John Pearson's Buckets Blog

Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life

Issue No. 517 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting trumpets a Laugh-Out-Loud book that promises humor can be a secret weapon in business and life—even for you! Plus listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast (see below) for Steve Macchia's interview with John. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


The “Global Humor Cliff” is featured in the LOL book, Humor, Seriously. For a taste, view “How to Make a Sense of Humor Your Superpower” in this “five lessons in five minutes” video from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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The 4 Styles of Humor: What’s Your Style? 

In their 2021 serious—but very humorous—book, Humor, Seriously, a Stanford Graduate School of Business prof and a business strategist/stand-up comedian describe how a business and board consultant puts his funny to work.

Using humor—instead of put-downs—to address organizational and boardroom dysfunction, this senior management consultant always packs a copy of the “CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a set of guidelines devised by U.S. government officials to sabotage terrorist organizations from the inside.” 

That 50-page quick-read resource for your leadership toolbox is noted in the wonderful book by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, subtitled, “Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.)”

The authors laugh along with their readers: “Originally developed by the OSS during World War II, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual is a guide for, as the CIA puts it, ‘teaching people how to do their jobs badly.’” They add:

“Here’s a sample of some of the tactics our nation’s best intelligence officers recommend you use to undermine the operations and efficiency of a terrorist cell—or a typical American board meeting.”
• When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
• Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
• Haggle over the precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
• Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
• Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

I’ve been in those board and staff meetings! LOL! But the sabotage resource is just one of dozens and dozens of creative ways to inject humor into our boring and lackluster workplaces (and Zoom calls!). The authors explain how the best leaders and managers use humor at work—and no surprise—the book has hilarious moments. But you’ll also discover that humor is very serious business. Start with the research.

Really—there’s research on humor? Of course—if you’re a Stanford prof, you survey more than 700 people to ask, “What’s holding you back from using humor at work?” Four myths popped out of the clown car (I mean...the research car):

MYTH #1: The Serious Business Myth. The authors bust this myth with research and insightful quotes—even from President Eisenhower (1953-1961), “the second-least naturally funny president after Franklin Pierce” (1853-1857). Bottom line: employees love humor.

MYTH #2: The Failure Myth. This erroneous belief often plagues team members who “express a deep, paralyzing fear that their humor will fail.” Aaker and Bagdonas come to the rescue again with a helpful four-quadrant chart (aka Boston Consulting Group Matrix)—positioning “appropriateness” on the vertical axis versus “laughter” on the horizontal axis. (See page 28, just three pages beyond my “Page 25” standard for charts that summarize great books.)

MYTH #3: The Being Funny Myth. Good news! You don’t have to be funny all the time—just look for “a moment of delight that leads to a smile, or an ‘aha’ rather than a ‘haha’ (or, if you work for a supervillain, a ‘mwahaha’).” And get this—Gallup has documented the “Humor Cliff,” when humor rises and falls. The authors note that “we tend to smile and laugh much more on the weekends than on weekdays.” They add, “So you’ve been practicing.” (That’s funny!) And more good news: my age group on the Gallup chart, “Humor Cliff, Weekend Edition,” documents that we laugh more on weekends than those stuffy 40- to 60-year-old people! But…then it's downhill until you’re in your 80s and 90s. Those folks, apparently, have more to chuckle about!

MYTH #4. The Born With It Myth. Even comedians “need both talent and training to succeed.” More good news—with training and exercise, you can learn how to use humor in your life and your workplace. Humor is a skill “…we can strengthen through training and use, much as we would strengthen our leg muscles by working out at the gym…and walking to and from the fridge during videoconferences when our ‘camera isn’t working.’” (See the “No One Is Born Funny” chart on page 31. It involves puppies!)

WHAT’S YOUR HUMOR STYLE? Of course, this business strategist/professor writing duo offer a “Humor Styles Questionnaire.” I completed the online assessment and received a three-page report (in color!). The book explains the four humor styles and begins with this: “First, like any good lumberjack, let’s understand our axes.” (Funny!) 

Have you ever segmented your humorous friends and family members into four groups? (Not me!) The four styles:
• The Stand-up (Aggressive-Expressive)
• The Sweetheart (Affiliative-Subtle)
• The Magnet (Affiliative-Expressive)
• The Sniper (Aggressive-Subtle)

Sniper? Yes! “Snipers are edgy, sarcastic, and nuanced, unafraid to cross lines in pursuit of a laugh. They describe their humor as an 'acquired taste’—one that not everyone will acquire—with a delivery that tends to be dry and under their breath.”

Me? They tag me as a Magnet—but you’ll need to read the book to see why I enjoy injecting humor into my book reviews, my meetings, and my wardrobe (says my wife!). So…put on your own clown clothes and take the free HUMOR TYPOLOGY QUIZ. You’ll receive your own “Custom Humor Typology Report” and you’ll be on your way to injecting appropriate humor into your workplace. (I’m serious! Take the quiz!)


What’s your Humor Style? Stand-up, Sweetheart, Magnet, or Sniper? Click here to take the Humor Typology Quiz featured in the seriously funny book, Humor, Seriously.

YOU WILL THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT HUMOR. There’s way too much in this book to mention here—but for the record—I made 45 notes in the front blank pages of my book. Very funny/serious stuff! You (yes, you!) and even your boss can learn how to leverage the power of humor in business (and life), based on the popular class at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Here’s a taste from the book:

• LOL. The late night TV writers for Seth Myers deliver 100 jokes each day. Myers thins it down to just 12 of the best. (I’d like to read the left-overs!)
• LOL. Read about the prank that the White House senior advisors pulled on President George W. Bush (2001-2009) during a policy meeting. (Everyone wore tan socks.)
• LOL. Chapter 2, “Your Brain on Humor,” highlights a student-written underground newspaper at West Point that emerged after 9/11. (The purpose: “lift the collective spirits” of the cadets.) This chapter reminded me of the brain science in Brain Rules for Work (read my review).
• LOL. In “The Anatomy of Funny” chapter, they note the classic humor technique of exaggeration—with Sarah Cooper’s “Airline Seating Chart” on page 83. Hilarious! Cooper reveals the real truth about your airline experience: First Class, Economy Comfort, Economy Discomfort, Economy Agony…and worse!

MORE LAUGHS COMING...
• LOL. When Deloitte consultants “like so many of us, had stopped speaking like humans,” the team developed software that called out the objectionable jargon—“holding a contest to see who could provide the most egregious ‘bullwords.’” (They list the top bullwords, like “bleeding edge,” “robust,” and "synergize”!) The winner won a trip to bullfighting school. For real! This reminded me of the classic mission statement video by "Weird Al" Yankovic.
• LOL.The authors highlight a company that “created a wall of ‘quotes of the week,’ where they would document the funniest moments and phrases, encouraging all employees to be on the lookout for moments of humor and joy throughout the workday.”
• LOL. Another company created enormous signs highlighting their core values. One sign to spotlight “AGILITY” was misspelled and read “AGLITITY.” (The fun-loving team reports that the typo is still on the sign and prompts chuckles every day!)
• LOL. In the chapter, “Creating a Culture of Levity,” read why one company has a budget line item for chicken-themed socks!” (Hilarious!)
• LOL. Don’t skip the laugh-out-loud footnotes like this one on page 124 referencing your pet frog: “If you got this deep-reach callback [a humor technique] to the negotiations study in chapter 2, we are proud of you.” 

3 OPTIONS! Want to cannoball deeper into the humor pool? Here are three options. Oops! Four options! (See what I did there?)
[  ] #1. Read Humor, Seriously.
[  ] #2. Listen to Humor, Seriously.
[  ] #3. View “Class Takeaways: Humor Is Serious Business” from Stanford Graduate School of Business. The video: “Five lessons in five minutes — learn how to make a sense of humor your superpower.”
[  ] #4. Take the free HUMOR TYPOLOGY QUIZ. 

To order from Amazon, click on title for Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.), by Jennifer Aaker  and Naomi Bagdonas. Listen on Libro.fm (6 hours, 5 minutes). And thanks to Sydney Romanov for generously gifting this book to me and giving me many laughs (and insights). Note: The authors sometimes use what Trey Gowdy calls “non-church words”—so buyer beware!



Also, to order the 50-page declassified CIA resource from Amazon, click on title for Simple Sabotage Field Manual , by United States Office of Strategic Services. (Per above, consider bringing this book to every dysfunctional board meeting! LOL!)



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Try a “Bad Idea Brainstorm” session with your team! Humor, Seriously suggests that “instead of just assuring your team that ‘there are no bad ideas,’ explicitly ask for the silliest, craziest, worst possible ideas they can think of—the ones they think have no chance of working.” Read the chapter, “Putting Your Funny to Work” and try this at your shop. DISCUSS: After taking the Humor Typology Quiz, discuss how the four humor styles might approach the “Bad Idea Brainstorm” session!

2) One of my many books of quotations includes this keeper, “Humor is God’s aspirin” (author unknown). Humor, Seriously notes that writing jokes can be a counter-intuitive way to create new ideas. In 2017, a global retailer asked a “pitch” company to write jokes on how brick and mortar stores should compete against e-commerce. One standout: “Amazon never lets you keep the hanger.” The authors noted, “But underlying each of these jokes was real insight.” ASSIGNMENT: Write some jokes your church could use to inspire members and attenders to exit online church and return to their favorite pew! (You might unearth some deeper insights with a few LOLs!) 

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The Book Bucket affirms that “leaders are readers” (and listeners). How about a pie-in-the-face award for managers who have read the LEAST number of books in the past 90 days?

Buckets Countdown:
The Book Bucket (#5) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Book Bucket Core Competency: “We believe leaders are readers! We create a culture that embraces a healthy appetite for leadership and management books, journals, articles and audio resources. We mentor team members with thoughtfully selected titles and chapters to help them leverage their strengths, grow in their faith and serve others with passion. We don’t just talk about books—we actually read them!” 

LOL from the Book Bucket! We’ve chuckled over a few LOL books over the years, including these favorites that were featured in Issue No. 480 (click here):
• A Comedian’s Prayer Book, by Frank Skinner (order from Amazon)
• Laughter Therapy: Good Medicine to Make Your Heart Glad, by Jonny Hawkins and Bob Phillips (order from Amazon)
• Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward, by Paul Johnson (order from Amazon)

LOL! SIGN ON A PASTOR'S DESK:
“Don’t feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything;
that’s my job—God.”
(From Quotes for the Journey, compiled by Gordon S. Jackson)

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Book Bucket.

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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THRIVE! “The Resiliency Diagnostic” in Arrive and Thrive is worth the price of the book. See the 20 statements on the “Effective Crisis Leadership Competency.” That’s just one of many helpful resources in this brilliant book by three women authors, subtitled, “7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership.” (Read the review at my value-added, jargon-filled, synergistic blog, Pails in Comparison.)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Know how to use appropriate humor in your marketing and communication pieces? Call us to learn why humor is a “secret weapon” in your storytelling. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Crazy Ambulance Tales

Issue No. 516 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a fun book by Emmy award winning writer, Chris Treece. Love those EMTs! Plus listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast (bottom left) for Steve Macchia's interview with John. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”

What’s an ECNALUBMA? Crazy Ambulance Tales is a page-turner! Fun to read, well-written, plus there’s wit and wisdom in every colorful chapter! 

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Here Comes the ECNALUBMA!

“John, when are you going to read a book just for fun?” That was Joanne’s pointed question—and when your wife speaks, you should listen, right?

So “just for fun,” I read the new book, Crazy Ambulance Tales, by Chris Treece. This Emmy award winning writer reminisces about his college years in Vermont—learning and serving as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) on the fire and rescue squad of St. Michael’s College. From first-year “probate” to the crew chief’s seat on the ambulance runs—following the author’s tales (both hilarious and poignant) was absolutely fun and the title is perfect—CRAZY! 

But, I need to push back a bit on my wife’s assumptions. I do read lots of fun books. To date, this is Issue No. 516 with another book review (but who’s counting?). My reviews tilt toward leadership and management books (business and nonprofits) and faith-based books. I’m a lifelong learner—and, at least for me, reading and reviewing books is FUN! 

So, you’ll understand (even if my wife doesn’t) that I can find leadership and management insights (and deep spiritual content) in almost any book. To be clear—Crazy Ambulance Tales was exceptionally fun to read, but the leadership learnings popped out frequently. (Sorry, Joanne. I can’t help myself!)

LEADERSHIP/MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS: FUN!

SNOOPY! As part of the first-year training to be a certified EMT, the leadership softens the rigorous work by assigning nicknames to the probates. Chris Treece majored in journalism and so “Snoopy” (the Peanuts comics character—often on his doghouse roof with a typewriter) became the author’s new moniker. Fun! (How does your team balance critical training with light-hearted moments?)

ECNALUBMA. Huh? Yeah—"ECNALUBMA” was the in-house name for their rig. Get it? It’s AMBULANCE spelled backwards—per the large letters on the front of ambulances so it’s visible in your rear view windows—especially in emergencies. Fun! (What does your organization’s name read when spelled backwards?) 

SAVED A CHICKEN’S LIFE! When interviewing to become an EMT, the panel asked Chris Treece, “Have you ever saved a life?” He thought through his Boy Scout years and came up empty, but then offered this: “Well…I saved a chicken.” (The panel almost convulsed in laughter!)

Treece added, “I got to be known in my neighborhood as a guy who was really good with bandages and iodine, mostly due to self-inflicted injuries via bicycles, go-karts and dog bites.” So a neighbor asked him to examine her chicken that had been attacked by a dog. He administered first aid on the left wing joint. A panelist asked, “And what was your level of success with the patient?”

“She lived,” Treece proudly said. “Still producing about two eggs at day, I’ve been told.” (More laughter by the interviewers!) Fun!

LEAD! Early on, his mentor (the crew chief) told Treece to take the crew chief command on a routine transport of a patient from a smaller hospital to a large medical center. Treece confesses the awkwardness of telling his chief what to do. He still remembers the valuable debrief: “You’re the chief. You’ve got to lead. Nothing is worse than a crew chief who won’t lead, and in fact you’ll never become the chief if you can’t lead.”

A.B.C. Reading this book, I thought back to the First Aid class in my college days (and the final exam in a live triage setting!) and many years of summer camp staff training with counselors and lifeguards. So I appreciated this refresher on the helpful memory devices employed by the St. Michael’s crew.
   • A.B.C. – “What is most important in the patient’s care? Their A.B.C.: airway, breathing, and circulation.”
   • O.P.Q.R.S.T.U. – “What are the questions for a patient exam? Onset, provokes, quality, region, severity, times, undoes.”
   • And this: “What is your first job on the scene? To make sure it’s safe. A dead rescuer saves nobody.”

Plus, sometimes the author would wander into an EMT night class “…greet everyone cheerfully, then promptly flail about and keel over on the floor.” Every student remembered the instructor’s immediate response.

So…with that introduction and context—you'll dive deep into Crazy Ambulance Tales—and you won’t stop talking about this book. The chapter titles are way too tempting!
   • The Double Forking
   • God Smiles on Drunks and Babies
   • The Patient Is Hiding in the Closet
   • A Bit Too Much Creamed Corn with Lunch
   • No Public Displays of Affection (PDA), Please!
   • Transporting Buddha and John Lennon
   • 25 Below at 5 a.m.

Whew! You’re right there in the ambulance (I mean the ECNALUBMA) on those 2 a.m. calls to horrific traffic accidents, fires, and dangerous encounters. My appreciation for first responders just skyrocketed. Oh, my. I’m so, so grateful that women and men are called to serve on the front lines. This book also reminded me of the courageous officers profiled in L.A. Cop, by Bob Vernon.

Somehow, though, the author’s masterful storytelling blends unbelievable danger with (almost) a stand-up comedy narrative tucked cleverly into those pages when you wonder out loud—“How do they deal with these challenges, day after day, and often at night and working holidays?” Not fun! But…the author’s humor is refreshing—which is what we should expect from an ECNALUBMA crew chief named Snoopy! Fun!

CENSORED! Treece wrote a weekly column, “Fire & Rescue Blotter” for the college newspaper—detailing the crew’s “more colorful calls.” He admits the blotter was rather dull, so he tried to spice it up. “Monday, May 26, the rescue unit responded to a nearby home where a heavily bearded individual in a ruffled pink dress lay unconscious on the kitchen floor due to a diabetic coma.” While true, the editors and squad superiors wouldn’t accept his more colorful accounts! Fun!

RECRUITMENT SAVVY. The author was named “Membership Chairman” (the title “sounded like a frumpy, elderly woman in a gigantic, flowered straw hat”) so he changed the title to “Recruitment Officer” (without getting permission!).

His unique approach in recruiting other students to consider joining the rescue squad is textbook savvy. Like a Peter Drucker disciple, he analyzed his potential customers and zeroed in on them. “So we had to find these rare birds on campus, probably by looking at their scars, vehicles, or colorful hobbies, and share heart-pounding and bonding experiences with them, in between their signing up for the ECA class and trying out for the squad.” Each crew member took the ECA (Emergency Care Attendant) class—a semester course required to work on the ambulance.

Note: My camp and conference colleagues, members of CCCA, will find stunning parallels to their current challenges of recruiting college students for summer camp positions. Must-read!

MEMORABLE WRITING. You’d expect an Emmy award winning writer to turn a phrase or two—but every chapter surprises with eye-catching and soul-catching one liners. 
   • The elderly man—cheerful—but in need of help. Treece writes, “..he had an expression on his face, like he was seeing a beautiful place we could not. Like his spiritual luggage was packed and ready to go—right now.”
   • The elderly patient when asked why she called for help, “I’m not sure what’s wrong. Maybe I just had a bit too much creamed corn with lunch.”
   • The five myths of ambulances, sirens, and inattentive vehicles on the road. Treece colorfully describes The Guy in the Knit Hat, “driving an ancient coupe”—bopping along with earphones and a Walkman (illegal, by the way). Myth #4: “Everyone who hears a siren pulls to the right. Ha ha! Oh boy! I love this one. No.” The author’s perfect label for The Guy: “Oh boy. Future customer.”
   • The chapter describing the love and care that EMTs often provide and how it is sometimes reciprocated—“Even EMTs need a little love.” 
   •  And the lonely 80s-something woman who would call in on those dark Vermont winter evenings—and the crew would arrive, cheerfully, and just hold her hand. Treece notes, “What you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me.”
   • Treece’s “theology of the ambulance”—important and insightful.
   • Why the author needed “an upper room”—and why you need one also.

DEEP CAMARADERIE. Poignant! Up until now, you’d find the best example of teamwork in the bestseller, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown (read my review). However, I have a new winner! Read Chapter 25, “The Warm Hood of the Rig.” You’ll yearn for a team that embodies what Chris Treece reminisces about.

“I miss the camaraderie. That sounds cliché, but I mean deep camaraderie, the kind that is based on seeing the absolute worst that life has to offer and facing it together as a team.” He adds, “I miss being part of an organization of people who loved me, supported me and knew me better than anyone else on the planet—even my parents, who could never really bring themselves to ask me for details of what I did on the rig.”

The author also notes what he does not miss about those long nights, sleep deprivation, and more.

Who should read this book?
   • My Christian camp and conference center colleagues and rescue mission team members. (Must-read!)
   • Team leaders and train-the-trainers
   • Thoughtful leaders and readers (you’ll have a new appreciation for first responders)
   • Anyone who wants to be better prepared for emergencies (first aid, Heimlich maneuver, and more). Note: Treece was trained by, and worked alongside, Michael O'Keefe, the co-author of Emergency Care (the classic EMT textbook).

To be clear—this really was a FUN book to read—but the insights and wisdom were a special bonus. This is a spectacular book. I bought three copies of Crazy Ambulance Tales to give to first responders, including my local fire department team in San Clemente. They recently aided my neighbor who had fallen, sadly, on his 89th birthday. I was so impressed with our EMTs—and so grateful.

To order from Amazon, click on title for Crazy Ambulance Tales, by Chris Treece.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Here’s a great exercise for your team. Chris Treece chronicles two areas: What he learned going in to this opportunity—and what he learned going out (four years later). He writes, “I went on the rig believing in God. I came off the rig believing in God and the power of goodness, but also the power of evil.” (This reminded me of Daniel Henninger’s recent WSJ column when he writes, “Putin’s war is forcing a re-evaluation of evil in the world and our response to it.”) What did you learn in an earlier position—going in and going out?

2) Oh, my. Chapter 24, “Maple Farm Road,” describes—some years later—Treece bringing his wife back to Vermont and to the tragic scenes he experienced on Maple Farm Road—events which still plagued the author. At that sad location, his wife, Helen, took his hand and prayed—for the families who lost loved ones and for her husband, Chris—that the dark spirits and nightmares would vanish. And this is stunning: “…they never came back.” Have you had a spiritual encounter that took your breath away? 

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The Program Bucket standard: “We research and understand our customer before launching new programs.”

Buckets Countdown:
The Program Bucket (#6) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Program Bucket Core Competency: “We are zealots for program effectiveness and so we research and understand our customer before launching new programs, products or services. We measure program results. We feed our primary programs and drop the losers—all in the spirit of discerning where God is at work.” 

Top 10 Questions to Ask About Program Capacity and Sustainability. Download this worksheet (PDF) from the Program Bucket and identify the three most important questions for your organization. (Suggestion: Read Luke 14:28-30 in The Message.)
 
The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Program Bucket here. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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SELF-COACHING! “First and foremost,” write David Novak and Jason Goldsmith, “good managers are good coaches.” Click here to read my review of Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. Visit my new blog, Pails in Comparison, for more book reviews

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Knock! Knock! The media is here! Is your team prepared for PR emergencies? Have you conducted Crisis Bucket practice drills so you know what to say—and who can and cannot say it? We can help you practice. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Gift of Disillusionment: Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades

Issue No. 515 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a new book from Peter Greer and Chris Horst on what leaders do after idealism fades. Stunning stories, plus listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”

“Trite Jeremiah 29:11 memes assuring us our hardships are NBD (“no big deal”) because God has a plan aren’t helpful,” write Peter Greer and Chris Horst. “’It will all work out’ is not just untrue: It is hurtful.”

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Bring Your Bible and a Wet Towel
(for the Tear Gas!)

NO WORDS. Really—no words. I don’t have an adequate vocabulary to persuade you to read The Gift of Disillusionment. But I’ll try.

First…there’s the title. The GIFT of disillusionment? No thanks! Then the sub-title, “Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades.” Of course—you’ll agree—idealism is always inadequate, so do we really need this book? But then why am I so drawn to the stories? So captivated by the big idea—and the practical (not preachy) way that the Old Testament words of Jeremiah are fleshed out in this book?

Maybe…because trustworthy authors Peter Greer and Chris Horst have never disappointed. (Must-read: Rooting for Rivals.) Maybe…because the authors have diagnosed the current dilemma—there’s an epidemic of discouraged and disillusioned leaders. Burnout. Pain. Heartache. Quitting time!

So just in time, these two transparent leaders share their own vulnerabilities and stunning stories as they introduce us to more than a dozen heroes—in-the-trenches people who are beautifully positioned around the globe to meet needs. Their narratives (you guessed it) feature idealism, disillusionment, but finally—enduring hope. 

The authors “sought leaders with a minimum of twenty years of service in their fields and interviewed those who demonstrated staying power, sticking around long enough to experience the thorniest and knottiest difficulties.” They add, “We intentionally  sought leaders who had wounds and setbacks that could have forced them to give up—but who pressed on anyway.” 

Are you discouraged—or know someone who’s burned out? Read this book and learn from these pioneers who lead organizations and demonstrate what Eugene Peterson terms “long obedience in the same direction.”

Greer and Horst issue this invitation to readers and leaders: “We want to be, as the book of Jeremiah puts it, ‘serene and calm through droughts, bearing fresh fruit in every season.’” With “The Weeping Prophet” (aka “The Persevering Prophet”) guiding and interpreting, these in-the-trenches stories of women and men ministering in oh-so-challenging settings…well, no words. Simply stunning! Memorable page-turners!

Noting Jeremiah’s prophetic challenge, the authors write: “Their leaders failed them. The city walls no longer protected them. Their security, safety, and certainty evaporated. Their hope ran very thin. Many gave up on God.”

OK. This is real life. I can relate. No Pollyanna here! They add, “And no amount of positive thinking or inspirational Christian wall art promising a hope and a future would change their circumstances. Yet Jeremiah remained faithful and hopeful throughout his journey.”

The true leadership stories are incredible:

• Jo Anne Lyons—deep disappointment in her own denomination’s position on social justice, yet she became its leader!

• Farai Mutamiri—a pastor (now bishop) in Zimbabwe (harassed, jailed, and more). When his congregation was removed from their church building, they met outside for five years (as did other churches). “We became so strong. People would come to church with their Bibles and with wet towels, so they were prepared for tear gas.”

• Tita Evertsz—abandoned a life of drugs (living in the U.S.), left her abusive husband, and with three young children returned to Guatemala. God uses her to live and minister in a 60,000-person slum. Disillusioned? Yes—neighboring churches outside the slum rejected new converts. Hope? Read her story.

• Dr. Phil Thuma—gratefully stuck with his calling to do malaria research in Zambia and launched a nonprofit in his basement. He’s featured in the “Discernment” chapter—a prevailing theme across every narrative. (See my review of The Discerning Life and The Discerning Leader Podcast with Steve Macchia and yours truly.) The authors quote Henri Nouwen, “Discernment is a life of listening to a deeper sound and marching to a different beat, a life in which we become ‘all ears.’”

