John Pearson's Buckets Blog

8 Leadership Flicks

Issue No. 433 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights eight movies and videos—some eligible for your lifelong learning goals (i.e. watch during the day without guilt!). Be safe, please. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my recent review of The Advice Trap—on how to be more coach-like every day.

11½ Hours of Movies, Videos & YouTube

Welcome to the movie issue with my recommendations of eight titles (including comedy) that address leadership issues, insights, and ideas. Enjoy!

#1. HARRIET (2019)
PG-13 (2 hours, 5 minutes) - Amazon Prime
Memorable Line: “The hole in my head just made God’s voice more clear.”



You think your life is hard? Take a run in Harriett Tubman’s shoes. In my 2019 review of Leaders: Myth and Reality, by General Stanley McChrystal (US Army, Retired), I urged readers not to skip the chapter, “The Heroes: Zheng He and Harriet Tubman.” McChrystal writes, “She never intended to lead, and that turns out not to matter—she became a hero, and a leader, all the same.”

Then Harriett premiered on Nov. 1, 2019. You’ll want to watch it twice. I was stunned by Tubman’s attentive heart—always listening for divine direction. Don’t miss this jolt, 38 minutes into the movie—Harriett, age 13, with a fractured skull, observes, “The hole in my head just made God’s voice more clear.” The writing is powerful: stinks, stings, and stature. Heart-breaking: learn what gave landowners their stature. God’s voice: “…something like a sting, like a slap in the face.” The river crossing scene: courage defined.

#2. WE HAVE A POPE (2011)
Original title: “Habemus Papam” (Italian with English subtitles)
Unrated (1 hour, 44 minutes) - Amazon Prime
Read my review.
Memorable Line: “Not me, Lord! Not me!”

No spoiler alert is needed because I’ll just set the stage for you. The papal conclave is in session—and balloting has begun. The thunderous murmuring from dozens of cardinals needs no sub-titles: “Not me, Lord! Not me!”

No one wants the job.

Makes me wonder if, post COVID-19, there will be more or less applications for presidents, prime ministers, popes, governors, and mayors? Leaders needed. Yikes!

#3. THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA (1969)
PG-13 (2 hours, 19 minutes) - Amazon Prime

I stumbled across this one last week when the WSJ recommended the novel by Robert Crichton (which I have not read). Set during WWII and directed by Stanley Kramer, and starring Anthony Quinn, a wine-producing Italian village must hide a million bottles of wine from the Germans.

The village clown becomes the mayor (has that ever happened before?)—and without reading a book, watching a TED Talk, or attending training sessions—Quinn masterminds an ingenious plan. Lots of laughs (and a bit rowdy for PG-13)—but the teamwork scene is incredible and memorable.

On one level—it’s the aspiration for every country, including Italy, during this COVID-19 crisis. (Not the wine—the teamwork!)

#4. TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH (1949)
Not Rated (2 hours, 12 minutes) - Amazon Prime
Read my review.
Memorable Lines: “And I want you to paint this name on the nose of your ship: ‘Leper Colony.’ Because in it you're gonna get every deadbeat in the outfit. Every man with a penchant for head colds. If there's a bombardier who can't hit his plate with his fork, you get him. If there's a navigator who can't find the men's room, you get him. Because you rate him.”

In the classic 1949 film, Twelve O’clock High, Gregory Peck plays an Air Force general tasked with rejuvenating an exhausted and demoralized bomber group in World War II. From 9,000 feet, the daytime air raids against Germany seemed hopeless and unending. The unspoken goal: fly 25 missions with all limbs intact and you’ve done your duty.

One mission arrested my attention in the middle of this remarkable movie. General Frank Savage (Peck) announces a strategic target: the ball bearing factory. Bomb just one factory (Germany’s sole ball bearing supplier) and you’ll disrupt assembly lines throughout the country. Brilliant!

So…what’s your strategic target?

The film is often used in MBA courses (google it). Constantino Salios taught a course at Biola University’s Masters of Arts in Organizational Leadership program in 2007 and invited me to join the class for this powerful film.

#5. IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON (2007)
PG (1 hour, 39 minutes) - Amazon 
Read my review.
Memorable Line: “And of course at that time, the Atlas boosters were blowing up every other day down at Cape Canaveral. And it looked like a very, you know, a good way to have a short career.” (Jim Lovell)

This extraordinary documentary has teachable moments in almost every one of my 20 management buckets. The Results Bucket: check. The Strategy Bucket: bull’s-eye. The Systems Bucket: 15 astronauts owned 15 segments of the mission. The Crisis Bucket: “Houston, we have a problem.”

The film is absolutely rich in memorable moments in the Team Bucket. Then there’s the People Bucket with often hilarious and poignant illustrations of the four social styles, including analyticals (Neil Armstrong) and expressives (James Lovell).

#6. Sesame Street: Ernie Puts Down the Duckie (2003)
G-rated – View on YouTube (5 min.) or Amazon Prime
Memorable Line: “Put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone.”



Add some hoopla! to your next Zoom meeting and screen this rousing sing-along video clip, “Put Down the Duckie.” Read the Book Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets—and learn why “You gotta put down the duckie…if you wanna play the saxophone.” Hoots the Owl is trying to teach Ernie a lesson in Learning 101. Hebrews 12:1 is also applicable for this principle: “Master the Management Buckets by Reading.”

This Sesame Street video (all ages will love it) features more than a dozen celebrities and musicians, including Paul Simon, John Candy, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, and my favorite, Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

#7. OUR DAILY BREAD (1934)
Not Rated: (1 hour, 13 minutes) – Amazon (sometimes on YouTube)
Read my review.
Memorable line: “Ya gonna follow me or quit like yellow dogs?”

The New York Times named Our Daily Bread, directed by King Vidor, “one of the 10 best films of 1934.” (Which may not mean anything.) But I titled my review, “The Cadence of Team Building”—and I urge you to skip the plot and just watch the last 12 minutes.

Let me net it out for you. Would you invest 12 minutes to enrich the team building culture in your organization? Of course you would.

So here’s the plan. Give your staff team (or department team) the movie synopsis—but just show them the last 12 minutes. In my opinion, it’s the best video clip on team building ever produced.

Our Daily Bread depicts the deep depression-era cultural discouragement of the time, but lands on an upbeat solution. No need to watch the entire 73-minute film—often termed as a propaganda piece for the idea of a socialistic community. (Any inferences to current left-leaning politicians are purely coincidental. Note that I’m not recommending the film’s message, so just use this closing scene as a powerful team building tool.)

#8. MAKE YOUR BED (2014)
Inspirational Talk – View on YouTube
Time: 19 minutes
Read my book review.
Memorable Line: “If you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.”

The best-selling book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe the World, packs a punch at the fast clip of one big punch every 10 short pages. Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired) delivered these 10 principles at a university commencement address. His speech on May 21, 2014, to the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin went viral—with over 10 million views!

Watch the 19-minute YouTube video here (and read a transcript of his speech in the back of his book). The big idea for Principle #1: “Start your day with a task completed.” Or, listen to the audio book (1 hour, 53 minutes) at Libro.fm

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Bonus Hymn (for crisis reflection)
“I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow” (5 minutes)
Read my notes.

The great hymn, “Amazing Grace,” penned by converted slave trader John Newton (1725-1807), is familiar to all. But…have you sung or read Newton’s other, more deeply convicting hymn? My opinion: at the heart of a person’s response to crisis looms a strong or inadequate theological foundation.

In Knowing God, by J.I. Packer, the esteemed author wraps up Chapter 21, “These Inward Trials,” with Newton’s remarkable lyrics: six convicting verses of “I Asked the Lord That I Might Grow.” I’ve listened to, sung, and meditated on the words for 18 months now. “Alexa, repeat!” Yet every repeat stings. (Read the lyrics here. Listen here.)
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Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) What’s the most insightful leadership lesson you’ve ever learned from a movie, video clip, TED Talk, or podcast?
2) “Give me any two pages of the Bible,” said Cecil B. DeMille, “and I'll give you a picture.” Aristotle said, “The soul never thinks without a picture.” Why do you think the right film, at the right time, for the right reason—can be so powerful?

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Never Worry Alone!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Team Bucket is that a balanced life honors God and “thus we serve with more fulfillment and joy.” Is that possible during a crisis?

Authors Michael and Katherine Stallard recommend 12 must-do action steps during this COVID-19 crisis. Big Idea #11: “Never worry alone!” They note, “‍Whenever you feel anxious or stressed, call up a friend and talk it through. Doing this will move your brain activity from the amygdala where threats are processed to the cortex where we make rational decisions.” Click here to read the short article.

