Issue No. 121 of Your Weekly Staff Meetingincludes President Bush’s remarkable reading appetite. Karl Rove comments, “In the 35 years I’ve known George W. Bush, he’s always had a book nearby. You don’t make it through [Yale and Harvard Business School] unless you are a reader.” And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Book Lover Bush
President George W. Bush is a book lover. Besides reading through the Bible each year, along with a daily devotional reading, the President read 95 books in 2006. He finished 51 books in 2007 and read at least 40 in 2008. Karl Rove, former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President Bush, reported all of this in a Wall Street Journal column on Dec. 26, 2008. Rove and the President had a little reading contest going over the years. Rove won each year (his top mark was 110 books in 2006). Amazing.
The next day, in the same paper, Peggy Noonan predicted, “I suspect reading is about to make a big comeback in America, that in fact we’re going to be reading more books in the future, not fewer.” In her column, Noonan listed the wide range of books she had devoured in 2008.
Rove commented on Bush’s equally diverse selections and said Bush explained that he had lost the contest “because he’d been busy as Leader of the Free World.” Rove added, “The reading competition reveals Mr. Bush's focus on goals. It's not about winning. A good-natured competition helps keep him centered and makes possible a clear mind and a high level of energy. He reads instead of watching TV. He reads on Air Force One and to relax and because he's curious. He reads about the tasks at hand, often picking volumes because of the relevance to his challenges. And he's right: I've won because he has a real job with enormous responsibilities.”
So…what books will you read in 2009? And how many? For starters on your Bible reading/devotional times, you might enjoy the unique format of Solo, a Scripture selection from The Message on one page and a Read/Think/Pray/Live brief commentary on the second page. “The devotions found in Solo are based on the classical method of lectio divina: reading, thinking, praying and living Scripture with the intention of inviting an infinite, omniscient God into your life—as it is, no gloss, no veneer. Lectio divina is more Bible basking than Bible study.”
To order this week’s book from Amazon, click on this title: The Message//Remix: Solo: An Uncommon Devotional, by Eugene Peterson.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Raise your hand if you’d like to be in a 2009 book reading contest and be willing to read a minimum of one book per month. Any volunteers?
2) In groups of three, think back over the last 10 years and share the most helpful Bible reading/devotional materials or methods you have used to help you become more like Christ. (That’s the point, right?)
Subsidy Creep - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Program Bucket, Chapter 6, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to build program capacity and sustainability first. (You never have a second chance to make a first impression.) It happens often: a great idea with a modest budget has turned into a nightmare. The program initially required a modest subsidy, but then it got very popular. Pricing was off-kilter and now the subsidy is enormous. It’s that dreaded subsidy creep.
The next phase is not pretty. You begin the cutbacks. Staff members are laid off and programs are sliced. Quality dips. Morale plummets. Visionaries withdraw. Prayer meetings are scheduled. Blamers pontificate. Whiners turn up the volume. Board members start talking out of school.
News Flash! Cancel the prayer meeting; it’s not a spiritual problem! It’s not a leadership problem. It’s not even a problem in the Budget Bucket. It’s a sustainability problem. The business model doesn’t work. Sometimes you can figure this out in advance with wise counselors and consultants and sometimes you can’t. But if “sustainability” is not yet in your program vocabulary, write the word on your whiteboard right now along with the verses from Luke 14:28-30.
To download Worksheet 6.2 “Top 10 Questions to Ask About Program Capacity and Sustainability,” visit the Program Bucket page of my website.
CEO/Board Dialogue – Jan. 20-21, 2009. CEOs and Board Chairs: Join your colleagues for this first-ever dialogue for the CEO and the board chair, a 24-hour retreat in sunny Phoenix in January with Bob Andringa, Fred Laughlin and Dale Lefever. It’s limited to 12 teams of two (24 people). For more information, visit www.CEODialogues.org.
NEXT STEPS: I can help you integrate these leadership and management best practices into your unique setting and help you assess your competencies in the 20 management buckets. Email me at John@JohnPearsonAssociates.com or visit my website at www.JohnPearsonAssociates.com and my book website at www.ManagementBuckets.com.
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