Management Craft

Have you put your goal/dream on the shelf? Here's a helpful story.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I got a very warm and wonderful email from a reader of my book, Two Weeks to a Breakthrough. Her email is very inspiring and so I asked her if I could share it on the blog. Here is our email stream. Below the emails, I have included a link to a quick synopsis of the Daily Practice - an important part of my system for generating breakthroughs.

Do you have some goal or dream that you have put aside to take care of more pressing matters? It takes just a few minutes each day to stay on track and generate breakthroughs.

And if you have a young reader on your holiday shopping list, pick up a copy of Bev's book - it looks wonderful!

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Dear Lisa:

I just wanted to say thank you again for your role in helping me achieve a dream and goal. I heard you speak at ASTD on "2 Weeks to A Breakthrough." It set the wheels in motion and I accomplished tremendous groundwork in that first 2 weeks--support of key movers/shakers, an illustrator and deal with the Universe to find a way to pay for it all...then I took another 2 years to get the financing accomplished and also have a baby in the middle of it all. Point is: whenever I got off track, I came back to the "breakthrough" method to keep going.....and the doors kept opening every time!

I can proudly say I've now published my Scottish children's book, The Terrible Tenor, along with local illustrator/artist Dana Arnim. We received a grant from the Celtic Arts Foundation (WA) as part of their affiliation with the National Endowment for the Arts projects. So, here we are with Gracie McPhee, The Terrible Tenor, wreaking havoc at a Highland Games where she saves the day in an incident involving haggis. It's a wonderful story that is all a-buzz in the Highlands community of bagpipers, drummers, dancers, pipe bands, Scottish vendors, etc.

I just have to say that "2 Weeks to a Breakthrough" is pure magic with a little elbow grease for good measure. Thank you for writing this book and sharing your message! I can't imagine what all you must set in motion and never see the results... and so today on Thanksgiving Eve, I say THANKS to you with a very grateful heart.
 
Cheers,

Beverly Collins Parnell
Author, The Terrible Tenor
www.terribletenor.com

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Bev:

What a cool story and accomplishment! Best of success with the blog. That you found a great partner to help support the project is a great example of how to generate breakthroughs. Thanks so much for sharing your thanks, I love these stories. I think we all put many things in motion that we never know about and it is wonderful when we get to hear from people who have been affected in some way.

2W2BK has always been my favorite book. Ironically, it is the least successful of the 10 I have written in terms of sales. I like to think of it as a cult hit, for the reasons you share in your story. I have heard from others who have made something happen, and this is precious.

 I, too, find success in revisiting the basic suggestions for how to generate breakthroughs.

I think your story might catalyze others who have temporarily put their projects or dreams on the shelf. Would you mind if I share your email on my blog? I would include a link to your book site. It is a great time of year for people to reflect and think about how to make 2010 amazing.

Happy holidays and happy new year to you.

Regards,

Lisa

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Hi, Lisa- thanks very much for your response and I am surprised 2W2BK is the least successful in terms of sales. Cult hit, indeed! Feel free to share my story as I'd love for it to inspire belief in others out there.

Now my favorite question: what next?! There's always another dream and breakthrough right around the corner. Sometimes we just need the map to get there!

Warmest holiday wishes,

Bev

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Bev kept at it and made something happen. This is the key to generating breakthroughs, keeping at it every day (and restarting if you get off track).

The Daily Practice - check out this older post, which summarizes the Daily Practice. If you would like to give 2W2BK to your team for the new year, send me an email. It's the perfect positive dose of action oriented inspiration (if I do humbly say so myself :-).

Pictures from Bhutan

This is not related to management, but several people have asked to see some of my pictures from mt recent trip to Bhutan (and Thailand).

Here is a Flickr slideshow of some of my shots.

And here are pictures my husband Bill took. Notice that he has several high mountain shots. He did a high altitude trek (up to 16,000 feet) while I explored several villages at lower elevations (up to 9,000 feet).

Bill's Pictures

The Value of Simplicity - Do You Know What Simple Feels Like?

I am just back from Bhutan and Thailand. I will post more about what I learned on the trip in the coming days, but here is just a quick thought. Simplicity is beautiful.

