John Pearson's Buckets Blog

Living Your Strengths

Issue No. 393 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a faith-based StrengthsFinder book—integrating biblical wisdom with the strengths movement.  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

Don't Handcuff Your Brain or Heart!

Mark Cuban invests three hours every day—not in shooting hoops with his Dallas Mavericks, not in sizing up Shark Tank deals, and not in other typical entrepreneurial endeavors—but in reading! According to Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (watch for my review coming this month), the most important routine/habit you can develop is reading.
 
And John Baillie (1886–1960) shares this wisdom in A Diary of Private Prayer (31 morning prayers and 31 evening prayers):

“Leave me not, O gracious Presence, in such hours as I may today devote to the reading of books or of newspapers. Guide my mind to choose the right books and, having chosen them, to read them in the right way. When I read for profit, grant that all I read may lead me nearer to Thyself. When I read for recreation, grant that what I read may not lead away from Thee. Let all my reading so refresh my mind that I may the more eagerly seek after whatsoever things are pure and fair and true.”

So…this issue encourages you to keep reading—to keep “refreshing” your mind by reading; to honor God in your reading. Thus here’s a StrengthsFinder niche book that you might have missed, written by the father of the strengths movement and two others:

Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your Community, by Albert L. Winseman, Donald O. Clifton, and Curt Liesveld

“Our coauthor, Don Clifton [1924-2003], was always fond of saying that each person can do something better than 10,000 other people. The key is for individuals to discover what that something is, and then do it.” 

Winseman and Liesveld add, “Indeed, developing our talents into strengths requires risk. We must step out, try new things, or take a chance by doing something we may fail at—at first. But if we do not take some risks—emotionally, physically, and spiritually—we will never grow. God expects no less from us and from the Church.”

How’s this for a “before and after” testimonial from a church board member?

“After serving almost four years on the church board, I had yet to fully know or understand those with whom I was working. The extent of our personal knowledge about one another went little beyond being asked to ‘share your favorite movie.’ 

“At the initiation of a new church board chair and a new executive pastor, we underwent strengths coaching, both individual and team. Everyone engaged in the process, and I learned more about my teammates in one evening than in all my previous years on the board. It was the most meaningful and significant times we’ve spent together.”   

If you work or volunteer in a faith-based organization, you will deeply appreciate how Living Your Strengths integrates the StrengthsFinder assessment with biblical insights. Example: my Top-5 strengths according to the Gallup assessment are: Focus, Responsibility, Significance, Belief, and Maximizer. So Living Your Strengths suggests three Scriptures that relate to the Focus theme:
   • Luke 9:51 (“…he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”)
   • Philippians 3:12-14 (“…I press on toward the goal…”)
   • Hebrews 12:1-2 (“…let us lay aside every weight…”)

Similar to the other StrengthsFinder books, Living Your Strengths includes two- and three-page summaries of all 34 talent themes—plus Scriptures for each theme. The book also includes chapters on “The Power of the Right Fit,” “Creating Strengths-Based Congregations,” and “Discovering a Calling.” Each book also includes one unique access code to the Clifton StrengthsFinder online assessment.

If you’re leading a team of staff or volunteers in a faith-based ministry or church—and blindly leading without understanding strengths—you have handcuffed half your brain and half your heart. Delegate your reading today and invite a team member to check this out.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your Community, by Albert L. Winseman, Donald O. Clifton, and Curt Liesveld. 



Click on the title to read my 2009 review of Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow, by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie.

Click on the title to order StrengthsFinder 2.0, from Gallup and Tom Rath (Discover Your CliftonStrengths).

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Why strengths? The authors of Strengths Based Leadership write, “The odds of an employee being engaged are a dismal one in 11 (9%). But when an organization’s leadership focuses on the strengths of its employees, the odds soar to almost three in four (73%).” What’s our level of staff (or volunteer) engagement here?
2) Rath and Conchie note that “While the best leaders are not well-rounded, the best teams are.” Here’s a Starbucks card for the first person who shares how a team member has helped you leverage your strengths recently (which requires, of course—that both of you know your strengths!). 

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Visualize Your Strengths!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Team Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets encourages leaders to “laminate your strengths” with wallet-size cards listing your Top-5 strengths from the StrengthsFinder assessment.

High performing teams go one step further: tent cards. My son, Jason, the creative guru at Pearpod Media, loves working with clients who leverage and visualize their strengths by bringing their strengths tent cards to every meeting. Try it!

In addition to strengths, learn how to leverage the four social styles when communicating with your team (and with your customers). So click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Stories of Sheer Pure Grace

Issue No. 392 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks—should you write a book? Read how Nancy Nelson answered that question. Powerful! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

You Should Write a Book!

“You should write a book!” As my clients, friends, and family know—I’ve repeated that mandate to colleagues hundreds of times over the years. It’s often in response to my hearing a truly original leadership thought, a management nugget, or a poignant story. 

Another favorite line: “That would make a great chapter title in your book!”

Several years ago Nancy Nelson shared a personal story during a brief conversation with Makoto Fujimura, the noted artist and author, who asked her, “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” Nancy admitted she had been praying about it, but was reluctant, so Fujimura inspired her with this:
 
“…these stories are a sacred trust from God. They are not to be kept to yourself but have been given to you to be shared.”

Thus Stories of Sheer Pure Grace was born—and trust me—heaven came down and emboldened Nancy to share 50 stories (50!) of remarkable insights into God at work in her life and the lives of others. This book is now on my Top-10 Book List for 2018.

Nancy (a long-time friend and fellow presenter in a board governance training program), writes “This collection is the result of sitting at the keyboard each morning for two months and praying, ‘Holy Spirit, wordsmith through me these stories so they bring honor and glory to God.’” He did and they do.

“…these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying,” notes Nancy. Whew! Just a few chapters in, I confessed to being a spiritual midget. Nancy prays! Friends pray! Co-workers prayed! The board prayed! Her children prayed! Her grandchildren prayed! The results—stunning!

Nancy headlines each story of sheer pure grace with a unique characteristic of God: The Revealing Wordsmith, The Master Planner, The “Wooer,” The Hijacker, The King of Hoopla, Prazable, The Territory Enlarger, The Strategic J.J., The Dog Catcher, The Culture Changer, and The Promise Keeper. (There are 39 more!)

These powerful three- and four-page narratives of God’s grace will touch your soul—and your tear ducts—as you walk through this humble and gifted woman’s span of numerous professional careers, including nearly 40 years at Warm Beach Camp and Conference Center in Washington State. Nancy has the chops to be a CEO, but she opted for making other CEOs look good as the key leader in food service, HR, and fund development. 

