Issue No. 227 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a book of 130 checklists, including 14 ways to facilitate a meeting—and how to infuse them with energy and substance. You’ll also note a way to leverage this book’s wisdom once a week for over two years. And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Hypothetical Candidates
Rats! I wish I had written this week’s book! It’s very, very good and will probably make my Top-10 list for 2011. It’s got checklists and I’m big on checklists. (FYI: one of my Top-10 books from last year, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, was just ranked No. 7 on this month’s New York Times’ paperback business bestseller list.)
So when Jim Canning recommended Smart Moves for People in Charge: 130 Checklists to Help You Be a Better Leader, I was immediately hooked—even before the book arrived. It exceeded my expectations by about 129!
The “checklists” run about three pages each, but each item on the checklist has been expertly honed down to just the big idea, with three to five lines of color commentary. That’s it—the big idea, an insight—and you’re in and out. Examples:
Checklist No. 48: Nine Guidelines to Make Praise Motivating
#1. Overcome your reasons for not praising enough (there are three).
#9. Initiate a team-of-the-month program. “Your company will be one of the very few that elevates work teams in this way.”
Checklist No. 50: Seventeen Inexpensive Ways to Reward Employees
#12. Taking a member of the support staff on a sales call. “People in support roles may spend their entire careers without meeting those people who ultimately pay their salaries—customers. What this trip will cost is puny compared to the motivation it will purchase.”
Checklist No. 56: Thirteen Tactics for Increasing Teamwork
#1. Create a teamwork culture. “Rename staff meetings ‘team meetings.’”
Checklist No. 61: Eighteen Tips for Conducting a Selection Interview
#7. Stay away from hypothetical questions. “Whenever you ask, ‘What would you do if…’ you encourage the candidate to guess at what answer you’re looking for rather than tell the truth. These are hypothetical questions calling for hypothetical responses. Since you’re not hiring a hypothetical candidate, it’s best to avoid them. Instead ask, ‘When was the last time you encountered…? How did you handle it?’”
Each of the 130 checklists has an average of 10 to 20 big ideas—with easily 1,200 ideas in this 296-page goldmine. The first of nine sections, for example, “Build Your Executive Power,” has more than 150 ideas, plus the short color commentaries and some memorable call-outs. You’re probably familiar with half of the ideas (but maybe not practicing all of them)—but likely 20 percent of the ideas are new gems for you, or certainly many of your team members, including those you’re mentoring.
Each of the nine sections, like Spread the Word, Lead Your Team, Build Your Team, Stay Close to the Customer, and Find Your Balance, conclude with a dozen or more pithy quotations. Example: under “Twelve Quotes Worth Quoting About Teamwork,” the authors include this from former Boston Celtics NBA Coach Red Auerbach, “They said you have to use your five best players, but I found you win with the five that fit together best.”
The call-outs scream-out to be shared immediately! For example:
“A consultant advised one manager to initiate a gripe session with several dissatisfied employees. The manager responded, ‘Are you crazy? All they’ll do is complain!’ To which the consultant retorted, ‘I hope so—that’s just what a gripe session is for.’”
Speaking of consultants, there’s a checklist titled, “Ten Tips for Hiring a Consultant.” The call-out is brilliant! “If you can’t fully identify the problem in advance, consider using one consultant to identify the problem and another to help you solve it. Here’s one reason why. Let’s say you know you’ve got serious morale problems but haven’t figured out why. If you hire a human relations consultant both to pinpoint the cause and to recommend solutions, you’re tempting that consultant to find the problems he knows how to solve.”
Or, as Abraham Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.”
How can you not buy this book when the checklists are so tempting?
--13 Ways to Get Employees to Keep You Informed
--6 Red Flags of Burnout
--13 Steps to Delegate Effectively
--17 Ways to See Your Business Through Your Customers’ Eyes
--10 Steps to Resolve Customer Complaints
--9 Tips for Creating a Succession Plan
--8 Ways to Get Great Value From Mentoring
--9 Methods to Handle an Insubordinate Manager
--13 Ways to Make Sure Your Incentives “Incent”
--18 Management Classics You Should Read
--15 People to Listen To
--64 Business Terms to Have on the Tip of Your Tongue
--7 Tips for Giving Off-the-Cuff Speeches
Like I said…this is a goldmine! Check!
To order this book from Amazon, click on the graphic below: Smart Moves for People in Charge: 130 Checklists to Help You Be a Better Leader, by Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Gutsy idea: “From this book’s table of contents, select the 25 leadership behaviors you believe are most essential to your success (e.g. ‘Managing your time effectively’). Give the list to your employees and ask that they identify the three behaviors that you display most consistently and the three you display least consistently. Tabulate the results. Ask humbly for explanations and perhaps examples of feedback you don’t understand. (For even greater impact, ask employees to choose the 25 leadership behaviors they’ll evaluate in you.)”
2) OK…who wants to borrow this book for a week? Your assignment: report back at our next team meeting on just one checklist—and what you learned. Then inspire another member to do the same for next week. (Note: with 130 checklists, you can keep your team meetings energized for over two years with just one book!)
Hire Healthy People! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Culture Bucket, Chapter 8, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to hire for attitude, not aptitude. Other thoughts on culture and core values:
Max DePree: “The corporation can never be something we are not.”
Miles McPherson: "One way to get a healthy culture is to hire healthy people."
For five book recommendations on culture and core values, plus other resources, visit the Culture Bucket webpage.
JOIN US AT THESE WORKSHOPS AND WEBINARS!
WEBINARS:
Aug. 23, 2011 (Tuesday) – Webinar: 3 Core Competencies for God-honoring Church Governance with Steve Macchia and Dan Busby (hosted by ECFA)
WORKSHOPS:
--Sept. 17, 2011 (Saturday) – Nonprofit Board Governance Workshop (hosted by Town and Country Manor, Santa Ana, Calif.)
--Sept. 27-28, 2011 (Tues. & Wed.) – Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience, (Orange County, Calif.)
--Oct. 20, 2011 (Thursday) - 9 Governance Essentials for Nonprofit Ministries Forum, with Steve Macchia and Dan Busby (sponsored by ECFA and hosted by Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, Colo.)
Just Added!
--Oct. 25-26, 2011 (Tues. & Wed.) – The Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Workshop (Sponsored by Neighborhood Christian Fellowship and Arrow Community Center, Covina, Calif., and hosted by Christian Community Credit Union, San Dimas, Calif.)
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