The authors help effective leaders boost human connection in cultures to improve performance. Check out my reviews of their books:

• Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy, and Understanding at Work, by Michael Lee Stallard, Jason Pankau, and Katharine P. Stallard. (Read my review.)
• Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity, by Michael Lee Stallard, with Carolyn Dewing-Hommes and Jason Pankau. (Read my review.)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. “The soul never thinks without a picture,” said Aristotle. Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
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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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Advice Trap

Issue No. 432 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends the perfect coaching book for leading your team from home—and why you must tame the Advice Monster! It’s top-of-my-list, so far, for 2020 book-of-the-year. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here my recent book reviews.

Tame the Advice Monster!  

Hello. My name is John and I’m an Advice Monster. Yikes! If you’ve got the guts to read this book, you won’t come out unscathed.

Yikes! Once again, I apologize to the hundreds of colleagues I worked with over the years (especially direct reports). Had I read this book during my CEO years, I coulda/woulda been a more effective (and healthier) CEO. So, so sorry.

And even though the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The good news: the second best time to plant a tree is today.

And one more Yikes! Another superbly incredible book will have to pop out in 2020 to dethrone The Advice Trap from being named my book-of-the-year—it’s phenomenal.

Michael Bungay Stanier says “Your job is to make your coaching an everyday interaction.” He quotes a colleague, “Coaching is no longer an event. It’s a way of being with each other.” And get this: “Coaching is no longer a one-off, occasional, ‘come into my office so I can coach you’ way of managing someone.”

During this current COVID-19 crisis (and the next crisis, and the next crisis…), The Advice Trap is absolutely the first book you and your team should read. Now. Today. The author’s coaching principles are easy-to-remember:
   1. Be Lazy (“…about jumping in and solving other people’s problems for them Just stop it!”)
   2. Be Curious (Tame your Advice Monster by “staying curious and managing the process of the conversation.” This is the essential principle.)
   3. Be Often (You can be more coach-like outside of the “hierarchical, formal event.” Think meetings, phone calls, Zoom calls, email—all forms of communication.)

Whew! Perfect timing! While huge numbers of team members are working from their homes during this COVID-19 crisis, this book says you can be more coach-like today. And curiosity is a big key. He quotes Dorothy Parker (and three cheers for all of the full-page easy-reading quotes in this gem):
“THE CURE FOR BOREDOM IS CURIOSITY.
THERE IS NO CURE FOR CURIOSITY.”

In my 2016 review of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, I shared a personal experience with Michael Bungay Stanier’s “AWE” Question (“And What Else?”). The big idea: keep asking the AWE question until the person you’re coaching fesses up to the real challenge. It was powerful—and the four-minute exercise was a conversion experience! (Read my review.)

Pick One. Michael Bungay Stanier says “Your job is to stop seeking the solutions and start finding the challenges.” He adds, “You can be known as the person who helps articulate the critical issue or as the person who provides hasty answers to solve the wrong problem. Which would you prefer? Exactly.”

How? “From now on, frame your role as helping to find the real challenge. What this really means is being relentless: staying curious long enough to allow the other person to create the insight and space to reach the heart of the matter.”

View this 14-minute TEDx Talk, “How to Tame Your Advice Monster,”
by Michael Bungay Stanier (March 13, 2020). It’s meaty, funny, and
might be your best use of 14 minutes this week!

Since reading this book, I’ve used the practical tools and phrases six times. A caller wanted my advice (Yeah!), but I resisted giving advice and instead dug deeper for the real challenge (very hard, but very satisfying). Over several evenings, I made the mistake of reading 20-30 probing and hilarious paragraphs to my wife, Joanne. She now throws the “Advice Monster” phrase back at me. Yikes!

Even my email responses are shorter. “Joe, so sorry, but I just read The Advice Trap, and taking it to heart by asking YOU questions and NOT giving advice. Sorry!!!” (See pages 150-152 for ways to graciously and effectively respond to those long, rambling emails. Worth the price of 20 books!) I just shipped the book to a client and will recommend The Advice Trap on a webinar next week.

If you’re still thinking you’re a great coach—and this would be a great book for everyone else—check out page 43, the “Mix ‘n’ Match Advice Monster Table.” The author says “you can’t tame your Advice Monster until you know what sets it off.” There are 12 types of people who activate your monster persona (pick one!)—coupled with 12 situations (pick one!).
   • My deadly combination: someone who asks me for advice—paired with a “time is short” situation.
   • Yours might be: someone who challenges you—coupled with “they keep making mistakes.”
Remember my “unscathed” comment? Caution: Scathing Ahead!

Oh, my. There’s so much more meat—delivered with wit and wry wordsmithing. The layout, the end-of-chapter questions, the abundant resources. So stunningly fun to read! I’ll end with these teasers:
   • Most of your people are working very hard on the wrong problem. You can fix this. (See the “Practice Masterclass” options and abundant online resources.)
   • The “Advice-Giving Habit” (AGH!) “generates waste, leaches innovation, and reduces the capacity to scale for success.” (Understand “Easy Change vs. Hard Change.”)
   • Advice Monsters come in three packages: Tell-It, Save-It (the rescuers), and Control-It (Yikes. He writes about me!).
   • There are “prizes” and “punishments” with each style. (My style: “I protect us from chaos.”)
   • In “A Bonus Bonanza of Extra Goodness” resource section, the author tweaked my curiosity (he’s good!) with a HBR article about “chaos pilots.” (Wow—we need chaos pilots more than ever! Yes or No?)
   • And this quote: “Hire for intellectual curiosity.” Per Liz Wiseman, “Intellectual curiosity is the stem cell of good leadership behaviors.”

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier.



Reminder! Delegate your reading! Ask a team member to also read and report on The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier. To listen to the audio version (3 hours, 10 minutes), visit Libro.fm

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) You’ll find dozens and dozens of practical ideas for being more coach-like, such as “Place the seven questions from The Coaching Habit near your keyboard. Set yourself the goal of asking at least one of them before you fire off advice, opinions, and suggestions. Maybe even ask two.” OK, team! I have a Starbucks card for the first five people who text me that you have done this!
2) The author quotes Peter Drucker, “The leaders of the future will know how to ask.” So how will you tame your Advice Monster—and move from telling to asking?

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1:1 Weekly Meetings: Scrap the Agenda! 
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

Yikes! Michael Bungay Stanier has a radical idea for my Meetings Bucket, Chapter 20, in Mastering the Management Buckets. Whether in person or on a Zoom call, he urges us to flip the script:

“Let’s face it, the standard weekly one-on-one meeting can be a dispiriting experience. It can easily become a ritualized reporting that, honestly, bores both sides of the conversation. You want to know what they’re up to…kind of. They want to reassure you that all’s OK and that they’re a good person who’s working hard, but they don’t love the ‘prove it!’ nature of the conversation.”

Instead, the author says a “coach-like approach can revitalize the experience. Cast aside the standard agenda that’s part of why the meeting feels stuck, and open with ‘What’s on your mind?’”

Read more on pages 152-153 and don’t miss this acid test: “See how long you can go in this meeting before you have to share an idea or an opinion.”

Click here for more resources from The Meetings Bucket, including the template, “Weekly Update to My Supervisor”—needed now more than ever during these work-at-home days. This tool pushes need-to-know info into the pre-meeting report, saving you time in your one-on-one meeting for being more coach-like!

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Many times…your breakthrough will come from an outside set of eyes and ears—and one or two powerful and probing questions. Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Fearless Innovation: A No-Nonsense Guide

Issue No. 431 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a new quick-reading book (also on audio) on why your organization needs a chief innovation officer—especially for these unprecedented times. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here my recent book reviews.

Can You Crunch Crisis With Innovation? 

Timing is everything, right? So in my queue for this week’s book review is the perfect title at the perfect time: Fearless Innovation: A No-Nonsense Guide.

With the USA’s unprecedented response to the coronavirus pandemic this week (national emergency declaration, travel bans, schools and sports venues closed, stock market gyrations, etc.)—you may have time to think more proactively about your organization. At least two people at your shop should read and report on this book within seven days.

The managing director of Cisco’s global Co-Innovation Centers says that today 63 percent of companies are hiring chief innovation officers and “more than 90 percent of companies are implementing new tech to support innovation processes.”

Subtitled, “Going Beyond the Buzzword to Continuously Drive Growth, Improve the Bottom Line, and Enact Change,” Alex Goryachev has no small task. In the sea of books and resources on “innovation,” an over-used and mostly misunderstood buzzword, why should I read yet one more yada/yada/yada treatise on an author’s favorite anecdotes? Yikes! Especially when he quotes Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert:

“Large corporations welcome innovation and individualism in the same way the dinosaurs welcomed large meteors.”