When reading books, I read with a pen (to slow me down) and make notes in the front of each book—noting memorable phrases and page numbers. I made 25 notes—but I could have made 200. Some of my favorites:
   • Nancy’s favorite name for God: Abba. Read why.
   • Quoting Dutch Sheets, “We humans are into microwaving and God is into marinating.”
   • Hosting a charitable foundation staff for lunch at Warm Beach Camp, Nancy directed them to the downstairs restrooms—sadly in need of renovation and relocating upstairs. (The grant proposal followed!)
   • How Mrs. Lemke (second grade teacher to Nancy’s son) responded to Thad’s appreciative comments four years later. “Don’t thank me, Thad, thank God. You don’t know how many times I sat in your chair before and after school and prayed for God to help you learn how to read.” 
   • When Warm Beach Camp agreed to serve children of incarcerated parents, Nancy noted, “…I found myself crowded into a tiny living room with a handful of plain, ordinary people who seemed to have dreams out of proportion to their means.” (Surprise: God answered their prayers.)
   • After the camp staff read The Prayer of Jabez, Nancy realized: “God funds what HE wants done!” (Read Amos 5:22-24 in The Message. It begins, “I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes…” Yikes!) 

One More:
• To complete her master’s degree at UCLA in dietetic/nutrition, Nancy conducted a research project with expectant mothers in Tijuana, Mexico. Enjoy this must-read story on God as “The Stage Director,” and LOL when you read the response of the faculty committee when they learned Nancy’s research had been published in the Mexican Journal of Nutrition!

They say you can’t tell a book by its cover—but I disagree. Makoto Fujimura’s striking work, Charis-Kairos (The Tears of Christ, 2017), graces Stories of Sheer Pure Grace. Amazing—on two levels: 1) That this artist would gift his work for a paperback cover (the original is Japanese Nihonga art—mineral pigments and gold on Belgium linen), and 2) That Nancy would have the chutzpah to ask for the gift. (Attention Fundraisers: This book is a short course in the art of asking.)

Example: In Chapter 23, “The Rescuer,” Nancy notes that King Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20) called for a nationwide time of fasting and prayer. That inspired the Warm Beach team to truthfully alert donors to a financial crisis. The donor appeal came to be known as the “Jehoshaphat Letter” and Nancy notes, “It was the kind of crisis letter an organization can only send out once in its history.”

On the back cover is a nickel-sized head shot of Eugene Peterson, along with his endorsement of this special, special book. Wow! The candid photo captures Peterson laughing his head off—and Nancy explains their connection and her deep appreciation for The Message.

She quotes from Eugene Peterson’s introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel in the Old Testament, “…as we submit our lives to what we read, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but to see our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.” Then Nancy adds, “And like 1st and 2nd Samuel, these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying.”

And here’s a gut check: Eugene Peterson notes in his introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel, “We do violence to the biblical revelation when we ‘use’ it for what we can get out of it or what we think will provide color and spice to our otherwise bland lives. That results in a kind of ‘boutique spirituality’—God as decoration, God as enhancement. The Samuel narrative will not allow that.” 

Oh, my. I wish I had space to chronicle another dozen bullet points of powerful answers to prayers—but that would require a holy spoiler alert! Order two books and inspire a friend or colleague to experience sheer pure grace. 

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy L. Nelson. 


   (back cover)

 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Nancy is so, so transparent. She credits the TrueFace team (Bruce McNicol, Bill Thrall, and John Lynch) and their book, The Cure, for helping her understand deep insights. Nancy writes, “…it’s love, usually applied by others, that is the solvent that helps us remove our masks so that our faces can become radiant.” Have you read The Cure?
2) So...should we write a book? Should you write a book? Is there a creative way (per Nancy Nelson’s approach) to tell our organization’s story—yet infuse the narrative with page-turning drama, vulnerable stories, powerful answers to prayer, and inspirational insights? If you’re in—we’ll meet at Starbucks tomorrow to map out the plan.

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Don't Be Like Brian's Grandpa!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Book Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets encourages leaders to be readers and to avoid “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome” and to mentor your team members with niche books (like Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy Nelson).

Brian Ogne, one of the most enthusiastic camp and conference center directors I’ve ever met, once asked his grandfather if he’d like a special book for Christmas. His granddad replied, “Why would I need another book? I already have one!”

Don’t be like Brian’s grandpa!

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Once you have your book written, you may need a sales and branding strategy. If so, click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Barna Trends 2018

Issue No. 391 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends Barna Trends 2018, a must-have resource for updating your Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan. (You do have a rolling plan, right?) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for my recent book reviews.

What Barna Trends Will Impact Your Strategic Plan?

Yikes! It’s almost October and you’re way, way behind on updating your Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan. You do that right? Your team, your board, and key volunteers look ahead at least three years, and every fall, you update the plan by one year. Yes? So your plan for 2019-2021 is due soon.

Warning! “Sameness isn’t strategy. It is a recipe for mediocrity.”

That’s the cautionary wisdom from Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin. They note: “Every industry has tools and practices that become widespread and generic. Some organizations define strategy as benchmarking against competition and then doing the same set of activities but more effectively. Sameness isn’t strategy. It is a recipe for mediocrity.”

Which brings me to today’s resource, Barna Trends 2018: What's New and What's Next at the Intersection of Faith and Culture, the annual update from the editorial team at Barna. 

In the S.W.O.T. section of your updated strategic plan, are you simply refreshing last year’s revision of the previous year’s inadequate research—or are you seriously addressing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats with current trends, wisdom, and discernment?

Barna Trends 2018 will help! I was privileged to be part of a board planning retreat earlier this year that leveraged this invaluable book. Facilitated by Rick Bee, a board member at Christian Community Credit Union, the planning session looked at dozens of trends from the Barna book. (And…my deep thanks to Rick for sharing his notes with my eNews readers!)

MEDIA TRENDS:
• Only 6% of Americans say celebrities are a credible source for news.
• What news outlets do we trust? TV news: 69%; local newspapers: 50%; national newspapers: 44%.
• Podcasts are watched by 23% of Americans (Millennials: 42%, Gen X: 30%, Boomers: 10%, Elders: 5%).

MOBILE PHONE TRENDS:
• 70% of parents sleep with their phones, but only 10% say that social media is the last thing they do each night.
• 62% of parents check their phone in the first hour of the day.
• Of the above group, 74% are checking email first thing in the morning, 51% are reading or sending texts, 48% are on social media, and 36% are reading the news.

WORLDVIEW TRENDS:
• Only 17% of Christians who consider their faith important, and attend church regularly, actually have a “biblical worldview” (as defined by Barna).
• 33% agree that if you do good—you will get good; and if you do bad—you will get bad.
• 28% agree that all people pray to the same god or spirit—no matter what name they use for that spiritual being.
• 23% agree that many religions can lead to eternal life; there is no “one true” religion. Of that group, Millennials and Gen X agree with that view more than others.

HOW WOULD YOU GIVE $100?
• 64% would give $100 to a domestic child in need—not a child living overseas.
• However, Millennials are the most interested age group in giving to international needs.