• Camille Melki—founder of Heart for Lebanon, one day realized he was demanding answers from God about his difficulties, but was asking the wrong question. “Most of the time when you ask the why question, God won’t give you an answer. Should you try the how question…you better have a notebook and a pen, because the answer is very, very long.”

Amazingly, in this compact book (but also deep book), you’ll thank God for the other dozen hope-filled leaders from Poland, Philippines, Palestine, Haiti, Oklahoma, India, Detroit (whew—what a story!), and other neighborhoods where leaders are Jesus-in-the-flesh. 

You’ll be convicted also. When Camille Melki was earning his master’s degree in the U.S., he agreed to serve as a youth pastor—but only on one condition. “He made the hiring committee commit to firing him the day he graduated” so he could return to Lebanon where God had called him to minister.

The themes from Jeremiah and real life will touch your soul: False Hope, Faint Hope, Forgotten Hope, Suffering, Surrender, Commitment, Justice, Sacrifice, Forgiveness (powerful!), Discernment, Obedience, Perseverance, and Community.

The writing is superb and a delight—and helps soften the hard themes. A Haitian leader recommends, “If you don’t have patience, don’t go into ministry. Especially in this country, we need barrels of it.”

It’s impossible to read this book without a pen. The quotable quotes from Eugene Peterson, Tim Keller, and others jump off the page, like this one from C.S. Lewis: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Or this from Oswald Chambers at the beginning of the “Discernment” chapter: “The purpose of God is not to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God.”

If it’s been a while since you’ve read a gritty, honest book—read this one. It’s contrarian. “The sun will come out tomorrow”—not always true. And this: “We’ve all heard that ‘failure is never final.’ But for many, it is final.” But—there’s hope! (Read the powerful poke-in-the-ribs questions at the end of every chapter, like this one: “Is your tendency to live inwardly or outwardly? Why?")

Note: Kudos to Greer and Horst who had numerous opportunities to promote their organization, Hope International—but they didn’t. They shared the platform with other heroes. (So well done—and another shout-out for their book, Rooting for Rivals.)

If cynicism and lost hope have you by your ankles—read this book. (There is enduring hope.)

To order from Amazon, click on title for The Gift of Disillusionment: Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades, by Peter Greer and Chris Horst, with Brianna Lapp and Jill Heisey. Listen on Libro.fm (6 hours, 7 minutes). And thanks to Bethany House Publishers for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Have you moved from being an idealist to a cynic? “Cynicism prompts us to slip back from the dance floor and move to a place of safe distance in the balcony, where we can smugly critique the moves of others. Look at those ridiculous dance moves, we criticize.” Where are you today? Idealist? Cynic? Disillusioned? Hopeful?

2) The authors remind us that we are in a grueling battle. “We don’t wear sandals to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and we don’t show up to push back darkness without the Light. While there are plenty of surprises in life, we know one thing for sure: This journey will be exceedingly difficult. We all have firsthand experience and the promise of Jesus to confirm it: ‘Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.’” Are you wearing sandals or combat boots as you battle evil?

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 ASSIGNMENT! Read The Gift of Disillusionment and identify each hero’s social style!

Buckets Countdown:
The People Bucket (#7) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The People Bucket Core Competency: “We celebrate the God-designed uniqueness of our team members, our customers, our donors, and our volunteers. We are diligent about understanding the four social styles—Analyticals, Drivers, Amiables and Expressives—and helping our people find their comfort zones as they grow in their interpersonal versatility skills.”

ASSIGNMENT! Download the chart in the People Bucket, “General Overview of the Four Social Styles,” and then as you read about the heroes in The Gift of Disillusionment—discern each person’s social style: Analytical, Driver, Amiable, or Expressive?
 
And…as you lead and manage your team (or connect with family and friends), discern if you are leveraging your versatility in finding your comfort zone—and also adapting to others’ styles and comfort zones. (Example: I’m a Driver. My wife, Joanne, is an Analytical. Versatility required!) Read Mistake #16 in Mastering Mistake-Making.
 
The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the People Bucket here. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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Well…this is encouraging! Even inspirational! The author of ROAR says that he’s “fond of asking eighty-year olds, What is your favorite future?” He’s on the constant search for role models “who are doing extraordinary things in their seventies and eighties, ignoring self-imposed ageism or the refrain that ‘you are too old to do that!’” Visit John’s PIC blog to read Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It's Too Late), by Michael Clinton.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. We’ve “rebranded" the four social styles into these four descriptors: Info-Sponges, Just-the-Facts, Heartfelts, and Share-Meisters. (Read more.) To communicate effectively to all four social styles, contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being

Issue No. 514 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a new book (published today) that asks, “PICK ONE: Life-Giving Work or Life-Sucking Work?” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”
 
In one organization in Road to Flourishing, “…when compensation became the last remaining complaint and nothing was done about it, it stuck out like a sore thumb.”

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PICK ONE: Life-Giving Work or Life-Sucking Work

Right now. Clear your calendar. (Really!)

Next, order multiple copies of Road to Flourishing and schedule a day—or an offsite retreat—with your team members. If “collaboration is the secret sauce of a high-performing culture” and “eating together is a sacred thing,” as Al Lopus notes, then use this powerful book to assess and enrich your organization’s culture.

Unlike any book you’ve ever read, this practical, practical roadmap oozes with both best practices and worst practices from the trenches—and you can learn from both! 

EXAMPLE #1: “THE LAST 10 PERCENT.” Lopus writes, “One of the best conflict-resolution principles for teams that I’ve heard comes from Rock Point Church in Arizona. They call it ‘the last 10 percent.’ 

“As lead pastor Bill Bush explains, ‘When we’re in a tough meeting, we always ask around the room, ‘Hey, did everyone say the last 10 percent?’ Because I know there are a lot of people who will say 90 percent of what’s bothering them. And the problem is, that last 10 percent is usually the real problem. And so you keep having meetings that sound so good. We high-five each other—‘Hey, we got through. We communicated so clearly. That was great.’ And then everybody walked out of there with the real problem still tucked away.’”

As the CEO and Cofounder of Best Christian Workplaces Institute, Al Lopus has seen it all! (Oh, my!) BCWI launched in 2002 as an employee engagement ministry dedicated to helping Christian leaders and organizations achieve their full potential by creating flourishing staff workplaces. BCWI helps measure and improve the health of organizations through surveys, a unique 360 Leadership Review process, and consulting services. (Visit their website here.)

Road to Flourishing is no pie-in-the-sky, trendy book from academic idealists. On the contrary! Research-based, the book delivers what Lopus and the team at BCWI have learned from “the most widely used Christian-based engagement survey” across the globe. And get this! They have actually inspired more than 1,000 churches, ministries, and Christian-owned businesses to measure the health of their workplace cultures.

Using the helpful “FLOURISH Model,” Road to Flourishing goes deep on “Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being” (the book’s subtitle). So…how would your team members rate these eight factors—and have you ever discerned an objective, quantifiable way to measure overall engagement at your shop?
   • Fantastic Teams
   • Life-Giving Work
   • Outstanding Talent
   • Uplifting Growth
   • Rewarding Compensation
   • Inspirational Leadership
   • Sustainable Strategy
   • Healthy Communication

EXAMPLE #2: COMPENSATION CONUNDRUMS. I don’t need to urge you to read the chapter, “Rewarding Compensation,” because you and your team members will skip to Chapter 6 first (like I did!). Lopus describes two Christian organizations that “committed the same classic error in opposite ways.” 

• Classic Error #1: Sore Thumb! Seven of the eight “FLOURISH” factors improved in one organization—“but when compensation became the last remaining complaint and nothing was done about it, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Despite how far the organization had progressed, poor compensation yanked employee engagement back like a bungee cord around its waist.” (Memorable metaphor!)

• Classic Error #2: Bribed to Cause Mayhem! In another organization, employee pay and benefits did receive high marks—but the staff “gave their employer low marks on most keys to a flourishing culture.” The problem? “…there was a disturbing number of disengaged employees, people who weren’t just unenthusiastic at work but were actively pumping toxicity and dysfunction into the culture.” Lopus notes that “…they were being paid so well that they were sure never to leave on their own. They were being bribed to keep causing mayhem, and they were not about to kill the golden goose.”

EXAMPLE #3: “CULTURE IS A BUCKET OF PURE WATER.” The book shines well-deserved spotlights on healthy organizational cultures, including Joni & Friends, where Doug Mazza, the former president and CEO, used a “bucket” metaphor (nice!): 

“Culture is a bucket of pure water,” says Mazza. “If it’s polluted, dropping in a great strategy is not going to clean it. Great strategies flourish in clean water. Get the culture right, point to it constantly, and new strategies will evolve and are invented in healthy cultures.” Lopus adds, “Put another way, while a sustainable strategy nourishes a flourishing culture, a flourishing culture irrigates a sustainable strategy.”

(Note: Chapter 8, “Sustainable Strategy” mentions why the Joni & Friends team followed Henry Blackaby’s approach in Experiencing God.)
 

BONUS PODCAST!
Click here to listen to Al Lopus interview Doug Mazza on The Flourishing Culture Podcast, “How Flourishing Workplace Culture Fosters a Thriving Mission,” (Season 7, Episode 16).

Lopus doesn’t mince words when writing about the toxic work cultures he’s observed. But Road to Flourishing is also upbeat—you can create “life-giving work” for every team member. You have two options: (1) continue to apply inappropriate Band-Aids to your sick workplace, or (2) go deeper and discover how your organization’s culture will flourish with God-honoring and intentional best practices. Reading this book with your team members is a no-brainer. 

PICK ONE: 
[  ] Life-giving work.
[  ] Life-sucking work.

To order from Amazon, click on title for Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, by Al Lopus with Cory Hartman. Listen on Libro.fm (6 hours, 52 minutes). BULK PRICING: Use the discount code BCWI at ivpress.com to receive 40% off 10+ books or 50% off 25+ books.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In the foreword to Road to Flourishing, Peter Greer, president and CEO of Hope International, urges organizations to invite BCWI to assess and measure their organizational cultures. “You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken…” writes Greer. How are we measuring employee engagement and well-being? (Note: Watch for my next eNews with my review of The Gift of Disillusionment, by Peter Greer and Chris Horst.)

2) Of the eight factors in a flourishing culture, Al Lopus notes that “The strongest overall influence on workplace culture is inspirational leadership, closely followed by life-giving work.” List the eight factors (see above) in F.L.O.U.R.I.S.H. and discuss: What do we do well? What needs dramatic improvement? And…what’s our plan? 

 

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The Culture Bucket Core Competency includes this zinger: “We invite those who won’t live out our values to exit.”

Buckets Countdown:
The Culture Bucket (#8) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Culture Bucket Core Competency: “We strive to create a corporate culture with core values that are crystal clear. We yearn for a God-honoring workplace where grace and trust are alive and well. Because we are human we will always have relational conflicts, so we are zealots about resolving conflict early. We invite those who won’t live out our values to exit. We experience true joy at work.”

QUESTION: Why do you think that more than 1,000 churches, ministries, and Christian-owned businesses invested time in measuring the health of their workplace cultures? What would be the upside of achieving recognition as a Certified Best Christian Workplace? Check it out here!

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Culture Bucket here.

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10 BIGGEST TAX AND FINANCIAL MISTAKES! Do you know the “10 Biggest Tax and Financial Mistakes Made by Churches and Nonprofits?” Read the short reviews of the 2022 tax and financial guides from ECFA in John’s new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC).

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. “Outstanding Talent” is one of the eight factors on the “Road to Flourishing.” We can help you identify, recruit, train, and inspire the right people for the right spots on your communication and marketing teams. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions

Issue No. 513 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting suggests a book for your soul—for Holy Week and every week. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”


Arthur Bennet’s spiritual classic, The Valley of Vision, is a stunning collection of almost 200 Puritan prayers. Balm for your soul!

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“My mind is a bucket without a bottom…”

This Holy Week, I’m recommending a sobering book that has touched my soul. Over the last four months, I’ve read, prayed, and reflected on the one-page prayers in The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, by Arthur Bennett (Editor). Below is the last half of the prayer, “Paradoxes.”

Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be
    an evangelical hypocrite,
  who sins more safely because grace abounds,
  who tells his lusts that Christ’s blood
    cleanseth them,
  who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell,
    for he is saved,
  who loves evangelical preaching, churches,
    Christians, but lives unholily.

My mind is a bucket without a bottom,
  with no spiritual understanding,
  no desire for the Lord’s Day,
  ever learning but never reaching the truth,
  always at the gospel-well but never holding water.
My conscience is without conviction or contrition,
  with nothing to repent of.
My will is without power of decision or resolution.
My heart is without affection, and full of leaks.
My memory has no retention,
  so I forget easily the lessons learned,
  and thy truths seep away.
Give me a broken heart that yet carries home
  the water of grace.

Click here to read the entire prayer.

Oh, my. If you’re gutsy enough to read the 193 prayers, your soul will have some serious work to do. (Trust me.) Published by Banner of Truth in 1975, Arthur Bennett (1915-1994) wrote these original prayers, borrowing from the prayers and poems of Puritans (and others), including: John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, David Brainerd, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Augustus Toplady, and Isaac Watts.

For a spiritual taste, you’ll find numerous YouTube videos online, including this introduction from podcaster Tim Wildsmith with the title prayer, “The Valley of Vision.”


View the 3-minute prayer and introduction to “The Valley of Vision.”

Trust me—this is not a “one-and-done” devotional book. Those Puritans understood sin’s ugly hold. Whew. 

“Let me never forget that the heinousness of sin
   Lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed,
      As in the greatness of the Person sinned against.”

But the Puritans were also enthralled with Grace (read the “Sleep” prayer here):

“Show thyself to me as the God of all grace, love and power;
   Thou hast a balm for every wound,
      a solace for all anguish,
      a remedy for every pain,
      a peace for all disquietude.
Permit me to commit myself to thee awake or asleep.”

If you’re a listener (not a reader), you might find some cassette recordings of The Valley of Vision (ask someone over 70 what a “cassette” is). Here’s a two-minute YouTube video, “Longings After God," read by Max McLean:

       
View the 2-minute prayer, “Longings After God.”

In this Easter Week, I’ll close with the final lines from the “Love Lustres at Calvary” prayer:

O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise,
  my every step buoyant with delight, as I see my
    enemies crushed,
  Satan baffled, defeated, destroyed,
  sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood,
  hell’s gates closed, heaven’s portal open.
Go forth, O conquering God, and show me
  the cross, mighty to subdue, comfort and save.

I will read this treasured book again and again and again. To order from Amazon, click on title for The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, by Arthur Bennett (Editor). Note: There are two editions available: Paperback and Bonded Leather. (And thanks to Jon Ortlip and the Ambassadors Football team for gifting this book to me. Forever grateful!)

  
           PAPERBACK                  BONDED LEATHER

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In the four-minute endorsement video on Amazon, Ligon Duncan, Chancellor & CEO at Reformed Theological Seminary, notes that “…the prayers of The Valley of Vision help get me praying when there’s nothing in my tank.” In his new book, The Discerning Life, Steve Macchia writes, “The older I get, the harder it is to pray.” So…what do you do—when there’s nothing in your prayer tank?
2) The prayer, “Penitence,” concludes with this: “My soul is often a chariot without wheels, clogged and hindered in sin’s miry clay; Mount it on eagle’s wings and cause it to soar upward to thyself.” How would you describe your soul today?

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Like the above lifelong learners, the senior global leaders for Ambassadors Football meet on Zoom to study Experiencing God (2021 Edition). What is your team studying—so they experience more fulfillment and joy?

Buckets Countdown:
The Team Bucket (#9) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Team Bucket Core Competency: “We believe that a balanced life honors God, each other, our families and our friends, so we leverage the unique set of talents and strengths given to each person by God. Thus we serve with more fulfillment and joy. We also leave work on time, physically and mentally.” 

How do you inspire your team members to honor God? Jon Ortlip, president of Ambassadors Football (soccer ministry in 28 countries), is leading his global team in studying the 2021 book-of-the-year, Experiencing God (2021 Edition)—every time they meet together online.

And (ironically), when I had the privilege of facilitating a leadership enrichment experience for Ambassadors Football’s senior global leaders in January 2015, Ortlip and the team presented me with The Valley of Vision book. (LOL! It only took me seven years to go deep on it, but I’m so, so grateful for their thoughtful gift!)

How will you “serve with more fulfillment and joy” in 2022? Gift your team members with a significant book study and—as Jon Ortlip does—rotate the leadership of the study every time you meet.

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Team Bucket here.

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10 FATAL FLAWS! Do you know the “10 Fatal Flaws That Consistently Lead to Failure in Leadership?” Read John’s short review of The New Extraordinary Leader in his new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC).

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Need a unique gift and study book for your team members and/or your customers? Consider going deep on this creative book, designed by Pearpod, 30 Days Unplugged: How a Catholic Priest Turned Off His iPhone and Took a Call From God (Full Color Edition), by Father Darrin Merlino, CMF. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Ending Human Trafficking: A Handbook of Strategies for the Church Today

Issue No. 512 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks you pray about who should read this handbook, Ending Human Trafficking. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.” 

I first read this poignant quote in Steve Macchia’s book, Crafting a Rule of Life. 

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“Without a plan, it is hard to put empathy and compassion into meaningful action.”

Do you resonate with Frederick Buechner’s inspiring insight? “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

I remember the first time I read Buechner’s quote in Steve Macchia’s book, Crafting a Rule of Life. Then that same year, I noticed it again in Parker Palmer’s short book, Let Your Life Speak. Buechner’s insight is convicting—yet liberating. He reminds us that we don’t have to be passionate about every need on the globe (Ukraine, poverty, homelessness, crime…the list is endless). Compassion fatigue and burnout will break us—if we foolishly try to care for every social need around us. 

Within that context, I so appreciate the tone and helpful wisdom in the new book (just published today): Ending Human Trafficking: A Handbook of Strategies for the Church Today, by Shayne Moore, Sandra Morgan, and Kimberly McOwen Yim.

But before you say, “Not for me, please!”—please read further.

The authors have crafted a handbook so those in your church who are open to caring about ending human trafficking—have a clear roadmap for next steps. The book is a warm mix of compassion, education, inspiration, and toolbox. 

Right now—stop and pray. Pray that our God of Compassion, Justice, and Love will bring to mind one, two, or three people in your church who should read this book. (And maybe you should read it also.)

Ambassador John Cotton Richmond, who served as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons for the U.S. Department of State, writes in the foreword:

“Have you ever felt overwhelmed by an important task, perplexed about how to take action, or doubtful that your best efforts could make a difference?” He admits, “I have. It is a mixture of preemptive fatigue, profound confusion, and learned hopelessness.” He notes that people of faith understand “the unmistakable directive to care for the oppressed and to seek justice. But without a plan, it is hard to put empathy and compassion into meaningful action.”

THE PLAN! Shayne Moore, Sandra Morgan, and Kimberly McOwen Yim (all with impressive credentials) have thoughtfully packaged the problem, the context, and the solutions into a very readable book—using six P’s (five of which are universally used in fighting human trafficking; and three highlighted by the U.S. State Department):
   • Partnership: Connect, Engage, Collaborate
   • Prevention: Inform, Identify, Intervene
   • Protection: Recover, Restore, Reintegrate
   • Prosecution: Investigate, Litigate, Obligate
   • Policy: Legislate, Governance, Capacity Build
   • Prayer: Stand Firm (Ephesians 6:12)

All of the above is introduced on page five (most authors don’t get warmed up until page 25!). Each “P” has a goal in the “Enhanced collaborative model for human trafficking task forces.” (Figure 1.) The overall goal: “Prioritize people over process.” (Amen!)

After reading Ambassador Richmond’s succinct foreword and the “Build a Safety Fence” introduction (see the frequent safety fence "signposts" noted), I skipped to Chapter 7, “Policy,” to learn how churches and nonprofits can make their unique contributions. The authors clearly understand church leaders and offer this:

“Our hope for this book is not to overwhelm. Not every church has to have a separate ministry addressing human trafficking, but in providing information and language around the problem, we hope to help leaders see strategic ways their church may already be addressing this problem.”

Why a chapter on policies? “Policies that create opportunities for review will build dynamic change that may eliminate time-consuming or expensive programs in order to pour into another ministry that is more effective.”

The chapter on partnership is a short course—applicable to numerous causes—on how to create lasting change through collaboration. The authors reference a survey tool that will measure a task force’s partnership effectiveness in three arenas: value, trust, and density. (“Density is measured by how many lines there are between partners and how strong those connections are. If the density score is low, the trust and values lines may be strong but few.”)

Note: To go deeper on partnerships, I encourage leaders to read Phill Butler’s excellent work, Well Connected: Releasing Power, Restoring Hope Through Kingdom Partnerships (read my review). His “15 Critical Principles” of partnership are excellent, including #8: “Effective partnerships are even more challenging to maintain than to start.”

THE WACKO CHURCH PEOPLE! 
I should mention that the book opens with an awkward moment when a Department of Justice official was moderating a conference for human trafficking task force leaders. The table topic: “Discuss one of your biggest task force challenges.” Dr. Sandie Morgan (co-author, ordained minister, and administrator of the Orange County, Calif., Human Trafficking Task Force) listened to a Texas police sergeant respond: “Easy! The wacko church people.”

When a conferee told the police officer that Dr. Morgan was “one of them,” Sandie quipped, “Yes, I can marry you and bury you.” What happened? “Everyone laughed and the awkward moment passed, but the point was made: in the public square, when it comes to issues of human trafficking, churches and people of faith are often viewed as a problem.” (The authors give examples. Oh, my.)

The “prayer” chapter is superb—and the confession page is convicting. There are also stunning resources in Appendix A, B, and C, including the “Faith and Freedom Policy Brief” and a helpful glossary. The authors also include the important role of “local faith actors.”

Who in your church will read this book, hear from God—and begin (or improve on) establishing partnerships to battle the horrific evil of human trafficking?

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Ending Human Trafficking: A Handbook of Strategies for the Church Today, by Shayne Moore, Sandra Morgan, and Kimberly McOwen Yim. Foreword by Ambassador John Cotton Richmond. (And thanks to IVP Academic for sending a review copy.)



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) The authors of Ending Human Trafficking very effectively use the “safety fence” model and metaphor to paint a picture of the 6 P’s plan. What model or metaphor does our organization use to succinctly describe our mission and program outcomes?
2) Are egos and logos obstructing the Biblical mandate for unity in John 17? Could we more effectively partner together for Kingdom causes? Is it time to revisit our organization’s partnerships—and/or to launch more partnerships? Who will read Ending Human Trafficking? (Extra credit! Read Rooting for Rivals: How Collaboration and Generosity Increase the Impact of Leaders, Charities, and Churches, by Peter Greer and Chris Horst, with Jill Heisey.)

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 You likely need celebration and LOL-experiences even more to combat compassion fatigue and workplace stress—so plan some hoopla!

Buckets Countdown:
The Hoopla! Bucket (#10) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Hoopla! Bucket Core Competency: “We harness the power of hoopla! for celebration, recreation, intentional food and fellowship gatherings, and just plain fun. We thrive on knock-your-socks-off spontaneity. We believe hoopla! honors God. We budget funds for hoopla! to mitigate workplace stress and most importantly, to show our team members how much they are loved and appreciated!”

Really? Can you take on the evils of the world, like human trafficking, and still create a culture and environment where hoopla! is practiced? YES! You likely need celebration and LOL-experiences even more to combat compassion fatigue and workplace stress.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal highlighted innovative ways that companies and organizations are enriching workplace experiences with creative recognition practices. Click here to read, “Have You Praised a Colleague Today? Go On, Say Something Nice. Companies roll out new ways for workers to compliment one another; ‘Your empathy is like Kool-Aid, the way it adds flavor to a boring call.’”

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Hoopla! Bucket webpage here.

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Check out John’s new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with book reviews on self-coaching, customers, team-building, the “second half” of life, and yes…a book about books!

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Is it time to revisit your strategic partnerships? We’ve also helped clients launch creative and meaningful campaigns to address human trafficking. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Generosity Factor: Discover the Joy of Giving Your Time, Talent, and Treasure

Issue No. 511 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a quick-reading business parable by Ken Blanchard and S. Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”

I asked Ken Blanchard to mention our conference theme in his keynote, but he would not accept my thank you gift! LOL!

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Ken Blanchard Wouldn’t Take My Money!

Picture this! Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager and the author/co-author of more than 60 books, is 10 minutes into his keynote address at Christian Management Association’s 1997 national convention in San Diego. He mentions the conference theme, “Management Survival/Leadership Revival,” and then winks at me. (I’m in the front row.)

Just Blanchard, me, and his Raving Fans co-author, Sheldon Boyles, were in on the joke. My keynote speaker invitation letter to this bestselling author and management guru included this request: “If you’d be gracious enough to mention our conference theme in your keynote, I’ll give you $20 cash!”

Blanchard concluded his outstanding talk and joined me in the front row. I whispered my thanks. “Fantastic presentation—and here’s the $20 for mentioning our theme. Thank you!”

Blanchard refused the cash. “Put it in the offering,” he laughed. He had previously refused our honorarium. Instead, he invested heart and soul into the lives of ministry leaders and managers from across the country that evening. We learned that he did enjoy In-N-Out Burgers back then, so I slipped him a gift card with our thanks. 

Now 25 years later, I was reminded again of Ken Blanchard’s generosity. Back in 2002, I read The Generosity Factor: Discover the Joy of Giving Your Time, Talent, and Treasure, by Ken Blanchard and S. Truett Cathy. I immediately bought more copies to give to friends. 