But…read the contents page and you’re hooked. Here are just nine of the 42 juiciest chapter titles and subtitles:
   • No Leadership = No Strategy = No Innovation
   • If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It
   • Incentivize Innovation through Radical Transparency
   • Stop Thinking “Disruptively”
   • The Pen is Mightier Than the Program
   • The Lonely Innovator Myth
   • Hire a Chief Innovation Officer
   • Put Governance Processes into Action
   • Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Urgent! Order Fearless Innovation today and read the innovation and change insights with today’s coronavirus filter. How will this affect our organization? What should we do? What should we not do? A crisis brings opportunity (see my Crisis Bucket)—and this resource will help you inject new thinking and new creativity as you build a culture of innovation.

Our globe’s crisis mandates innovation and could bring out the best in entrepreneurship. Already, I’ve noticed this:

• From Fine Dining to Drive-Thru. Per the Seattle Times on March 12, 2020, “Canlis, Seattle’s premier fine dining institution, announced Thursday morning that, due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, it will suspend fine dining operations indefinitely, but start a drive-thru burger joint in their parking lot, a pop-up bagel shop, and an at-home dinner delivery service.”

• Small Groups. Many churches have long preached the core value that “life change happens best in small groups.” Now that cities and states are limiting attendance of public gatherings, maybe church leaders will double-down on enriching the small group culture of their churches with customized curriculum and beefed up leader training for small group settings.

• Pretzels and a Mask. When changing planes in Panama City, Panama, last month, I complimented the airport pretzel shop staff for their entrepreneurial smarts—they added surgical masks to the menu for just a buck!

• Move to Digital. Nick Nicholaou “was in a roundtable meeting last week with many of the largest churches in the south and west. Many said they are stopping the printing and distribution of bulletins…” He adds, “This could be a great opportunity to transition the congregation from physical to digital bulletins and programs!” (Read his article.)

I think Alex Goryachev would salute these innovators. The author, interestingly, writes about his early days with Napster. Noting that there are three common—but inappropriate—responses to change (ignoring, shaming, and regulating), he admits that “Napster never survived the litigation, but ironically, the music industry did not survive Napster either and had to adapt—the digital music revolution was unstoppable, no matter the amount of regulation.”

If your reading style is to surf a book first, you’ll get sucked into the fascinating case studies in each chapter, including:
   • Lego. Yup, those little bricks that ingeniously find your bare feet! Since 1949, they’ve sold more than 400 billion!
   • Wikipedia Foundation. Did you know that after 244 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica published its final physical edition in 2010 (and a 250th anniversary yearbook in 2018)? “Today, Wikipedia features over 48 million articles in hundreds of languages, which would fit into about 19,000 print volumes of Britannica.”
   • TripAdvisor. Get this—456 million people visit the site each month! There are two attention-getting signs on the founder’s office door: “Speed wins” and “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.”
   • Cisco. The author’s aha moment of transparency is worth the price of the book. Proud of the innovative program Cisco launched to partner with startup companies, he got push-back from a Cisco employee with a great idea (page 103 is a must-read).
   • IKEA. Three of our five grandchildren are 17 (they’re triplets!).The case study on IKEA is now required reading for them. Founder Ingvar Kamprad launched IKEA at age (wait for it…) 17. Read how IKEA innovatively leverages the open-source philosophy to stay close to the customer.
   • Bloomberg Philanthropies. Yes—that Bloomberg! Read how and why Michael R. Bloomberg’s philanthropy wing facilitates innovation teams (“i-teams”) in municipal governments.

If you delegate your reading—and a team member summarizes this book at your next weekly staff meeting, I’ll ship a free copy of this book to the first person who emails me that the reviewer did NOT mention the author’s hilarious true story on pages 55-56.

In one of his first jobs, the author produced a robust metrics scorecard each week. The emailed report was greeted with “Great job!” or “Fantastic!” or “So interesting!” But the numbers were not great—decline was evident—but clearly no one was reading the report.

“So I tried a little experiment,” writes Goryachev. “One week, I password protected the Excel spreadsheet before sending it out. To my amusement, I received the same positive responses, but not one person asked me for the password—obviously, no one was reading the report. So, a few weeks later, I just stopped producing the report and invested my time in surfing the web. And no: no one ever asked about those numbers again.”

(For another LOL example, read pages 222-223 in Mastering the Management Buckets, “Delete Dumb Delegation: Do you still need that monthly report?”)

You’re busy and this review is long enough. But if you’re ready to move from buzzwords to bounty—this “No-Nonsense Guide” will point you in the right direction. And let me add, with more than 32 pages of endnotes, the resources/links are phenomenal—and the succinct chapter summaries are PowerPoint-worthy.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Fearless Innovation: Going Beyond the Buzzword to Continuously Drive Growth, Improve the Bottom Line, and Enact Change (A No-Nonsense Guide), by Alex Goryachev. To listen to the audio version (6 hours, 4 minutes), visit Libro.fm. And thanks to Wiley and Fortier Public Relations for the review copy.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Alex Goryachev suggests there are three (worst) responses to change: ignoring, shaming, and regulating. Here’s permission to be frank during our staff meeting today: what is the typical default response to change in our organization’s culture? How do you feel about that?
2) The author quotes Peter Drucker, “What gets measured, gets improved.” After a team member presents a brief review of chapter 3, “If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It,” ask this question: What’s the difference between “activity” metrics and “impact” metrics? What are we measuring for improvement—that is actually improving?

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Innovation and Entrepreneurship:
The Lemonade Stand Continuum
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Program Bucket, Chapter 6, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is this:
“Don’t Be the 8th Lemonade Stand in a Row of 9! It’s risky to be the first program—it’s high risk to be the last.”

That’s a principle from Marketing Your Ministry: Ten Critical Principles, which I co-authored with Dr. Robert Hisrich in 1990. After reading Fearless Innovation, I would have enjoyed an afternoon of lemonade and pretzels with Alex Goryachev and Bob Hisrich. As Goryachev readily admits, there’s tension between schools of thought on innovation and entrepreneurship. To widen your thinking, read my reviews of two other books by Hisrich:

• Entrepreneurship, by Robert D. Hisrich. Along with co-authors Michael P. Peters and Dean A. Shepherd, Hisrich has created perhaps the most comprehensive study ever of entrepreneurial men and women. In this remarkable 602-page book, filled with fascinating sidebar profiles of in-the-trenches entrepreneurs, the authors uncover every entrepreneurial stone ever imagined and conclude their work with 17 case studies covering 120 pages from the Rug Bug Corporation to “Mamma Mia: The Little Show That Could!” (Read my review.)

• Corporate Entrepreneurship: How to Create a Thriving Entrepreneurial Spirit Throughout Your Company, by Robert D. Hisrich and Claudine Kearney. You’ll appreciate the practical insights, like the “Flop of the Month Award.” In seeking to build a core value for the “tolerance of mistakes,” (nine markers for entrepreneurial cultures), “BMW has a ‘successful failures’ program that awards employees whose innovative ideas fail during implementation by giving a ‘flop of the month’ award.” (Read my review.)

Delegate additional reading on the topic with these gems:

• Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder, by Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal, Ph.D. Clifton’s core belief: “Entrepreneurs create customers. And customers, in turn, create jobs and economic growth. Almost no leader knows this.” He adds, “Virtually all U.S. and world leaders have misdiagnosed the core problem and put billions and billions of dollars into mistaken strategies that are not helping America’s economy, much less the world’s.” Hmmm. Still timely! (Read my review.)

• Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear, by Max Lucado. And speaking of fearless, encourage your team with this Master Wordsmither’s eight-letter acronym, “P.E.A.C.E.F.U.L.” delivering eight worry-stoppers. It’s the perfect book to delegate to a team member. “Pick a chapter and give us a five-minute reminder on how to imagine a life without fear.” Read my review (click here) or listen to the book on Libro.fm (click here: 3 hours and 33 minutes).

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. To leverage the innovation gifts and entrepreneurial strengths of your team and board, it often helps to ask an outside (unbiased) voice to evaluate and inspire key people. Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Issue No. 430 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights my book-of-the-year pick from 2013. Whew! This is one powerful, convicting book. Bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith says there are 20 workplace habits you need to break.

The author says that a “minor” workplace foible can become a major crisis. Why? “More often than not, it’s because people’s inner compass of correct behavior has gone out of whack—and they become clueless about their position among their coworkers.” So…if all of us are somewhat clueless, what should we do?

Click here for my review or click on the title to order from Amazon: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break, by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter. 