PASTORS AT RISK OF BURNOUT
Barna assessed burnout risk for pastors using 11 factors. “A pastor is low risk if they do not meet any of the factors, medium risk if they meet criteria for one of the factors, and high risk if they meet three or more of the factors.” Here are five of the 11 risk factors:
   • “Their primary day-to-day tasks do not fit their calling or gifts.”
   • “Tenure at their current church has been a disappointment.”
   • “Less confident in their calling today than when they began ministry.”
   • “Have suffered from depression sometime during their ministry.”
   • “Frequently feel emotionally or mentally exhausted.”

Similar to Barna Trends 2017 (read my review here), the book spotlights trends in culture, life, and faith. This 2018 edition adds a feature, “The Truth About a Post-Truth Society.” (Shocking stats! Just 36% agree that the church “…has my best interest at heart.”)

As you—truthfully—document trends for your 2019-2021 Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan, you’ll want to read the following articles/sections—or delegate them to your Strategic Planning Task Force (you do have a task force, right?):
• Glossary—Theolographics (defines a “post-Christian”)
• The “Fake News” Phenomenon (and what’s to blame)
• Who Prays for Donald Trump?
• The Pastoral Credibility Crisis
• Gen Z Views on Sexuality
• One in Three Teens Is Cyber Bullied
• What Do You Hope Your Child Will Obtain From Their Education?
• Degrees of Preparation: The top three things pastors wish they had been better prepared for
• Busyness: A New Family Tradition

Barna gives us a LOT to think about, but allow me to add more complexity to your planning process. Donald Rumsfeld always used four planning steps whether at Fortune 500 companies or in government. Read more about his second step: “Identify your key assumptions.” In Rumsfeld Rules, he notes that “It is possible to proceed perfectly logically from an inaccurate premise to an inaccurate and unfortunate conclusion.” How do these new trends impact your old assumptions?

MORE BARNA TRENDS
• Workplace Romance
• Eight in 10 Parents Say Their Job Has Never Been Harder
• Volunteers View Volunteering as an Act of Generosity
• Barna Identifies Five Reasons the World Is No Longer in Agreement About Anything
• 29% of Pastors Don’t Attend Conferences
• Prayer Is a Rarity Among Church Teams
• The Myth of the Lazy Teen
• The Ultimate Financial Goal for Life (segmented by generation)
• The Dechurched: America’s Greatest Mission Field

FINALLY…
• A Q&A on Team Leadership With Gen. Stanley McChrystal (read my review of his 2015 book, Team of Teams)
• More Than Clever Sermons, by Francis Chan
• American Ideas About Islam

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Barna Trends 2018: What's New and What's Next at the Intersection of Faith and Culture.

 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Does our strategic plan have at least 10 assumptions that have been affirmed by our customers (and donors)? Are these assumptions based on the latest trends or outdated trends?
2) Barna Trends 2018 notes that “eight in 10 parents say their job has never been harder.” How might that new statistic impact our work with staff, volunteers, customers, and donors? 

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Strategic Insanity
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Strategy Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets encourages teams to be strategic about strategic planning. As Einstein preached, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So buy two copies of Barna Trends 2018—and delegate your reading and research! And this reminder from the authors of Playing to Win. Lafley and Martin write that that there are five ineffective ways that many leaders inappropriately champion when defining the strategy process:
   1) “They define strategy as vision.
   2) They define strategy as a plan.
   3) They deny that long-term (or even medium-term) strategy is possible.
   4) They define strategy as the optimization of the status quo.
   5) They define strategy as following best practices.”

Once you have your strategy nailed down, you may need a re-branding process. If so, click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the the hot-off-the-press second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Before and After Babe Ruth

Issue No. 390 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a colorful baseball book (with management insights) by Dan Busby, a self-described “ticketologist.” You can’t put it down! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for more summer reading list nominees.



Management Through the Lens of Baseball

Hey, baseball fans! The 2018 World Series begins on Oct. 23. Will your favorite team be there? (Go Cubs!)

Today, the New York Yankees are 11 games out of first place in the AL East, but it hasn’t always been this way. The Yankees have won 27 World Series championships—an MLB record. But their most recent Commissioner’s Trophy has been collecting dust since 2009.

So…what’s up with these fascinating factoids? And why should you care?

Hot-off-the-press is Dan Busby’s amazing book, Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes. Even if you’re a Chicago Cubs fan like me (I survived 21 winters in Chicago), you can’t put this book down. It’s absolutely fascinating—and there’s something in this book for everyone: fans, CEOs, marketing/branding teams, church leaders, parents, fundraisers, and team builders! Enjoy these eight water cooler conversation starters:

1) HEADLINE SAVVY. The Yankees were once called the “Highlanders,” but that 11-letter moniker crowded newspaper headlines, while “Yanks” and “Yankees” were a better fit. The name, “Knickerbockers”—a plug for a popular beer from Owner Jacob Ruppert’s brewery—was also rejected due to length.

That reminded me of Charles Handy’s autobiography that notes Management Guru Peter Drucker “once quipped that journalists only came up with the word [guru] because ‘charlatan’ was too long for a headline.”

2) FUNDRAISING SAVVY. During World War I, “...in an attempt to positively influence public opinion about professional baseball…the Ball and Bat Fund was established to provide baseball equipment to soldiers serving overseas.” Across America, every baseball fan was asked to donate “25 cents for the purchase of equipment and to forward a copy of the appeal to four other fans.” (When’s the last time you asked your most loyal donors to recruit other donors?)

3) PR SPIN. Quoting Peter Morris on the Yankees at Hilltop Park for their 1903 to 1912 seasons: “The best player may have been throwing games, their chief scout was a bigamist, the owners skirted the law, and maybe the best thing you could say about the ballpark was that it never burned down.”

So…why a book about baseball through the lens of baseball tickets? My friend, Dan Busby (we co-authored a governance book last year), has a very serious day job as president of ECFA (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability). In off-hours though, he describes himself as a “ticketologist.”

In the 1950s, Busby began collecting World Series programs (the mail order company attached actual World Series tickets!). Inspired, Dan upped his game and in 1962 began collecting opening day tickets from every major league baseball team. This ticketologist now consults with the National Baseball Hall of Fame concerning memorabilia acquisitions. I tell friends, “Dan is in a league of his own—he’s a walking Wikipedia!”

This gorgeous coffee table book features baseball tickets and season passes on every page—and the remarkable colors, shapes, sizes, fonts, and advertising (yes—advertising was alive and well in the early 1900s) are outdone only by the page-turning narrative on owners, managers, players—Babe Ruth, of course—and Yankee and MLB history, in all its virtues and vices. You can’t put it down!

More fascinating factoids:

4) 1 COOKIE OR 2? I was reminded of the “One cookie or two cookies?” marketing lesson I gave my son Jason (at age four)—when I read Busby’s account of Babe Ruth’s salary negotiating skills when the Sultan of Swat was still with the Boston Red Sox:

“Before the 1919 season began, Ruth gave [Owner Harry] Frazee a choice of two proposals:
     --one year at $15,000
     --or three years at $10,000 each.
Frazee reluctantly accepted the latter.”

