Management and Leadership Advice

I have many things I have been meaning to share with you. I need to catch up! Here's a start:

Do you manage or work with interns? Z University has created a toolkit to help you gain the most from interns while providing them with the learning experiences they need. It's a great idea.

Patrick McKenna, from Edge International, passed along the link to his free e-book called First 100 Days: Transitioning A New Managing Partner. Although this is written from the context of a law firm, I think a lot of the tips are useful ad relevant for any new leader. He offers a lot of great questions you can ask to quickly learn about your new company, the projects, and the people. Patrick suggests that if you save a copy of the ebook to your desktop, this improves the resolution.

You have heard of good intentions, right? Well, I had the best of intentions to read the following two books. As a blogger, I often get asked whether I would be interested in looking at someone's new book. I don't always say yes, in fact, I say yes only about 50% of the time. I love books. Well, I have had these two books, which I said I was interested in reading, in my cue for some time. And, I honestly do not know when I will get to them. This is not a very nice thing to do to the author, who had a reasonable expectation that I would get to his or her book before the next ice age.

Anyway, instead of making them wait longer, I am going to tell you the books and where you can find them if the topic piques your interest:

First up is The Wisdom of the Flying Pig. I feel really bad about not reading this one because author Jack Hayhow even send me a flying pig toy. Very cool and clever. Luckily for me, several other bloggers have read an reviewed this book (all loved it) and so I will link to a couple of these reviews:

Marketing Interactions offered a meaty review here. Here's a snippet: "Jack's astute observations about how people work and the nature of relationships is inspiring and the stories he tells as illustrations of principles are valid for a multitude of uses."

Mike over at Converstations offered this review. Mike's snippet: "The inspirational quotes accentuate the stories. The glossy pages and abundance of white space make it a quick read with ample space for notes. However, what struck me was how the instructions can be translated to blogging."

The book is very good looking and well put together. It has nice and thick glossy pages, so it feels good to hold. I know that probably sounds funny, but it matters! I love this quote from page 28:

Great achievement is always preceded by great expectation.

OK - Not yet read book #2 is called Performance Conversations: An Alternative to Appraisals. The topic of this book is very appealing to me because I love to hear about alternatives to appraisals. That said, even if you did nothing more and just killed appraisals, most companies would be better off. Don't get me started on THAT again. I feel really bad about not reading and telling you about this book because it appears that author Christopher Lee did not send it to too many other people. Skimming through the book, it looks very interesting. He challenges basic assumptions and reveals the fallacies that underlie appraisal systems. If performance management, performance optimization, team building, or any variation of performance X are of interest to you, it might be worth picking up this book. Christopher Lee offers lots of data and examples. If you are an HR professional, you ought to get the book for sure. Here's a little excerpt from the book, page 36:

An Organization Is Only s Good as Its Managers

Conversations, Not Evaluations

Conversations are communication; evaluations are judgments. In order to improve performance, the individual and the manager must talk. Ideal performance must be described, the obstacles to ideal performance must be identified, and performance action plans must be agreed upon. Evaluating performance on appraisal instruments is not a necessary ingredient to good performance.

Agreed.

My apologies to both Jack and Christopher for not doing a proper job reviewing their books. :-(

Good stuff - check it all out!

Comments

[Meikah Delid]

Thanks for this heads up, Lisa! I think I'm going to get a copy of the book and read it. Based on what you've shared here, I think the book has many uses in business and life in general. Good one!

[Wally Bock]

Allow me to suggest Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership. I wrote it for front line managers, who aren't likely to get any training in the really important part of their job.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1419624555/

[Astha]

Thanks for the great links. It was great going through the Z Univ site- they've certainly found a niche which needs great thinking and great input.
Will probably pick up the Performance Conversations book too- I love the title!

[thebizofknowledge.com]

The second book sounds particularly interesting in my opinion, especially that quote about an organization only being as good as its managers. How true is that, and how often overlooked??!!