Blanchard (now 82) and S. Truett Cathy (1921-2014) practiced what they preached! Cathy (founder of Chick-fil-A) was a memorable keynote speaker at Christian Management Association’s 2003 national conference in Colorado Springs. (CMA is now CLA.) He came to give, not take. Every person in the audience received a gift card for a tasty Chick-fil-A sandwich! 

So…it was a joy to re-read The Generosity Factor—another business “parable” in the mode of The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey (my favorite book in the Delegation Bucket). 

WHO SHOULD READ THE GENEROSITY FACTOR?
• CEOs and Senior Leaders—on the fast track, but maybe the wrong track. A less-than-humble business owner (the Broker) meets a thoughtfully generous business leader (the Executive). You’ll follow their conversations through the Four T’s: Time, Talent, Treasure, and Touch.

• Not-Yet-All-In Givers—especially those who are grasping too tightly to their resources and may be blind to the needs around them (as was the Broker).

• Pastors and Church Board Members—who perhaps build stewardship campaigns based on budget needs (“Today is Stewardship Sunday! Here’s the pledge card!”), versus teaching Biblical generosity because it’s…well…Biblical!

• Chief Development Officers and fundraisers—who prioritize methodology over motives. The Generosity Factor is a critical reminder that true generosity is a commitment to all Four T’s. Just checking the “Treasure” box doesn’t let you off the hook for Time, Talent, and Touch. (You’ll miss the joy of generosity.)

Along the way, you’ll also have a few nostalgic flashbacks to real life 20 years ago, including: palmtop computers, Yellow Pages, CNN Sports, Headline News (24/7), and more! The “Gratitude List” exercise is just as relevant in 2022. (Try it—and discern if your first draft is more God-directed than the Broker’s first draft. Yikes.)

Another player in this parable is the Reporter—a timely reminder about the power of the written word and the opportunity to influence others. She shares an acronym that’s a pretty good summary of The Generosity Factor:
   • He Owns It All.
   • Every Day Is an Opportunity.
   • Action Is Required.
   • Remember Your Blessings.
   • Thank Him.

H.E.A.R.T. (That’ll preach!) Who in your circle of influence might appreciate reading this book?

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Generosity Factor: Discover the Joy of Giving Your Time, Talent, and Treasure, by Ken Blanchard and S. Truett Cathy. Listen to the book on Libro.fm (2 hours, 25 minutes). 



P.S. Read my recent review of The Discerning Life, by Stephen Macchia. And to go deeper, read more about his wisdom-filled twist on the Three T’s. In his book, Crafting a Rule of Life, Macchia recommends you focus on Five T’s—Time, Trust, Temple, Treasure, and Talent. Check out the book’s resource-rich website here.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Dick Towner often mentions that one of his favorite generosity quotes is from Ben Patterson who observed, “There is no such thing as being right with God and wrong with your money.” What's one of your favorite generosity quotes?

2) Towner reminds pastors and church leaders: “Every church has a stewardship culture, either by design or by happenstance—a set of beliefs and values regarding an individual’s relationship to their money and possessions. A sub-biblical stewardship culture creates behavioral expectations for Christians that hinder a scriptural response to the culture’s mores about wealth and property.” (Noted in “The Church’s Leadership Role in Bringing Stewardship Front and Center” from the book, Revolution in Generosity, Wesley K. Willmer, General Editor.) Describe your church's stewardship culture.

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The Donor Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets notes,“We believe that extravagant generosity is the biblical norm, not the exception.

Buckets Countdown:
The Donor Bucket (#11) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The well-chosen book given at appropriate times can spark generosity in both current givers and non-givers. Martin Luther said, "People go through three conversions: The conversion of their head, their heart and their pocketbook. Unfortunately, not all at the same time." What book will you order today for yourself or a friend? Check out these classics:

[ ] The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn. He writes: “God owns everything. I’m His money manager.” (read my review)
[ ] Joy Giving, by Cameron Doolittle. I’ve never (never!) read a book that includes so many biblical insights from generous givers across the globe. (read my review)
[ ] The Third Conversion, by R. Scott Rodin. He writes, “Never tell God what to do, and never tell God’s people what they are to give. You just might end up underestimating the generosity of both.” (read my review)

[ ] Being Generous, by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch. “The story is told that when a friend heard that [C.S.] Lewis had given money to a beggar in Oxford, the friend remarked that he shouldn’t have done so because the beggar would only spend the money on alcoholic drink. Lewis replied, ‘If I kept the money, I would only have spent it on drink!’” (read my review)
[ ] Revolution in Generosity, by Wes Willmer, General Editor. Three cheers for Willmer and his labor of love by inspiring 20 thinkers to contribute chapters to this important book. (read my review)
[ ] Igniting a Life of Generosity, by Chris McDaniel. In my review, I ask, “What if…before your organization mailed the monthly appeal letter, hundreds and hundreds of generous givers—prompted by the Holy Spirit—sent in their checks and made online gifts BEFORE you asked for the contribution?” (read my review)
[ ] 40 Day Spiritual Journey to a More Generous Life, by Brian Kluth. “No church ever has a money problem, only a faithfulness problem.” (Read my review and order from Amazon.)

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For a list of books I’ve reviewed in the Donor Bucket, visit the Book Bucket.

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Check out John’s new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with additional book reviews including Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career, by David Novak and Jason Goldsmith. Learn why Tom Brady is a big fan of “self-coaching.”

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. If you lead a church or nonprofit (or serve on its board), have you taken time to discern the generosity messaging that you’re communicating? Helpful? Harmful? Biblical? Need help? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest

Issue No. 510 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a potential 2022 book-of-the-year (just published this month). The three McKinsey senior partners suggest you create a “Hall of Failures” and organize funerals for failed projects! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”

The co-authors of CEO Excellence note that some companies create a “Hall of Failures” and organize funerals for failed projects!

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Will You Read 1 Book or 20 Books?

Yikes! According to the new book, CEO Excellence, “Thirty percent of Fortune 500 CEOs last fewer than three years, and two out of five new CEOs are perceived to be failing within eighteen months.”

If you’re a CEO—perhaps slipping off that perilous perch—take two aspirins and call me in the morning. Or…just read this remarkably well-researched book by three senior partners at McKinsey & Company. Subtitled, “The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest,” CEO Excellence is an early contender for my 2022 book-of-the-year honors.

2 Options for Studying the BEST Leaders:
• Option 1: Read 20 leadership books (see my suggestions below).
• Option 2: Read CEO Excellence (the equivalent of 20 books).

MY TOP-20 LIST. Here are my Top-20 takeaways from CEO Excellence:

#1. EXCEPTIONALLY PRACTICAL. Trust me—this outperforms any book you’ve read recently. I made 51 notes, but I could have made 251. Jam-packed with serious CEO thinking—the authors looked at 2,400 CEOs of public company, then zeroed in on 67—using their criteria for the “best leaders.” (The appendix includes 36 pages of CEO bios.) After “in-depth, multihour interviews,” this book popped out. You’ll love it.

#2. MANAGE BY MILESTONES. The book’s “six mindsets” launches with the Direction-Setting Mindset, “Be Bold.” In Chapter 3, CEOs are encouraged to “Act Like an Outsider” when allocating resources. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (who is quoted often), urges CEOs to “manage by milestones (not annual budgets).” The authors note, “In essence, Dimon’s approach is never to let an annual budget cycle get in the way of making good business decisions.”

#3. CORPORATE FUNERALS & HALL OF FAILURES! In the section, “Kill as Much as You Create,” the book describes how savvy CEOs eliminate sacred cows and dead horses. One CEO “set up a ‘Hall of Failures’ where the company organized funerals for failed projects. The idea was to show that trying and failing would be honored as long as lessons were learned and shared…” The ceremony also communicated “that no more resources would be allocated to the effort—that the projects were dead.” 

#4. PRACTICAL WORKSHEETS. In my first browse through CEO Excellence, I discovered three practical worksheets in the appendix (nine pages)—worth the price of the book:
• Worksheet 1: My CEO Mandate: What is the degree of change you aspire to lead? (Rate the six mindsets on a scale of 1 to 5.)
• Worksheet 2: How Am I Leading Today? (Rate how you’re currently leading, within the six mindsets: Challenged? Able? Excellent?)
• Worksheet 3: Prioritizing Improvement Areas and Related Actions (five assessments/action steps)

#5. ENGAGE THE BOARD (Mindset #4). The worksheet asks CEOs to rate their engagement with the board in three areas: Relationships, Capabilities, Meetings. You can rate your appropriate involvement in board meetings on a three-level continuum. (Hint: Excellent CEOs help the board focus on the future.) 

#6. EXIT BOARD MEMBERS. Jamie Dimon, when he was the new CEO of a contentious merger, amazingly inspired the two merged boards (22 members) to exit eight members to a more workable board size of 14. Read how he approached this delicate dance in the section, “Tap the Wisdom of Elders.” McKinsey’s research notes: “A full 82 percent of executives think at least one member of their company’s board should be replaced, citing reasons such as diminishing performance due to advanced age, serving on too many boards, and reluctance to challenge management.”

#7. HEART PADDLES. In Chapter 2, “Strategy Practice,” we learn the importance of “applying ‘heart paddles’ to create a series of performance-enhancing S-curves.” Why keep an eye on your organization’s downside? “The average lifetime of an organization in 1935 was ninety years, in 2015 it was eighteen years.”



#8. DO WHAT ONLY YOU CAN DO. There are three convicting chapters for CEOs on the Personal Effectiveness Mindset, “Do What Only You Can Do.” Did you know that when he was “urged to spend longer stretches of time on his masterpiece The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci immodestly responded, ‘The greatest geniuses accomplish more when they work less.’” Chapters 16, 17, and 18—huge gut-checks for all leaders!

#9. VACATION PROTECTION! When the CEO of Mastercard is on vacation—get this—he gives his cell phone to his wife. “My wife locks the device in the safe with a code that she sets, so I have to get her to open the thing and give it to me!”

#10. CHIEF OF STAFF ROTATION. To both mentor key people (and ensuring the COS role does not become too powerful), the CEO of Mastercard intentionally changes his chief of staff every 18 to 24 months.

#11. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY? “In year six of my eleven-year journey,” reported Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit, “one of my 360 feedbacks came back with, ‘Brad is lowering the standards in the company because he’s being too kind in reviews and isn’t willing to call anybody out.’” While many CEOs are flexible in their coaching, per Ken Blanchard’s situational leadership approach, Smith changed. “I started to coach business performance in public and personal performance in private.”

#12. OH, OH! WHY DOES OUR CEO HAVE A COACH? Initially fearing that if he retained a coach, people would wonder if he was on the bubble, Best Buy’s CEO soon embraced coaching. “Now I realize an executive coach can help successful leaders get better. One hundred percent of NFL teams have a coach—in fact, a coaching staff. Why on earth should CEOs and management teams not have a coach?”

#13. IF YOU WERE CEO…? To enrich continuous learning, Netflix’s CEO asks his top 50 people, “If you were CEO, what would be different at Netflix?” Intuit’s CEO met twice a week with managers several levels down—and asked three questions, including: “What’s getting better than it was six months ago?”



#14. ZOOM MOMENT. The CEO of Electronic Arts—hosting a Zoom meeting of 7,000 employees during COVID—was interrupted by his five-year-old son who asked his dad to make a paper airplane! The CEO paused the Zoom call and—of course—made the paper airplane! (It took just 30 seconds—but the response from work-from-home team members was worth gold. Said one, “Thank you. You just gave us permission to be parents.”)

#15. STAY HUMBLE. Every chapter begins with a “I-must-memorize-this” quotation. Chapter 18’s message, “Stay Humble,” begins with a Sudanese proverb, “A large chair does not make a king.”

#16. SUCCESSION BEGINS ON DAY ONE. Throughout the book, intentional succession and the need for humility oozes out. One CEO noted, “My kids used to say, ‘I’m sure people laugh at your jokes at work because they have to, but you’re honestly not as funny as you think you are.’ When you leave the job…people don’t laugh at your jokes and they don’t call anymore.”

#17. STAY GROUNDED. The CEO of Cadence noted: “Every morning [my wife] reminds me to bless the people I work with. She tells me, ‘It’s not your work; you’re just doing your part. Give the glory to God.’ That keeps me grounded.”

#18. ELEGANT SIMPLICITY. In the helpful conclusion, the authors summarize: “…a third theme is to convey the new direction with elegant simplicity. Virtually every CEO we spoke to could describe their strategy in an elevator ride. They also often had a ‘one pager’ that told the whole story crisply.” (Note: every chapter ends with very helpful bullet-point summaries.)

#19. BEST CEO DESCRIPTION: CONDUCTOR. U.S. Bancorp’s CEO believes a symphony conductor is the perfect metaphor for CEO excellence—noting that at no time in a performance does the conductor [CEO] “actually play an instrument.”

#20. “(DON’T) PUT PEOPLE FIRST!” Chapter 6, “The Talent Management Practice,” is a contrarian and must-read chapter—DON’T put people first. Instead, define the role first. When interviewing the CEO of “an average-performing health care company,” the authors asked three questions:
• “Who are your top twenty most talented leaders?” 
• “What are the twenty most important roles in the company?” 
• “How many people on the first list are filling roles on the second list?”

The CEO’s response? “He went pale.”

Oh, my. I could add another 20 reasons why this book is so helpful. Must-reads: the difference between winning vs. victory, the lottery ticket effect, “Treat the Soft Stuff as Hard Stuff,” pendulum swing lessons, the matrix organization vs. the helix organization, left tackle positions, categorizing talent into four buckets—and the six months rule, the Law of Triviality, plus why Netflix uses a Chaos Monkey and another CEO uses a “Wreckoon” (a small mnemonic) to stress-test thinking in meetings. And don’t miss the “Moments of Truth Practice” (aka crisis stories). “The best way to manage a crisis is, of course, to prevent it in the first place.”

You can’t always eliminate the crisis—but you can inspire your board and your team to read this book. And by the way, McKinsey & Company is a writing machine. Read my review of Fast Times (on digital winners) by four McKinsey partners.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest, by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra. Listen to the book on Libro.fm (11 hours, 37 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and Simon & Schuster/Scribner for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Imagine! The former CEO of Home Depot would regularly write 200 hand-written notes to employees every Sunday—thanking them for a specific customer service story that made its way to the CEO’s office. What might be the powerful result if our team members (and volunteers and donors) received hand-written notes from our CEO?
2) Have you read another book recently (or some years back) that was a comprehensive summary of multiple competencies? What’s your style? Read or listen to one comprehensive book—or read niche books (or niche chapters) to go even deeper?

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The Book Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets, suggests you recommend “niche chapters” to your team members.

Will You Read 1 Book or Niche Chapters in 20 Books? Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The hot-off-the-press book, CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest, is unusually comprehensive in its scope. Will you read one book or 20 books or 20 niche chapters? For your lifelong learning, here are 20 other books I’ve reviewed—each one related to the Top-20 takeaway topics above:

#1. Exceptionally Practical. Read my review of The Practical Drucker.
#2. Manage by Milestones. Read my review of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0).
#3. Corporate Funerals. Read my review of Necessary Endings.
#4. Practical Worksheets. Read my review of Leadership Core.
#5. Engage the Board. Click here to browse the four governance books co-authored by Dan Busby and John Pearson.
 
#6. Exit Board Members. Read my review of Boards That Lead.
#7. Heart Paddles. Read my review of Myself and Other More Important Matters.
#8. Do What Only You Can Do. Read my review of What You Do Best in the Body of Christ.
#9. Vacation Protection. Read my review of Margin.
#10. Chief of Staff Rotation. Read my review of The Gatekeepers.

#11. No More Mr. Nice Guy. Read my review of Emotional Intelligence 2.0.
#12. Why Does Our CEO Have a Coach? Read my review of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
#13. If You Were CEO. Read my review of The Advantage.
#14. Zoom Moment. Read my review of Remote, Inc. and Working Remotely.
#15. Stay Humble. Read my review of Humility.

#16. Succession Begins on Day One. Read my review of How Will You Measure Your Life?
#17. Stay Grounded. Read my review of Experiencing God.
#18. Elegant Simplicity. See my review of Owning Up (and read Chapter 5 on strategy).
#19. Best CEO Description: Conductor. Read Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening.
#20. (Don’t) Put People First. Read my review of You’re Not the Person I Hired!

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Check out John’s new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with additional book reviews including Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams From Isolated to All In. Patrick Lencioni said, “Every leader and manager needs to read this.” Shark Tank guru Daymond John labels Connectable “a must-read.” I agree.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Need one or 20 book suggestions for enriching your marketing and communication strategies? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Discerning Life: An Invitation to Notice God in Everything

Issue No. 509 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a book (just published today) by Steve Macchia, who confesses, “The older I get, the harder it is to pray.” (I love his authenticity—and the book!) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”

Steve Macchia on discernment: “We want a simple system to follow: set up the room, put people in place, consider the right options, add a prayer, and then press the button of discernment.”

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“God, what fabric softener do you want me to buy at the store this week?”

Wait! Is this a book on discernment—or an entire PBS season of This Old House? With delightful humor and humility, Steve Macchia’s troubles and travails with his 75-year-old house create the stage for learning and listening—and noticing God’s heart for us. 

Don’t skip Steve’s true stories (and memorable old house metaphors). “Apparently, tomato sauce can expire, and when it does, it explodes.” The porch of heaven (beautiful). Low water pressure issues. Ice dams on the roof from a long winter (dubbed “snowmageddon” and “snowpocalypse”). It gets worse, of course! (The poor guy!)

But, really, this is a hopeful book. The Discerning Life: An Invitation to Notice God in Everything emits the same respectful tone that oozes out of Macchia’s other books (see Crafting a Rule of Life and others). Steve writes with high regard and aspirations for readers and leaders—fellow pilgrims. He confesses, “The older I get, the harder it is to pray.” Steve admits he’s “just a beginner” in this discernment journey, and so with that honest humility, he invites me in. I love this book. 

TAP. TAP. TAP. I’ll never forget the moment when Steve Macchia, speaking to several hundred ministry leaders, asked us to “Tap, Tap, Tap” on a colleague’s shoulder. We faithfully followed his directions, chuckled, and then stopped. And then this classic response from Steve: “Wait! I didn’t tell you to stop tapping!” (More chuckles.) And with that, Steve gifted us with a lifelong metaphor of God as a loving initiator. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022).

Macchia asks, “But are we aware of his presence? He’s tapping on the shoulder of our hearts all the time: tap, tap, tap . . . tap, tap, tap. As Christ- followers, it’s incumbent upon us to notice the tap and not brush it aside, shun God’s presence, or be so numbed or hardened or oblivious as to miss it altogether.” This book rekindled that moment. I’m so grateful.

“FAR TOO OFTEN, SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT HAS BEEN PIGEON-HOLED,” Steve writes, “into the exclusive realm of decision-making, learning how to make good choices and know God’s will methodically and predictably. We want a simple system to follow: set up the room, put people in place, consider the right options, add a prayer, and then press the button of discernment.”

He adds, “For some people, spiritual discernment is reserved for major ministry or organizational decisions, like calling the right pastor or determining where to plant a church. For others, it’s a tool used to spiritualize every single decision: God, what fabric softener do you want me to buy at the store this week?”

Why a book on discernment? “There is no more important topic for the church to wrestle with today than to know God, notice him at work in, through, and all around us, and to aid others in embracing and fulfilling the discerning life.” 

With several helpful definitions and commentaries on “discernment,” I especially appreciated this one: “Perceiving and noticing the present, attentive to the now, and in anticipation of the next—like holding hands and looking both ways before safely crossing the street.”

Tall order? Yes! “All of this will take a lifetime to rehearse,” promises Macchia.

LOL! “On a spiritual retreat a handful of years ago, I was sitting with a spiritual mentor, detoxing my hurting soul. I was sharing about feelings of abandonment from those I thought had my best interests in mind but had turned against me. I was not in a good place. After listening to my story, this godly man encouraged me to do one of the strangest things ever suggested to me:

“Wink at myself in the mirror. At least once a day. For the foreseeable future. That sounded so bizarre! But his point was to do this as a reminder of God’s unconditional love for me each day. This spiritual leader shared that our lives will be filled with disappointment, heartache, suffering, and sorrow. That reality we cannot change. But the inner reservoir of our soul can indeed be opened to receive love once more, over and over and over again. That’s the way of God, and if we’re to live a discerning life, it’s to become our way too.” 

ALLERGIC TO SPIRITUAL DEPTH. Macchia is just warming up when he reminds us that “Without a prayer closet, we are destined to live an inch deep and a mile wide. For any number of reasons, we are highly allergic to spiritual depth. We’re guilty of a self-ordained, self-empowered, self-absorbed life. And although we value the priority of prayer and believe in the importance of a prayer closet, we are far too busy for such a notion to be fully realized in our lives. It reeks of weakness. It smacks of ritual. It sounds boring. I used to need it, but it’s no longer necessary. Been there, done that, moving on.

“DEPTH IS SUBTRACTIVE. IT IS NOT ADDITIVE. We don’t dig a hole high; we dig it deep,” writes Macchia. “Similarly, in the spiritual life, depth relates to what’s going on underneath the surface. A deeper life isn’t measured by accumulation, unless what’s gained is more of God. Depth is hidden and mysterious. Depth is experienced most abundantly in relation to what we lose or sacrifice or release. Even depth of knowledge, depth of compassion, depth of character, depth of insight, and depth of contentment require some form of letting go in order to fully receive.” 

Macchia continues, “Preconceived notions need to be released in order for greater knowledge to be received. Creature comforts need to be released in order for compassion to be offered. Humility creates character. Wisdom forms insight. Contentment comes from letting go of that which previously defined you. In spiritual depth, we find life at its fullest by letting go. In so many profound ways, the spiritual life is all about letting go—not always complete detachment (as in the love of our spouse or child), but by holding people and things with a much looser grip, in order to mature as God desires.”

In recent years, I’ve slowly munched on one book for up to six months (just on weekends)—seeking to go slow and deep. Examples: Packer’s Knowing God and Blackaby’s Experiencing God. But…the deep end of the pool can be threatening. Nevertheless, The Discerning Life is my weekend book for the next six months. 

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Discerning Life: An Invitation to Notice God in Everything, by Stephen Macchia. Listen to the book on Libro.fm (8 hours, 7 minutes). Note! LTI is offering a limited time discount on bulk orders of five copies or more with free standard shipping within the continental USA. Click here.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Here’s an idea—go deep on this book with your team members. The stories are page-turners (think This Old House—the perfect discernment metaphor). The “Practicing a Preference for God” succinct summaries (see “Tap, Tap, Tap”) are so helpful. And the lists…oh, my…the lists! Steve Macchia resists formulaic pious claptrap—and instead—delivers deep and soul-challenging content: discernment definitions (5), discernment postures (12), soul-neglect causes (10), stumbling blocks to listening (10), poignant discernment questions (11), Jesus’ favorite topics (17)—you’ll love the lists! And this reminder: “All of this will take a lifetime to rehearse.” OK team—who will summarize the first chapter at our next staff meeting?

2) Steve Macchia writes, “A consistent visit to your prayer closet fulfills your soul’s deepest longings. A prayer closet can be as simple as a dedicated time and space where you go with Bible, journal, and pen in hand to meet with God, as unhurried, unhindered, and uncluttered as possible. That’s all that’s needed—nothing more; nothing less.” Is “closet” a metaphor here—or does Steve Macchia expect us to actually find a closet for prayer times?

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Communicate your annual S.M.A.R.T. Goals for volunteers using the one-page G.N.O.M.E. Chart. Read the Volunteer Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets.

The 20 Buckets Countdown:
The Volunteer Bucket (#12) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Volunteer Bucket Core Competency: “We reject the notion of a two-tiered Kingdom workforce. Instead, we seek to treat our paid volunteers (staff) and our unpaid volunteers with equal passion and intentionality. We will never have enough paid staff to accomplish our Kingdom assignments, so we continually hone our skills in volunteer cultivation, recruitment, orientation and engagement.”

Tap! Tap! Tap!—Discernment for Volunteers (i.e. Board Members). Steve Macchia’s “Tap, Tap, Tap” theme is featured in two books by Dan Busby and John Pearson. Read Macchia’s blog commentary on Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom (Lesson 11), and read Peter F. Clements’ blog commentary on Lessons From the Church Boardroom (Lesson 11). And click here for the five-minute video conversation with Busby and Pearson, “Tap! Tap! Tap!”

Enhance Volunteer Satisfaction and Mission Results! Visit the Volunteer Bucket webpage and download Worksheet #12.1, “The G.N.O.M.E Chart: Annual Volunteer Goals.” In just one page, you and your volunteer team can establish Annual S.M.A.R.T. Goals for your volunteers in four key areas: Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation, and Engagement. Click here. 

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

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Check out John’s new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with with additional book reviews including this fascinating read:
• PIC #5: Inside Marine One: Four U.S. Presidents, One Proud Marine, and the World’s Most Amazing Helicopter, by Col. Ray L'Heureux and Lee Kelley - (read review)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Need help discerning next steps in your communication strategies? Is prayer and discernment an integral part of your team’s process? It can be! Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020

Issue No. 508 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks if you should switch from binge watching to binge reading—especially in a crisis. Columnist George Will says he is “paid to do what I would do without pay.” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with four new book PICs.

19 Hours of Binge Reading (or Listening!)

So…did you do anything interesting or uplifting from 2008 to 2020? Do you even remember the key events and issues during those 13 years? (Well…we actually remember 2020, don’t we? We’re still living it.)

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will can help you remember with his latest collection of 750-word columns in American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020. His masterful writing will tempt you to set aside your “B” priorities and drink deeply from his opinions and insights. 