Parents: Inspire your kids to play baseball. In 2014, L.A. Angels center fielder Mike Trout signed a six-year contract extension for $144.5 million. Yikes. Compare his 2018 salary of $33.25 million to The Great Bambino’s 1919 salary of $10,000 per year. Yikes, again.

5) SUNDAY BASEBALL. According to Busby, “At the start of the twentieth century, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati were the only major league towns that allowed Sunday baseball.” It’s interesting that today, MLB doesn’t complain when churches conduct services on Saturday.

6) FLOP WARNINGS! Busby describes Boston Red Sox Owner Harry Frazee as a “clever theatrical promoter” (his day job) and his biggest hit, No, No, Nanette, ran for 321 shows on Broadway. Riding that wave, Frazee produced Yes, Yes, Yvette—which flopped after just 40 shows. (Memo to Marketing: conduct flop analysis on all products, programs, and services—especially when the CEO thinks he or she has a home run idea.)

7) NFL: BLAME BARROW. Baseball Hall of Famer Ed Barrow (1868-1953), the “de facto general manager” of the Yankees for many years “was the first executive to put numbers on player uniforms.” He retired the first player’s uniform numbers (Lou Gehrig’s), and was the first executive “to allow fans to keep foul balls that entered the stadium.”

And NFL execs may want to note this: Barrow “was the first to require the playing of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ the United States’ national anthem, before every game, instead of only on holidays.”

I gotta stop…but how about just one more!

8) HOT DOGS ON THE FIELD? What’s more American than hot dogs and baseball? But in the 1921 World Series between the Yankees and the Giants (nine games at the Polo Grounds), concessionaire Harry Stevens “was selling 21,000 hot dogs and 3,000 bags of peanuts per game”—but—“he complained that the drama of the games was hurting his sales, because the fans were so focused on the action that they were not eating enough food. (Memo to Management: identify your measurable goals first—then play ball!)

This beautiful book is a treasure. It’s the perfect gift book for baseball fans and your organization’s front lobby. Nicely done, Dan!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by Dan Busby.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) “For the next four weeks, I’m asking four people to borrow this Yankees book for a week and present one fascinating factoid and one management insight at our next four staff meetings. The first taker earns a Starbucks card!”
2) The announced opening day attendance at the new Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923 (the “Souvenir Programme” cost 15 cents) was 74,217. One problem: seating capacity “was really around 62,000.” How accurate are our stories and statistics—and what drives our need to exaggerate?

P.S. GO CUBS! And read my other two favorite baseball books, The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse, by Tom Verducci (2017), and A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred (2014), by George F. Will.

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Major League Branding
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Printing Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets notes Fred Smith’s pithy book, Breakfast With Fred—and this wisdom, “I learned to write to burn the fuzz off my thinking.”

If it’s time for you to burn the fuzz off your branding, click here for a free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media.

For more on branding your programs, products, and services, order the the hot-off-the-press second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Hemingway Didn't Say That

Issue No. 389 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting warns—those famous quotations from Mark Twain, Yogi Berra, and Ernest Hemingway? Probably fake news. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out the links on these pages for more summer reading list nominees.



Pop Quiz on Popular Quotations

Fake news. Fake stats. Fake quotes. Who ya gonna call?

Call Garson O'Toole. He’s got some chops, at least for branding—he labels himself “the internet’s foremost quote investigator.”

We haven’t talked about the Printing Bucket for a while—so during these lazy days of summer, here’s a fun reference book by O’Toole that will position you as the premier quotemeister at staff meetings.

Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations, by Garson O’Toole, describes (to accurately quote the book’s dust jacket): “How one man corrected hundreds of modern misquotations infecting the internet, our books, and our minds.”

POP QUIZ! Did the following people originate these quotations? (True, False, or Recycled? Answers below.)

1) Andy Warhol: “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”
2) Woody Allen: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
3) Pablo Picasso: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.”
4) Edmund Burke:
     “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
       is that good men do nothing.”
5) Thomas Edison: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
6) Bill Gates: “640K [of computer memory] ought to be enough for anyone.”
7) Chief Seattle: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”
8) Dorothy Parker: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
9) Mother Teresa: “’Do good anyway’ and the Paradoxical Commandments.”
10) U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes on the invention of the telephone:
     “Great invention,
       but who would ever want to use one?”
11) Benjamin Disraeli: “Half of the town councilors are not fools.”
12) David Foster Wallace: “You’ll worry less about what people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
13) John Wooden: “Sports do not build character. They reveal it.”
14) Albert Einstein: “Not everything that counts can be counted.”
15) John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, and Woodrow Wilson:
     “If I had more time,
       I would have written a shorter letter.”
16) Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Easy reading is hard writing.”
17) Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
18) Mark Twain: “If your own tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.”
19) Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Proverbs 17:28: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
20) Mark Twain: “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

You’ll enjoy this book! Garson O’Toole (click here for his Quote Investigator website) segments his known quotation falsehoods into four categories: Group Error, Reader Error, Author Error, and Finders Keepers. Example: 

In researching the quotation attributed to Benjamin Disraeli: “Half of the town councilors are not fools,” O’Toole devotes six pages (including notes) and concludes that the earliest reference was in 1927 in Sweden, and not from London and Prime Minister Disraeli. The 1927 quotation:

“A government official reportedly lost his temper and rebuked his fellows. A municipal councilor . . . remarked that certainly half of his colleagues were fools. An apology was demanded. He promised to make reparation and caused bills with the following correction to be posted on boardings in the town: ‘I said that half of the town councilors are fools. I now declare that half of the town councilors are not fools.’”

According to O’Toole, “Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, Dorothy Parker, and Yogi Berra are quotation superstars. Personas of this type are so vibrant and attractive that they become hosts for quotations they never uttered.”

So…what’s your favorite quotation—and have you verified its accuracy? As Abraham Lincoln noted, “Not everything you read on the internet is true.”

POP QUIZ ANSWERS: Quotations 1 and 2 are true. All others are false, except O’Toole says 12 and 15 are “recycled.” And here’s an interesting note (at least to me): Quotation 12 notes that Ethel Barrett should also get some credit for this recycled quotation. It appeared in her 1968 book, Don’t Look Now, but Your Personality Is Showing (5th printing), published by G/L Regal Books—also the publisher of my book, Mastering the Management Buckets (now distributed by Baker Books).

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations, by Garson O'Toole.


YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life” is frequently attributed to Confucius. Not so, says O’Toole. But…whoever said it, do you agree with it? Why?
2) “Proofreading occurs best after publication” is one of my favorite quotations, but I don’t know who first shared that wisdom. Discuss: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are we to zero typos and accurate attribution?” (Visit the Printing Bucket.)  