 

Servant of All: Reframing Greatness and Leadership through the Teachings of Jesus

Issue No. 429 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a new take (with a deeper context) on the perilous path to greatness. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Top-10 books of 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year pick.


“To Be Honest…”

To be honest…I have this thing about political pundits, CEOs, board members—even colleagues—who, after five minutes or more into a conversation then preface a statement with “Well, to be honest…” (I wonder: Is this now the first time they’re being honest with me?)

So—NEWS FLASH!—I’m saying this up front. To be honest, I really wasn’t motivated to read yet another book on servant leadership. We’ve all read them. We know (we know!) we could be and must be better at serving. Yada. Yada. Yada.

But (to be honest), because Ralph Enlow’s book, The Leader’s Palette: Seven Primary Colors, was on my Top-10 list for 2013 (and I still quote from it), I was willing to give servant leadership another try. And to be honest, Enlow’s latest book is only 125 pages, with lots of white space. I can speed-read this, I thought.

Whoa! Slow down, Pearson. Servant of All checks all of the boxes:
   • Convicting.
   • Motivational. Quotable.
   • Short chapters—long on wisdom.
   • Frequently, very, very funny. LOL funny.
   • Dramatically changed my thinking on Matthew 18.

As I’ve noted before, the measure of a great book is how often I’m reading selections to my wife, Joanne. And get this: Joanne picked it up and read it.

Subtitled, “Reframing Greatness and Leadership through the Teachings of Jesus,” the author (his day job is president of the Association for Biblical Higher Education), walks us through the Gospels to pinpoint the fuller and deeper context of what many take out of context:

     “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last,
       and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)

He writes that “some of the people who most often quote this simple and straightforward principle are among the worst violators of its true implications.” He adds, “…the disconnect between precept and practice is because much of our practical, theoretical, and even theological commentary on servant leadership fails to account for all the Bible has to say on the subject.”

In the foreword, Barna Group’s David Kinnaman notes, “We have a surplus of Christian leaders who mistake the size of their platform for the impact they are having for Jesus.” We all see it. Who’s the greatest? Check my Twitter followers. What’s your open rate?

The first five short chapters address how we misunderstand greatness. To be honest, I underlined most of the book. Example: “For all our talk about servanthood as Christ’s disciples, we just don’t like it when others are granted preference—especially in ways that expose our laxity or pettiness.” By page 57, Enlow has already called “Strike Four” on the disciples.

“Are you kidding me?” Enlow asks. Why did Jesus organize an inner circle campout on the mountain top with just three of the disciples? “Nine of the twelve get excluded from the greatest private screening of all time.” I underlined this:
     “The emotional path between exclusion and resentment
       is exceedingly well worn.”

I could fill this entire review with quotable quotes—dozens, wonderfully word crafted by Enlow. Plus, dozens more from a few hall of fame servants (is that an oxymoron?). Examples:

   • “What enables us to achieve our greatness contains the seeds of our destruction.” (Jim Valvano)
   • “If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you.” (Peter Marshall)
   • “Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.” (John Donne)
   • “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.” (H.G. Wells)
   • “A journey toward greatness is a journey down, not up.” (Larry Richards)
   • “Nothing—it would seem—fuels a crisis more than ambiguity.” (Ralph E. Enlow, Jr.)
   • “Not only did Jesus affirm that Simon’s answer was correct, he went way overboard.” (Enlow)
   • On Peter: “Often wrong, but never in doubt.” (Enlow)

In one setting, writes Enlow, “Matthew 18:15-20 was the go-to Scripture passage for addressing personal conflict on the team.” He describes the setting and then adds, “The frequency with which the passage was applied in an attempt to resolve these offenses became itself a source of irritation.”

Why the confusion over the Matthew 18 principles? Enlow: “One reason for this is that rarely, if ever, is this text recognized to be a continuation of Jesus’ lengthy discourse on greatness.” His insights in chapter 10, “The Pursuit of Greatness,” are worth the price of the book. (To be honest.)

How I wish other authors could deliver powerful content in small packages like Servant of All:
   • Five probing questions for each chapter (study guide quality)
   • Six memorable and alliterative chapter titles in Part 2—perfect for six weekly staff meetings. (Add prayer—and it preaches!)
   • Summary “In a Nutshell” sidebars contrasting “Worldly Thinking” versus “Godly Thinking.”

Did I mention humor? On forgiveness protocols, when Peter “was looking for a rule that would quantify his moral obligation and validate his righteousness,” you’ll recall Jesus’ answer on how often we must forgive someone: 77 times (some translations say 70 times 7). Per Enlow, here’s how Jesus responded:

“Put away your scorecard, Peter. You can’t count that high. In fact, if you’re keeping score on such things at all, it reveals that you have failed to understand what constitutes true greatness…”

To be honest—and this is the last time I’ll use that annoying phrase—I will read this book again. Enlow, himself, is amazingly transparent—which is arresting. This is a 10 on the must-read scale.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Servant of All: Reframing Greatness and Leadership through the Teachings of Jesus, by Ralph E. Enlow, Jr.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In his conclusion, Ralph Enlow reminds us to pursue the context of Jesus’ teaching on greatness, and writes, “If you have the courage to engage it in this way, you will not come out unscathed.” OK, team—do we have the courage to read this book together?
#2. Enlow: “The sort of greatness Jesus has been commending in this passage only comes by means of grace. Gratitude acknowledges and appropriates God’s grace. God’s grace appropriated engenders, in its turn, true greatness.” (Or as Anne Lamott says, “Grace always bats last.”) Do you agree?

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“10 Biggest Mistakes”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Budget Bucket, Chapter 15, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to implement best financial practices. Since the majority of my readers are board members and staff of nonprofit organizations and churches, I annually recommend two best practice resources:

• Zondervan 2020 Church and Nonprofit Tax and Financial Guide: For 2019 Tax Returns, by Dan Busby and Michael Martin
• Zondervan 2020 Minister's Tax and Financial Guide: For 2019 Tax Returns, by Dan Busby and Michael Martin

Both books include Top-10 lists, including “10 Biggest Tax and Financial Mistakes,” “10 Tax and Finance Questions Most Frequently Asked by Churches and Nonprofits,” plus (for the minister’s guide), “10 Biggest Tax Mistakes Made by Ministers.” Number 6 on the ministry mistakes list: “Weak controls over revenue, including failing to have offerings and other cash and checks controlled by two individuals until the funds are counted.”

For more resource in the Budget Bucket, click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Stuff and Soul

Issue No. 428 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting announces a new book out just today—Soul and Stuff by Wes Willmer. Another must-read! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Top-10 books of 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year pick.



Gut-Check: Soul-Check

I measure books on a sliding scale:
• Level 1: Readable—but not worthy of a review.
• Level 2: Readable/Reviewable—but may not land on my annual Top-10 list.
• Level 3: Must Read/Must Review—with new and arresting insights. (Hmmm. Never thought about that before.)

Here’s a Level 3 book—just released today: Stuff and Soul: Mastering the Critical Connection, by Wesley K. Willmer with Micah Hogan.

The authors don’t beat around the bush. They write, “When Jesus said that our heart is where our treasure is (Matt. 6:21), he showed the vital connection between our stuff and our souls. Where is your heart right now? Ask yourself what and where your treasure is, and you’ll know the answer.”

Even if you’ve read a dozen books on joyful giving, generosity, and stewarding your resources, it’s a prudent discipline to read one more—year after year, after year. Why? My friend Dick Towner often quotes Ben Patterson:

“There is no such thing as being right with God and wrong with your money.”

So…here are four reasons why “Soul and Stuff” (hot-off-the-press) is the book I’m reading—and re-reading—this year.

#1. Mastering the Three T’s. Many of us have heard a zillion sermons on the three T’s, right? Time, Talent, and Treasure. But Willmer and Hogan flip the script on us (a mark of a Level 3 book):
• T1 – Stuff is a TOOL. They quote A.W. Tozer: “Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.” (Whew. Think about that!)
• T2 – Stuff comes with a TEST. “…the best thing is that this is an open-book test, and you’re allowed to look at your neighbor’s answers! We should constantly have our Bibles open when making financial decisions and also ask our friends and neighbors who are further along in generosity for help and guidance.”
• T3 – Godly use of stuff is a TRADEMARK. “When God’s children bear their Father’s trademark, their giving becomes a means of others worshipping God.” Our giving and our generosity highlight God’s character. (Think about that!)