Good news: You’ll agree with many of Will’s conclusions. More good news: You’ll disagree with many of his conclusions. (That’s what “deep reading” is all about.)

I’m sure you know that George Will writes a syndicated column on politics, plus domestic and foreign affairs, for the Washington Post. His twice-a-week meanderings through the jabs and joys of front page issues is sliced and diced rather eruditely in his columns—as would befit a PhD from Princeton with a side trip to Oxford. 
 

SECOND INNING STRETCH
Yet…George Will’s midwestern roots (Champaign, Illinois) and baseball keep him grounded (no pun intended). Enough so that his love of baseball and the Chicago Cubs pop out often. Click here to read my review of his book, A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred. Will quotes sportscaster Red Barber, “Baseball is dull only to dull minds.”

And speaking of dull minds, how can you not read American Happiness and Discontents when George Will thinks so highly of you? In the required-reading intro, the author nostalgically notes that upon arriving in New York City for the first time in 1958, at age 17, he “plunked down a nickel for a New York tabloid in order to see what was going on in Gotham. This purchase of a New York Post was a life-changing event because in it I found a column by Murray Kempton.”

Will says Kempton “paid a compliment to his readers”—he held them in high esteem. “Furthermore, Kempton knew that reading newspaper columns is an optional activity, so a writer must make the most of his ration of words—in Kempton’s case, often fewer than 700 of them.”

Will waxes eloquent with a similar admiration for his readers: “However, the fact that most Americans do not read newspapers, let alone the commentary columns, is actually emancipating for columnists. The kind of people who seek out written arguments are apt to bring to the written word a fund of information and opinions.”

He adds, “Having a self-selected audience of intellectually upscale readers allows the columnist to assume that his or her readers have a reservoir of knowledge about the world. So, he can be brief—most of the writings in this book are approximately 750 words long—without being superficial.”

I’ll accept that compliment, but it’s convicting. Yikes. Do I hold high the readers of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (i.e., you) with appropriate admiration?

Oops! I haven’t hooked you yet on why you should read American Happiness and Discontents. Nine reasons (within my new 750-word rule!):

1) 19 HOURS IN 192 DOSES! In your car, or while peddling on your Peloton, you can listen to George Will’s insights—one column at a time in just 19 hours of listening pleasure (actually 18 hours and 55 minutes). I recommend Libro.fm audio books and CLICK HERE for a free audio book offer.

2) A JOY TO READ. George Will—whether you agree with his worldview or not—is a joy to read. “Writing—forming sentences and paragraphs, producing a felicitous phrase in the service of a well-made argument—is, for me, a metabolic urge, and more fun than I can have anywhere outside of a major league ballpark.” (He adds that he is “paid to do what I would do without pay.”)

3) 50 YEARS/6,000 COLUMNS. Whew! In January 1973, the author began writing columns for William F. Buckley’s National Review and the Washington Post. Total output over 50 years—about 6,000 columns! (That dramatically exceeds Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours standard.)

4) BOOKS HAVE CAREFUL EDITORS! George Will believes the importance of books is increasing—so many of the 192 columns in his book are well-crafted reviews of important books. “The velocity imparted by the new media [he labels the new media “the instantaneous and essentially cost-free dissemination of thoughts, most of which should never have been thought, let alone given written expression”] somehow is an incentive for intemperate discourse. Books, however, have long gestations and, usually, careful editors.”

5) BINGE READING! For an in-depth staff meeting discussion, assign the column, “In Praise of Binge Reading” (April 19, 2020) to team members. George Will urges us to “mute Netflix long enough” to read several think pieces on deep reading. He quotes Adam Garfinkle’s work that suggests “government’s problem-solving failures reflect not just hyper-partisanship and polarization but the thin thinking of a political class of non-deep readers who are comfortable only with the shallowness of tweets.”

6) “THE PAST IS NOT DEAD.” Will’s fascinating look-backs at selected columns from 2008 to 2020 are, ironically, forward-looking. He quotes William Faulkner, “The past is not dead. It is not even past.” You’ll appreciate these issues under the George Will microscope:
   • “A Nation Not Made by Flimsy People”
   • “The Perverse Fecundity of a Perfect Failure”
   • “The Announcement of a Presidential Candidate You Will Never Hear”
   • “How Not to Select Presidential Candidates”
   • “Anti-Capitalist Conservatives versus Progressives: The Narcissism of Small Differences”
   • “Bootleggers and Baptists, Together Yet Again”

7) TOO MUCH POTUS! “There is very little in this book about recent presidents. What William Wordsworth felt about the world—that is ‘too much with us’—is how I feel about almost all presidents.” From a presidential message (tweet?) you will never hear: “I will not ruin any more American evenings with televised State of the Union addresses. I will mail my thoughts on that subject to Congress from ‘time to time,’ as the Constitution directs.”

8) FOOTBALL/BASEBALL. Interestingly, the author has strong feelings about football (remember—he’s a baseball guy), especially the brutality, concussions, and brain injuries. His first of 11 columns in Section 11, “Games,” features his 2012 column, “Are You Ready for Some Autopsies?” He bookends the sports section with a sweet column for Dodgers fans, “Vin Scully, Craftsman” (Sept. 4, 2016), marking Scully’s final season in the broadcast booth (eight years in Brooklyn and 59 in Los Angeles!).

9) CRISIS COACHING. George Will highlights his fair share of CRISIS issues in the book—and the historical look-backs are helpful in making sense (if we can) of the current crisis in Ukraine. Section 9, “Darkness Remembered” features 10 columns on the German resistance, Eichmann, falsification, China and Churchill, fascism, and authoritarianism. Not recommended for light beaching reading. In fact, sobering!

If you read or listen to one column every day for the next 192 days, you’ll widen your interests, deepen your insights, and enjoy fascinating conversations with family and friends. Email me on September 19, 2022 (192 days from now), when you’ve read (or listened to) the final pages of the book and the poignant column, “Lieutenant Colonel Jim Walton” (July 6, 2008)—about a solemn CACO (casualty assistance calls officer) visit to deliver sad news. (And sadly—being repeated every day now in Ukraine.)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020, by George F. Will. Listen to the book on Libro.fm (18 hours, 55 minutes). And thanks to Hachette Book Group for sending a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Not every George Will column solves society’s deepest dilemmas. At your next staff meeting, invite a team member to read “The Plague of Denim” (2009). He quotes a WSJ writer who writes that wearing denim is a manifestation of “the modern trend toward undifferentiated dressing, in which we all strive to look equally shabby.” DISCUSS! Why did Vin Scully wear a coat and tie in the Dodgers broadcast booth for 67 years (not a typo!), yet denim (with unholy knee holes) is the accepted clerical vestments in many Protestant churches today? What’s the deal? Has anyone thought deeply about this enigma?

2) In The President’s Club (read my review), the authors note that John F. Kennedy asked Clark Clifford for counsel on how to navigate the transition into the White House. Kennedy’s team, said Clifford, “behaved as though history had begun with them. The new elite did not appear to show much interest in history.” He added, “I regarded this as a form of arrogance.” So…in your next transition, how do you avoid the triple sins of ego, ignorance, and arrogance?

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Warning! Failure to prepare—in advance—for a crisis will exacerbate the crisis. Read The Crisis Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets.

The 20 Buckets Countdown:
The Crisis Bucket (#13) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Crisis Bucket Core Competency: “We are prepared for most crises. We have plans in place and a crisis facilitator trained, and we drill our team members frequently and spontaneously. Yet we trust in God, who is our Protector, Comforter and Sustainer."

Harry Truman said: “The only thing new in this world is the history you haven’t read.” To sharpen your competencies in the Crisis Bucket, consider reading how other leaders and columnists have addressed American and global crisis moments:

• See the four books highlighted on the Crisis Bucket webpage, including: Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, by David A. Nichols.

See also:
• The Time of Our Lives, by Peggy Noonan (read my review)
• The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, by Robert D. Novak (read my review) 

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

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PAILS IN COMPARISON: Check out John’s new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with new reviews of four books:

[  ] PIC #1: Books Are Tremendous: What They Represent to Some of Those Who Have Written, Read and Loved Them, by Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, Editor – (read review)
[  ] PIC #2: Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It's Too Late), by Michael Clinton – (read review)
[  ] PIC #3: Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams From Isolated to All In, by Ryan Jenkins and Steven Van Cohen – (read review)
[  ] PIC #4: Converted: The Data-Driven Way to Win Customers' Hearts, by Neil Hoyne  – (read review)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Do you have a deep and historical understanding of your customer? Do your communications compliment your customer’s intelligence? Is your social media uplifting, informative, and inspiring—or just boring? Do your customers wear denim? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Talent: The Market Cap Multiplier

Issue No. 507 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights the tenth book I’ve reviewed by Ram Charan, the esteemed business consultant, author, and CEO adviser. He warns “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is terrible advice! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here my review of Fit at Last, by Ken Blanchard.  

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Worst Advice Ever: “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It”

Pssst! Here’s a little secret. Please keep it quiet.

When reading a new book, I’ll often scan the chapter titles and pick one chapter to read first. If it’s satisfying, enlightening, or inspiring—I’ll keep going. If not, I’ll close the book and move on. I only review and recommend books I’ve read thoroughly for Your Weekly Staff Meeting. Unlike other critics, I won’t waste my time and your time on a book that isn’t helpful. (Click here to read why one book guru gives a book only 50 pages to rope him in.)

So…for this issue’s book, I started with Chapter 6, “Rethinking the Myth ‘If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.'” Bingo! It sucked me in—and I devoured the entire book. Every CEO and board member (including nonprofit leaders) will find fresh insights in Talent: The Market Cap Multiplier, by Ram Charan and Anish Batlaw (168 pages, Jan. 25, 2022).

Ram Charan’s commentary in Chapter 6 cautions that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is faulty thinking. “This has been the worst wisdom for centuries.” In one of six “real-world case studies” featured in Talent, co-author Anish Batlaw describes his work with Hemnet, Sweden’s dominant online site for real estate listings. Was the current CEO (they called him “John”) capable of growing the company? Was “John” a growth-oriented CEO?

Ram Charan notes that Hemnet was not “broken” when General Atlantic invested in it, “so many might have said it needed no repairs. This would have been an error. It faced some great opportunities, but, to seize them, it needed some fixes.”

Yikes! Imagine…if your organization had a “90 percent market share and about 88 percent awareness among consumers,” and had “an implicit value of $214 million.” “John” is doing a great job, right? If it ain’t broke…

NOPE! (Or as they say in Sweden, NEF!). General Atlantic, with a 61 percent stake, believed a new growth-oriented CEO could rocket Hemnet to new levels. So…the Hemnet board said adjö (goodbye) to “John” and, with the help of the lead deal partner at General Atlantic, they recruited a growth-oriented CEO—in less than 100 days!

Not easy! Ram Charan comments, The lead deal partner “sensed that something was not right, and he had the conviction to trust his instinct and engage Anish [co-author of Talent]. He trusted the data that Anish presented to him and eventually made the tough decision to agree to replace the CEO. This took incredible courage, as he had to go back to the Investment Committee just after completing the deal and tell them the company needed a new CEO.” 

He adds, “You have to make tough decisions at times. Too often, leaders hang on to talent for too long because they are loyal or have performed well in the past. The loyalty needs to be to the business. The company comes first.”

That’s my favorite chapter, but the other short chapters all tie for second place! (Did I mention my Swedish heritage?) Here’s why you’ll devour and quote from this book in future staff and board meetings:

THE TALENT PLAYBOOK. The introduction paints a new vision for the Chief HR Officer’s role—with a nod to COVID—and “reinvents the C-suite operating manual.” Anish Batlaw’s approach “parts way with old practices, gut instinct, and speculation, and drills down into operational reality…” 

Why the focus on talent? The authors document how, with the right talent, organizations can speed past sleepy, incremental growth and experience 2X, 3X, 5X and greater growth (over two to five years or so)—with the right talent. But this warning: there will be “bumps” and “jolts” along the way.

Chapter 1: EVANGELIST FOR TALENT. Bill Ford, General Atlantic’s CEO, is quoted in Chapter 1 with this: “Before, we focused on having the right investment, the right price and deal structure. But we’ve learned talent is as important as all of those things.” The authors add, “By his own account, Bill has become something of an evangelist for talent…” 

“True leaders,” believes Bill Ford, “don’t have irrational goals—they’re rational, even when they seem unattainable.” And this: “I think about succession all the time.”

Chapter 2: TALENT BANK. Anish Batlaw’s unique approach to building a “Talent Bank” will change your thinking about building your executive team. “A great CEO establishes high standards for the leadership team and builds the team in the context of not where the company is today, but where it will be in the future.”

The case study on Oak Street Health includes Batlaw’s six-point evaluation of Oak Street’s CEO which included: Track Record, Strategic Thinking, Learning Agility, Drive for Results, Team Leadership, and Interpersonal Influence. (Not a bad list!) Don’t skip Ram Charan’s comments about the “War for Talent” and why compensation was benchmarked against larger companies—where Oak Street would eventually be. The right talent enabled Oak Street Health to build "an outstanding patient experience with a 90 percent Net Promoter Score." Click here for more on NPS.

Chapter 3: PREPARING A CEO FOR HYPERGROWTH. I’ve mentioned my “Page 25 Standard” in previous reviews. Talent waits until Page 55 to deliver a fascinating three-column implementation chart on the UK fashion company, Depop: Phase 1: Planning, Phase 2: Workshop, and Phase 3: Adoption. Ram Charan’s commentary follows Anish Batlaw’s case study at the end of each chapter. Charan’s insights: “Fundamental to Anish’s approach is hiring talent ahead of the curve.” Plus, the benefits of moving quickly. Charan is no stranger to the talent topic. See his books below.

Chapter 4:  NO WAY…WOULD YOU TAKE THIS JOB! “A Risk-taking Leader Lifts a Corporate Phoenix From the Ashes” is must-reading for board members. If your organization is struggling, why would a highly qualified CEO candidate risk saying yes to you? And…how do you inspire a search firm to begin a search without a compensation agreement? This case study on Vishal Retail, a chain of Indian hypermarkets is beyond fascinating—and instructive. (It took me back to my 2009 review of the equally fascinating book, Being Indian.)

THERE’S MUCH MORE. I’ve already highlighted Chapter 6 for you (“If It Ain’t Broke…), and you’ll find more gems in the remaining chapters:
• Chapter 5 - “To be successful at Johnson & Johnson, you have to be exceptional at strategy but at the same time, immerse yourself in detail and nail execution.”
• Chapter 7 – Four themes from General Atlantic’s deal makers on what makes an “A” CEO. Example: “Makes decisions with speed and conviction, but pauses for decisions that are ‘high impact and irreversible.’”
• Chapter 8 – Read about the key role that the CHRO played in “Building a Leadership Team for a Successful Merger.”
• Chapter 9 – Maybe the most important reason to read the authors’ conclusion is this: “…the War for Talent will only get more intense. Proven leaders with demonstrated records of high performance are going to be pursued as never before. It will be more difficult, and more expensive, to recruit and retain them.”

REMINDER: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” has “been the worst wisdom for centuries.”

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Talent: The Market Cap Multiplier, by Ram Charan and Anish Batlaw. (And thanks to Fortier PR and IdeaPress Publishing for sending a review copy.)



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) It takes courage for a CEO and/or a board to make gutsy talent decisions. In his book, Owning Up, Ram Charan asks, “Are we well prepared to name our next CEO?” He adds, “There is nothing more important for a CEO than having the right strategy and the right choice of goals, and for the board, the right strategy is second only to having the right CEO.” Question: Do we have the right strategy and right choice of goals?
2) In the chapter, “Vision Growth Must Equal Leader Growth,” in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, Dan Busby and I include a lesson from my early days as a very young camp director. The subtitle: “Caution! Vision-casting often backfires.” (Read the chapter online here.) Question: Do we have growth-oriented senior leaders? If not, what’s our next step?

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Wisdom from the Board Bucket! Master the four phases of board recruitment: Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation, and Engagement.

The 20 Buckets Countdown:
The Board Bucket (#14) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Board Bucket Core Competency: “We believe that board members must sense God’s call to serve on the board of directors. We invest time in cultivating, recruiting, orienting and engaging board members in their strategic role as stewards of our organization. The first step in organizational sustainability is to inspire board members to be highly committed and generous partners in ministry.”

Ram Charan has written 31 books and, so far, I’ve reviewed 10 of his insight-packed resources, including:

BOARD GOVERNANCE
• Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask, by Ram Charan (read my review)
• Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way, by Ram Charan, Dennis Carey and Michael Useem (read my review)

TALENT
• The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan (read my review)
• Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis, by Ram Charan (read my review)

PLANNING AND EXECUTION
• The Amazon Management System: The Ultimate Digital Business Engine That Creates Extraordinary Value for Both Customers and Shareholders, by Ram Charan and Julia Yang (read my review)
• Rethinking Competitive Advantage: New Rules for the Digital Age, by Ram Charan with Geri Willigan (read my review)

Note: If you’re a listener (not a reader), you’ll find many of Ram Charan’s audio books at Libro.fm.

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. If you’re thinking “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is still smart wisdom—what if you’re wrong? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Working Remotely: A Framework for Success

NOTE!  An updated version of the book I reviewed in Issue No. 486 (new title and new cover, etc.) was published on Jan. 23, 2022.  Click on the title to order from Amazon: Working Remotely: A Framework for Success, by Nick B Nicholaou, General Editor (Jan. 23, 2022).

Issue No. 486 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features an expert-loaded book on working remotely—and a 30-minute interview (live today). Listen as George P. Wood interviews John on mistake-making for the Influence Podcast. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the new book John wrote with his son, Jason, Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned. 

Working from home? Nick Nicholaou and 10 colleagues deliver a framework for success in their new book.

Working Remotely: Accountability & Measurements

Yikes! Recent news reports say many organizations will continue to allow staff to work remotely—due to COVID. But there are downsides.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ORIGINAL REVIEW, published on Sept. 2, 2021.

Fit at Last by Ken Blanchard and Tim Kearin

Issue No. 506 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting suggests a book by Ken Blanchard with a do-over option for your unfulfilled January fitness goals. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here an excellent companion book to this issue’s topic, How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters.



“Would you rather exercise for 1 hour a day or be dead for 24 hours a day?”

When Ken Blanchard’s son noticed that his dad was “gimping around and looking a lot like Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Scott admonished him:

“Dad, I’ve heard you kid around and say to mom that when a tour bus unloads passengers at a hotel in Hawaii, 35 women will get off the bus and only 5 men, because the rest of the guys are dead.”

So…Ken Blanchard, bestselling author and management guru, knew it was time to adopt a healthier lifestyle—so he’d be one of those 5 men on the bus!

Fit at Last: Look and Feel Better Once and for All chronicles Blanchard’s three-year “Fit at Last” journey from 2010 to 2013—with the savvy help of his co-author, Tim Kearin, a fitness coach and former director of strength training and conditioning at the United States Military Academy.

Perhaps…your New Year’s Resolutions commitments (remember those?) are a dim memory and your scale is barking back at you this February? You’re not alone! Ken Blanchard (now 82) confesses to a history of failed commitments—and this is NOT his first book on getting fit.

Back in 1986, Blanchard and his wife, Marjorie, wrote The One Minute Manager Gets Fit, along with co-author D. W. Edington. Just 128 pages in the classic one minute manager story format, that book covered fitness basics including a dozen healthy lifestyle habits such as 1) “I love my job (most of the time),” and 4) I know three methods to reduce stress that  do not include the use of drugs or alcohol.”

Perhaps…you can identify with Blanchard. In fact, Fit at Last (2014) is stunningly transparent. Writing about his good intentions—yet soft on long-term commitment—Blanchard even anticipated your push-back!

“Come on, Blanchard. I’m sick of hearing about this yo-yo weight and exercise thing with you. You write about motivation, you speak about motivation, and you even wrote a book about fitness. Why couldn’t you keep your commitment to your commitment and keep on going with your fitness journey?”

You probably already guessed—I also needed a February pep talk. Hence…this book. While I’ve been working with a personal trainer for five months (amazingly helpful), I’m ready to move from short-term goals to a long-term healthy lifestyle. (And at my age, “long-term” may be subject to discussion.)

Fit at Last surprised me. The book is innovative and inspiring and the approach can be customized to your individual needs. Here are four elements that will capture your attention (and maybe your commitment):

#1. DO OR DIE? “Would you rather exercise for 1 hour a day or be dead for 24 hours a day?” That’s from page 23 about the importance of having three reasons or purposes to help you keep your commitment to your commitment:
   • A health-driven purpose.
   • A cause-driven purpose.
   • A personally-driven purpose (the most difficult).

#2. MEMORABLE COMMENTARY. Each chapter includes a “Ken” commentary followed by a “Tim” commentary. Both are truth-tellers! Tim Kearin had worked with Blanchard numerous times before—but was unsuccessful at inspiring Blanchard to keep the faith year-round. “Ken and I had been down this road many times before. In years past, on or about Groundhog Day, I would get ‘that call’ from Ken.” But this time, Ken called Tim in November 2010—not in February! The back-and-forth format makes for lively and entertaining reading—just 126 pages, plus three back-of-the-book resource sections (about 50 pages), including:
   • Pearls of Wisdom from five experts
   • Understanding Exercise and Fitness: Tim’s Toolbox
   • Developing Your Own Fitness Program 

#3. SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP® II MODEL. After reading The One Minute Manager, or The New One Minute Manager, you likely also read Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership®.

Fit at Last is brilliant! Blanchard and Kearin discuss Ken’s fitness journey using the four Development Levels from Situational Leadership. Where are you?
• D1—Enthusiastic Beginner: Low competence, high commitment
• D2—Disillusioned Learner: Low to some competence, low commitment
• D3—Capable but Cautious Performer: Moderate to high competence, variable commitment
• D4—Self-Reliant Achiever: High competence, high commitment

Next…what leadership style (help) will you need to succeed—long-term? Once you set SMART goals (their acronym: Specific, Motivating, Attainable, Relevant, and Trackable), you can discern the help you need along the S1 to S4 continuum: Directing, Coaching, Supporting, and Delegating.

Applying this leadership/management approach to fitness is…well, brilliant. It opened my eyes (and body) to assessing where I was in my journey and—most importantly—why.

BONUS! In 2012, Ken Blanchard gave a TedX Talk in San Diego on the three aspects of collaboration (a question he is often asked). While he didn’t talk about fitness, you’ll immediately see how a collaborative approach to fitness will better ensure success. Blanchard notes, “You can’t learn everything by yourself.” Click here to view the TedX Talk—and how to collaborate effectively with different personalities and egos.


View Ken Blanchard’s 16-minute TedX Talk on collaboration. Fascinating!

#4. BEFORE AND AFTER. Honest! The dust cover of the hardback book includes Blanchard’s “Before” and “After” photos! And on page 125 for all the world to see—Kearin spotlights Blanchard’s vital statistics in three columns: Nov. 25, 2010, Nov. 25, 2011, and Nov. 25, 2013. (Email me when you’ve posted your own three-year stats on Facebook!) Example:
   • Body weight (Blanchard lost 44.5 pounds!)
   • Height (he gained one-half inch!)
   • Balance on left foot (2010: 2 seconds; 2013: 120 seconds)
   • Waist: navel level (Blanchard dropped from 45 to 40 inches)

Ready to get fit? To order from Amazon, click on the title for Fit at Last: Look and Feel Better Once and for All, by Ken Blanchard and Tim Kearin.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Ken Blanchard has written over 65 books and when he celebrated his 70th birthday, he invited all of his co-authors to a special party—celebrating their collaborative work. Name five to 10 collaborators you would invite to your 70th (or 80th!) birthday party.
2) Blanchard and Kearin emphasize the importance of building a strong support system to help you accomplish your fitness SMART goals (friends, colleagues, coaches, etc.). Are you ready to get fit? If so, who is in your support system?

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Wisdom from the Budget Bucket! “When you’re in a hole—stop digging!”

Buckets Countdown:
The Budget Bucket (#15) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Budget Bucket Core Competency: “We operate with integrity and are accountable for best practices in our financial management. We mentor our team members so they understand the financial implications of our programs. We monitor our progress monthly.”

Over the years, I’ve collected my favorite financial axioms, including:
• “We’re nonprofit—but we didn’t plan it that way.”
• “Nonprofit is a tax designation—not a management philosophy.”
• “When you’re in a hole—stop digging.”
• “You didn’t end the year in the black—if your roof is still leaking.”

Visit the Budget Bucket to view several finance book recommendations, including the 2022 book, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. Click here to read my review.

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Out-of-date or out-of-shape? Do your Design, Digital, Marketing, and Social Media tools need a fitness review?. Contact Pearpod Media.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness

Issue No. 505 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting delivers a laugh-a-page treatise on wokeness from the editors of The Babylon Bee.  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my 2021 Top-10 Books and Book-of-the-Year.


G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936): “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”

“Blessed are those who don’t feel like working, for they shall be given free money.”

I’m thinking that readers of Your Weekly Staff Meeting fit nicely into two groups:
• Group 1: Halfway through this book review, you’ll unsubscribe. (Nice knowing you.)
• Group 2: You’ll blame me again for another must-read book you just ordered.

The authors of The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness don’t hold back. They urge you to check all the boxes to certify your wokeness. “It’s important to remember that your problems are not your fault. They are the fault of the oppressor class." They add:
   • “Your parents? Oppressors.
   • Your teachers? Oppressors.
   • People with a different skin color than you? Oppressors.
   • Anyone who disagrees with your woke worldview? You guessed it. Oppressors.”