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Typos Matter!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) 

The Printing Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets will remind you that if the written emergency instructions on a Boeing 747 are laced with typographical errors, it may cause passengers to wonder, “If the proofreading is shoddy—what about the safety precautions?”

Check out the six strategic “balls” in either the book or the hot-off-the-press second edition workbook, Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon.

#1. LEVERAGE your communication tools to keep programs and projects aligned with your BHAG and strategies.
#2. APPOINT and empower a printing coordinator.
#3. CREATE a failsafe proofreading system.
#4. POST your printing deadline calendar by the coffee.
#5. SELECT a style and take off!
#6. MAXIMIZE new technologies and innovations.

The workbook (232 pages) includes worksheets for staff meetings on all 20 buckets/core competencies, including the Results Bucket, the Customer Bucket, the Team Bucket, the Delegation Bucket, the Printing Bucket and much more.
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2 Printing Bucket Resources!

BOB KELLY: 2 MILLION QUOTES! Need the perfect quotations for your presentations, inspiring talks, PowerPoints, articles, or full-length books? Contact Bob Kelly, Resident Wordsmith at WordCrafters, Inc. His quote collection now comprises 585 published volumes and close to two million selections. (Honest!) Bob will also help you with your writing projects. Visit his website here.

JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

How CEOs Manage Time (HBR)

Issue No. 388 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting notes that you don’t need to read a thick book on time management—just read this article: “How CEOs Manage Time” (only 19 pages) in this month’s Harvard Business Review. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for more summer reading list nominees.



How CEOs Manage Time

Even U.S. presidents have much to learn on how they manage their time. In The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (read my 2012 review here), the authors note this: 

“Clinton would call Nixon and describe his schedule—when he got up, when he exercised, how long he worked, in order to hear if that was normal for a president. After Nixon died, Clinton said it felt like the loss of his mother.”

The co-authors comment: “The most precious commodity of the United States of America is neither the gold bullion in Fort Knox nor the launch codes in its ballistic missiles. It is the time of the commander in chief: there is only so much of it, and how it is spent shapes pretty much everything else.”

According to The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, when Erskine Bowles served as President Bill Clinton’s second chief of staff, he “carried around a card with the president’s top priorities written on it [just three or four big projects]—and rebelled when Clinton tried to go off script.”

So how do you manage your time? Are your team members effectively investing their time with the right balance of doing, thinking, meeting, influencing, and reflecting? Here’s help!

Not every topic needs a War and Peace-length treatment (over 1,400 pages!). Harvard Business Review’s bi-monthly magazine (July-August 2018) features 19 practical pages in their spotlight on “The Leader’s Calendar,” including:
   • “How CEOs Manage Time,” by Harvard Business School prof Michael E. Porter and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria (11 pages)
   • “What Do CEOs Actually Do?" (a 2-page color-coded chart)
   • “One CEO’s Approach to Managing His Calendar,” by Daniel McGinn and Sarah Higgins (6 pages)

Fascinating stuff! The authors agree with U.S. presidents: “Time is the scarcest resources leaders have.” They add, “The way CEOs allocate their time and their presence—where they choose to personally participate—is crucial, not only to their own effectiveness but also to the performance of their companies. Where and how CEOs are involved determines what gets done and signals priorities for others. It also affects their legitimacy. 

“A CEO who doesn’t spend enough time with colleagues will seem insular and out of touch, whereas one who spends too much time in direct decision making will risk being seen as a micromanager and erode employees’ initiatives. A CEO’s schedule (indeed any leader’s schedule), then, is a manifestation of how the leader leads and sends powerful messages to the rest of the organization.”

The highly readable format of HBR articles—distilling data into bite-size chunks—is brilliant. One “In Brief” sidebar summarizes three points: The Problem, The Study, and The Findings. Under the latter:

“Leaders must learn to simultaneously manage seemingly contradictory dualities:
   • integrating direct decision making with indirect levers like strategy and culture,
   • balancing internal and external constituencies,
   • proactively driving an agenda while responding to unfolding events,
   • exercising leverage while being mindful of constraints,
   • focusing on tangible decisions and the symbolic significance of every action,
   • and combining formal power and legitimacy.”

With warnings like “avoiding the lure of e-mail,” and “making time for personal well-being,” the authors tracked CEO time in 25 key areas, such as meeting time, face-to-face interactions, one-on-one meetings, strategy time, time with customers, and “two-hour-plus blocks of alone time.” The article lists the degree of variation between the CEOs.

This study—unique in CEO research says HBR—tracked the activities of CEOs at 27 large companies 24/7 for 13 weeks and then conducted deep dive debriefs with each leader. The color-coded two-page chart summarizes nine key areas (where they work, work vs. personal time, lengths of meetings, etc.). Example: the 27 CEOs reported that 75% of their time was scheduled and just 25% of their time was spontaneous (on a 24/7 basis over 13 weeks).

Page 46, “Four Behaviors of Great Executive Assistants,” is PowerPoint-worthy. One insight: EAs can help CEOs by including all the relevant players in meetings—resisting the temptation to keep meetings small. “…good CEOs delegate well, and to do so they need their direct reports and affected managers to be present. Otherwise, extra rounds of communication and follow-up will be needed after the meetings. Good EAs avoid that problem by getting the right people in the room to begin with.”

You’ll also appreciate the over-the-shoulder look at a week-at-a-glance schedule of Tom Gentile, CEO for Spirit AeroSystems. The Monday to Sunday grid (also color-coded) clocks every 24 hours over seven days in 15-minute increments. “Attended his company’s board meeting on less than three hours of sleep and then had dinner with his wife.” Yikes!

Speaking of boards, “All our CEOs understood the importance of spending time with their boards. In our study, interacting with directors accounted for 5% of CEO’s total work time, or 41 hours per quarter, on average. But…we saw significant variation: One CEO spent six hours with directors; another spent 165.” They emphasize the importance of CEOs “managing up” to the board and finding time “to build meaningful one-on-one relationships with individual directors.”

Trust me—this is worth the read.

ORDERING OPTIONS:
[  ] Option 1: Subscribe to the Amazon Kindle version of Harvard Business Review Magazine (30 days free) and read the July-August 2018 version online. Click here.
[  ] Option 2: Purchase at many newsstands, airports, and bookstores.
[  ] Option 3: Visit Harvard Business Review here and subscribe (six issues per year) or just download the “Leader’s Calendar” collection of three articles (19 pages). Click here.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) One CEO, Tom Gentile, who tracked his 24/7 time for 13 weeks was surprised to learn he spent less time one-on-one with his direct reports than the average CEO does. My counsel to clients: keep one-on-one meetings on the front burner with the “Weekly Update to My Supervisor” form from Mastering the Management Buckets. Download here. 
2) One of Gentile’s “big take-aways” in his debrief with Professor Porter and Dean Nohria was that he spent too much time on email. Take a guess: how much time does your CEO spend on email in the average week? Too much, or too little?

