Issue No. 211 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting previews a short and sweet, but powerful book on how to get off the dime—and start stuff. Seth Godin says, “Soon is not as good as now.” And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
VP of Starting
Seth Godin is one out-of-of the box guy. You may have read Tribes, Purple Cow, or Meatball Sundae. But, trust me, you’ve never read anything like this one.
One big idea: START SOMETHING!
He builds his case creatively. Free yourself from the factory mentality (wait for instructions). Like this: “Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do. If you lived in that world, what would you do? Go. Do that.”
The “Poke the Box” title references his Ph.D. uncle who built a buzzer box and plopped it into his cousin’s crib. “The box had two switches, some lights, and a few other controls on it. Flip one switch and a light goes on. Flip both switches and a buzzer sounds. All terrifying, of course, unless you are a kid.”
“Life is a buzzer box,” he shouts. “Poke it.”
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.
What’s your answer to “What do you do here?” Seth says that almost no one ever says, “I start stuff.”
Seth challenges the status quo. Competitors are performing at high levels—neck and neck—so “quality is not so interesting anymore.” He adds, “The problem: you can’t get blander than bland. You can’t grow by becoming ever more predictable and ordinary. You might have a dependable and predictable and cheap product, but if the market wants something better, you’ll be stuck playing catch-up.”
Every page has a one-liner pleading to be posterized:
--Don’t wait to be picked for the next project. “Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.”
--“Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them.”
--“Most employees can give you a long list of all the things they’re not allowed to do.”
--“The company policy manual has an answer for your situation, and it only takes a few vice presidents to make it clear.”
--“‘This might not work’ isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you should seek out.”
--“Starting means you’re going to finish. If it doesn’t ship, you’ve failed.”
There’s more gut-checkers for leaders: “In the short run, playing your strongest player, following the playbook, rewarding someone who has done it before—these are all great ways to win. In the long run, though, all you’ve done is taught conformity and punished initiation.
“One reason organizations get stuck is that they stick with their ‘A’ players so long that they lose their bench. In a world that’s changing, a team with no bench strength and a rigid outlook on the game will always end up losing.”
Yikes! And he’s just warming up. In just 84 pages, Seth Godin packs a wallop. If you start this book, you’ll finish it. Guaranteed. (Bonus! Visit The Domino Project and download the stunning 22-page workbook—no charge.)
To order this book from Amazon, click on the graphic below for Poke the Box: When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time? by Seth Godin.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Godin writes, “As the economy shifts, large (and small) organizations are discovering that this brainwashing thing was a huge error. You can’t snooze your way to greatness. You can’t optimize your way to surprising growth. You can’t organize your way into blamelessness.” On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 as “follow the rules” and 10 as “start stuff without permission,” where are you?
2) Seth says, “The person who fails the most usually wins.” Do you agree?
Plan Now for Your Next Crisis - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Crisis Bucket, Chapter 13, in Mastering the Management Buckets is this: “It’s not if you’ll have a crisis, but when.”
Step #1 in crisis management is to name and empower a Crisis Coordinator who will become the expert in crisis operations.
If you don’t have a Crisis Coordinator, START today—and appoint one. It’s that simple—but it may save lives, reputations, resources and sound sleep!
For more ideas and resources on crisis plans, visit the Crisis Bucket, where you can download the article, "We've Got an Emergency: Essential Lessons Every Manager Needs to Learn Before a Crisis Hits" (The Inside Story of How World Vision Responded to the Tsunami Disaster).
Note: Dates for our 2011 Management Buckets, Nonprofit Board Governance and 3-Year Rolling Strategic Plan workshops are now posted here, JPA 2011 Workshops, along with some new workshops on hiring and firing (Top-10 Hiring Mistakes) and goal alignment (The Results Bucket).
Comments