With hilarious (and woke) graphics on every page (I double-checked: every page), the authors list other oppressors in your life: “your neighbors, your boss, white people, Elon Musk, Amazon, your babysitter, that guy who cut you off in traffic, and everyone who has it better than you.”

WAIT! Before your unsubscribe…hear me out. 

If you’ve lived on Planet Earth for more than a week, you’ve likely chuckled over the Babylon Bee’s satirical tongue-in-check headlines and stories. Their brand: “Fake news you can trust.” Recently:
• “To Ensure No Sex Scandals, CNN Replaces All Anchors With Mike Pence”
• “9 Signs You're Watching Too Much Fox News” (“Your bedroom pillow, your throw pillows, and your couch cushions are all MyPillows. Oh no! You've been brainwashed!”)
• “'The Generation After Mine Is The Worst,' Says Every Generation In Human History”
• Visit the Babylon Bee website for more.

WAIT! Maybe you should read a LOL book that also makes your blood boil. (After all, you’re a big fan of “tolerance,” right?) The authors promise to teach you “How to Take Your Wokeness to the Next Level by Canceling Friends, Breaking Windows, and Burning It All to the Ground.” (That’s the book’s subtitle.)

“'It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it,' G.K. Chesterton observed more than 100 years ago.” That’s the opening salvo in Kyle Mann’s Nov. 9, 2021, opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. The Babylon Bee’s editor-in-chief added, “The Laughing Prophet, as he was known, pointed out that people who are secure in their beliefs need not fear mockery. It’s those with shaky doctrines who can’t tolerate laughter. Today’s political radicals hold their views with the fervor of a religion, and by Chesterton’s measure they’re rather weak creeds.”

In Mann’s WSJ piece, “Why the Woke Can’t Take a Joke,” he writes, “Satire in all its forms—from online satirical papers like the Babylon Bee and the Onion to the pre-Trump days of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver—is the little boy turning the world on its head by pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. The kid isn’t scheming to start a political revolution or even really telling a joke. He’s dryly stating the obvious, not having yet learned the rules of polite society.”

If you’re ancient enough to also remember and appreciate The Wittenburg Door (the typo was unintentional, they say) or Lark News (funniest piece: “Church members struggle to memorize mission statement”), then maybe you’re a Group 2 zealot.

Sorry—before you unsubscribe—I should tell you more about the book. The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness leaves no sacred worldview unskewered. My favorite chapters:
• “The True Story of American History” (“Learn how you were brainwashed into thinking America is an OK place.”)
• “Fighting the Culture War” (What to do if a company won’t serve you chicken sandwiches on Sunday? Boycott!)
• “How to Make Sure Your Church Is as Woke as Jesus” (“He fed five thousand people by raiding a nearby village and forcing them to pay their fair share.” The authors spotlight a dozen woke Bible characters, including the robbers in the good Samaritan story.)
• “Follow the Science” (“The divine words of SCIENCE are brought down to us by infallible people in white coats called ‘scientists.’ Scientists are always in complete agreement with each other, forming a vast consensus.”)

With a few woke edits, several Bible verses have been “updated to reflect correct thinking,” such as Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are those who don’t feel like working, for they shall be given free money.”

There’s more, but I’ll get canceled if I say too much. By the way, don’t skip the 17-page “Glossary of Wokeness.” Example: “Systemic: A magic word that makes any kind of oppression sound much worse. Racism? Meh. Systemic racism? Scary!” 

While the authors include everyone’s new favorite word, “equity,” I didn’t find my favorite woke word, “existential.” But then Peter Funt came to the rescue in his Feb. 1 WSJ feature, “Roll Over, Kierkegaard, It’s All ‘Existential.’” He writes, “Here’s my question: Why are writers and politicians today trying so hard to shoehorn the word existential into sentences?” Another must-read!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, by Kyle Mann, Ethan Nicolle, Joel Berry, and Gavin Yee. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (4 hours, 20 minutes). 



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Pop Quiz #1: OK…around the room—and everyone must answer. Name a book you read (or listened to) in the last five years that you still disagree with—but you read in order to learn the other person’s viewpoint or worldview.
2) The authors note that “in his woke instruction manual, 1984, author George Orwell wrote about how important it is to control the dictionary. The one who controls the language controls the past, present, and future.” Pop Quiz #2: Define the following: hate speech, mansplaining, socialism, justice, climate change, and Dr. Seuss.
 

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Great Idea from the Delegation Bucket! Start a DON’T-DO LIST and delete dumb delegation!

Buckets Countdown: 
The Delegation Bucket (#16) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Delegation Bucket Core Competency: “We are experts at appropriate delegation. We invite team members to accept assignments based on their strengths. We value organized delegation and believe in the Point Person Principle. We track our to-do lists and we add to our don’t-do lists." 

Visit the Delegation Bucket to download the one-page “Dysfunctional Delegation Diseases” (Gut-Check Assessment). Where are you on the continuum? 
• Code Green. I’m pretty healthy. This isn’t a problem.
• Code Yellow. I have this disease occasionally.
• Code Red: Yikes! I need to see a Delegation Doctor!

Delete Dumb Delegation! You’re probably working off your To-Do List today, but do you have a Don’t-Do List? Read the Delegation Bucket chapter and then download the “Delete Dumb Delegation” poster for your cubicle, office, or break room (or the refrigerator in your home office, maybe?).

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. All humor aside, where is your organization positioning itself on the wokeness continuum? Are you offensive—and turning people off? Are you authentic—and growing your base? Who’s telling you the truth? You may need outside counsel. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Exponential: Transform Your Brand by Empowering Instead of Interrupting

Issue No. 504 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting quotes branding author Jeff Rosenblum: “When every brand is trying to be emotional, sometimes the bravest thing a brand can do is be boring.” (Wait! What…?)  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my 2021 Top-10 Books and Book-of-the-Year.


Exponential author, Jeff Rosenblum, says that "the greatest advertisement of all time” was the iPod billboard, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” 

Move From Interrupting to Empowering Customers
Oh, my! What’s not to like about an author who includes his father’s endorsement in his new book? (Today, Exponential remains at “#1 New Release in Marketing and Consumer Behavior” on Amazon—more than a week after it was released.) Jeff Rosenblum’s father writes:

“I thought my son was a complete knucklehead who couldn’t construct a sentence, but this book is legitimately good. He said if I write a recommendation, he’ll buy me lunch. So, get this book.” (Neil Rosenblum, author’s father and market research teacher)

Author Jeff Rosenblum attacks his topic like a James Bond villain! His premise in Exponential: you can “transform your brand by empowering instead of interrupting.”

And speaking of James Bond, numerous chapters—including Chapters 1, 3, and 8—almost explode off the page with heart-beating action (blood and more blood!). But his literary device has a point (he admits to a bait-and-switch). “We began with a gory story about how I nearly severed a kid’s thumb. From here on, I promise that the blood spilled will be more metaphorical than literal. But the disruptions to the status quo will be no less dramatic.”

Who should read this book?
• Marketing, PR, and Fundraising team members
• Savvy CEOs (who intuitively have recognized the insanity of their same old/same old marketing blunders and blah/blah/blah messaging)
• Board members (The book will shock you! The author says that those in the Gen Z age bracket “ignore the vast majority of TV advertisements.”)
• Consumers (if you want confirmation about the dismal state of advertising and marketing today)

Jeff Rosenblum socks-it-to-you:
• “Brands stand naked in front of their consumers. They are now defined by their behavior, not their messaging.”
• “Advertising is shifting from technology-fueled messages that interrupt the consumer journey to data-connected content that carries people through the consumer journey.”
• “After many years of grinding that builds an army of evangelists, most don’t realize that a different set of processes will be needed when exponential growth kicks in.”

Before your next marketing team meeting delivers the worst of group-think recommendations, post this on your wall: “This new type of advertising doesn’t need to be a Patagonia-inspired public service initiative promising to save the world. While those efforts are great, most people don’t wake up in the morning expecting brands to hug the trees and save the manatees. They simply want their own lives improved, one small step at a time.”

To be clear, Rosenblum affirms, “Advertising is not dead.” But…the current dead end path of advertising is “institutional insanity.” He’s stumped why more people in the ad industry don’t understand the new path: empowering the consumer. “So they keep doing the same old things—variations on interruptive ads—with results that get worse and worse.”

Instead, check out the Transport for London videos, such as “WhoDunnIt.” The author notes the clever attention-grabber line—repeated in the series of videos: “This is an awareness test.” Click here for the scene—reminiscent of an Agatha Christie mystery.


WHO DUNNIT? Test your awareness competencies with this very clever two-minute ad from London Transport. Click here.

The author spotlights best and worst advertising practices. Alarming—but delicious reading!
• Department store guru John Wanamaker’s quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” (Rosenblum’s research puts that figure at 90 percent wasted! Yikes!)
• Early in his agency career, Rosenblum “became obsessed with using data to tell stories to help my clients take action. I turned the walls of our office into boards that looked like a scene in a TV police show.”
• How an empowerment approach conceived of a rap contest for a motorcycle client that turned the tables on who pays who—and drew hundreds of thousands to the website. (Did you know Michael Jordan owned a motorcycle racing team?)
• Why the upcoming Super Bowl ad spend-a-thon is pure insanity—and how Jeep’s Groundhog Day commercial, starring Bill Murray, won high marks. Yet (gulp!) when wanting to buy a Jeep, the author discovered that Jeep’s website “felt completely disconnected from the hoopla” of the commercial. View the video here.


View Jeep’s Groundhog Day commercial starring Bill Murray (1-minute).

When COVID triggered a recession in the spring of 2020, learn why discount shoppers (those who thrive on Sale! Sale! Sale!), ultimately “abandoned retailers that they didn’t feel emotionally connected to, and why J. Crew had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. While many may blame that outcome on the pandemic, other retailers like Restoration Hardware, who built their entire models around empowerment, doubled their market cap during the same period.”

Hmmm. Perhaps members and attenders at your own church have demonstrated similar behaviors—due to little, if any, emotional connection before COVID. So next weekend perhaps, they will get their coffee and donuts—and check off the box, “I Attended Church Today!” from the comfort of their Lazy-Boys.

Note: This “empowerment” insight is not just more mumble/jumble ad copy rhetoric. After the publisher of The Wall Street Journal penned his annual “Report to Our Readers” message, I read four letters to the editor in the Jan. 22 print edition—oozing with love and appreciation for their Monday to Saturday reading rituals. Stunning!

You will resonate with Rosenblum’s brutal analysis of advertising interruptions. “Even today, I’m amazed at how many people in my industry act as if folks are still patiently sitting through TV commercials, admiring the flashy banner ads on their laptops, or watching closely as a YouTube pre-roll delays the video they really want to see. This kind of institutional insanity in corporate America is based on faith in a reach-and-frequency model, which the advertising industry has spent decades perfecting.”

He adds, “It’s a numbers game where the score is kept by how many people you can reach and how frequently you can interrupt them with a brand message.” Then this: “Marketers keep making ads, and the audience keeps running away.”

So he pushes back: “…who feels good about being interrupted?” He skewers the financial services industry—you’ll endure about 1,000 digital ads from them! He admits, “the data proves that the approach gets some results, but I equate it to trying to kill a grizzly bear with a BB gun.” (I’m guessing PETA is not one of his clients!)

If I were still a CEO today, I’d bring four books and four Chick-fil-A gift cards to my next weekly meeting and inspire four people to each report on a book over the next four weeks. ("Please contrast and compare.") To add a little Hoopla! (aka "bribe")—I might create a Super Bowl theme and ask everyone to rate the TV ads and the company’s approach: Interruptions or Empowerment? The four books:

[  ] Exponential: Transform Your Brand by Empowering Instead of Interrupting, by Jeff Rosenblum (order from Amazon)
[  ] Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers (read my review)
[  ] Brain Rules for Work (read my review and also Chapter 3 of Exponential, “This Is Your Brain on Advertising”)
[  ] From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers...into Lifelong Fans (read my review)
[  ] Bonus Book! The Care and Feeding of Ideas, by Bill Backer. Last year, Paul Palmer recommended this 1993 book by the creative mind behind the Coca-Cola commercial, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” (Sorry…that earworm is now stuck in your head!) 

There is SO much more in Rosenblum's book, but you'll have to read it. Learn why the classic "beer test" interviewing technique is misguided. How to spot people who pad their resumes by asking Elon Musk's interview question. And...how "stack ranking" almost destroyed Microsoft.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Exponential: Transform Your Brand by Empowering Instead of Interrupting, by Jeff Rosenblum. And thanks to Fortier PR and McGraw Hill for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) The author writes, “The key to exponential growth is actually being great, not saying you’re great. Behavior over messaging. Authenticity over image.” So…do we believe our own press releases? Are we truly empowering our clients and customers—or are we incessantly interrupting them and not blessing them?
 2) Rosenblum notes, “When every brand is trying to be emotional, sometimes the bravest thing a brand can do is be boring.” (Wait! What…?) He adds, “Are you using your time and talent to create a modern version of spam, or are you creating content that people would actually go out of their way to enjoy?” OK…let’s confront the brutal facts of our current advertising and marketing strategy and tactics. 
 

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Great Idea from the Operations Bucket! “Every Friday morning with coffee, host a Bagels & Bureaucracy stand-up meeting. Award Starbucks gift cards to the best ideas for ruthlessly eliminating bureaucracy in your organization!” Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

Buckets Countdown: 
The Operations Bucket (#17) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Operations Bucket Core Competency: “We affirm the high and noble calling of management and the spiritual gift of administration. We reject the fallacy that leaders lead and managers manage. We relentlessly pursue both effective and efficient operational solutions to organizational challenges. We are experts at ruthlessly eliminating costly bureaucracy that impedes results. We are yes men and women!”

Bagels & Bureaucracy: Great Idea from the Operations Bucket! “Every Friday morning with coffee, host a Bagels & Bureaucracy stand-up meeting. Award Starbucks gift cards to the best ideas for ruthlessly eliminating bureaucracy in your organization!”

Visit the Operations Bucket to read why Olan Hendrix writes, "Leaders must learn to manage, and managers must learn to lead.” Plus, check out the book recommendations including this WW2 thriller, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victor (watch for the April 22, 2022, movie and view the trailer here).

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Whew! The advertising world is changing. If your marketing team is under pressure—but still using worn-out strategies, we can help. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters

Issue No. 503 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting says that you can probably do one big project every five years. Here’s how to begin the process and the project. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my 2021 Top-10 Books and Book-of-the-Year.


BAD NEWS/GOOD NEWS. Bad News: my future co-author and I have cancelled our celebration cruise. Good News: Michael Bungay Stanier’s new book, How to Begin (on creating Worthy Goals), was just released!

Memo to “Mike” – Cancel the Cruise!
I have a good friend. We’ll call him “Mike.” So anyway… “Mike” and I had big dreams of co-authoring a book on SMART goals. Then in 2018, I noticed a bestselling author stole our dreams and had the audacity to write his own book on SMARTER goals. 

But…there’s always room for another book—especially with our expansive platforms, branding, and unique positioning. Right, “Mike?” 

Not anymore. The train has left the station. It’s the final nail in the coffin. It’s… (OK, I’ll stop).

MY MEMO TO "MIKE"
Hey, “Mike.” Remember that bestselling book we were going to write? The good news: it’s done. The bad news: bestselling author Michael Bungan Stanier (aka MBS) just wrote it. And frankly, it’s at least 10 times better, 20 times funnier, and easily 100 times more helpful than anything we could have cobbled together. (We’ll have to cancel that “got-the-book-done celebration cruise” with our wives. I haven’t told Joanne yet.)

How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters is the complete package. The author of The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap (my 2020 book-of-the-year) released How to Begin last week. And apparently, he couldn’t wait to begin his book—so his first paragraph is on the front cover! (“Mike,” why didn’t you think of that?)

“Mike,” here’s the big idea. MBS says you can do maybe one “big” project every five years. But don’t meander into it. Don’t procrastinate. Just begin—but use a process. (He says that a good process is “a thing of beauty.” I resonate with his passion!)

The author has tested his process with thousands of people—and, he says, “A good process is scalable. That means it’s understandable, can be taught and learned, and can spread. You can take it, adapt it, and make it your own. You can use it by itself or work it through with others.”

“Mike,” you’ll remember my “page 25 standard”—that a book needs to deliver the meat and potatoes no later than (and often on) page 25. MBS showcases his Venn diagram for his Worthy Goal on page 34. (Close enough.)

Also for me, the measure of a great book, seminar, sermon, or process is this: Are the labels memorable? Can I do this? Answer: The How to Begin process checks all the boxes.

First…find a Worthy Goal. (He defines it brilliantly: “Thrilling, Important, and Daunting.”)

Second…Commit. (You gotta read about “False Starts” and “Mosquitoes.”)

Third…Cross the Threshold. (The “This/Not That” comparison chart on page 171 is…OK, I’ll say it again…brilliant. I could have used that in my consulting every day.)

But…here’s the kicker, “Mike.” Rather than rhapsodizing on and on with those annoying word salads—and blue-skying it—the author applies the process to his own two big projects. A work project and a non-work project. (Brilliant!) His marching orders for himself (and you): write three drafts.

So, like a fly on a wall (or maybe a mosquito—see below), we watch MBS walk through his three drafts. (Brilliant!)
• NON-WORK PROJECT (Draft #1): Create a new, top-notch podcast.
• WORK PROJECT (Draft #1): Stop being CEO of his company.

I won’t spotlight a spoiler here, but…Breaking News…MBS admits he was “an accidental CEO” and he isn’t that great at the job (“I don’t have the skills or the focus to grow and scale the company…”). 

His second draft is very transparent on the why question. “…I’m committed to learning about, and role-modelling, how to give up power…” He worries about making an insincere fake power transfer “which is really a dump of all the things I don’t want to do, while holding on to all the cool bits and pieces.”

Yikes! I’m tempted to buy this book for dozens of “accidental CEOs.” Powerful! Watching MBS agonize over his drafts will release energy for shaping your own Worthy Goal—using his three-draft process.

DRAFT #1: The crappy draft! (“Brené Brown suggests ‘stormy’ as a gentler adjective.”) MBS says that his first attempt is always mediocre, tepid and confused. “It’s overstuffed and underbaked,” and it’s funny, “but not in a way that’s at all amusing.”

DRAFT #2: The active draft. Before you nail down the second draft, MBS has three tests for you: Spouse-ish (Thrilling), FOSO (Important), and Goldilocks Zone (Daunting.) He says you’ll likely get one of three responses from your “spouse-ish” person (spouse, friend, etc.). The Goldilocks Zone chart on page 52 is very helpful. Does this draft have a “just right” feel to your Worthy Goal?

Note: Your active draft needs active verbs and (no surprise) he delivers a list of 75 verbs. The book’s frequent QR codes rocket you to a resource-rich website. Check out the “Give a Verb, Take a Verb” section!

DRAFT #3: The final draft. Here…you’re further defining your project. Don’t strive for perfect. “Good enough” will often do. To arrive, MBS suggest you add a key word or phrase to fine-tune and intensify your Worthy Goal. 

“Mike,” I’ve mentioned the brilliant labels in this book. My new word/concept of the year is “Mosquitoes.” They are “tiny and mighty.” MBS quotes Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop:

“If you think you’re too small to have an impact,
try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”

MBS adds, “Your Worthy Goal comes with a cloud of its own Mosquitoes. These Mosquitoes are all the things you’re currently doing and not doing—secular sins of commission and omission—that are contrary to this Worthy Goal you’ve set for yourself. You’ll find they’re numerous. Some are tiny, others more significant. No single Mosquito is fatal in and of itself, but together they irritate you, weaken you, slow you down, and distract from your Worthy Goal.”

There’s so much more he packs into this gem: who you’re traveling with and who to leave behind, who’s in your Brain Trust group, the four archetypes you need around you (plus a “trickster” who “provokes you, challenges you, mocks you”), the 10-minute exercises (did I mention this book is both brilliant and practical?), and the humor. LOL humor!

While MBS acknowledges insights from authors (Seth Godin, Jim Collins, Liz Wiseman, David Allen, and others), I had to laugh out loud when he wrote this (one of dozens of creative call-outs):

“’Originality is just unacknowledged plagiarism.’ Appropriately, I haven’t been able to find the originator of this quote.”

To order from Amazon, click on the title for How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters, by Michael Bungay Stanier. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (3 hours, 11 minutes). And thanks to the author for sending me a review copy.



P.S. So anyway, “Mike,” I guess the book we envisioned writing together is a success—likely a bestseller. (Except…we didn’t write it.) We both love branding. How about a book on branding? Oh, wait. An extraordinary book on branding, Exponential, was just published this week! (Read my review in the next issue.)
 
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) MBS says you can tackle, perhaps, one “big” project every five years. What’s your big work project and your big non-work project? Have you done the heavy lifting (three drafts) to write your Worthy Goal for both projects? Will you read How to Begin?
 2) “Notice your Mosquitoes,” writes MBS. He labels our secular sins of commission and sins of omission as those things that “irritate you, weaken you, slow you down, and distract from your Worthy Goal.” He describes his own Mosquitoes swarm (quite an honest list!). What does your swarm look like? 
 

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The 20 management buckets (core competencies) are highlighted in three broad arenas of Cause, Community, and Corporation. Has anyone on your team mastered the Systems Bucket? Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

Buckets Countdown: 
The Systems Bucket (#18) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Systems Bucket Core Competency: “We are passionate about systems thinking and process management. We encourage systems people to use their gifts and mentor others for the benefit of our Cause and our Community arenas. We are careful not to tinker or over-tweak, yet we are tenacious about tickler systems. We have a heart to create systems that serve people, not the bureaucracy!”

Ball #1 in the Systems Bucket reads: “Add Process Management to Your Resume. Mentor your people to ‘think systems.’” My oldest brother, Paul (1939-2015), was one of those wonderful MBA types: trained as an engineer, but happiest when serving people in a general manager's role. He had brains and a heart. He mentored me often through the years, but I still need the brain transplant. Visit the Systems Bucket to read the “systems tribute” to Paul that was shared at his memorial service in 2015.

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Inspire your team to begin a buckets refresh over 20 days, 20 weeks, 20 months, or (if you’re young enough!), 20 years! Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Have big ideas and big projects—but need an outside nudge and the expertise to actually BEGIN the project? We have helped dozens of clients move from idea to implementation. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers

Issue No. 502 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting notes that “our brains process stories better than statistics.” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my 2021 Top-10 Books and Book-of-the-Year.



Translate Dry Stats Into Emotional Moments!

Chip Heath, bestselling author, says that “our brains process stories better than statistics.” I was hooked on this brilliant concept in the introduction, but by page 25 (my measure of the “meat and potatoes” of a book), he nailed it—and I’ve already repeated this example to friends and family!

THE STATISTIC: “40% of U.S. adults do not always wash their hands after using the bathroom at home.”

THE STORY: “2 out of every 5 people you shake hands with may not have washed their hands between using the toilet and touching your hands.” (Yikes!)

You MUST read or listen to this book (hot-off-the-press yesterday): Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. I’ve already recommended this book to two CEOs, one national association executive, and a chief development officer. Just look at the tempting section and chapter titles on why you must “translate everything” to up your communication game:
   • “Avoid Numbers: Perfect Translations Don’t Need Numbers”
   • “Convert Abstract Numbers Into Concrete Objects”
   • “Human Scale: Use the Goldilocks Principle to Make Your Numbers Just Right”

On using “emotional numbers—surprising and meaningful—to move people to think and act differently,” check out:
   • How to avoid dry statistics by using transferred emotion (Florence Nightingale did this!)
   • “Bring Your Number into the Room with a Demonstration” (brilliant!)
   • “Selecting Combos That Hit the Right Notes Together”

EXAMPLES (Stats vs. Stories):
What’s the difference between a million and a billion? You could give the dry statistics—but where’s the fun in that? (And who would remember?). So the authors create a story. You enter a lottery to win either $1 million or $1 billion—with a catch. If you win, you must spend $50,000 per day. How long will it last?
   • You win $1 million—and “you go bust after a mere 20 days.”
   •  Your friend wins $1 billion—and it would take her 55 YEARS to squander $50,000/day!

I know. Why read a book about numbers? First—the authors are hilarious! Noting that it would take about two generations to spend $1 billion, they add, “Almost 14 presidential terms” or “one wait to hear your name called at the DMV.” Lol.

The genius of this book (less than 150 fast-reading pages, plus almost 50 pages of fascinating notes) is in the mouth-watering examples of stats versus stories. (Oh, my. I could have used this during my CEO years. Just brilliant.)

STATISTIC (Accidental Deaths): “There are a little more than 50 million people in England, and around 50 deaths each day via accidental causes (slipping in the tub; being swept away in a flooding river; falling from a ladder). The daily risk of dying there in an accident is roughly 1 in a million.”

STORY (Accidental Deaths): “Your risk of dying unexpectedly in England on any given day is the same as your odds of having to guess which date someone is thinking of between 500 BC and August 1, 2200.”

ATTN: CDC AND NEWS ANCHORS! Please, please, please—read Making Numbers Count. Retain Chip Heath as your consultant. Most of your COVID statistics make no sense at all—there’s no context. Dry stats—meaningless. We can’t relate. Chip Heath can help you! Please!

Example: Remember the container ship, Ever Given, that ran aground in a sand storm and blocked the Suez Canal in 2021? Here’s the stat vs. story comparison by two news outlets describing the size:

STAT: “The container ship Ever Given is almost a quarter-mile long.”

STORY: “Imagine the Empire State Building tipped over on its side and blocking the canal. The container ship Ever Given is actually longer than the Empire State Building if you take off the tiny, needle-like antenna at the very top of the building.”

