Issue No. 375 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features 10 last-minute gift ideas, including a beautiful coffee table book, Change Is Good…You Go First. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out my recent book reviews on this page.
Last Minute Gift Books and Spoiler Alert!
Quick! Here are some gift options for your last-minute Christmas shopping needs. This potpourri (or maybe mishmash) of books, gift cards, New Yorker calendars, and other tempting purchases will help you find gifts for team members, board members, colleagues, spouses, grandparents, and your pastor.
[ ] Don’t Step in the Leadership: A Dilbert Book by Scott Adams. With 127 pages of comic strips, it’s a laugh-a-page. Dogbert the Consultant’s pitch: “I can give you excellent advice for $50,000 a month. If budget is a problem, I also offer bad advice for the low price of $45,000 a month.”
[ ] The Leadership Secrets of Santa: How to Get Big Things Done in YOUR “Workshop”…All Year Long, by Eric Harvey, David Cottrell, Al Lucia, and Mike Hourigan. Great insight: “Avoid punishing [super stars] for good performance (“You did such a good job of handling that mess, the next time we get one, we’ll give it to you again.”).
[ ] Don't Let Jerks Get the Best of You: Advice for Dealing With Difficult People, by Paul Meier, M.D. Are you a first-degree jerk, or a second-degree jerk? Take the 25-question quiz. If you score 56-75, you’re a high-level First-Degree Jerk. If you score 15 or below, “Lying is probably one of your jerky problems.”
[ ] Breakthrough the Ick Factors of Nonprofit Leadership: Discover Your Organization’s True Potential, by Tom Okarma. Published in 2015, this helpful book is no joke. With an abundance of online resources, this experienced consultant names 10 “ick factors”—and how to address them, including: Non-Strategic Board Candidate Sourcing; Not Delegating Authority, Tasks or Projects; Ineffective Meetings; and Lack of a Clear Strategy. Must reading in 2018!
[ ] The Big Ideas Notepad: 100 Brainstorming, Mind-Mapping & Awesome Idea-Generating Sheets, by Mary Kate McDevitt (Artist). I’ve passed this 8” x 11” notepad around board retreat rooms—and asked each person to tear out a “big idea” page for a brainstorming assignment. Includes 200 tear-out pages with 13 creative and witty designs. My favorite: a sheet with two columns: “Genius!” and “Not So Genius.”
[ ] Amazon Gift Card. Can’t decide? Order an Amazon Gift Card.
[ ] Change Is Good…You Go First: 21 Ways to Inspire Change, by Max Anderson and Tom Feltenstein. This beautiful, full-color coffee table book (7.5” x 5.5”) has over 100 pages of memorable quotations and stories about change. My favorite: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance a lot less.” Read the ingenious way consultants snagged a contract with British Rail.
[ ] How Much Land Does A Man Need (Classics To Go), by Leo Tolstoy. Just $1.99 for this Kindle Edition—it’s the perfect “read-before-our-next-staff-meeting” short story (14 pages) from the author of War and Peace (that tome is 1,392 pages, but just $ .99 on Kindle). Or, read How Much Land to your family around the fireplace. Poignant!
[ ] The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham, by Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley. Last week a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times surmised, “Billy Graham must be spinning in his grave.” Not yet! Dr. Graham celebrated his 99th birthday last month—and this book is a gem. The authors quote Russ Busby:
“He’s one of the few Christian leaders whose attention God can get when he wants it. He’s not running so fast or so deeply involved in his own agenda. When God taps him on the shoulder he says, ‘Yes, Lord,’ rather than “Just a minute, I have to finish this.’ God can quickly get his attention.”
[ ] Raising Your Kids to Love the Lord, by Dave Stone. Powerful! Parents and grandparents will appreciate this refresher course in parenting by Pastor Dave Stone. In just 140 pages in this beautifully illustrated short gem, Stone’s humor will delight you and his wisdom will inspire you. His chapter, “The Most Powerful Word,” is classic. What’s “The One Essential Book”? (He jokes: “Here’s a hint: it’s not this one.”)
[ ] Cartoons from The New Yorker: 2018 Day-to-Day Calendar. One of my favorite gifts each year: LOL cartoons every day to tear-off, tweet, tease, and/or toss. Example: Dec. 31, 2017: One whale to another: “My New Year’s resolution is to lose 38,000 pounds.”
Note: Special thanks to Jim Canning for scouring used bookstores and finding humorous leadership gems to send my way, including the first three above.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) What’s one of the most treasured books you’ve ever received as a gift? Why?What’s one of the most treasured books you’ve ever received as a gift? Why?
2) Put down your device for a minute and answer this question: “How does God get your attention?”
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Spoiler Alert!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
Jason Pearson listened to the audio version of The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, and immediately gifted five copies of the hardback book to staff members at his church. Jason’s guessing that I’ll name this my 2017 book-of-the-year. Watch for my Top-10 list on New Year’s Eve.
And by the way, check out pages 195-226 for the updated list of more than 350 books I’ve reviewed (including annual Top-10 lists), categorized within the 20 buckets, in Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates, and Tips From John Pearson (a CrossSection Resource). It also includes color commentaries by Doug Martinez and Jason Pearson. And for more on the Book Bucket, click here. For more resources in all 20 buckets, click here. And if you still haven't read the original book, click here: Mastering the Management Buckets.
P.S. Read John's latest board governance blog, "Baiting the Board Hook for Maximum Engagement."
Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers, the frequency of which is based on an algorithm of book length, frequent flyer miles, and client deadlines. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As a board member and raving fan of Christian Community Credit Union (a non-profit), we proudly list the credit union as a sponsor at no charge. And...in this issue we also salute Bible Incubator, an initiative of CrossSection.
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