#2. Quotable Gut-Checks. Stick-in-the-ribs questions and quotes are peppered throughout each chapter like these:
• “Who sits on the chair of your own soul?”
• “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” (Jim Elliot)
• “The object of life, according to Jesus, is breathtakingly simple: Be rich toward God.” (John Ortberg)
• “In the total expanse of the human life, there is not a single square inch of which Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine.’” (Abraham Kuyper)
• “Nobody is so poor that he or she has nothing to give, and nobody is so rich that he or she has nothing to receive.” (Pope John Paul II)
• “Being rich toward God is not a formula; it’s a way of life.”
• “The formation of our souls, Ruth Haley Barton says, takes place ‘incrementally over time with others in the context of disciplines and practices that open us to God.’”
• “I am convinced that the great deterrent to giving is this: the illusion that earth is our home…Heaven, not earth, is my home.” (Randy Alcorn)
• “According to a Barna survey across all generations, only one in ten Christians say that serving God with their money is their number one financial goal. One in ten! It is no surprise that the Israelites in the desert made their famous calf out of gold.”
• “Have you noticed that most financial appeals address you as the owner of resources or a donor and not the steward of God’s resources?”
• “For Jesus, generosity is an attitude of the heart long before it is a description of an act.” (R. Scott Rodin)
• “…radically and basically all sin is ingratitude.” (Karl Barth)

#3. Page 36 Gut-Check Chart. Yikes. Normally, as I’ve mentioned in other book reviews, page 25 often delivers the meat and potatoes of a book. But since this is a very short book (thumbs up!) with just 92 pages, plus a study guide and a three-page appendix, the authors gently coax us along before hammering us with the spiritual gut-check chart on page 36. They list six “Stages of Faith and Giving” with a three-column format on “Correlation of Stuff Use and Soul Transformation,” building on a model by James Fowler. I’ll list just three of the six:
• Stage 1: IMITATOR – It’s easy to pinpoint a few friends and colleagues here. “Is able to mimic the examples of others in giving when shown or instructed.”
• Stage 3: CONFORMER – “Gives because it is the thing to do. Likes recognition, tax benefits, and other personal gain from giving.” (Yeah—I know the type!)
• Stage 6: MATURE STEWARD – I think I’ll skip this one—it’s meaty. You’ll have to read the book.

My gut: page 36 is worth the price of the book. I’ve photocopied this page and taped it to my office wall—as a daily reminder about my stuff and my soul. (And LOL—as I was photocopying this page—looking out my office window, I noticed a classic 1950s cherry red Chevy drive by, prompting a subtle covetous leap in my soul.)

#4. Is it well with my soul? Read Chapter 2 on mastering the idea of soul—and you’ll never sing “It Is Well With My Soul” casually or thoughtlessly again. If you don’t know this great hymn’s origin, google the story of Horatio Spafford, who lost four daughters with the sinking of the SS Ville du Havre—yet could pen these profound verses.

There’s so much more—and I urge you to read this thoughtful book with a pen and a prayerful spirit.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Stuff and Soul: Mastering the Critical Connection, by Wesley K. Willmer with Micah Hogan.



Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) The appendix in Stuff and Soul lists 10 “Biblical Principles for Stewardship and Fundraising.” Before you reference pages 113-115, write down three to five principles that you would include on the list.
2) Spoiler Alert! The summary statement reads: “When these principles are implemented, which rely on God changing hearts more than on human [fundraising] methods, the resulting joy-filled generosity of believers will fully fund God’s work here on earth.” Fully fund? Wow! Do you agree? 

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“If I am always in a hurry…”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Donor Bucket, Chapter 11, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is this caution to nonprofit and church fundraising teams: “When you spend your days in fundraising, you raise money. But when you invest your life in growing God-honoring stewards, He raises up extravagantly generous givers.”

In alignment with Soul and Stuff is John Ortberg’s book, Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You. In his chapter, “The Soul Needs a Center,” Ortberg reminds us:

“We all commit idolatry every day.
It is the sin of the soul meeting its needs
with anything that distances it from God.”

“If I am always in a hurry to be somewhere else,
it’s an indicator that my soul has not yet found its home.”

Is it well with your soul today? (Click here to read my review of Ortberg’s book.) 

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

The Amazon Management System

Issue No. 427 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a digital wake-up call in just 138 pages. Learn why frugality is an Amazon core value! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Top-10 books of 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year pick.



Two-Pizza Team Meetings!

Emergency alert! Bestselling business author Ram Charan says the disrupter is in the building—and its name is Amazon. “Our 21st century prevailing management systems are still largely inherited from the oldest forms of human organization, such as the military and the church,” he writes. Designed for “command and control” in the pre-Internet era, these hierarchical bureaucracies mimicked the only management systems they knew.

Until the digital age and Amazon.

Whew. This tightly written book, The Amazon Management System (just 138 pages plus helpful appendices), is a wake-up call for nonprofits, for-profits, and churches. If you’re wondering…
• …why your credit card bill is populated with Amazon purchases, read this book.
• …how to learn more about Amazon’s focused obsession on the customer, read this book.
• …how Amazon (online in 1995) was worth $1 trillion in 2018 (it goes up and down, of course), read this book.

In addition to the big ideas—and bold management risks—there’s plenty of fun stuff in this quick-reading book, with one-page bullet-point summaries for every chapter. For fun: Why did Jeff Bezos pick “Amazon” for his company name? According to Ram Charan and Julia Yang, Bezos had experimented and then rejected numerous other suggestions like:
• Awake.com
• Browse.com
• Bookmall.com
• Relentless.com
• Makeitso.com
• Cadabra.com

“Still searching, Bezos referred to the dictionary. Luckily the name hunt didn’t last long. Amazon jumped out at him. It was love at first sight. Amazon ‘is not only the largest river in the world. It’s many times larger than the next biggest river. It blows all the other rivers away,’ Bezos said.”

That’s just one interesting sidebar in this serious—but short—analysis of the Amazon management system. It’s a must-read assignment for every senior leader (and perhaps your board members).

The authors aren’t suggesting your organization becomes an Amazon clone—but, instead, “understand how it works and pick the valuable ingredients and inspirations for your own digital way.” And you will think differently about digital immediately. The digital future is scary, but brimming with opportunity. The book highlights six building blocks:
   1. Customer-Obsessed Business Model
   2. Continuous Bar-Raising Talent
   3. AI-Powered Data and Metrics System
   4. Ground-Breaking Invention Machine
   5. High-Velocity and High-Quality Decision-Making
   6. Forever Day-1 Culture

A very helpful one-page checklist of the Amazon Management System is on page 135. One page only! And—throughout this gem—it’s the rare page in my book that isn’t underlined. Examples:

• On Amazon’s relentless drive to invent, “Seek and build big ideas continuously [using a brilliant press release process]…and construct cross-functional full-time and co-located ‘two-pizza’ team with the right project leader.” Why? If two pizzas aren’t enough, the team is too big!
   
• On making high-velocity decisions: a brilliant segmentation and process for decision-making: Type 1 decisions (one-way doors) and Type 2 decisions (two-way doors). “For Type 2 decisions, speed matters. Let the metrics owner make the call. If approval required, one level only.”

• To create a “Forever Day-1 Culture,” Amazon does this: “Operationalize by observable behaviors, create forcing mechanisms, live and breathe them yourself, and invent memorable symbols and rewards. (See page 132 for the “Just Do It Award.” The authors add, “Given his constant reinforcement of frugality, Bezos came up with the totally unorthodox idea of having old sneakers, worn and torn, mounted and bronzed.” (It reminded me of my 2017 book-of-the-year, The Power of Moments.)

• “Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ.” Oh, to have observed an executive meeting when Bezos—skeptical when the head of the Customer Service Department said that customer wait times were “well under one minute” (without “offering any supporting evidence”)—used the meeting room speakerphone and dialed the call center’s 800 number. The wait time: four-and-a-half minutes. Yikes!

If you’re looking for weekly staff meeting topics, consider using the “Amazon 14 Leadership Principles” on pages 141-143. Succinct, with three to four lines of commentary, they include: 1) Customer Obsession (there was an empty seat at early meetings—representing the customer), 2) Ownership (leaders are owners), and 3) Invent and Simplify.

The fourth principle is noteworthy and arresting: 4) Are Right, A Lot. Amazon notes: “Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.”

Others include: 5) Learn and Be Curious, 6) Hire and Develop the Best. “Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion.” 7) Insist on the Highest Standards, 8) Think Big. “Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.” And 9) Bias for Action.

When hiring, a designated “Bar Raiser,” independent of the team that is hiring, also interviews the applicant. Bar raisers are “meticulously trained to be the stewards of Amazon’s leadership principles.” (Read more here.)

The tenth principle is Frugality. “There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.”

11) Earn Trust, 12) Dive Deep [no task is beneath a leader], 13) Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. “Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting.” 14) Deliver Results.