You get the idea: what’s more effective? Dry, mind-numbing stats or “Wow! That’s Amazing!” stories and examples that relate to your own experience?” (I’ve been to the Empire State Building.)

What stats should you turn into stories?
• Homeless meals served
• Enrollment comparisons (students, campers, inmates, church attendance, etc.)
• Year-to-date donor comparisons for the board
• Budget vs. Actual reports
• Inventory excesses?

STAT (true story on inventory procurement): “We’re wasting millions, perhaps 10s of millions on an inefficient procurement system. Here’s a 9-tabbed spreadsheet that summarizes my findings.”

STORY (bringing the demonstration into the room): “Come see my collection of the 424 different gloves that our company is currently ordering. This represents just one minor product that we purchase…”

The demo: Jon Stegner, a business exec, recruited an intern to “track down one of each glove, attached price tags to them, and brought them into a conference room where senior leaders met. Then he poured the gloves out onto the conference room table and invited the leaders, one by one, to come see the ‘Glove Shrine.’” 

The result: “The minute anyone saw the Glove Shrine, they immediately jumped to a question, the very one Stegner had wanted them to ask: ‘If we’re wasting this much money on gloves, what else are we wasting money on?’”

I gotta stop, but I could list the dozens and dozens of the book’s STAT vs. STORY examples for the next 20 issues… Wait! Maybe Chip Heath and Karla Starr would say: “In the time it will take you to listen to this book, you’ll drink just 7 cups of coffee (aka 7 trips to the restroom—and please wash your hands) and you and your team will easily have stumbled upon at least 17 ways to leverage the art and science of communicating numbers. That’s the equivalent of…” (Well…you get it.)

OK…just one more—on how to “Recast Your Number in Different Dimensions: Try Time, Space, Distance, Money, and Pringles.” (Yikes! “In order to burn off the calories in a single Pringle, you’d have to walk 176 yards, or almost 2 football fields.” Uh…I’ll have just one, thank you.)

STAT (NEA budget): “In 2016, the $148 million allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts accounted for .004% of the federal budget expenditures ($3.9 trillion). Suppose we eliminated it in response to criticism?”

STORY (NEA budget): “Trying to balance the budget by eliminating the NEA would be like editing a 90,000-word novel by eliminating 4 words.”

Ready…set…SPRINT! Gather your team together and start reshaping your dry stats into memorable stories! Suggestion: read the demonstration stories about the speed of a baseball pitch. (Strike Three!) Plus, marvel at Usain Bolt’s speed (19+ seconds) in the 200-meter race at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro (and the narrow margins). If you can clap your hands four times in a second, Bolt crosses the finish line on Clap 1…and by Clap 3, the eighth-fastest person in the world crosses the finish line—“hopelessly out of contention—and the race is over.”

Enjoy! To order from Amazon, click on the title for Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (4 hours, 35 min.). And thanks to Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, Inc. for sending me a review copy.



Note: Chip Heath is also the co-author, with Dan Heath, of The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact (my 2017 book-of-the-year). Read my review.
 
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) I couldn’t help myself! Reading Making Numbers Count reminded me of an early comparison question—first asked by Steve Allen on the 1953 TV quiz show, What’s My Line? (He asks the question of the last guest: “Is it bigger than a bread box?”) Click here. Florence Nightingale was “ahead of her peers, by more than a century, she started by equating basket size.” So instead of describing cold stats following the Crimean War in the 1850s (“…in its first 7 months, 7,857 troops died out of 13,095”), she “translated” that into this memorable line: “We had 600 deaths per 1,000 troops”—“a rate of mortality which exceeds that of the Great Plague of London.” What stats in our organization need to be basket-sized—and appeal more to the emotions?

2) If you’re a “Six Sigma” zealot, you could say: “Six Sigma is 3.4 defects per million objects.” Or…use a memorable story: “To achieve Six Sigma as a baker, imagine baking a batch of 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies every night. You could do that for 37 years before finding a cookie that is burned, raw, or doesn’t have the perfect number of chips.” OK, team! In groups of two…here’s one of our boring organizational stats. Turn it into a memorable story! (Winning team gets these chocolate chip cookies!) 
 

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Oops! Has attention to detail and clarity been replaced by fuzzy thinking and leaky buckets? Time for a refresh? Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.
 

Buckets Countdown: The Printing Bucket (#19): aka The Communications Bucket - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Printing Bucket Core Competency: “We elevate the power of the written and spoken word and leverage our communication tools to create synergy and alignment between our mission, BHAG, strategic plans, and programs. We believe proofreading and style matters!”

FUZZ NOTE! “I learned to write to burn the fuzz off my thinking,” commented Fred Smith in his pithy book, Breakfast With Fred. The big idea in the Printing Bucket: Use print deadlines to burn the fuzz off your organization’s blue sky plans that otherwise would rarely be committed to the printed page (or the website).

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Inspire your team to begin a buckets refresh over 20 days, 20 weeks, 20 months, or (if you’re young enough!), 20 years! Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

 

JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Need help “translating” your dry and boring organizational stats into memorable stories—ones that your raving fans will repeat frequently to others? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Born to Build: How to Build a Thriving Startup, a Winning Team, New Customers and Your Best Life Imaginable

Issue No. 501 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks if you are born to build? This first issue of 2022 spotlights a book and an online assessment from Gallup that rank orders 10 entrepreneurial talents. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my 2021 Top-10 Books and Book-of-the-Year.


“Gallup has found that there are three key players in the development of any organization…” Are you born to build?

You Need All 3: Rainmaker, Conductor, Expert

Jim Clifton, chairman of Gallup, makes this striking point:

“People will ask you throughout your life, ‘Where do you work?’ and ‘What do you do?’ They never ask you, ‘What are you building?’ When conversations change to ‘What are you building?’ the world will change.”

Clifton and co-author Sangeeta Badal, Ph.D. (Principal Scientist for Gallup’s Entrepreneurship and Job Creation initiative) make a compelling case for the importance of identifying the entrepreneurial people on your team, in your family, in your church, and in your community. And, says Gallup, the “born to build” genes are God-given. And by the way, did you know that your children or grandchildren can test pilot their entrepreneurial talents at the annual Lemonade Day in the U.S.?
 

This may be the first book you should read in 2022: 

Born to Build: How to Build a Thriving Startup, a Winning Team, New Customers and Your Best Life Imaginable.

And good news! Similar to Living Your Strengths and StrengthsFinder 2.0: Discover Your Clifton Strengths, this 2018 book from Gallup, Born to Build, includes a unique (one-time use) code so readers and leaders can access the online “Gallup’s Builder Profile 10 (BP10™)” assessment. BP10™ will identify your innate talents and motivations and show you how to make the most of your talents to build something.

And more good news! You can postpone reading the book and go right to the online assessment, but I’m guessing if you read the first seven pages, you’ll be hooked. Just 150 pages (plus a huge appendix) with helpful charts and graphs, you’ll hit paydirt on pages 28-29. (Just three pages past my “page 25” standard of getting to the meat and potatoes, or just the potatoes if you are a vegetarian.) 

The three-column chart on pages 28-29, “Pathways From Personality to Business Success,” lists Gallup’s highly researched findings of the “10 talents that are specifically linked to entrepreneurship.” Once you complete the online assessment, you’ll discover the link between Talent, Behaviors, and Likely Business Outcomes. For example:

One of the 10 talents is DISRUPTER, an entrepreneur who can “think outside the box” and “imagine possible futures.” That will enable your enterprise to move in a new direction with “market disruption.”

The other nine talents: Confidence, Delegator, Determination, Independence, Knowledge (“you constantly search for information that is relevant to growing your business”), Profitability, Relationship, Risk, and Selling. The selling talent includes people who are “ambassadors and evangelists,” who can “persuade others easily,” and “communicate clearly.”

NOTE! According to an email I received from a Gallup team member—in response to my inquiry—Born to Build is the new-and-improved version of their 2014 book and assessment, Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder. Read my 2014 review here—and note the additional nine entrepreneurial books and resources I included in that issue.

ARE YOU A BUILDER? 
Whether you’re called to be an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur (inside your organization), I’d urge you to read Born to Build and take the assessment. Or, if maybe your top talent is Delegator…well then, we already know you’re going to assign the reading and reporting back to someone on your team, right?!

WHAT’S NEW? Are you a builder—and how do you fit in? Three labels (new to me, but very helpful) are introduced, based on research. “Gallup has found that there are three key players in the development of any organization, whether it’s a new enterprise, a new division within a company or a nonprofit.” The authors predict that when the following “three alphas” combination exists in an organization or on a team, “the likelihood of it breaking out and booming grows exponentially.” The three:

• The alpha RAINMAKER. “…has unusual drive and persistence—rare grit. Obstacles and failure actually increase a Rainmaker’s determination. An enterprise virtually never works without this player.”
• The alpha CONDUCTOR. “…has management ability. This is the operations person or manager who knows how to get all players on the team—or in the ‘orchestra’—to work together seamlessly. This person holds the whole organization together.”
• The alpha EXPERT. “…provides differentiating expertise to the core product or service. Whether it is an analytic services startup’s brilliant statistician, a new restaurant’s star chef or a software firm’s best programmer, virtually every successful startup has an alpha expert who highly distinguishes it from the crowd.”

Are you an alpha builder? “The trick is knowing how you fit in. This book will help you determine which alpha role is best for you. It will tell you from which role your God-given strengths will develop most.”

WARNING! Clifton and Badal warn that “building is a high-degree-of-difficulty task, but natural builders want the impossible assignment. They prefer the messiness, the problems, the barriers, the absence of supervision, the improvisation and the rush of a new customer breakthrough.” They add, “Builders are made differently than the rest of us. They are born and put on earth to build.” 

8 TOOLS! Once you complete the online assessment, you’ll have access to eight tools—integral to Gallup’s four keys to building an enterprise (nonprofit or for-profit). Key #1: is “Creating Self-Awareness.” The tools include: an internal map of your personal characteristics, how to build your “personal board of directors,” tips on creating a “purpose journal” and (for the second key) an “opportunity journal.” Plus, four more tools to help you analyze the viability of an idea, how to test hypotheses, mapping team talents, and assessing your wider network.

I’m not an alpha anything, but I leveraged my Delegator talents and inspired my son, Jason, to take the Born to Build assessment for a test drive. His BP10™ results delivered his 10 builder talents in rank order. Gallup recommends that you focus on your top four talents because “they provide the best opportunity for business success.” No surprise, “Disruptor” was in Jason’s top four. (Gallup says that Jason is “brimming with new ideas” and thinks of “novel ways to move things forward.” Bingo! I agree!)
 
Are you a builder? Read the book, take the assessment, and download the helpful tools from Gallup—or delegate this to a builder on your team.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Born to Build: How to Build a Thriving Startup, a Winning Team, New Customers and Your Best Life Imaginable, by Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Badal, Ph.D. And thanks to Gallup Press for sending me a review copy.

 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Born to Build quotes David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather (and also known as “The Father of Advertising”): “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.” Who on our team ranks high on the BP10™ in Selling?
2) Do we have all three critical alpha players on our team? Who is our Rainmaker, our Conductor, and our Expert?
3) Do we understand the critical role of the Conductor (the alpha manager)? Let’s delegate this Gallup book and assessment to: _______. Begin by reading this review of It's the Manager: Gallup Finds the Quality of Managers and Team Leaders Is the Single Biggest Factor in Your Organization's Long-Term Success, by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter.
 

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Inspire your team to begin a buckets refresh over 20 days, 20 weeks, 20 months, or (if you’re young enough!), 20 years! Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

Buckets Countdown:
The Meetings Bucket (#20) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Meetings Bucket Core Competency: “We design meetings like an architect designs buildings. We have high expectations that our purpose-driven meetings will enhance team-building, accountability and our commitment to results. We value Holy Spirit-led meetings. We reject boring meetings.”

In addition to other book recommendations on the Meetings Bucket webpage here, check out Resource #20.4: "My Annual Professional Development Plan" form. Download the one-page PDF and use it as a template when coaching team members to take responsibility for their own professional development. Note the Bronze, Silver and Gold levels and the opportunity to create a perks point system. 
 
The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Inspire your team to begin a buckets refresh over 20 days, 20 weeks, 20 months, or (if you’re young enough!), 20 years! Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.

 

JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Start the new year off right with an outside assessment of your strengths and opportunities. Do you have all three key people on your team: Rainmaker, Conductor, and Expert? We can help you identify talent and coach them. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

TOP-10 BOOKS FOR 2021

Issue No. 500 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (not a typo—500th issue!) delivers my Top-10 book picks from 2021 and my Book(s)-of-the-Year. Also, Happy New Year! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #25 below.) And if you’re behind on your reading, click here for my top picks from a year ago.


“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.” (Anatole France)

TOP-10 BOOKS FOR 2021
This issue features books (and movies) I reviewed in Issues No. 458 to 499. To read other 2021 book reviews from Your Weekly Staffing Meeting eNews, visit the archives at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog.

In 2021, I published 43 issues. (But I thought Your Weekly Staff Meeting was published weekly? Fake news?) Certainly not all 10 books will have popular appeal—because all of us are at different levels of competency and curiosity across the 20 management buckets. As author Steve Leveen reminds us in The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, “Do not set out to live a well-read life but rather your well-read life. No one can be well-read using someone else’s reading list.” What were your Top-10 books in 2021?

2021 BOOK(S)-OF-THE-YEAR
Yes…because we’ve endured another crazy COVID year…why not? For the second time, I’m naming TWO books as my “Book-of-the-Year.” You have time on your hands—so read two books (or maybe 10!).

#1. LEADERSHIP CORE: CHARACTER, COMPETENCE, CAPACITY (LEADERSHIP MULTIPLIERS), by Dick Daniels. Read my review here. I began my review with this headline: “Dick Daniels Has Been in Your Staff Meetings!” I added, “Dick Daniels has an uncanny understanding of our organizations. How did he listen in on our staff meetings, our one-on-one performance reviews, our job interviews, our office gossip, and our board meetings? Yikes!”


 
Best Quote. “Every leader will face at least one impossible situation during their leadership tenure. That time is described as having your back against the wall, with no way out, completely alone, and the feeling of gloom you have when it seems like the end is near.” (Don’t despair: Dick Daniels has deep insights and wisdom for you.) Note: This is the first time that an author has received TWO book-of-the-year picks. His first must-read: Leadership Briefs, my 2015 book-of-the-year.
 
#1. EXPERIENCING GOD (2021 EDITION): KNOWING AND DOING THE WILL OF GOD, by Henry Blackaby, Richard Blackaby, and Claude King. Read my review or listen to the 2009 edition of the book on Libro.fm (11 hours, 3 minutes). From May to December, I read about one chapter every weekend from Experiencing God (2021 Edition). This powerful/powerful update of the classic book/workbook was published in May 2021 with seven new chapters and dozens of memorable stories that you’ll share with families and friends. (I shared one story around our Thanksgiving table last month.)



Best Quote. “Nowhere in the Bible does God promise to stop us from making mistakes!” He lists four inappropriate ways for discerning God’s voice. (Even well-meaning people make these mistakes! Yikes!) These are serious mistakes—because people are misunderstanding what the Bible teaches. They include: “1) Asking for a miraculous sign, 2) Seeking a method, 3) The ‘name it and claim it’ method, and 4) Open and closed doors.”

2021 TOP-10 BOOK LIST: The Other 9
(With brief excerpts from my reviews, these nine books are listed in alphabetical order by author.)

#2. NEXT JOB, BEST JOB: A HEADHUNTER'S 11 STRATEGIES TO GET HIRED NOW, by Rob Barnett. Read my review. Listen on Libro (8 hours, 5 minutes). If you’re currently in between jobs again (the author’s label: #iBJA), this is a must-read.



Best Chapter. “The Perfect 30-Minute Interview” (Chapter 9) is unlike anything I’ve read on navigating your actual interview. Shocker: “…your number one goal in any first job interview isn’t to get hired.” (The goal: score that second interview.)

#3. BECOMING TRADER JOE: HOW I DID BUSINESS MY WAY AND STILL BEAT THE BIG GUYS, by Joe Coulombe with Patty Civalleri. Read my review. Listen on Libro (7 hours, 32 minutes). Literally, this book checks all 20 management buckets.

 

Best Quote. “…the most important single business decision I ever made was to pay people well.”

#4. THE BOMBER MAFIA: A DREAM, A TEMPTATION, AND THE LONGEST NIGHT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, by Malcolm Gladwell. Read my review. Listen on Libro (5 hours, 14 minutes). No recommendation needed. If the author is Malcolm Gladwell—‘nuff said!


 
Best Quote. The Bomber Mafia is a story about mistake-making and Carl Norden (the genius), a Dutch engineer, educated in Switzerland, who came to America in 1904. Norden “…was a true believer in blank slate, and this reveals his ego. He said, ‘I don’t want to know the mistakes other people made. I don’t want to know what they did right. I’m going to develop what’s right myself.’”

#5. PUBLIC SPEAKING LAWS OF SUCCESS: FOR EVERYONE AND EVERY OCCASION, by Richard J. Goossen. Read my review. Our five grandkids joined me for a Zoom review of this very, very practical book with 50 insightful laws on public speaking—including funerals, weddings, lectures, sermons, seminars, and keynotes. Brilliant!



Best Quote. “You only learn by doing—not by waiting to be perfect. You can be better than 90% of all public speakers by following and applying the laws of success in this book—guaranteed.”

#6. COLLISION COURSE: CARLOS GHOSN AND THE CULTURE WARS THAT UPENDED AN AUTO EMPIRE, by Hans Greimel and William Sposato. Read my review. Listen on Libro (12 hours, 54 minutes). This page-turner chronicles the daring CEO of Nissan who fled Japan—hidden in a box—on a private plane to Lebanon!



Best Quote. The authors quote a former defense lawyer in Chapter 11, “Justice Japan Style,” that “Japanese judges are very overconfident of their ability to find the truth. They are trained not to admit that they have made a mistake, even when there is a miscarriage of justice.”

#7. THE MOTIVE: WHY SO MANY LEADERS ABDICATE THEIR MOST IMPORTANT RESPONSIBILITIES, by Patrick M. Lencioni. Read my review. Listen on Libro (2 hours, 37 minutes). Get this! “If someone were to dive into a stack of my books for the first time, I’d tell them to start with this one.” (Amazing! His book, The Advantage, was my 2012 book-of-the-year).



Best Quote. Don’t invite Lencioni to your commencement program! When this business guru hears a graduation speaker admonish students to “go out into the world and be a leader,” he says he wants to stand up and shout, “No!!! Please don’t be a leader, unless you’re doing it for the right reason, and you probably aren’t!”

#8. BRAIN RULES FOR WORK: THE SCIENCE OF THINKING SMARTER IN THE OFFICE AND AT HOME, by John Medina. Read my review. Listen on Libro (8 hours, 36 minutes). POST-COVID? Dr. Medina is warning “clients about relying too heavily on people looking at behavioral crystal balls to predict the future of work beyond COVID-19. If past is prologue, most people will get it wrong anyway.”



Best Quote. What’s your leadership style: empathy or toughness? Dr. Medina says the difference between Prestige and Dominance “comes down to leading with forearms versus foreheads.” (I think Medina could do stand-up comedy!)

#9. 30 DAYS UNPLUGGED: HOW A CATHOLIC PRIEST TURNED OFF HIS iPHONE AND TOOK A CALL FROM GOD, by Father Darrin Merlino, CMF. Read my review. Apparently, when you turn off your iPhone and other distractions—and follow the St. Ignatius spiritual exercises for 30 days (not a typo!)—you’ll discover that Jesus delivers some very, very funny lines!



 Best Quotes. Fr. Merlino’s commentary on Luke 2:51-52 notes, “Breaking from my meditation, what I find fascinating is that none of the boys in Nazareth made the cut to be an Apostle!” Then…imagining himself as a guest on Bill Maher’s TV show: “He is accusing me of being a sinner. I say, ‘Duh, of course I am. The difference between you and me is that I admit that I am a sinner, but you haven’t yet.’”

Reminder! The Top-10 books ("the other nine") are listed in alpha order by author's last name!

#10. FIGHT HOUSE: RIVALRIES IN THE WHITE HOUSE FROM TRUMAN TO TRUMP, by Tevi Troy. Read my review (Part 1 of 2 reviews). Listen on Libro (9 hours, 1 minute). These mini-case studies in leadership, administration, team-building, and team-denigrating are so insightful, I wrote a second review, “POTUS Pop Quiz!”


 
Best Quote. Attn: Kamala Harris! The vice president position “to outsiders, is a position of great prestige, but to a power player like [Lyndon] Johnson, the former Senate majority leader, it was a comedown.” Johnson was miserable as VP. “I detested every minute of it,” said LBJ who had a phone installed in his office for direct calls from the White House, “but the phone rarely rang.”

Bonus Book!
#10. NO WAY HOME: THE CRISIS OF HOMELESSNESS AND HOW TO FIX IT WITH INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANITY, by Wayne Winegarden, Joseph Tartakovsky, Kerry Jackson, and Christopher F. Rufo. Read my review. My short review includes 10 “True or False” questions on how to fix homelessness.



Best Quote. True or False? “Today, across Los Angeles’s 500 square miles, roughly 10,000 people live in some 5,000 vehicles.”

BOOK BUCKET LISTS! I love lists and the core competency in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to create your own Top-100 Books List. I’ve curated my list using the 20 management buckets categories. Download the template from the Book Bucket and start your list this week!

For more Books-in-the-Bunker ideas, check out these lists:
•  2020 Spiritual Growth Books  – click here
•  2020 Leadership Growth Books – click here
•  Best Board Governance Books – click here
•  30 Books to Delegate During This Crisis...and the Next Crisis (a 12-page PDF with links to 30 book reviews) – click here
•  8 Leadership Flicks – click here

COMING IN 2022. I'm reviewing some fascinating books in 2022, including a must-read gem by Chip Heath and Karla Starr, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers. Pre-order on Amazon for the Jan. 11, 2022, release or listen on Libro (4 hours, 35 minutes). Making Numbers Count should be required reading/listening for every CEO, CFO, board chair, and marketing team member. (Note: Chip Heath, along with his brother, Dan, wrote the 2017 book-of-the-year, The Power of Moments.)

Visit the Book Bucket webpage to download three lists of books (updated through 12/31/2021) that I’ve reviewed since 2006, including my Top-100 books list.

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David Kinnaman: “We have a surplus of Christian leaders who mistake the size of their platform for the impact they are having for Jesus.” (See Mistake #25 in Mastering Mistake-Making.)

Mistake #25 of 25: Obsessing on My 15 Minutes of Fame 
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned

John’s Mistake #25: “’Grace always bats last,’ says Anne Lamott. I was so hyper-focused on my agenda and my big moment, that I missed the opportunity to bless Joe with his big moment.”

John writes, “That morning, literally in the back seat of our ride to the airport, the Lord gave me an unmistakable wake-up call. ‘John, it’s not about you.’ I can laugh now, but I can still remember the sting of God’s voice. So I’ve learned that I need a steady diet of reading reminders to lessen my need to be noticed. When I’m walking in the Spirit, many times the waters part and I see a path open for being a blessing to others. (Now, the more I read later in life, the more I realize that I’m not alone in my self-absorbed focus. Yikes.) Here are two books that continue to remind me that ‘grace always bats last.’”

For Mistake #25, John recommends two books:
• The Leader's Palette: Seven Primary Colors, by Ralph E. Enlow, Jr. (read the review)
• Servant of All: Reframing Greatness and Leadership through the Teachings of Jesus, by Ralph E. Enlow, Jr. (read the review)

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake-Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
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"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you missed John's half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance," you can now order the 107-page workbook on Amazon. Click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Overwhelmed by bulging bookshelves and too-many-experts-telling-you-what-to-do? We can help you achieve a laser-like focus for your communication strategies—with simplicity. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers

Issue No. 499 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a new book from Harvard Business Review Press on loving your customers! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #24 below.)


Yikes! I assumed I was “in-the-know” about the Net Promoter system (Promoters, Passives, Detractors)…but I was wrong! Must-read: Winning on Purpose.

“The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Your Customers”—Really?

Oh, my! 

I ASSUMED…that this hot-off-the-press book from Harvard Business Review Press by the creator of the Net Promoter system would fill in the blanks on my favorite customer loyalty question. You’ll recognize this question. For example: “How likely is it that you would recommend Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews to a friend?”


 
And…you’ll recall how the NPS management system works.
• Promoters (smiles) – responses in the 9-10 range
• Passives (meh) – responses in the 7-8 range
• Detractors (frowns) – responses in the 0-6 range

I assumed I’d learn a little more…but not much else.

I WAS WRONG! The 11-page preface (who reads the preface first?) hooked me—and immediately raised my expectations. This isn’t a nuts-and-bolts book, this is a fascinating deep dive into loyalty, love, the Golden Rule, and the new “customer capitalism.” Does a business book really say that Jesus raised the bar on all of this? See Matthew 7:12 and then Matthew 22:30. (Wait…love? Really?)

I ASSUMED…that since I have been recommending the Net Promoter system to clients for many years, I was reasonably in sync with the rationale. I assumed…I understood the core values.

I WAS WRONG! Yikes! By page 8, I was agreeing with Fred Reichheld that “the world is tired of surveys,” yet the NPS (aka “Net Lives Enriched”) continues to add value and spotlight the winners. But…I had no idea why. Now I know! And this caution! “…far too many practitioners are corrupting NPS by making the score a target rather than a measure that inspires learning and growth.”

