The Hoopla! Bucket 4

Issue No. 56 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting comes with this reminder about the power and promise of a weekly meeting with your team. Planned well, you can inspire and motivate your team to function as a team, plus you can hand-out mini-affirmations that will be remembered for years. Too busy for meetings? You’re too busy.  And a reminder: reviews of past books (now 56) are featured in the archives here.

Slow Down for Excellence

Like a Rembrandt or a Gauguin, or an exquisite gourmet dinner, you will savor the writing, the language, the nuances and the hidden humor in this week’s masterpiece novel, Gilead.  Marilynne Robinson’s treasure was highly acclaimed by critics and received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Warning. You’ll also weep as you journey with John Ames, the 76-year-old still-in-the-pulpit Congregational minister in Gilead, Iowa.  It’s 1956 and Pastor Ames is journaling a life letter to his seven-year-old son, an extraordinary blessing from his second and younger wife.

Warning #2. It will slow you down. Way down. Gilead will prick your emotions, then trigger snickers that balloon to belly laughs. Why read it? It’s a masterpiece of writing, words and ideas.  It will inspire your vision for excellence. It’s not a leadership or management book, but it is.  This is a five-star recommendation.

Click here to order Gilead from Amazon.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
#1.  When the routine and daily drain of life weigh you down, where do you go for inspiration? When mediocrity (good is good enough) tempts you, what moves you towards excellence?
#2.  The writing in Gilead is so precise and lovingly wordsmithed, some pages just take your breath away. When does your work rise to its highest level?

The Hoopla! Bucket: Spontaneous Smiles - Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience

If the annual staff Christmas dinner and the summer staff picnic are your only entries for “fun at work,” you need some more ideas from The Hoopla! Bucket.  At our Management Buckets Workshop Experience, we focus on this core competency for hoopla:

“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!”

Here’s an easy—but guaranteed smile-generator for an afternoon break. Microwave a small bowl of M&M's® Peanut Chocolate Candies for 30 seconds (give or take) so there are hairline fractures in the candy. Serve immediately. (Thanks to David Carlson at Agros International for this idea. He delivered the smiles and the calories at a recent Agros board/staff retreat.)

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
#1.  Depending on your social style (driver, analytical, amiable or expressive), your appreciation for hoopla may be different than your colleagues. How important is fun-on-the-job for you?
#2.  If you could wave a magic wand and transform our corporate culture here, what would it look like?

Comments

[David Carlson]

John,
Thanks for the hoopla encouragement & "nuked" M&M Peanut (important that your readers use this "version" of the M&M varieties...not the 'ol standby plain...tho' having said that, the "user" may find that "nuking" their particular favorite is exceptional as well) and I thought I'd add a caveat on the 30 second "cook time", since every microwave varies...the key is the getting the candy to an "almost ready to hatch" stage. The peanut heats up first & melts the chocolate...ooohlala!

Celebrate!