Oh, my—there is SO much I should add to this review, like:
   • Avoiding “the creep onto the treacherous slippery slope called ‘Day 2’”
   • Amazon’s flywheel (per the Jim Collins concept)
   • The amazing impact that Jeff Bezos’ grandfather had on his thinking
   • “Nothing overcomes the wrong person. In the wrong hands, great ideas will not blossom.”
   • “To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.” (See the 18 failed innovations on page 80.)
   • Charlie Ward, the junior software engineer, who proposed the idea for Amazon prime in 2004. As of 2018, Amazon had over 100 million Prime Members!
   • Start with the customer (see what questions to ask on page 86).
   • “Eat your own dog food.”
   • The Jeff Bezos 70-90 Rule (When you have 70% of the info—make the decision. “If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”)
   • Why Bezos resists “the overrated importance of harmony.”
   • July 9, 2004: The day Amazon banned PowerPoint presentations at the core executive team level—and honed the “Six-Page Narratives” (sometimes two pages) approach. (See Bezos’ email on page 108!)

And finally, “A wrong decision may not be career-ending at Amazon, but Bezos will make sure the lesson is well learnt.” (Note: Read this book and it will be career-enhancing. Guaranteed.)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Amazon Management System: The Ultimate Digital Business Engine That Creates Extraordinary Value for Both Customers and Shareholders, by Ram Charan and Julia Yang.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) The authors say that Amazon’s emphasis on Forever Day-1 is not rocket science. But organizations must notice the “usual suspects” to Day-2 thinking: “complacency, bureaucracy, and interdependency that blurs the lines of accountability.” What are the “usual suspects” that inhibit results in our organization?
#2. Originally, Amazon had five values, but those morphed into 14 Leadership Principles. Many “experts” would say 14 are too many—and can’t be remembered or lived out. But Amazon has “operationalized” their principles into daily life. Example: read the blog post, “What’s It Like to Interview at Amazon.” Pop Quiz! From memory, recite our core values—and share when you saw one value lived out in the last seven days.

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Ram Charan: Prolific Thinker!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is that you must be “a disciplined lifelong learner in the art of management.”

I’ve appreciated Ram Charan’s consistently helpful books on management, leadership, and board governance. In addition to The Amazon Management System (December 2019), check out my reviews of these Ram Charan books:

• Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan (Read my review.)
• Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Done, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan (Read my review.)
• Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis, by Ram Charan (Read my review.)
• Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask, by Ram Charan (Read my review.)
• The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers, by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan (Read my review.)
• Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way, by Ram Charan, Dennis Carey and Michael Useem (Read my review.)
• The Attacker’s Advantage: Turning Uncertainty Into Breakthrough Opportunities, by Ram Charan (Read my review.)

REMINDER: TO DOWNLOAD 3 LISTS OF 400+ BOOKS REVIEWED BY JOHN PEARSON, visit The Book Bucket (click here):
• List #1: Books by Management Buckets Categories
• List #2: Chronological List of 425 Issues of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (400+ books)
• List #3: John Pearson's Top-100 Books List (updated every 2 years)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Talking to Strangers

Issue No. 426 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features the latest Wall Street Journal bestseller by Malcolm Gladwell—but be warned. It’s depressing! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Top-10 books of 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year pick.

Don’t Read This Depressing Review!

If you’re looking for an upbeat you-can-be-anything-you-wanna-be positive-thinking, inspirational page-turner for Year 2020—THEN QUICK!—delete this eNews. This book is depressing.

Malcolm Gladwell’s new bestseller, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know, is mistitled. Had the publisher asked me, I would have suggested these titles:
• We Are Rotten at Spotting Liars and Deceivers!
• The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things and Desperately Wicked!
• Why Neville Chamberlain Should Have Skipped the Meeting With Hitler!
• The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth: LOL!
• Dishonesty and Stupidity Are Everywhere: Don’t Trust Large Organizations or Bernie Madoff!

I could go on. But if you insist on reading my review of Talking to Strangers (and even worse—reading the book), please remember that I warned you.

This will be short—because it’s too depressing to write a long review.

THE BIG IDEA: Really smart people (the CIA, military intelligence, regulators, university officials with Ph.D.’s, the list goes on…) are not that smart when discerning if people we don’t know well are hoodwinking us (think spies, double agents, Ponzi schemers, football coaches, job applicants, the list goes on…). So…what chance is there for the rest of us with average intelligence? Gladwell: not much! The author elaborates on two puzzlers:

PUZZLE #1: “Why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face?”

PUZZLE #2: “How is it that meeting a stranger can sometimes make us worse at making sense of that person than not meeting them?”

EXAMPLE: The brazenness of a female employee of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (a Cuban spy), who won honors from the CIA and then was chosen for a stint in Cuba as a CIA distinguished intelligence analyst. Shocking! (Did I mention “shocking”?)

BEST QUOTE: “The issue with spies is not that there is something brilliant about them. It is that there is something wrong with us.”

What’s wrong? We’re rotten at spotting liars. Citing numerous studies, Gladwell notes: “What [the researcher] discovered is what psychologists always find in these cases, which is that most of us aren’t good at lie detection. On average, judges correctly identify liars 54 percent of the time—just slightly better than chance.”

He adds, “This is true no matter who does the judging. Students are terrible. FBI agents are terrible. CIA officers are terrible. Lawyers are terrible.”

In typical Gladwellian fashion (to be clear—I love his books), the author paints page-turning narratives with both familiar and unfamiliar accounts: Chamberlain and Hitler, Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Cox (fascinating), the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State University, and the never-should-have-happened death of Sandra Bland (the result of a routine traffic stop). There’s more (and caution—some of the verbatim courtroom accounts are raw and R-rated).

AHA! MOMENT: There are many, but I was particularly intrigued with Gladwell’s focus on “location” and why local police tend to misunderstand criminal data about location—or just ignore it. I found just a modicum of hope to mitigate the depression:

Discussing the “Law of Crime Concentration,” the author writes, “Like suicide, crime is tied to very specific places and contexts. Weisburd’s experiences in the 72nd Precinct and in Minneapolis are not idiosyncratic. They capture something close to a fundamental truth about human behavior. And that means that when you confront the stranger, you have to ask yourself where and when you’re confronting the stranger—because those two things powerfully influence your interpretation of who the stranger is.”

FINAL THOUGHT: The book is depressing, but you should read it—or delegate your reading to someone on your team.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, by Malcolm Gladwell. And special thanks to Dave Barton for recommending this depressing book! To listen to the audio version (8 hours, 42 minutes), visit Libro.fm

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Malcolm Gladwell said the reason we’re so bad at spotting liars is because “we’re truth-biased” and “…we nearly always miss the crucial clues in the moment…” Yikes! So…who would like to read and report on this book BEFORE we interview our next job applicant?
2) In a footnote about training U.S. military personnel who might some day be water boarded and/or tortured (page 244), Gladwell contrasted two schools of thought. "The Navy wanted to show their trainees how bad things could get. The Air Force felt their trainees were better off not knowing that.” How would you approach this subject—wanting the best for the people you’re training?

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Outliers: 1 of My Top-100 Books
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to create your Top-100 book list. This week, I posted three updated lists on my Book Bucket webpage:

BOOKS REVIEWED BY JOHN PEARSON:
• List #1: Books by Management Buckets Categories
• List #2: Chronological List of 425 Issues of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (400+ books)
• List #3: John Pearson's Top-100 Book List (updated every 2 years)

One of my Top-100 book picks is by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success. (Click here to read my 2008 review.) Here’s a snippet:

You will insist that Gladwell’s conclusions cannot possibly be true. Are they? You’ll sense sadness at how we fail to understand culture—and the incredible harm of wasted years and lives—all preventable, claims the author. He makes a compelling case about luck, timing—and the extraordinary power of the 10,000-hour rule and how it contributed to the success of Bill Gates and the Beatles.

Read Outliers and then host a team discussion on the vast implications for your organization, such as what to consider when recruiting new team members and how professional development programs might need to change based on a person’s ethnicity. For example, Greeks and Guatemalans are in the top five of the “uncertainty avoidance” countries (high reliance on rules), while Swedes and Jamaicans represent the top-five cultures best able to tolerate ambiguity. (Did I mention I’m Swedish?)

P.S. To read my 2013 review of Gladwell’s excellent book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, click here.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

Top-10 Books of 2019 and Book-of-the-Year

Issue No. 425 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting delivers my Top-10 book picks from 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year. Also, Happy New Year! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my 2018 Top-10 picks from last year.

TOP-10 BOOKS FOR 2019

This issue features books I reviewed in Issues No. 398 to 425. To read other 2019 book reviews from Your Weekly Staffing Meeting, visit the archives at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog on this page.