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The CEO's Job Description
Insights from Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance

Try this. After reading the HBR article, “How CEOs Manage Time,” review the CEO do-it-yourself job description tool in Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance. Of the 10 basic responsibilities of nonprofit CEOs listed, ask your board and staff to weigh in on the Top-3 priorities—based on your current situation and environment.

The workbook includes access to 16 downloadable templates including: the “Prime Responsibility Chart” (a one-page division of responsibilities between the board, the CEO, and the senior team), the “CEO Monthly Dashboard Report,” and the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. For additional governance resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for the Nonprofit Board, by John Pearson.

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Need a Branding/Strategy Do-Over?
Many times poor branding is the result of an inappropriate or ineffective (or tired out) strategy. Read my review of Harvard prof Michael Porter’s classic HBR article, “What Is Strategy?” Click here.

Porter preaches that “around this core of uniqueness are encrustations added incrementally over time. Like barnacles, they must be removed to reveal the underlying strategic positioning.”

For more help on branding and strategy, check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod. Click here.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Operation Mincemeat

Issue No. 387 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a remarkable book on the zillions of details involved in one of the greatest war ruses of all time. It’s filled with leadership lessons and why missing even the smallest details can literally kill you. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for more summer reading list nominees.



The Twin Frailties of Wishfulness and Yesmanship

D-DAY! Seventy-four years ago today, on June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded Western Europe in the largest amphibious attack in history. So here’s a summer re-run book for your lazy days of summer reading list. (Note: I first reviewed this on Sept. 9, 2010.)

And…if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere where winter just arrived, it’s the perfect book for those quiet evenings at home. The author delivers an amazing narrative of a war machine bureaucracy that—due to detailed planning—gets it done.

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory is unlike any spy novel I’ve ever read. I’ve enjoyed all of Tom Clancy’s novels starting with The Hunt for Red October. But this is different—and better—and all true. Operation Mincemeat is painstakingly documented (details). It’s a page-turner.

In World War II, following the successful North Africa campaign, a tiny team at British Intelligence in London attempt to create the biggest ruse in war history—convincing the Germans that the Allied invasion of Europe will come through Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily. The big idea: find a corpse, build an identity, dress and drop it off the coast of Spain by submarine—and deceive the German spies in Spain into believing that the officer’s secret documents contained the invasion plans.

It’s a true thriller—and the details and insights are extraordinary. The small team in London (about 20 men and women and just five typewriters in a stuffy underground office) executed the plan with spy movie genius. Along the way, the leadership and management issues jump off the pages, including how to recognize the twin sins of “wishfulness” and “yesmanship.”

“…John Godfrey identified what he called ‘wishfulness’ and ‘yesmanship’ as the twin frailties of German intelligence. ‘If the authorities were clamouring for reports on a certain subject the German Secret Intelligence Service was not above inventing reports on what they thought probable.’ The Nazi high command, at the same time, when presented with contradictory intelligence reports, was ‘inclined to believe the one that fits in best with their own previously formed conceptions.’ If Hitler’s paranoid Wishfulness and his underlings’ craven Yesmanship could be exploited, then Operation Barclay might work: the Germans would deceive themselves.”

SPOILER ALERT! I won’t give you the all delicious details in this review, but the Allies win. How Operation Mincemeat did its part to save perhaps thousands of lives on both sides is a poignant read. For detail-oriented people—who bless others by mastering the Operations Bucket and the Systems Bucket—this true account will not disappoint.

To order this book from Amazon, click on the link below for Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Has our team ever been tempted to succumb to the twin sins of “wishfulness” and “yesmanship?”
2) The conventional wisdom is that “the Devil is in the details.” But, wait a minute—is not God into the details? Who has God gifted on our team to focus on the details? 
  
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The Cardinal Sin of Omission
Insights from Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance

Speaking of sins (per the twin frailties above of wishfulness and yesmanship), Ed Morgan reminded us last month that “the cardinal sin of omission by the board is the lack of yearly evaluations of the CEO against board-approved goals.” In his color commentary blog on Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom for Lesson 26 of 40: Spotting, Catching, or Exiting a Falling CEO, Ed has even more to say about dysfunctional boards!

Solution! “Tool #14: The Board’s Annual Evaluation of the CEO” is a 20-page resource—with an add-water-and-stir survey instrument—and is one of 16 tools in the new book, Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance.

The workbook includes access to all 16 downloadable templates including: the “Prime Responsibility Chart” (one-page), the “Board’s Annual Self-Assessment Survey,” the “CEO Monthly Dashboard Report,” and the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. When you use all 16 of these time-saving solutions, you'll wonder why you didn't discover them sooner. To order from Amazon, click on the title for Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for the Nonprofit Board, by John Pearson.

For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

Leaders Eat Last

Issue No. 386 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting salutes a summer reading recommendation, Leaders Eat Last. Simon Sinek writes, “Trust is like lubrication. It reduces friction and creates conditions much more conducive to performance.” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out more summer reading list nominees on this webpage.



Why We Have Leaders

On this Memorial Day in the U.S., I’m launching a series of summer reading suggestions. If you missed my review of Leaders Eat Last in 2015 (a Top-10 pick), here’s your second chance. Enjoy this poignant military story.

I know. I know. In every issue, I rhapsodize about yet one more humdinger of a book. A must read. The-answer-to-all-your problems. Sorry.

But…you can blame Jerry White for this one. When Jerry and Mary White speak, I listen. I write it down. They are the real deal—and they don’t speak, write or recommend lightly. Jerry emailed me on the last day of 2014: “One of my bell-ringers this year was Leaders Eat Last, by Simon Sinek. Secular, but with such strong biblical ideas. Gen. [4 star] Kevin Chilton put me on to that book.”

You’ve likely enjoyed the TED talk by Simon Sinek (one of the 20 most popular talks) based on his book, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Perhaps you’ve even read the book. Some think his latest book is even better.

I’ve underlined dozens and dozens of brilliant quotes and insights in this gem, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. The 2017 paperback includes an expanded chapter on leading millennials.

So I’m torn: give you the 30,000-foot view—or entice you with a powerful story? Let’s go with the story.

The Ceramic Cup
(an excerpt from Chapter 8, “Why We Have Leaders”)

I heard a story about a former Under Secretary of Defense who gave a speech at a large conference. He took his place on the stage and began talking, sharing his prepared remarks with the audience. He paused to take a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup he’d brought on stage with him. He took another sip, looked down at the cup and smiled.

“You know,” he said, interrupting his own speech, “I spoke here last year. I presented at this same conference on this same stage. But last year, I was still an Under Secretary,” he said. “I flew here in business class and when I landed, there was someone waiting for me at the airport to take me to my hotel. Upon arriving at my hotel,” he continued, “there was someone else waiting for me. They had already checked me into the hotel, so they handed me my key and escorted me up to my room. The next morning, when I came down, again there was someone waiting for me in the lobby to drive me to this same venue that we are in today. I was taken through a back entrance, shown to the greenroom and handed a cup of coffee in a beautiful ceramic cup.”