I ASSUMED…(sorry Mr. Reichheld) that while I’ve always been enamored with the NPS (and intentionally did business with high-scoring companies) that this book would be good for me to read (kinda like taking medicine), but wouldn’t activate my juices. Read. Read. Read. Done.

I WAS WRONG! I can’t stop talking about the page-turning exemplars:
   • Enterprise Rent-A-Car: why they don’t use common industry tricks (nuisance fees). Their CEO’s approach to growing a business profitably: “You make sure your customers are treated so well that they come back for more and bring their friends.”
   • USAA’s CEO on caring for their employees who then will care for their customers: “Great leaders wake up in the morning worrying about that, and they go to bed worrying about it.” (Read why they provide freshly boxed dinners for employees to bring home to their families.)
   • Chick-fil-A: As founder Truett Cathy (1921-2014) drove the author around to visit a few of the foster homes Cathy sponsored, the Chick-fil-A leader mentioned "the Southern Baptist tradition of adopting a passage from the Bible as one’s life verse.” Reichheld commented that Cathy’s life verse, Proverbs 22:1, “…well, that might be the right verse for just about anyone.” Think about this: “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold (NIV).”

I ASSUMED…this book would clone other business books: deliver the goods in the first 25 pages—and then blah, blah, blah with 175 pages of filler. 

I WAS WRONG! Page 27, “NPS as Moral Compass” grabbed my attention: “The annual Forbes list of billionaires for too long has served as the compendium of our society’s exemplars of great success. But are these wealthy magnates really our most worthy role models? I would say ‘no.’ Financial net worth provides a wholly untrustworthy measure of personal greatness.” Must-read: Reichheld’s short list (as a reminder) of wealthy bullies and cheats. “They are all black-belt masters of value extraction rather than value creation.”

I ASSUMED…that the Net Promoter system was all I needed to know. 

I WAS WRONG! I read this poke-in-ribs: NPS is also defined as “Net Purpose Score.” In the chapter, “Aim for Greatness,” while appreciating Good to Great, by Jim Collins, the author also pushes back: “A company can’t be great without embracing a great purpose.” 

And this: “One important insight that Good to Great overlooked is that Collins’s famous flywheel won’t keep spinning unless it is powered by loyalty economics.”
 
I ASSUMED…I would learn more about building customer loyalties—but not much else.

I WAS WRONG! (again)! This book is a treasure trove of leadership and organizational insights. Examples:
   • The Credo of F.R.E.D. (Foster Recommendation, Eliminate Detraction)—which created his investment strategy, “F.R.E.D. Stock Index.”
   • Why he added Texas Roadhouse to his index in 2010. (Fascinating—since I recently reviewed the founder’s book, Made From Scratch.)
   • Why Apple stores founder Ron Johnson was “inspired by Jesus’s advice to ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ which Johnson considers to be the essential message of the Bible.”
   • Why Marriott International “uses the Golden Rule in the design of its training program.”

THERE’S MORE! 
In the section, “Love, Costco Style,” co-founder Jim Sinegal explained to an MIT class why Costco was not tempted to increase the markup on a bargain purchase of one million Calvin Klein jeans. “Our members trust us to pass along every saving to the customer. Any exception to this—well, it would be like taking heroin. Once you start it, you can’t stop doing it. And it would change the whole nature of the company.”

That reminded me of Harvard prof Clayton Christensen’s wisdom in How Will You Measure Your Life? He writes that sticking with your values “100 percent of the time is easier than 98 percent of the time.”

AND MORE:
   • Fred Reichheld’s insightful definition of “good profits” vs. “bad profits” and how his former bank (note: “former” bank) became addicted to bad profits.
   • The “Inspire Your Teams” chapter features a brief history of Bain & Company (where the author has worked since 1977) and why after some missteps (“departing employees were treated as losers or even traitors”), they learned that “truly great leaders are committed to helping employees lead great lives.” 
   • And, of course, since I’m a big fan of weekly staff meetings, another must-read section: “The Power of Doing Huddles Right.” (He calls them “agile scrums.”)

FAILURE TO BE HUMBLE:
   • Don’t Skip: “Honor the Golden Rule: But First, Understand It.” (And why you’ll prefer to fly Qantas—and why Chick-fil-A team members respond with, “My pleasure.”)
   • And why NPS “kicks it up a notch”—even beyond Peter Drucker’s customer axioms.
    • Favorite Chapter: “Be Humble.” He writes that the four deadly sins of greed, arrogance, complacency, and entitlement, “represent different facets of the same transgression: failure to be humble.” This reminded me of Andrew Murray's observation: “Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure.”
   • Worth gold: “Appendix A: Net Promoter 3.0 Checklist.”

HUMAN AND HUMOROUS:
I assumed this book would be helpful, but not deeply human or humorous. Wrong again! You’ll love the section in “Be Remarkable” when the creator of NPS is tutored by his daughter’s addition of another customer loyalty question! And learn why the author is a big fan of the timeless guide to good writing, The Elements of Style.

MY NPS RATING. So…how would I rate this book on the scale of 0 to 10? It’s a 10. To validate my enthusiasm, I not only recommended it to a friend, I ordered the book for him. Amazon, of course, delivered it in just one day!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, by Fred Reichheld with Darci Darnell and Maureen Burns. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm. And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press and Fortier PR for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) What does love look like at Discover Financial Services? “Discover does not sell bad debt to collection agencies, even after they become total charge-offs. As their CEO asked rhetorically, “You wouldn’t do that to a family member, right?” So…are we loving our customers—or do our organization’s policies, practices, and rules inhibit receiving 9s and 10s on the NPS question? 
2) If you have a “life verse,” please share it with our team—and why and when it became meaningful to you. (If you don’t have a life verse, feel free to borrow Proverbs 22:1 until you do!)
3) At your next staff meeting, ask: “Who is our resident Net Promoter system expert on our team? If no one—who would enjoy a generous Chick-fil-A gift card and a commitment to read this book and be our NPS champion?” 

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Warren Buffet: “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say NO to almost everything.” (See Mistake #24 in Mastering Mistake-Making.)

Mistake #24 of 25: Saying “Yes” Too Often
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned

John’s Mistake #24: “Sometimes…ego and over-confidence in my abilities coaxed me into saying ‘yes’ to opportunities and client projects—when I should have said ‘no.’”

Example: John agreed to be the guest host of a Chicago talk radio show in 1993. But…he endured 30 minutes of dead air time—no one called into the show! No one!!! (Not even John’s wife!) He later learned this wisdom from Warren Buffet: “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say NO to almost everything.”  

For Mistake #24, John recommends two books:
• Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets: 5 Questions to Help You Determine Your Next Move, by Andy Stanley (read John’s review)
• No! A Guide for Busy People: Banish Busyness and Focus on What Matters Most, by Doug Fields (read John’s review)

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake-Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
______________________________________________________________________________________

"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you missed John's half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance," you can now order the 107-page workbook on Amazon. Click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Need help creating customer surveys that get quick and informative responses? Need help with customer or donor loyalty? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Brain Rules for Work: The Science of Thinking Smarter in the Office and at Home

Issue No. 498 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a new book with 10 “brain rules,” including this one: “Power is like fire. It can cook your food or burn your house down.” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #23 below.)

The author of Brain Rules cannonballs into the leadership pool—and his one-two punch is noteworthy. 

What’s Your Leadership Style: Empathy or Toughness?

What’s not to love about a developmental molecular biologist—a brain guy—who is gutsy enough to write a chapter on leadership!

Dr. John Medina, an affiliate professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, has authored numerous “Brain Rules” books (read my 2008 review)—and this new one may be his best yet (just released on Nov. 23): Brain Rules for Work: The Science of Thinking Smarter in the Office and at Home. He writes:
 
“I admit I’m hesitant to write about leadership. And the biggest reason is that I’m a chicken. It takes chutzpah to address a subject with so many uncontrolled variables. I’m not sure that I or my chosen field of study are up to the task. Noted business guru Peter Drucker seems ready to wave a white flag too. Says he: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.”

While Medina appreciates Drucker’s “simplicity but not his explanatory power,” the author cannonballs into the leadership pool—and his one-two punch is noteworthy. His leadership Brain Rule: “Leaders need a whole lot of empathy and a little willingness to be tough.”

And get this! To explain his leadership thesis, he cites a study, “A Dual Model of Leadership and Hierarchy: Evolutionary Synthesis”—about the continuum between the Dominance style of leadership and the Prestige style of leadership. To illustrate, he includes scenes from the lovable holiday movie, A Christmas Story. (How’s that for perfect timing this week!) Watch this scene from the movie:

 
View the epic battle: Ralphie vs. Skut Farkus in A Christmas Story (3 min.).

What’s your leadership style: empathy or toughness? Dr. Medina says the difference between Prestige and Dominance “comes down to leading with forearms versus foreheads.” (I think Medina could do stand-up comedy!)

DOMINANCE STYLE. “People on this side of the pool obviously derive their power from an asymmetrical distribution of strengths. The strength can be physical—like Farkus’s ability to overpower weaker boys. The asymmetry can be coalitional too, the ability to compel toadies to do the bidding of the leader. This style is mostly leadership by coercion, exploiting combustible mixtures of anger, fear, and distress to maintain control.”

Medina cautions that “Joseph Stalin was a leader whose use of dominating tactics showed the extreme side of this leadership style.” Dominance leaders frequently offer loyalty programs with rewards, but they’re “not good at sustaining long-term productivity.” They “can make life miserable for subordinates…and often do.”

PRESTIGE STYLE. “To understand what alternatives exist, we have to swim over to the other side of the Dual Model pool, under the sign marked ‘prestige.’” To illustrate this style, Medina turns to the mother’s style in A Christmas Story.

In the hilarious scene when Ralphie’s younger brother, Randy, won’t eat his meat loaf and mashed potatoes for his father (“I’ll get that kid to eat. Where’s my screwdriver and plumber’s helper? I’ll open up his mouth and shove it in.”), Mom comes to the rescue with her “Prestige” leadership style. (View the 2-minute clip here.)

“Mom had knowledge about what it would take to get her little boy to eat his food, which she implemented—and it didn’t involve a screwdriver. Some would call this wisdom.”

Dr. Medina explains, “Prestige leaders posses the skills and knowledge necessary to understand the relational ecologies of the people they lead. To motivate their followers, prestige leaders identify what makes them tick, then use this insight to accomplish their goals.” He adds, “Dominance leaders tend to command; prestige leaders prefer to influence.” (Hmmm. To find out what makes your team members tick, maybe a refresher on the “3 Powerful S’s: Strengths, Social Styles, and Spiritual Gifts” might be helpful? See Mistakes #16, #17, and #18 in Mastering Mistake-Making.)

Short pause for a rabbit hole! I’m a reader, not a listener, so this may shock my regular eNews readers. For this book, I double-dipped and LISTENED to the audio book narrated by Dr. Medina (often witty) and then, later, underlined memorable one-liners and sections in my hardback book. This may be a new lifelong learning methodology for me. Apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks!

Honest. I didn’t plan to focus on the leadership brain rule when I read/listened to this book—because there is so, so much more on “the science of thinking smarter at the office and at home.” Nine more rules and dozens of insights, including: 

1) MEDINA GRUMP FACTOR. Read why one of Medina’s business clients labeled the author’s skepticism about “what research says (and doesn’t say) about the complexities of human conduct” as the “Medina Grump Factor.” His response: “There’s a lot of high-fructose nonsense out there, especially in the realm of self-help advice.”

2) POST-COVID? Dr. Medina is warning “clients about relying too heavily on people looking at behavioral crystal balls to predict the future of work beyond COVID-19. If past is prologue, most people will get it wrong anyway.”

3) TEAMS BRAIN RULE. “Teams are more productive, but only if you have the right people.” He begins this chapter with the boss in the Dilbert cartoon “announcing the team’s less-than-stellar performance.” Dilbert’s boss: “I only brought one teamwork award mug, so you’ll have to take turns drinking from it.” (Or…you could buy a Demotivators® poster from Despair, Inc. that reads: “TEAMS: Together we can do the work of one.”) 


Order this hilarious poster from Despair, Inc. 

4) HOME OFFICE. Medina offers very practical ideas (based on brain research) on how to be productive in your home office, including: Zoom “staring matches,” procrastination, and how to create a showrunner’s agenda to improve online meetings. His chapter summaries include memorable bullet points and the specific brain rule for each, plus “What to do next Monday” insights. 

5) THE BUSINESS OFFICE BRAIN RULE. “The brain developed in the great outdoors. The organ still thinks it lives there.” Wow. This chapter changed my thinking—and should be a must-read for everyone, especially my friends and colleagues serving in Christian camps and outdoor ministries.

6) CREATIVITY BRAIN RULE. “Failure should be an option—as long as you learn from it.” Three cheers for mistake-making and this: “I’m going to begin this chapter by asking you to think of as many new uses as you can for a brick.” Brilliant! And this from tech columnist Michael S. Malone: “Outsiders think of Silicon Valley as a success, but it is, in truth, a graveyard. Failure is Silicon Valley’s greatest strength.”

Don’t skip any chapters, especially the Brain Rule on Presentations. “Capture your audience’s emotion, and you will have their attention (at least for ten minutes).” I read and listened to this chapter twice—before facilitating a half-day training session last month. Yikes! To remind you how emotions trigger your brain, Medina begins with “one of the most iconic advertisements of all time.” View Mean Joe Green’s Coke commercial. It won most ad awards in 1979 including the Clio.

By the way, Medina also wrote Brain Rules for Aging Well. I do plan to read and review (and listen to) that book down the road—once I’m old enough!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Brain Rules for Work: The Science of Thinking Smarter in the Office and at Home, by John Medina. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (8 hours, 36 minutes). And thanks to Pear Press for a review copy and Libro.fm for the audio version.

  
          BOOK                                AUDIO        

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In Dr. Medina’s chapter on conflict bias, he highlights the compelling presentation made by Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) at a senate hearing on PBS funding in 1969. The $20 million subsidy was facing the axe. (View the 7-minute video here.) “The magic in the room became palpable. His gentle kindness and emotional steadiness spread across the assembly as if Rogers were their pastor, and the Senate chambers his church.” Suggestion: watch this at your next staff meeting and facilitate a conversation on what happened in that hearing—and why.
2) The Conflict/Bias Brain Rule reads: “Conflicts can be resolved by changing your thought life. It helps to have a pencil.” Fascinating! Dr. Medina also cautions, “Be wary of any HR training programs that claim to eliminate bias.” OK…team. Who will read and report on this chapter next week? 

 

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This will get your attention! “CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace.” Authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves add, “Considering the mountain of literature about EQ, you’d think corporate executives would be pretty smart about it.” (See Mistake #23 in Mastering Mistake-Making.)

Mistake #23 of 25: Being Overconfident in My Bag of Tricks
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned

John’s Mistake #23: “I was sailing along in my leadership career, overly confident that my ‘bag of tricks’ would serve me in every leadership situation. I had a lot to learn.”

John writes, “Without outside help and coaching, I would have continued my dysfunctional ways—to the detriment of my working relationships. Leading in a vacuum, without honest feedback, was a big mistake. What I learned at the Center for Creative Leadership [which included assessments from John’s direct reports and board chair]—was certainly one of the top 10 experiences in my life.”

For Mistake #23, John recommends this book and assessment:
• Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (The World’s Most Popular Emotional Intelligence Test), by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves (read John's review)

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake-Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
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"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you missed John's half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance," you can now order the 107-page workbook on Amazon. Click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Need help with Brain Rule #6 on Presentations? “Capture your audience’s emotion, and you will have their attention (for at least ten minutes)." Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Jump: Dare to Do What Scares You in Business and Life

Issue No. 497 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a new book that double-dares you to face your fears—and JUMP! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #22 below.)


Jump author Kim Perell says you can inoculate yourself against rejection—and learn to do what scares you!

Inoculate Yourself Against Rejection!

Quick! Cancel your next meeting and invest 15 minutes in viewing this hilarious TedTalk, “What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection.” Jia Jiang grew up with a traumatic fear of rejection. “Rejection was my curse,” he confesses. It “was my boogeyman.” But…rather than fleeing rejection, he embraced it! 

Jiang embarked on a creative 100-day journey of rejection—and you’ll laugh your way through his TedTalk and share it with colleagues. According to Kim Perell’s new Wall Street Journal bestseller, Jump: Dare to Do What Scares You in Business and Life—this young wanna-be entrepreneur figured out how to inoculate himself against rejection! Click here for his TedTalk.


View this hilarious and insightful TedTalk, “What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection” (15 min.).

Kim Perell (her own bio includes rejection, but also big wins) has an uncanny understanding of our fears and our excuses, listing dozens of reasons why we fail to take the leap into the next big thing. 

Jump is the perfect encouragement gift (Christmas, birthday, any reason) for your colleagues, friends, and family members. In just nine short chapters, Perell’s big ideas are irresistible reading—and her book complements and enriches the wisdom of many other authors.

Chapter 1: TAKE THE LEAP. What kind of jumper are you? Your colleagues? 1) Survival Jumper? 2) Opportunity Jumper? Or 3) Stagnant Jumper? (#3: “You’re considering a change because you’ve stagnated, are bored, or feel unfulfilled.”) 

This reminded me of Hans Finzel’s poignant confession, “My heart had left the building,” in his book, The Power of Passion in Leadership.

With five gut-check questions, Perell counsels, “look before you leap,” and asks, “Can I see my first three steps onto this path?” Or maybe just one, per Henry Blackaby’s insight: “When Jesus invited Peter to get out of the boat to walk on the water, He did not assure Peter he would stay afloat! The Lord simply said, ‘Come!’ (Matt. 14:28).”

Chapter 2: MASTER YOUR MINDSET. “Delete your excuses,” preaches Perell. Her family “would celebrate who had the worst failure. We normalized failure and developed a tolerance for it because that took away its power and mystery.” Don’t have enough time, money, or experience? Just excuses!

Oh, my! Jump was released on Nov. 16, 2021—but I could have used it earlier this fall. My granddaughter, Annika (14), is in the South County Community Handbell Choir (adult choir) and I was her Uber Grandpa transportation to rehearsals. Had I read Jump earlier, I would not have wasted my litany of excuses when Annika and the director asked me to join the handbell choir! (Excuse #1: “But…my most recent serious musical endeavor was in 1968 as a church choir director!”)

Well…I did JUMP in. It’s the hardest thing I’ve tackled in 10 years—but I’m blessed to be ringing with Annika. Our third of three Christmas gigs is Dec. 12. Y’all come!


Granddaughter Annika (14) invited me to JUMP into the South County Community Handbell Choir. (Please hum along: “Jingle bells, jingle bells…”)

The author inspired me! “As a rule of thumb, if something scares me or I hesitate because I haven’t done something before…I make myself do it!”

Chapter 3: TURN YOUR FEARS INTO FUEL. “Failing doesn’t make you a failure. Giving up does.” Kim Perell uses a four-step F.E.A.R. process: 1) Feel, 2) Embrace, 3) Act, 4) Repeat.

My favorite morning meditation from John Baillie (see Mistake #22 below), included this prayer on Day 29, “God, so many people who came before me have trusted You and weren't disappointed, so remove now all my useless anxieties and paralyzing fears."

Chapter 4: THE POWER OF DECISION-MAKING. Perell notes that Colin Powell (1937-2021) was “a big fan of the 40-70 rule which says that you need no less than 40 percent and no more than 70 percent of the available information to make a good choice.” She also urges jumpers to trust their gut more. 

I’m reminded that the intuitive approach is especially challenging for two of the four social styles. Read more on social styles here.
   • Analyticals: avoids risks, based on facts.
   • Drivers: takes risks, based on intuition.
   • Amiables: avoids risks, based on opinion.
   • Expressives: takes risks, based on hunches.

By the way, the two-page chapter summaries are split into two groupings: Jump Prep and Jump Hacks. Here’s a hack: “Another way to force yourself to trust your instincts on a smaller scale is to count to ten, then make a decision.” Or…try my suggestion in the Hoopla! Bucket: “Take a team walk and don’t turn back until you’ve made the big decision!”

Chapter 5: DEFINE SUCCESS ON YOUR OWN TERMS. My opinion: there is inadequate wisdom available on “jumping away from a situation” and how to “make peace with the past.” Gratefully, the author blends her counsel on goal-setting along with how to take stock of lessons learned in your present situation—before you jump.

This reminded me of Michael Hyatt’s book, Your Best Year Ever, and his wife’s wisdom, “People lose their way when they lose their why.”
 
Chapter 6: CREATE YOUR ONE-YEAR SUCCESS PLAN. Practical, gritty, and workable. “Do the hardest thing first” reminded me of Brian Tracy’s book, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. He quotes Mark Twain’s wit and wisdom, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Click here for my review and Tracy’s two funny frog rules!

Click here to download Kim Perell’s 37-page template for a one-year success plan.

Noting that your one-year success plan should be “aspirational (yet attainable),” the author highlights the innovative fitness program, “Couch to 5K”—one of the world’s most popular exercise programs, according to the BBC. By creating a weekly regimen of small wins, even a couch potato can run five kilometers in just nine weeks. Click here for the 2018 BBC video, “Anybody Can Run: The Story of Couch to 5K” (4-min.), click here for a 2021 update, and google your favorite app store for the "Couch to 5K" app.

Chapter 7: THE ART OF RELATIONSHIP BUILDING. Perell urges jumpers to “build bridges, don’t burn them.” And then this alert: “I promise that scorching the earth when you leave is one of the least pragmatic and intelligent things you can do for your career and reputation.” For more on this no-no, read the wisdom in Rob Barnett’s recent book, Next Job, Best Job.

Chapter 8: TAP INTO YOUR INNER STRENGTH. When is the last time you’ve exercised your emotional courage muscle? (“…it gets stronger the more you exercise it.”) Perell adds, “Emotional courage is a common trait among many of the most successful people I’ve worked with. They’ve trained themselves to be able to feel uncomfortable feelings and have hard conversations, because successful people know that not addressing the hard thing head-on will hurt more in the long run.”

The author confesses she struggles with emotional courage. Ditto. I appreciate Max Lucado’s wisdom in his book, Fearless. “Don’t waste an hour wondering what your boss thinks; ask her.” 

Chapter 9: STOP CARING WHAT OTHERS THINK. It was tough to pick my favorite chapter, but this one has three memorable take-aways:
   • “People-pleasing is a losing battle.”
   • “Cut out the critics.” (Read the five powerful questions for your own life audit.)
   • “It’s never too late to jump.” 

Perell spotlights Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He jumped at age 62 and in 12 years, KFC had more than 600 franchises! That brought me back to a favorite book, 5: Where Will You Be Five Years from Today? by Dan Zadra.

I hope you’ll jump into this book. Two options:
• Option 1: Delegate your reading for all the books I’ve mentioned here.
• Option 2: Just read Jump—a sweeping approach to doing what scares you!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Jump: Dare to Do What Scares You in Business and Life, by Kim Perell. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (4 hours, 19 minutes). And thanks to HarperCollins Leadership for sending a review copy.

 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Kim Perell is goal-oriented. She uses the “Rockefeller Habits” approach recommended by Verne Harnish in Scaling Up (my 2018 book-of-the-year). “I asked every team member to pick three goals or milestones for each month and to monitor their progress toward those goals.” Pop Quiz! What are your three goals for this month?
2) OK, since you asked—here’s one more book recommendation! Seth Godin asks, “What is the desperate need in organizations today? We need a VP of Starting. We need armies of gutsy people who don’t wait around asking for permission to launch.” Urge your staff to also read Poke the Box: When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time? by Seth Godin (just 84 practical pages).
 

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Breaking News! You don’t earn heavenly brownie points for practicing spiritual disciplines! John Ortberg writes, “Once the game starts, basketball players get no bonus points based on how many free throws they shot in practice. The only reason to practice them is to be able to make them in a game.” (See Mistake #22 in Mastering Mistake-Making.)

Mistake #22 of 25: Checking the Box, But Missing the Message 
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned

John’s Mistake #22: “Looking back over the years of my morning meditations, I realize now that I often found comfort in the methodology—not the Message.”

In this chapter, Pearson recommends John Ortberg’s book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Ortberg writes, “Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.”  He warns do-gooders (and check-the-box devotees) that God is not impressed with the activity of training.

Ortberg: “Spiritual disciplines are to life what calisthenics are to a game. Once the game starts, basketball players get no bonus points based on how many free throws they shot in practice. The only reason to practice them is to be able to make them in a game.” 

For Mistake #22, John recommends two books:
• A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic, by John Baillie (2014 edition with introduction by Susanna Wright)
• The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, by John Ortberg

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake-Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.

"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you missed John's half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance," you can now order the 107-page workbook on Amazon. Click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Is your organization facing a bold opportunity—but timidity is holding you back? We can help you JUMP strategically, thoughtfully, and prayerfully. We’ll help you face your fears! Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Experiencing God (2021 Edition): Knowing and Doing the Will of God

2021 Book-of-the-Year!
See Issue 500 for the Top-10 Books of 2021.

Issue No. 496 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights an expanded 2021 edition of Henry Blackaby’s classic, Experiencing God. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #21 below.)


Henry Blackaby: “If Balaam lived in our formula-driven day, perhaps he would have written a book, Donkeys for Dummies…”

Donkeys for Dummies!

I predicted in January 2021, “I’m out on a limb here, but not really. Leadership Core: Character, Competence, Capacity will likely be my 2021 book-of-the-year. It will take a phenomenal book to jostle this pick off its perch.”