We gunk up our lives and our work and our desks and our wardrobes and our friendships and our teams and our processes with more complexity and complication than is needed, I think. We need to experience simplicity to really feel it's power and pleasantness.

I stayed for three days in a valley that has no electricity except for a few hours of solar power or power from small individual generators. The valley could have electric, but does not because the wires might harm the threatened Black Neck Cranes who winter there. Underground wiring is not practical and the people have adjusted to this way of life. The rhythm of each day is determined by the season, the sun and moon, and faith, family and friends. I spent six hours tending a small wood stove in my hotel room one afternoon - that was my agenda, keep the fire going.

What's on your agenda for the rest of the week and how elemental is it? Is there a way you can make things simpler so that the extraordinary nature of everyday moments and people can shine?

Managers make things simpler - that is a big part of their job. And so it is for this reason that I recommend all managers visit the tiny kingdom of Bhutan in the future. To make things simpler, we must experience simplicity and how often do we do that?

BTW - don't misinterpret my suggestions about Bhutan and simplicity to mean that the country is somehow backwards or unsophisticated. In some ways, their leadership is quite cutting edge. That said, they are taking the process of modernization at a deliberate pace.

BTW #2 One last invitation to participate in my coaching survey. Now that I am back, I need to get cracking on a couple of books I am working on. One is about coaching and I would love it if you participated in my brief coaching survey about your coaching preferences. The link is here and all participants get a copy of the results. Thanks.

Click Here to take survey

Coaches, too, ought to make things simpler. That is the definition of a catalyst, after all, one who makes things easier.

The power of great mentorship - "Direction" from Lisa Edwards

Here is another guest post and story from Lisa Edwards called Direction. This one is profound - I love Lisa E's stories. You can also check out her book here. She makes a great point about how a bad experience or misfire can create a whole new opportunity.

How can you use this story to further your goals this week?

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Direction
 
“Keep looking up.”   Dick Damrow
 
 
All of us have a mid-life crisis at some point in our lives.  Some of us have it later in life, others have it early on. I was lucky.  My mid-life crisis happened in my early thirties.
 
Several years before then, I had returned home after grad school to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, when I discovered that my family’s printing business was in deep trouble.  As an only child with a great sense of responsibility, I chose to help my family with the business rather than pursue my own interests.  At first, I thought I was helping to save the business and turn it around, but after ten years of trying to turn it around, I recognized I was there to help my dad close the business.  As we struggled to keep that business alive, we had created a new business in an attempt to save the family business.
 
It is quite an experience to have one business that is dying and another that is prospering all in the same moment and I found it easy to lose my way.  Both situations have many moments of uncertainty, but one carries a feeling of great sadness and the other carries a sense of hope and optimism.
 
During this time, my relationship with my dad became strained and I sorely needed a wise friend and mentor who could help me during those moments when I felt uncertain about what to do next.  I needed someone removed from the situation who could keep my best interests at heart and give me advice and direction.
 
I can’t even remember how it all came about as everything during that time period is a blur, but somehow I ended up with just the mentor I needed.  Dick was a wise and caring mentor and treated me as a daughter.  He gave me advice—some of which I actually took, and gave me the reassurance I so needed during that time of confusion.
 
Since that time and over the years, Dick remained a dear friend and mentor.  We stayed in touch throughout my many moves across the country and I could always count on him to provide me with just one more bit of advice or just a few more reassuring words.  Whenever I faced a crossroads or needed to make an important decision, I’d call Dick to ask him what he thought.  In the most recent years, he rarely gave me advice, but just having him listen to me talk through my thinking was all the reassurance and affirmation I needed to go forward with a decision.
 
Just a few months ago, I went home to work with him on some business planning for my business.  It was a change in our relationship because for the first time, he wasn’t my mentor, offering free advice or counsel, but my consultant, who allowed me to pay him for the work he normally charged only to his clients.  I felt liberated in a funny way.  Like an adult.  And, I think he looked at me in an new way, too. It was a beginning and an end.
 
About a month ago, I got a call from a mutual friend of ours from home one evening.  She called to tell me that Dick had fallen down the stairs at home the night before.  He had hit his head and had undergone surgery to relieve the pressure his skull was causing on his swollen brain.  He was in ICU under constant watch, and though everyone was hopeful he’d make a full recovery, he had not yet regained consciousness.
 