“But this year, as I stand here to speak to you, I am no longer the Under Secretary,” he continued. “I flew here coach class and when I arrived at the airport yesterday there was no one there to meet me. I took a taxi to the hotel, and when I got there, I checked myself in and went by myself to my room. This morning, I came down to the lobby and caught another taxi to come here. I came in the front door and found my way backstage. Once there, I asked one of the techs if there was any coffee. He pointed to a coffee machine on a table against the wall. So I walked over and poured myself a cup of coffee into this here Styrofoam cup,” he said as he raised the cup to show the audience.

“It occurs to me,” he continued, “the ceramic cup they gave me last year . . . it was never meant for me at all. It was meant for the position I held. I deserve a Styrofoam cup.

“This is the most important lesson I can impart to all of you,” he offered. “All the perks, all the benefits and advantages you may get for the rank or position you hold, they aren’t meant for you. They are meant for the role you fill. And when you leave your role, which eventually you will, they will give the ceramic cup to the person who replaces you. Because you only ever deserved a Styrofoam cup.”

To order from Amazon, click on the graphic below or this title: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, by Simon Sinek.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Talk about the “ceramic cups” you enjoy in your present position. Are you holding onto them loosely—or with a tight grip?
2) One of Sinek’s key pillars is what he calls a “Circle of Safety” in the workplace. He says work-life balance “has nothing to do with the hours we work or the stress we suffer. It has to do with where we feel safe.” So….what enriches that safe feeling in our department or organization—and what detracts from it? (The book has insights on this.) 
  
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Eliminate Hallway Whining
Insights from Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance

In the chapter, “Eliminate Hallway Whining” in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, Dan Busby and John Pearson note, “In the hallways of boardrooms, perhaps the most constant whine is, ‘We don’t hear anything from our CEO in between board meetings. How can I steward this ministry, if I’m not in the loop?'”

Solution! “Tool #5: CEO’s 5/15 Monthly Board Report” is a simple add-water-and-stir template, and when formatted by the CEO’s assistant, takes the CEO just 15 minutes to write—and five minutes for board members to read, each month. Presto: Communication! News! Information! Encouragement! No Whining!

Tool #5 is just one of the 16 tools in the new resource, Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance. And...you have access to the downloadable forms.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for the Nonprofit Board, by John Pearson.

For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

The Softer Side of Leadership

Issue No. 385 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights the “softer side” of leadership—and this challenge: if you actually read some of the sections to your spouse (or a colleague), you are in the right lane. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and on this page, check out my Top 10 Book Recommendations of 2017, and my Book-of-the-Year pick.



"Hello Marylou!"

Ken Blanchard suggests you read fewer books, but—get this—read a book four times because “…the gap between knowing and doing is probably wider than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.”

Today, I’m halfway through my second read of Eugene B. Habecker’s powerful new book, The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead. First read: insightful and helpful. Second read: transformational. (I may run out of adjectives for the third and fourth read!)

Remember the toe-tapping Ricky Nelson classic, “Hello Mary Lou?” Click here to listen, but this warning: if you skip this two-minute break—read Chapter 4 first, “Stay Connected to the Heart,” or Chapter 6, “Cultivate Creativity.”



Why the “Mary Lou” reference? Gene Habecker invites his wife, Marylou, into several chapters—and Gene’s transparency is so, so refreshing. Example:

Reflecting on Frederick Buechner’s insights on how life batters leaders—prompting us to bury our true selves then “live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather…”—Habecker writes:

“…I can remember a very specific situation in which I was so bruised and battered by a particular leadership issue that I had functionally abdicated my presidential leadership assignment to an outside consultant. I remember walking around the block, complaining all the while about this to Marylou. Finally, she looked at me and simply said, ‘You need to go back upstairs and be the president.'” Hello Marylou!

Blind spots? Habecker says all leaders have blind spots. The problem: we’re blind to our own blind spots—and that creates frightening situations. He quotes Henri Nouwen in the important chapter, “Welcome Self-Discovery Learning.”

Nouwen: “…the house I had finally found had no floors…. It seemed as if a door to my interior life had been opened, a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life… The interruption…forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there.”

So Habecker reflects on one blind spot: busyness. “When Marylou and I were on our last sabbatical, she threatened to give me an ‘F’ in Sabbatical because I found it was very hard to detach from work in the way Nouwen describes…” Hello Marylou!

Now here’s a gut check for you (no pun intended). One of the essential soft skills of leaders is addressed in the chapter, “Practice Consistent Fitness Renewal.” The dilemma: so much to do, so little time. Who has time for fitness renewal?

Gene and Marylou were discussing John 17:4, “I have brought glory to you here on earth by doing everything you gave me to do.” Habecker notes, “I focused on ‘doing everything,’ and eagerly launched into my speech about needing to be better organized, more productive, and more effective so I could get more done. Frankly, my ‘to-do’ list was already becoming unmanageable. Marylou patiently listened, then she quietly, but importantly, reminded me that I had missed one part of the main teachings of the verse.

“She focused on the words, ‘you gave me to do.’ As she explained it, based on this verse and others, our priority work ought to be focused not on everything that could be done, but rather on what God has specifically given or called us to do. And that is the agenda that becomes our priority. Not my agenda, but His agenda.” Hello Marylou!

In addition to the “Hello Marylou” interludes, you will deeply appreciate this one-of-a-kind Leadership 401 grad school course on the softer side of leadership (never taught and rarely caught). Habecker’s diligent work is easy-to-read on a challenging-to-live topic:
   • Each chapter includes a summary page, “The Chapter Idea.”
   • Each chapter concludes with “Putting the Idea to Work.”
   • A final “To Summarize” paragraph nails the big ideas.

Certain themes will resonate with certain leaders. Some of us are blessed with “Marylou’s” in our lives (thanks, Joanne!) which helps. Maybe a test of your leadership will be if you read the most convicting paragraphs to your spouse or a colleague. Yikes.

My favorite think-about topics (during my second read): two questions from Patrick Lencioni; five questions from the HBR article, “Being a Strategic Leader Is About Asking the Right Questions;” charismatic listeners; what the 9/11 Museum missed; self-abandonment vs. self-fulfillment; and this from Simone Weil: “There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.”

Habecker’s footnotes invite leaders into a treasury of deep thought about the softer side of leadership from not-so-softies. His quotes from The Seeking Heart, by Fenelon, prompted me to pull out my unread copy and add it to my summer reading list. On difficult circumstances, Fenelon inspires: “The events of life are like a furnace for the heart. All your impurities are melted and your old ways are lost…”

Finally, Gene’s chapter on creativity is a whack-on-the-side-of-the-head. Convicting, but inspiring! I’m a big fan of creativity—but it challenged me in new and fun ways. Read about his reluctant visit to the Crayola Experience (now in four cities) when guess who admonished him, “Why are you just standing there watching and observing? Grab some paper, crayons, and start coloring something—anything—and don’t be afraid to color outside the lines.” Hello Marylou!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead, Eugene B. Habecker. (And…thanks to Gene for the advance review copy. The book will be released on May 17, 2018.)