Did I speak too soon? Yikes! From May to December, I’ve read about one chapter every weekend from Experiencing God (2021 Edition): Knowing and Doing the Will of God, by Henry Blackaby, Richard Blackaby, and Claude King. This powerful/powerful update of the classic book/workbook was published in May 2021 with seven new chapters and dozens of memorable stories that you’ll share with families and friends. (I shared one story around our Thanksgiving table last week.)

It's likely you spent time in the Experiencing God workbook years ago. Ditto. But…wow. This new edition (now with Henry Blackaby’s son, Richard, as the third co-author) is fresh, convicting, and so, so insightful. (How did I miss these truths on my first read-through?)

In more than 500 book reviews, I’ve featured only a handful of books that required two reviews. This book also requires two reviews, maybe three. Here’s Part 1 of 2:

FOUR MEMORABLE INSIGHTS (Part 1 of 2)

INSIGHT #1: The Two-Word Answer! Henry Blackaby shares the story of a couple who heard God direct them to take early retirement and serve overseas. Instead, they delayed until all their ducks were in a row and their dream home was built. But then… “a violent tornado swept right over their house, tearing it to splinters and leaving only rubble.” They asked Blackaby, “What do you think we should do?”

Blackaby’s two-word response: “OBEY IMMEDIATELY!”

INSIGHT #2: Mistakes! Blackaby writes, “Nowhere in the Bible does God promise to stop us from making mistakes!” He lists four inappropriate ways for discerning God’s voice. (Even well-meaning people make these mistakes! Yikes!) These are serious mistakes—because people are misunderstanding what the Bible teaches. They include:
1) Asking for a miraculous sign
2) Seeking a method
3) The “name it and claim it” method
4) Open and closed doors

On seeking a method, Blackaby comments, “Balaam heard God speak through a donkey even though he had never heard God talk through a donkey before. If Balaam lived in our formula-driven day, perhaps he would have written a book, Donkeys for Dummies, so people could discern when God was speaking to them through a donkey, too!”

INSIGHT #3: “See Where God Is Working!” When Henry Blackaby was a pastor, the church was located near a college campus. “One Sunday, I pulled our students together and said, ‘This week I want you to go to the campus and watch to see where God is working. If God shows you where He is working, immediately join Him!” (He explained that the Bible teaches that “people don’t ask questions about spiritual matters unless God is at work in their lives.”)

He writes, “That Sunday, I told the students, ‘If during the course of your day attending class, someone starts asking you spiritual questions, what else you may have planned, don’t do it. Cancel what you had planned and spend time with that individual to discover what God is doing.’ That week our students went onto the campus, watching to see where God was at work so they could join Him.”

What happened? “On Wednesday, one of our female students excitedly reported, ‘Pastor, a girl who had been in classes with me for two years approached me after class today. She said, ‘I think you might be a Christian. I need to talk to you.’ I remembered what you said. I had a class in a few minutes, but I skipped it. We went to the cafeteria to talk. She said, ‘Eleven of us girls in the dorm have been studying the Bible, and none of us are Christians. Do you know someone who can lead us in a Bible study?’”

Blackaby notes, “As a result of that contact, we started three Bible study groups in the women’s dorms and two in the men’s. For almost two years we had tried to do something for God and failed. Then for three days we looked to see where God was working, and what a difference that made!”

The authors remind readers not to look for a formula to experience God. Instead, they articulate seven key principles (realities) across the 26 short chapters—with dozens of memorable stories. The seven realities:

• Reality 1: "God is always at work around you.
• Reality 2: God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.
• Reality 3: God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.
• Reality 4: God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.
• Reality 5: God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
• Reality 6: You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.
• Reality 7: You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.”

INSIGHT #4: “Please Cancel My Request!” In Mark 2, when the four entrepreneurial friends of the paraplegic man brought their friend to Jesus for healing, Jesus—instead—forgave the man’s sins. Meditating on that passage prompted Blackaby to weep and pray, “O God, if I ever give You a request and You have more to give me than I am asking, please cancel my request!”

Read this gem—slowly—and the truths will seriously whack you. Example: “Focusing on identifying [spiritual] gifts instead of determining what God’s assignment is can also be severely limiting for believers who base their future usefulness for God only on their past effectiveness.” Blackaby adds, “The common approach to spiritual gifts can easily become self-centered rather than God-centered.” Stay tuned for more whacks (Part 2 of 2) in a future issue.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Experiencing God (2021 Edition): Knowing and Doing the Will of God, by Henry Blackaby, Richard Blackaby, and Claude King. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (11 hours, 3 minutes). (Note: The audio version is from the 2009 book revision.)



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) “When God speaks, it is important to write it down,” says Henry Blackaby. That’s from my short 2008 review of Experiencing God (click here). Why might you find value in reading an updated and expanded version of a book you’ve already read—and this time, making notes as you read (when God speaks).
 2) Glub. Glub. Glub? Henry Blackaby writes, “The affirmation comes after the obedience.” He notes: “When Jesus invited Peter to get out of the boat to walk on the water, He did not assure Peter he would stay afloat! The Lord simply said, ‘Come!’ (Matt. 14:28). Peter wouldn’t know he could walk on the water until he took his first step.” This past year or two, what have you learned about taking the first step?
 

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John’s “I’m trying” efforts were fruitless. “In trying to honor God as a college student, I wanted the fruits of the spirit to be evident in my life. But I focused on the fruits—instead of the spirit.” (See Mistake #21 in Mastering Mistake-Making.)

Mistake #21 of 25: Striving Really Hard to Walk With God
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned

John’s Mistake #21: “’I can do this by trying harder’ was my failed strategy. ‘Just be more disciplined.’ I missed the simplicity of John 15—being connected to the Vine.”

Read this chapter to discover what John learned during his college days about the difference between human striving versus simply enjoying a relationship with the God of the Universe! And…learn what happened when he violated that semester’s evangelism training mandate, “Never say ‘TURN OR BURN!’”

For Mistake #21, John recommends two resources from Cru:
• Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?*
• Have You Made the Wonderful Discovery of the Spirit-Filled Life?*  
*See bulk pricing from Cru Press.

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake-Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.

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"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you missed John's half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance," you can now order the 107-page workbook on Amazon. Click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Henry Blackaby suggests you conduct a personal inventory and ask, “’What am I presently doing that can only be explained by God’s activity in my life?’ If you cannot think of anything, spend time with the Lord and ask Him why.” Need help conducting both personal and organizational inventories? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers...into Lifelong Fans

Issue No. 495 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting includes a confession! John thought he could quickly sail through a new customer experience book. Not! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #20 below.)


Oh, my! Every chapter (honest!) packs a punch in this hot-off-the-press customer experience toolkit, From Impressed to Obsessed.

I Must Confess!

Yikes! I got carried away in the previous issue with my long (but fascinating!) review of Becoming Trader Joe. My penance: today’s short review!

I MUST CONFESS. While the title intrigued me, From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans…really, would there be any new or fresh thinking in yet one more book on the customer experience?

However…an endorsement from Horst Schulze of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is high praise. (Ditto endorsements from Seth Godin, Marshall Goldsmith, and Chester Elton.) And the wheelchair story from the hotel’s Dubai property is a stunner! Their mantra “radar on and antenna up” will be your next weekly staff meeting sermon!

I MUST CONFESS. I’m fairly well read. I know about Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and Hyundai…so really, I thought, I can speed-read through this book.

However…I’ve never linked those customer stories to actual principles. The author, Jon Picoult, just gifted me with a new mental filing system—12 slots for his 12 memorable principles. I switched from speed-reading to speed-learning.

I MUST CONFESS. I skipped the intro, looked for the most interesting chapter title—and thought I could judge the book by that chapter. One and done, I thought.

However…Chapter 17, “Deliver Pleasant Surprises,” hooked me in the first line! (No spoiler alert, but after you read it—you’ll share this “hook” and the principle with your colleagues dozens of times!) Pastor Picoult practices what he preaches!

I MUST CONFESS. Okay, I thought, I’ll read just one more chapter. No author on the planet can deliver 18 must-read chapters.

However…I was wrong again. Every chapter packs a punch:
• Chapter 9: the Expedia story in “Make It Effortless.” (“Answer questions before they’re asked.”) Plus, my favorite line: 

“Please waste my time,”
said no one, ever.

 

• Chapter 14: “Creative Relevance” and the question beneath the question, “What time is the three o’clock parade?”
• Chapter 18: the “Maggots on a Plane” incident in “Recover with Style.”

I MUST CONFESS. Honest. I tried to skip a few chapters. No crime in that, right?

However…the “Putting the Principles Into Practice” bullet points at the end of each chapter were just too much. I had to read the full chapter! Add in the “Key Takeways” (more bullet points!)—and Picoult ensured his book would be read. I mean, devoured. So don’t skip any chapter—especially Chapter 7—“Create Peaks and Avoid Valleys.”

I MUST CONFESS. I went back and did a proper read—even starting in the intro.

However…I should have read page one first (what a concept!). The first sentence of this powerful book is convicting: “If you’re aspiring to satisfy your customers, then you are aspiring to mediocrity.” Yikes!

I MUST CONFESS. After a very unsatisfying customer experience earlier this month, my wife and I labeled the 90-minute torture session, “From Impressed to Distressed.” I sent Jon Picoult’s book to the company’s CEO! (Maybe you should order two copies: one for you, and one ready to send to the Chief Offender of your next disappointing customer experience!)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans, by Jon Picoult. Are you a listener? Listen to the audio book on Libro.fm (pre-order for January delivery).



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Pop Quiz! Write down 12 principles for converting our customers and employees into lifelong fans. You have 12 minutes. Go!
2) In the chapter, “Keep It Simple,” the author notes that Trader Joe’s made a conscious decision to limit the number of products it carries. Compare 4,000 SKUs (stock-keeping units) vs. the average grocery store count of 50,000 SKUs. Why might less products, programs, and services help create raving fans—versus adding more, more, and more? Read my review of Becoming Trader Joe.
3) Bonus Idea for Your Team. Offer a Chick-Fil-A gift card (free lunch!) to the team member who will read and report on the customer service stories in Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath. (Read my review.)

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Ruth Haley Barton: “Like so many of us as leaders, Moses’ natural gifting was at the mercy of his unresolved past and the unexamined emotional patterns that drove him.” (See Mistake #20 in Mastering Mistake Making.)

Mistake #20 of 25: Trying to Fix Workaholism on My Own
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned

John’s Mistake #20: “I did not understand—nor address—my workaholism and the harm it inflicted on my family and coworkers. I should have asked a counselor for help much, much sooner.”

Read this chapter to discover what John learned and how and when he got help. A gifted therapist was instrumental in walking John through what drove his workaholism, often called “the addiction that America applauds.” 

For Mistake #20, John recommends this book:
• Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, by Ruth Haley Barton (Read John’s review of his 2009 book-of-the-year.)
• Order the 10th anniversary expanded edition of Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership. 

Ruth Haley Barton writes, “Like so many of us as leaders, Moses’ natural gifting was at the mercy of his unresolved past and the unexamined emotional patterns that drove him.”

Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering-Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.

"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you missed John's half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance," you can now order the 107-page workbook on Amazon. Click here.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Beware the “Lampshade Effect,” warns Jon Picoult in From Impressed to Obsessed. This is “the tendency for people to take a small error or oversight in the customer experience and infer from it that something bigger may be amiss.” (See also Ball #5 in “The Printing Bucket” chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets—a dozen typos in the airline emergency row’s safety chart! Yikes!) Are you overlooking your “small errors?” How would you know? Is it time for an objective assessment of your small and big errors? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Becoming Trader Joe

Issue No. 494 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting is just an appetizer to inspire you to partake of the full meal: Becoming Trader Joe. It’s a leadership and management feast! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for almost 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #19 below.)


Trader Joe’s founder, Joe Coulombe, organized the central management’s operation around the “skunkworks” concept popularized by Tom Peters. Coulombe’s title: “Chief Skunk.” See the Operations Bucket. (Photo credit: Becoming Trader Joe.)

Chief Skunk!

I’ve rarely met a Trader Joe’s customer who is not a Trader Joe’s raving fan. How about you?

This past June, HarperCollins Leadership published a fascinating read by the founder of Trader Joe’s. And yes—it’s a leadership book, but you’ll also be fascinated by the delightful discoveries down every aisle of this memorable treat, Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys, by Joe Coulombe with Patty Civalleri.

Joe Coulombe (he died at age 89 in February 2020) gifted us with MBA-level thinking in leadership, management, retailing, economics, history, and humor—all in 288 fast-reading pages. Imagine Renaissance Man meets Peter Drucker meets The Galloping Gourmet. (And thanks to my long-suffering wife, Joanne, I taste-tested snippets from the book with her in recent evenings—and she agrees: this is a stunningly delicious read.)

Becoming Trader Joe checks the box in all 20 management buckets (core competencies) and the three arenas of Cause, Community, and Corporation:

THE CAUSE

#1. The Results Bucket. Trader Joe’s financial growth and results were stunning—but, as you’ll read, it was not about the money. When asked a product pricing question—“What percentage margin did you aim for?”—this inquiry launched Joe Coulombe into his “tirade about how you pay your bills with dollars, not percents.”

#2. The Customer Bucket. Trader Joe’s niche customer: the overeducated, underpaid, and well-traveled person. Not “the masses who willingly consumed Folger’s coffee, Best Foods Mayonnaise, Wonder Bread, Coca-Cola, etc.” Joe Coulombe adds, “…I saw an opportunity to differentiate ourselves radically from mainstream retailing to mainstream people.” He notes, “I believe in the wisdom that you gain customers one by one, but you lose them in droves.”

#3. The Strategy Bucket. Coulombe creatively names the three versions of Trader Joe’s: Good Time Charley (1967-1970), Whole Earth Harry (1971-1976), and the final version—Mac the Knife (1977 and beyond). Note: Joe Coulombe and Russia gave up Five Year Plans in the same year, 1988!

#4. The Drucker Bucket. Greatly influenced by Peter Drucker, Coulombe notes Drucker’s “seminal piece in the July 25, 1989, Wall Street Journal called ‘Sell the Mail Room.’” This was six months after Coulombe left Trader Joe’s—but he reminisces about his good and bad outsourcing decisions. (“We never took mainframe computing inhouse…” Another rule: “Never buy a computer you can’t lift.”
        
#5. The Book Bucket. Ironically, Joe Coulombe names the “best” book on management—but he actually lists three of them! (Even better!)
   • The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I, by Barbara Tuchman – “It’s the best book on management—and, especially, mismanagement—I’ve ever read.” (p. 14)
   • The Winning Performance: How America's High-Growth Midsize Companies Succeed, by Clifford and Cavanaugh – He notes his favorite quote “from my favorite book on management.” (p. xiv)
   • The Mythical Man-Month, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. – “…one of my favorite books on management.” (p. 204)
   • And one more: Coulombe said “the best economics book I ever read” was Seven Kinds of Inflation, by Richard Dana Skinner (1937).

#6. The Program Bucket. Coulombe was thinking supply chain and logistics well before our current crisis! Chapter 13, “Virtual Distribution,” includes two lists of products carried in 1976 versus 1988—and the percentage of sales for each product. The 1976 list included 19 categories. The top-four sellers: dry groceries, milk and ice cream, and cigarettes at 10% each. Wine was fourth at 8%. The 1988 list: wine (22%), dry groceries (12%), nuts and dried fruit (12%), and frozen foods (11%). The 1988 list was pared down to 14 categories. Read the fascinating rationales for every yes/no buying decision. This chapter reminded me of the book, Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability.

 

THE COMMUNITY

 #7. The People Bucket. “…the most important single business decision I ever made was to pay people well.” Coulombe adds, “At a time when the minimum wage was $4.35, we often paid $13.00 per hour because these people were worth it. A distinction between full-time and part-time is a false dichotomy when it comes to productivity.” Plus, to enrich product knowledge of Captains (aka the top manager in each store), Trader Joe’s sent every Captain and spouse to Europe “to make a three-week grand tour of the wine and cheese regions in Germany, Switzerland, and France.”

 #8. The Culture Bucket. “…as Trader Joe’s became famous, the employees began earning something else: prestige. To be part of Trader Joe’s brought them instant recognition from their friends and families.” 

 
John’s granddaughter, Emelia Pearson (18), discerned that the Trader Joe’s crew member “uniform,” was such a unique and prestigious outfit—that she wore it for Halloween this year! (Note: she is not a crew member.) All Trader Joe’s employees continue to wear Hawaiian shirts, provided by the store (different shades to match the seasons, per Coulombe).

#9. The Team Bucket. Coulombe was not a silo thinker. Chapter 18, “Double Entry Retailing” is a crash course for every manager on what matters and the interrelationships of key areas. Team members influence and impact a whole system—with five variables on the “Demand Side” and 10 variables on the “Supply Side.”
   • Demand Side: assortment of merchandise, pricing, convenience, credit, and showmanship.
   • Supply Side: merchandise vendors, employees, “habits” and “culture,” systems, non-merchandise vendors, landlords, governments, bankers and investment bankers, stockholders, and crime.

Coulombe’s vision of teamwork found inspiration from Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony (during Coulombe’s years at Stanford University). Much later, he read this in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner: “Monteux never tried to get a performance out of an orchestra. He was always giving one with them.”

#10. The Hoopla! Bucket. No surprise—it was a hoot (and still is) to work at Trader Joe’s. He writes, “There was a particular angle to the naming of our products. I wanted to create a silent conspiracy among the overeducated, underpaid people in town, so that as they moved down the aisles they would read secret messages on the products.” Examples: Brandenburg Brownies, Sir Isaac Newtons, The Bagel Spinoza, The Peanut Pascal. “My favorite of all the private labels was Heisenberg’s Uncertain Blend of coffee beans.” (I had to google it. See the “uncertainty principle.”)

Another Hoopla! seasoning: “Showmanship” is defined as “the sum total of all efforts to make contact with the customer. It’s the most ephemeral, the most difficult, and the most important of the Demand Side activities.”

#11. The Donor Bucket. As of 1988, Trader Joe’s was receiving 300 donation requests per year from nonprofit organizations. Coulombe had five policies that guided their giving, including: “1) Never give cash to anyone. 2) Never buy space in a program. That is money thrown away. 3) Give freely, give generously, but only to nonprofits that are focused on the overeducated and underpaid.” 

In 2020, Trader Joe’s also donated nearly $345 million dollars of food and beverages, which equates to approximately 69 million meals, through their Neighborhood Shares program. Every nonprofit fundraiser should read “Promoting through Nonprofits” in Chapter 9.

#12. The Volunteer Bucket. This is stunning! Joe Coulombe—personally—volunteered his time to write and record a one-minute broadcast for a Los Angeles classical music radio station. The opening line, “This is Joe Coulombe of Trader Joe’s with a word on food and wine.” He writes, “We needed the publicity in those days, and KFAC was right on our target of overeducated and unpaid people.” He recorded 3,300 unique scripts (as in…no repeats!) for “Words on Food and Wine” and he would record 50 or 60 broadcasts in a session that left him “pretty well burned out.” Oh, my. This discipline “forced me to study the field of food and wine.”

#13. The Crisis Bucket. “Hairballs” is the title of Chapter 10—and the first line cautions, “All businesses have problems.” Coulombe’s favorite management quote is from Tex Thornton of Litton Industries: “If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions.” The author writes, “Early in my career I learned there are two kinds of decisions: the ones that are easily reversible and the ones that aren’t.”

This must-read chapter includes the section, “The Worst Hairball of My Career: The United Farm Workers’ Secondary Boycott.” Whew! The boycott of Trader Joe’s—just before Thanksgiving in 1971—was actually organized by young seminarians from Union Theological Seminary in New York.

THE CORPORATION

#14. The Board Bucket. When he retired from Trader Joe’s, Coulombe served on the board of directors of several companies. He also consulted with companies, but didn’t have the highest view of consultants! He found board work and the writing of this book, “satisfying, challenging, and appropriate to my age.” His succession plan (selling the company, continuing to lead it for a few years, and then exiting at age 58) is instructive for board members and CEOs.

#15. The Budget Bucket. Did you know that Trader Joe’s is the largest retailer of maple syrup in the United States? Ditto wild rice. That—and more—is from the introductory chapter, “A Trader Joe’s Sampler.” While financial steps (and missteps) are discussed throughout the book, budget-minded leaders will find the list of “Some of the Best Deals We Ever Made” absolutely fascinating. That topic was asked and addressed during a lecture he gave in 1998 for the Culinary Historians Society—“a lecture that led to this book.” (You’ll also appreciate the author’s pre-modern references to adding machines and slide rules!)

#16. The Delegation Bucket. You don’t grow from one store in Pasadena, Calif., to 530 stores nationwide by being inept at delegation. I could write an entire review—just on Trader Joe’s delegation competencies, but I’ll spare you. Just this: “We fundamentally changed the point of view of the business from customer-oriented to buyer-oriented. I put our buyers in charge of the company.” See more in Chapter 11, “Mac the Knife,” and how reducing the number of products—and requiring every product to pay its own way—put the authority and the responsibility on the buyers. Fascinating.

#17. The Operations Bucket. Taking a cue from the skunkworks concept by Tom Peters (see In Search of Excellence), Joe Coulombe created three major skunkworks projects in his central management: Skunkworks I: Buying, Skunkworks II: Sales, and Skunkworks III: Accounting. “I had signs made with these titles to be hung in each department." Over his door was this sign:

CHIEF SKUNK!

By the way, the Trader Joe’s approach to operations (especially the art and science of selecting store locations) should be required reading in seminaries for Church Planting 101. (Hint: Trader Joe’s locations are situated closest to their niche customers: the overeducated and underpaid.)

#18. The Systems Bucket. Fascinating! (Have I used that word yet?) “Every full-timer was supposed to be able to perform every job in the store, including checking, balancing the books, ordering each department, stocking, opening, closing, going to the bank, etc. Everybody worked the check stands in the course of a day, including the Captain.” Note: When I met Jason Addy this week (a 21-year employee, and the new Captain at the San Clemente, Calif., store), he was working the check stands! The Trader Joe’s “system” builds upon “the medieval French verb, retailer, which means to ‘cut into pieces.’”

#19. The Printing Bucket (aka the Communication Bucket). Trader Joe’s launched the Fearless Flyer newsletter in 1970 (now also online here). They synchronized promotion with purchasing—similar to one of my Printing Bucket axioms to “use publication deadlines to fine tune organizational decision-making.” Coulombe writes that “the Fearless Flyer was an educational medium and hundreds of customers kept three-ring notebook collections of the issues so they could refer back to the articles. For years, we printed three rings on the cover.” Three cheers for three-ring binders! (See my Operations Bucket and read, “Bless Bob With a Binder: A three-ring binder will usher in world peace. Almost.”)
 
#20. The Meetings Bucket. Your approach to meetings (with staff, board, vendors, and others) spotlights your organizational culture—but retailing is unique. When to meet? Coulombe hosted two employee parties every year (summer and Christmas), but planned two nights for each—to accommodate those who worked nights. Perhaps the focus on buyers is best illustrated with this: “Whenever a vendor claimed to be truly desperate, we offered to meet him 6:00 p.m. on Friday night. That separates the wheat from the chaff!” (For more on the culture of meetings, read Made From Scratch, written by the founder of Texas Roadhouse restaurants.)

Sorry. I got carried away—this book is so good, but my review is way too long. Sorry, again! Suggestion: after you read Becoming Trader Joe, read the new book on creating superb customer experiences. Watch for my review of From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans, by Jon Picoult.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys, by Joe Coulombe with Patty Civalleri. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (7 hours, 32 minutes).



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Trader Joe’s founder, Joe Coulombe, was the classic Renaissance Man. His book oozes with insights and quotations from Scientific American, Smithsonian, Albert Camus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, and others. What do you read—or who do you listen to—to inform your leadership and management decisions?
2) When John Pearson reads a killer quotation or a memorable chapter, he mentally files it under one of his 20 management buckets/core competencies from Mastering the Management Buckets. What’s your mental filing system for all things leadership and management?

A Trader Joe’s Afterword: “King of Cardboard and Spoils”

On Feb. 4, 2008, Dieter Zander, a pastor and friend, suffered a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of his brain. No longer able to pastor, his new vocation was “King of Cardboard and Spoils” at Trader Joe’s (really!). Read my 2013 review of the 32-page book (photos and commentary), A Stroke of Grace, by Dieter Zander and LaDonna Witmer. And another must-read, Bill Gaultiere’s blog, “A Kingdom of Cardboard and Spoils (Dieter Zander’s Story).”

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Chuck Girard wrote the worship song, “Slow Down,” and notes: “Even today, this song receives more mail and comment than any other song I have ever written.” Read more. (See Mistake #19 in Mastering Mistake Making.)

Mistake #19 of 25: Experiencing Infrequent God Moments
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned

John’s Mistake #19: “I believe Almighty God wants us to experience more frequent God moments, but I often moved way-too-fast on my own—and didn’t slow down for God to intervene.”

When John and Joanne celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2019, they began with a family breakfast at Dana Point Harbor. But halfway through the celebration, they were unprepared for a stunning “God moment” when their son, Jason, revealed what the Lord had orchestrated that morning—seemingly coincidental, but not really! 

For Mistake #19, John recommends two resources:
• Option #1: The One Year Bible (the entire Bible arranged in 365 daily readings – New Living Translation, by Tyndale) – Note: this edition was just published Oct. 19, 2021, by Tyndale. (Order from Amazon)
• Option #2: “Slow Down” (listen to this worship song written and sung by Chuck Girard) – Listen on YouTube
 
Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering-Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.

"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you live in Southern California, join John for the half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance.” Details here.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Does your organization need a deep dive into your customer niche again—or a 2021 version of Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).