In 2019, I published 27 issues. (But I thought Your Weekly Staff Meeting was published weekly? Not!) Certainly not all 10 books will have popular appeal—because all of us are at different levels of competency and curiosity across the 20 management buckets. What were your Top-10 books in 2019?

2019 BOOK-OF-THE-YEAR
CALL SIGN CHAOS: LEARNING TO LEAD, by Jim Mattis and Bing West (Order from Amazon) – Read my review. Listen to the audio version (12 hours) at Libro.fm

Best Quote. “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead.”

I’d slot Call Sign Chaos in a category of one. Leadership savvy (check!). Loyalty to the Commander in Chief—irrespective of political party (check!). An understandable primer on the history and deep divides in the Middle East (check!). A cogent argument for allies and partnerships (check!). Blunt but courteous approaches to commanding officers (check!). And—surprisingly—the in-the-trenches battle accounts and leadership/strategy assumptions in Iraq and Afghanistan—page-turning (check!). I could go on…

Learning to lead is a lifelong journey—and the author leads the way. Gen. Mattis writes that the Commandant of the Marine Corps maintains a list of required reading for every rank. With every promotion comes a new reading list. Brilliant.

Mattis served 712 days as the 26th Secretary of Defense. His Dec. 20, 2018 letter of resignation to President Trump is just one of numerous signed letters in the book’s epilogue—and is a short treatise on his core values and leadership savvy.

He also served as a U.S. Marine from 1969 to 2013 and was Commander of the U.S. Central Command from 2010 to 2013 under President Obama. From 2007 to 2009, for NATO, he was Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation. That’s an impressive business card! I urge you to read this book.

2019 TOP-10 BOOK LIST: The Other 9
(With brief excerpts from my reviews, these nine are listed in alphabetical order by author.)

#2. KNIGHT OF THE HOLY GHOST: A SHORT HISTORY OF G. K. CHESTERTON, by Dale Ahlquist (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.



Best Quote. G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) “was once asked what advice he would give to a young journalist. He said he would tell him to write one article for the Sporting Times and one for the Religious Times and then put them in the wrong envelopes.”

Published in 2019, the book is just 170 pages, and I couldn’t stop talking about it all year.

#3. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0 (The World’s Most Popular Emotional Intelligence Test), by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.

Best Quote. “CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace.” The authors add, “Considering the mountain of literature about EQ, you’d think corporate executives would be pretty smart about it.”

“EQ, on the other hand, is a flexible skill that can be learned. While it is true that some people are naturally more emotionally intelligent than others, a high EQ can be developed even if you aren’t born with it.”

#4. TURNING THE FLYWHEEL: A MONOGRAPH TO ACCOMPANY GOOD TO GREAT (Why Some Companies Build Momentum and Others Don’t), by Jim Collins (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.



Best Quote. “No matter what your walk of life, no matter how big or small your enterprise, no matter whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit, no matter whether you’re CEO or a unit leader, the question stands, How does your flywheel turn?”

Jeff Bezos “…considered Amazon’s application of the flywheel concept ‘the secret sauce.’” But this caution: you need to understand how your organization’s specific flywheel turns—and the sequence of the components. Collins notes seven key steps for capturing your unique flywheel approach—plus this warning: don’t feature more than four to six components.

#5. NO! A GUIDE FOR BUSY PEOPLE: Banish Busyness and Focus on What Matters Most, by Doug Fields (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.



Best Quote. “What I didn’t realize was that every ‘YES’ I was saying turned into an unspoken ‘NO’ as well, often to the people most important to me.”

More than 40 powerful quotations on why you must say NO:
• “When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.” (Paulo Coelho)
• “Sometimes no is the kindest word.” (Vironika Tugaleva)
• “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” (Warren Buffet)

#6. STRATEGYMAN VS. THE ANTI-STRATEGY SQUAD: Using Strategic Thinking to Defeat Bad Strategy and Save Your Plan, by Rich Horwath (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.

Best Quote. The author noted the Stanford University study that says you’ll retain six to seven times more information when it’s presented in a story format.

Thus...”Fwumpfh!”…”B-Zapp!”…and “Bwa Ha Ha!” (Yes, I’m quoting directly from this must-must read graphic novel!)
• “A survey of nearly 5,000 senior executives showed that more than 50% didn’t think they had a winning strategy in place.”
• “A recent study of more than 8,000 new, nationally distributed products found that only 40% were still on the market three years later.”

#7. LEADERS: MYTH AND REALITY, by General Stanley McChrystal (US Army, Retired), Jeff Eggers, and Jason Mangone (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.

Best Quote. In the chapter on “The Geniuses,” (Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein—two of 13 leaders profiled), the authors quote Bernstein:

“Finally, the great conductor must not only make his orchestra play, he must make them want to play. He must exalt them, lift them, start their adrenalin[e] pouring, either through cajoling or demanding or raging. But however he does it, he must make the orchestra love the music as he loves it. It is not so much imposing his will on them like a dictator; it is more like projecting his feelings around him so that they reach the last man in the second violin section.”

#8. “WHY YOUR MEETINGS STINK—AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT,” by Steven G. Rogelberg, (Harvard Business Review, January-February 2019), visit the HBR website here. (Read online at HBR) - Read my review.

Best Quote. “One study found that despite the prevalence of meetings today, 75% of those surveyed had received no formal training in how to conduct or participate in them.”
• “To prevent groupthink, consider incorporating periods of silence throughout the meeting…”
• Instead of verbal brainstorming, use “brainwriting.” (A must-read paragraph!)

#9. WHERE THE LIGHT DIVIDES, by Fred Smith (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.

Best Quote. “What the people of Israel did with the serpent, we do the same in many ways. We make good things into icons and then into idols.” He adds, “Some have made an idol of the church for their own benefit.”

So…caution all readers! Fred Smith’s 50 short chapters will sneak up on you and—if you have any measure of a spiritual pulse—you’ll get hammered. But it’s a good hammering. He’s provocative, but also patient with us. And just when you turn the page for a new chapter (“Ah! Yes! I know this biblical account…”), Fred will twist your pre-conceived and often ill-conceived understanding—and grab you by the spiritual throat.

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For the “10th book” in my Top-10 list, I’ll apologize in advance—here are three more books, co-authored with ECFA President Dan Busby. We pretty much split the writing in half—so at least half of the content is excellent (Dan’s half!).
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#10A. LESSONS FROM THE CHURCH BOARDROOM: 40 Insights for Exceptional Governance, by Dan Busby and John Pearson (Order from Amazon) – Read my summary.


Best Quote. “Would you trust a surgeon who stopped learning? How about a church board member who stopped learning?” (Click here to read the blog series from 40 guest bloggers.)

#10B. MORE LESSONS FROM THE NONPROFIT BOARDROOM: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! by Dan Busby and John Pearson (Order from Amazon) – Read my summary.



Best Quote. In Lesson 39, we quote Donald Rumsfeld, “Meetings are a good place to discover whether an organization might be suffering from groupthink. If everyone in the room seems convinced of the brilliance of an idea, it may be a sign that the organization would benefit from more dissent and debate.” (Click here to subscribe to the blog series beginning on Jan. 8, 2020.)

#10C. ECFA TOOLS AND TEMPLATES FOR EFFECTIVE BOARD GOVERNANCE: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson (Order from Amazon) – Read my summary.

Best Tool. Tool #11 of 22: Monthly Dashboard Report. A one-page color-coded dashboard report from the CEO to the board can be customized to highlight three to five of your CEO’s Annual S.M.A.R.T. Goals—with this caveat from Peter Drucker, “If you have more than five goals, you have none.” This will revolutionize your CEO’s (or senior pastor’s) priorities—and get everyone on the same page. Pair this with Tool #10—and you’ll eliminate hallway whining! (Read the blog series on all 22 tools. Click here.)

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Your Top-100 Books List
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to create your Top-100 Books List. I’ve crafted my list using my 20 management buckets (core competencies) categories. Download the template from the Book Bucket and start your list this week!

When my buckets book was published in 2008, I listed one book recommendation per bucket on pages 83-85. In the Delegation Bucket, for example, read The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, by Ken Blanchard, William Oncken, and Hal Burrows (Order from Amazon) - Read my review.

COMING JAN. 6, 2020: Visit the Book Bucket webpage on Jan. 6 to download three lists of books (updated through 12/31/19) that I’ve reviewed since 2006, including my Top-100 books list.

I'm reviewing some fantastic books in 2020, including this hot-off-the-press winner, The Amazon Management System: The Ultimate Digital Business Engine That Creates Extraordinary Value for Both Customers and Shareholders, by Ram Charan and Julia Yang (Order from Amazon).

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.