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In his chapter, “Stay Connected to the Heart,” Habecker writes, “As heart work is done, focus more on asking ‘what’ questions, not just ‘why’ questions. Rather than asking, ‘Why did that happen to me?’ focus more on questions such as, ‘So what can I learn from this situation? How can I grow?’” Share two more “what” questions with us.
2) In the chapter, “Protect Sacred Space and Enable Deep Thinking,” he notes, “If what people experience on the outside, however, is not grounded by some kind of transcendent or spiritual depth on the inside, the leadership persona or façade will be eviscerated the first time an organizational storm is experienced.” What patterns do you have in your life to ensure the presence of sacred space? 
  
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Five-Finger Feedback
Insights from Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance

“Five-Finger Feedback” is one of the 16 tools and templates I’ve used regularly. At the end of any meeting, ask each participant to rate the effectiveness of the meeting on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 is high), by holding up one to five fingers. You can also survey each participant twice:

• Question 1: My engagement in this meeting was a…
• Question 2: The overall effectiveness of this meeting was a…

The workbook includes access to all 16 downloadable templates including: the “Prime Responsibility Chart” (one-page), the “Board’s Annual Self-Assessment Survey,” the “CEO Monthly Dashboard Report,” and the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. When you use all 16 of these time-saving solutions, you'll wonder why you didn't discover them sooner. 

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for the Nonprofit Board, by John Pearson.

For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.

The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible

Issue No. 384 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends a chewable book for your summer reading list on the top 10 leadership conversations in the Bible. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and on this page, check out my Top 10 Book Recommendations of 2017, and my Book-of-the-Year pick.



Chewable Books

Steve Moore, president of nexleader and former president and CEO of Missio Nexus, embarked on a two-year search for leadership gold from Genesis to Revelation. Good news! He struck gold and he’s sharing the loot with us!

The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders is amazing. Moore’s book lands in my “chewable book” category. I’ll explain.

When Don Parrott recommended Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Strengthening the Leadership of Your Soul, he warned me: “At the end of every chapter, you’ll need to take a long break to pray and reflect on the convicting insights.” He was right. I eventually meditated through the entire book. Whew. I named it my 2009 book-of-the-year. Chewable—but chew slowly.
 
A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness, by Joseph A. Maciariello, is another chewable book. Perhaps you followed along every Monday in 2015, when a Drucker fan/guest writer shared his or her favorite snippet from the week's topic in my blog, Drucker Mondays.

My suggestion: don’t rush through The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible. Add it to your chewable list. 

Disclosure: I fully read every book I review. I don’t scan, skip, or speed-read. I underline, highlight, and write notes (by page number) on the blank pages—as prep for my reviews. But not this book. I sensed I should slow down—not for the review, but for the chew.

Last month, a fellow board member at Christian Community Credit Union, presented our regular lifelong learning segment in the board meeting, “10 Minutes for Governance.” (See Lesson 39 in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom.) Tom Matlock’s assigned topic was board humility—and he gifted every board member with a copy of Andrew Murray’s 68-page gem, Humility.

So when I joined Steve Moore’s trek for leadership gold, wondering what themes made his Top 10 list of leadership conversations in the Bible—I skipped to “Chapter 8: Humility.” Did I mention—chewable?
• “Pride hides from the consciousness of leaders behind a mask of overconfidence. Overconfidence isn’t just annoying to followers. It is dangerous for leaders.”
• Did you ever read this parenthetical note in Numbers 12:3? “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.)” 
• “I find it easier to admit my lack of patience than my lack of humility.”

There’s more from Moore:
• He references Larry Osborne’s insights: “The journey to accidental Phariseeism begins with a blind spot, not a sin spot.”
• “Busyness is one of the most common ways to reinforce leadership status, so survival and status become symbiotic, to everyone’s detriment. The leader thinks, I must be important or I wouldn’t be so busy.”
• And this insight from Dallas Willard: “God never gives anyone too much to do. We do that to ourselves or we allow others to do it to us.” 

Is Your Board a “Zombie Board?”
• “The survival instinct for leaders is automatic. The more our work thrives, the more we want to protect it. That’s why the first expression of groupthink in a nonprofit board is making organizational perpetuity, rather than mission effectiveness, its highest objective. These kinds of nonprofits, even faith-based ones, are like zombies. They can get scary ugly, but they are nearly impossible to revive and hard to kill.”

Pages 130-143 on humility are so, so chewable. Warning! The chapter includes five very convicting questions. 

But before you skip to the humility chapter—scan the context, “The Reason and the Research Behind This Book.” Moore identified 1,181 leaders in the Bible (including 108 in the New Testament) and mined for gold with six core questions, including: Who is the leader? Who are the followers? And What is the leadership situation? Each chapter includes a helpful diagram of these elements using Moore’s “Leadership Triangle.” Brilliant!

Join me in chewing through this special book. I will weigh in from time to time later this year, with reflections and/or reviews of other chapters. For now, it’s on my summer vacation reading list. (And thanks to Steve Moore for sending me a review copy.)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders, by Steve Moore.



P.S. Stock up on summer reading—and delegate your reading—with Eugene Habecker’s hot-off-the-press book (my next review), The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Steve Moore quotes Elizabeth Elliott: “The best way to find out whether you have a servant’s heart is to see what your reaction is when somebody treats you like one.” Why is it so hard to have a servant’s heart?
2) Moore says that leaders who rarely say, “I was wrong,” or “I don’t know,” should make us nervous. Instead of accepting responsibility for mistakes, “…there is always an explanation, a rationalization, or outright blame. It is the adult version of ‘the dog ate my homework,’ but the stakes are higher.” Discuss!
  
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16 Tools and Templates
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets

New this spring, Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for the Nonprofit Board features 16 tools and templates that have been field-tested by hundreds of CEOs and nonprofit board members. These "add-water-and-stir" practical tools will enhance your board's productivity, mission impact, and joy. Each tool has been tested and then tweaked across North America in boardrooms and meeting rooms. Boards especially appreciate the "CEO's 5/15 Monthly Report" template. CEOs all give a thumbs-up to the "Board Member Annual Affirmation Statement."

The workbook includes access to all 16 downloadable templates including: "Ten Minutes for Governance," the "Board Retreat Trend-Spotting Exercise," the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. When you use all 16 of these time-saving solutions, you'll wonder why you didn't discover them sooner.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for the Nonprofit Board, by John Pearson.

For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as our top pick for serving your financial services needs.