Dick passed away within a week. Those moments during that time were perhaps the saddest moments in my memory.
 
Before his celebration of life ceremony, one of his friends posted a profile on Facebook for everyone to post their comments about Dick.  More than forty pages of comments were posted.  The first few posts talked about how Dick was their mentor, but as more people posted, the more we each began to realize that we were not the only protégé!  There were hundreds of us! Talk about making a difference in the lives of others.
 
I think about Dick a lot and miss our conversations.  Sometimes I wish I could hear his voice just one more time.  Tonight, as I was home alone, contemplating a few decisions I need to make, I felt an ache to call Dick and ask him for his advice.  Knowing I should be quiet and still, instead I searched for something to do. I got on the computer, opened my inbox and saw Dick’s name attached to the emails he had sent to me in the last year.  Emails I can’t bring myself to delete from my inbox.  And in that instant, I remembered how he started to sign his emails to me when he began to stop giving me advice, and I realized that he had left me with the best advice of all “keep looking up.”

© 2009 Lisa Edwards - www.BloomWhereYouArePlanted.com

Creating Accountability

Here's an interesting article about accountability from Bob Prosen on The Street called, Helping Your Company Win: The Innovators. He offers several ways we can assess our role and priorities and practices to improve clarity and accountability. Check it out.

The Four Conversations: Communication That Gets Results

Over the last few weeks, I have been trying to get caught up on my business book reading - I was SOOO behind. I will be out of the country for the next three weeks, so I have cued up several posts about great books. These posts will be about books I recommend, because I don't have time to write about a book I would not recommend you buy.

Sixty percent of all management problems result from faulty communication. ~Peter Drucker

This post is about a unique book called, The Four Conversations: Communication That Gets Results by Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford. I first met the Fords about 15 years ago. Jeffrey teaches at Ohio State University in the business school and both he and Laurie help individuals and teams communicate more effectively. There is something about the way they explain things - something about how they talk about conversations that is highly unique, interesting, and helpful.

Management is a social act and occurs in conversations. Therefore, managers ought to be great conversationalists. This means knowing the type of conversation that will best get the desired result. The Four Conversations helps readers determine when and how to use each type of conversation. Here are the four conversation the book covers:

• Initiative Conversations: Create a Future
• Understanding Conversations: Include and Engage
• Performance Conversations: Ask and Promise
• Closure Conversations: Create Endings

These are all critical for managers to learn and practice. From the introduction:

When our students and clients began to practice improving their skills with all four conversations in their work situations, they were amazed to discover how very small changes in the way they talked could produce unexpectedly positive outcomes. Practicing managers were impressed with how easy it was to get results, and quickly applied the lessons to get similar benefits outside of work, with spouses, families, and friends.

We have since learned many of the persistent issues people tolerate in organizations can be resolved by using these four conversations. True, some people do not want to change the way they communicate, or do not want to make changes in their work practices. However, we have found most people are willing to make minor adjustments in their speaking and listening to gain major improvements in results and relationships.

Good stuff - pick up your copy today!

The Unforced Error - Why Some Managers Get Promoted While Others Get Eliminated

Over the last few weeks, I have been trying to get caught up on my business book reading - I was SOOO behind. I will be out of the country for the next three weeks, so I have cued up several posts about great books. These posts will be about books I recommend, because I don't have time to write about a book I would not recommend you buy.

This post is about a very fun and helpful book called The Unforced Error by Jeffrey Krames (you can listen to the podcast I did with Jeffrey about his last book, Inside Drucker's Brain, here). I love this book - it is written with such style and texture - humor, stories, examples and then clear suggestions. Here's the opening paragraph of the book that explains what an unforced error is:

The concept of the unforced error" is a pivotal one in tennis. Created by noted tennis authority Dr. Leo Levin in 1982, its describes as error that is "committed without a cause." It is, according to one standard definition, "a mistake by the player who hits a shot...when the player has time to prepare and position himself to get the ball back in play and (still) makes an error."

This book, then, helps reader recognize and avoid avoidable errors (including fatal flaws, or career killers). Jeffrey looks at various aspects of management and leadership and shows readers what not to do and what to do to be successful. I think you will really enjoy how this book reads and the information. The Unforced Error will be one of those books you share with others, so check it out!