2020 Spiritual Growth Books

Issue No. 424 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks, “In the next decade, what’s your plan for growing and enriching your walk with God?” Here are some daily, weekly, and monthly spiritual growth resources. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out this website for recent book reviews. Plus, coming this week—watch for my 2019 Book-of-the-Year pick.



2020 PERSONAL AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

In the introduction to The Message: Solo—An Uncommon Devotional, the editors describe the classic devotional method of lectio divina (reading, thinking, praying, and living Scripture) as “more Bible basking than Bible study.”

“But it’s not easy,” they add. “Lectio divina takes practice, and lots of it. You will have to learn to be quiet, to silence the voices of responsibility, self, family, and even religion in order to hear what God has to say to you.” (Yikes! “Responsibility” is one of my top-5 Gallup strengths!)

“Try not to view the elements of lectio divina as steps to be checked off your to-do list,” the editors add. But what if…”…no lightning strikes or brilliant revelations” come? “Sometimes devotion means just sitting in the presence of God.”

In Issue No. 423, I recommended several leadership growth books for 2020. Now in this issue, I’m suggesting some options for personal and spiritual growth books for 2020.

Over the decades, I’ve discovered that one size doesn’t fit all—and one spiritual growth practice doesn’t fit all. About every five years, I move on to another approach—in order to keep my walk with God fresh. Lifelong learning, after all, is about authentic living—not just learning. (See John Ortberg’s thoughts below on this.)

52 WEEKS
Silencio: Reflective Practices for Nurturing Your Soul, Stephen A. Macchia, Editor (Order from Amazon)



• This hot-off-the-press and slow-you-down 52-week resource is from the Leadership Transformations Ministry Team, led by Stephen A. Macchia, who practices what he preaches.
• It follows the lectio divina method (read, think, pray, live) and each week includes commentary, a hymn, reflection questions, and spiritual practices.
• John French, the writer for Chapter 1, tells about a friend: “He had read the Bible all his life; sometimes the text was full of life and challenge. Recently, however, his devotional life was more mechanical, simply going through the motions. Here was a serious Christian going through a dry spell. Deciding to read through the Bible in a year, at breakneck speed, he completed his assignment … but he sensed very little of the voice of God in his life.”
• If the above might be your story, you’ll appreciate Silencio.

365 DAYS
Trust for Today: 365 Days of Encouragement – A Year With the Trueface Team (Order from Amazon)

• You’ll chuckle when you read the short, one-page devotional thought for February 24, “Do angels laugh when we say something funny?” and “In heaven, will we be able to make God laugh?”
• Spoiler Alert! I’d buy the book just for the one-page story (May 29) about Dr. Rosscup’s response to a harried seminarian’s request for a one-day extension on a final paper. (The prof finished the paper for his student! On time!)
• I’ve reviewed numerous books by the Trueface Team (their best: The Cure). Maybe start 2020 by re-reading The Cure.

13 MONTHS OR 13 WEEKS
Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry (Expanded Edition, 2018), by Ruth Haley Barton (Order from Amazon) – Click here for the 10-hour audio version from Libro.fm 

• This expanded edition includes a foreword by Gary Haugen, Founder and CEO of International Justice Mission. He writes:
“…imagine with me for a moment, a staff of high-performing lawyers, criminal investigators, social workers and professionals in Washington, D.C., and offices across the developing world, rushing into the office to begin their day, faced with the task of fighting slavery, human trafficking, police abuse, and other forms of violent oppression. As these staff arrive at their desks, their first order of business is to stop. All phones are off. Laptops closed. No email. No meetings. Just silence. Solitude. Stillness. For thirty minutes.”

• In 2004, Haugen gave every staff member two gifts: a blank leather journal with the words “8:30 Stillness” embossed on the cover and a book by Ruth Haley Barton.

• In the Afterword of the book, Leighton Ford, author and pillar confesses, “I read here things that both sting and sing…”
• I named this my 2009 book-of-the-year and in 2020 I will re-read this convicting travelogue on the life of Moses. I’m taking 13 months for the 13 chapters. The chapters are way too meaty to digest in a week. In 2009, Don Parrott, then president of The Finishers Project, encouraged me to read this book—yet with a warning. “After you read it, you’ll need to get away for some solitude to deal with it.” I agree.
• And I double dare you! Answer the 17 assessment questions for leaders, “How Is It With Your Soul?” on pages 241-244.

30 DAYS OR 30 STAFF MEETINGS
Leadership Prayers, by Richard Kriegbaum (Order from Amazon)



• Richard Kriegbaum served and survived as a university president and thus gives us 30 powerful prayers on leadership (Identity, Values, Action, Delegation, Loss, Weariness, Planning, Courage, Marketing, Failure, Budget, Anger, Board, Intuition and 16 more). In his praying, the “board” prayer follows the “anger” prayer. Hmmm.
• Each prayer is two pages, followed by a one-page “reflection.” When is the last time you talked to your Heavenly Father about the Delegation Bucket? His key insight: “The highest form of delegating is to lay the leadership mantle on key people for particular goals and then follow their lead.”
• When I read it, I asked myself: What are five to 10 leadership topics, issues or concerns that, maybe, I’ve never, ever prayed about? (Read my review.)
• But beware! “By their nature, these prayers live only when they are internalized; they have power only when they are applied to real-life challenges. Skimming over them to get the main ideas will mean little because this is not a nifty new management technique.”

31 MORNINGS & 31 EVENINGS
A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic, by John Baillie (Order from Amazon)



• Where do I start? I received this deeply encouraging devotional book in 1988 and rarely missed reading the 31 morning prayers, one per day, for 12 years until it was stolen, along with my laptop. (Maybe the thief is still reading it?)
• On the blank facing page to each prayer, I had recorded my travels by date and location, U.S. and worldwide. Combined with the poignant prayers by this Scottish Presbyterian professor, my road warrior diary was both nostalgic and meaningful.
• I bought my replacement prayer book in 2000—a hardback this time—and used it infrequently for a decade (so it wouldn’t become stale), but now I read it online often (click here for free access).
• I’ve gifted this special book to dozens of appreciative friends—and it’s one of 10 books on my “ideal bookshelf” (click here for my list).

DIG DEEP & GO SLOW: 3 More Resources
#1. Steward Leader Meditations: Fifty Devotions for the Leadership Journey, by R. Scott Rodin (Order from Amazon)
• For your next 50 staff meetings! Read my review.

#2. Knowing God, by J.I. Packer (Order from Amazon) 
• 22 chapters/22 months! Read my review.
• 10-hour audio version (Order from Libro.fm)

#3. THE ONE YEAR BIBLE OPTIONS (15 minutes per day):
• The One Year Bible NLT (Order from Amazon) 
• The Daily Message: Through the Bible in One Year, by Eugene H. Peterson (Order from Amazon) 
• 73-hour audio version of The Holy Bible (HCSB) - (Order from Libro.fm)
• Reminder from Silencio: “Deciding to read through the Bible in a year, at breakneck speed, he completed his assignment … but he sensed very little of the voice of God in his life.”

2020 SELF-GUIDED GROWTH
Amazon Gift Card (Order from Amazon)



• Some team members (or family members) may favor picking their own books—based on their season of life. If so…an Amazon gift card is perfect!

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John Ortberg on Training vs. Trying
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

One of the big ideas in the Systems Bucket, Chapter 18, in Mastering the Management Buckets is “Ready! Fire! Aim! Resist the urge to tinker endlessly to perfect the flawless system. Perfection is not the goal.” This big idea also applies to personal and spiritual development.

In the footsteps of Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline) and Dallas Willard (The Spirit of the Disciplines), John Ortberg wrote The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People more than 20 years ago. His humor and his plain-spoken practical theology shine through and it remains one of my favorite books. (He joked about calling the book, “Dallas for Dummies.”)

Read the third chapter for his core message, “There is an immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something.” He adds, “Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.” Example: A New Year’s resolution to pray more every day may accomplish little if it doesn’t lead to being a more God-honoring person.

He warns do-gooders that God is not impressed with the activity of training. “Spiritual disciplines are to life what calisthenics are to a game. Once the game starts, basketball players get no bonus points based on how many free throws they shot in practice. The only reason to practice them is to be able to make them in a game.”

As you inspire your team in 2020, focus on results not activity. As you pray and practice spiritual disciplines this year, remember that those activities are not ways to get extra credit from God. If you and I are not becoming more loving and more caring, our “practice time” is worth little.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love. (Read John’s review here.)
___________________________________________________________________________________

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 an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. PRIVACY POLICY: Typepad, Inc. hosts John Pearson's Buckets Blog. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform for Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews. By clicking (above) to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy policy here.