“The Wisdom of Our Peers: How Collaboration Helps Us All Be Better at What We Do” by Kenneth Cook (Peer to Peer Advisors, $19.95).
Cook, who writes a monthly column for the Hartford Business Journal, advocates “management by talking about” as the way to create a learning organization that turns the page of opportunity. When colleagues share information, intellectual capital increases while missteps and execution time decrease.
He points to types of management mentalities that guarantee poor results. Here are a few:
• Treadmill mentality — What happens when everyone runs fast on their individual hamster wheels? They become myopic and lose sight of what’s important. Busyness trumps business. Treadmill mentality also insulates peers from peers. People think only in terms of what’s in front of them — often ignoring the effects of their actions on others (i.e. They’re too busy to ask.)
• Rearview-Mirror Management — You can’t build a company for tomorrow by managing it with Point A thinking. What got you where you are won’t get you to Point B. Companies need to embrace lifelong learning and ensure their employees have learning opportunities and challenges.
• Midas Touch Management (a corollary to rearview-mirror) — When a company becomes enamored with its own technology, products and services, it can easily lose sight of the competition and customer needs/wants. Their windows of opportunity are framed around a “if we build it, they will buy it” view of the market.
Conversely, the learning organization encourages ideas, allows risk-taking and invests in training and development. It looks internally to ensure continuous improvement and recognizes that such improvement also relies on identifying what’s happening outside the company (e.g. other industries, suppliers, competition, technology, consumers, etc.). Cook advises: “Ask your people to guess all the time. By guessing all the time, they become better guessers.”
The book’s five sections (leadership, strategy and growth, marketing and sales, operations and financial) have numerous discussion items that can be used to start your discussions.
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“Pumptitude — Pump Up Your Attitude and Gain Altitude” by Kim Yost (pumptitude.com, $29.95).
Wally Amos, of “Famous Amos” cookie fame, said that at the end of his life he wanted the “dash” on his tombstone (the line between when he was born and when he died) to be five feet wide. Why? A wide line indicates life’s accomplishments.
Yost knows about wide lines; in his six years as CEO of The Brick, Canada’s largest furniture, appliance and electronics store, sales increased by $600 million. He’s now the CEO of Art Van Furniture, a Michigan-based firm that refused to let the recession affect it. Since Yost arrived in 2009, the company expanded from five lines of business to 13.
To Yost, CEO stands for chief energy officer — the person who empowers others to achieve self-help guru Tony Robbins’s CANI (Constant And Never-Ending Improvement) attitude. As CEO, Yost doesn’t want a management team; he wants a leadership team. What’s the difference? Management implies tending to one’s knitting; leadership always involves moving forward. It’s all about establishing a corporate attitude of “Yes WE can.”
He identifies Schmonday, the eighth day of everyone’s week, as a key self-leadership element. Yost devotes five hours every Sunday evening, his Schmonday, “to re-focusing, staying on track, reading, learning, goal-setting, and above all continuing to grow.” He maintains a Schmonday game-plan toolkit which contains his goals (personal and professional), a list of his core values and mission statement, reading material, a to-get-done list and a self-progress report.
He employs the same game-plan toolkit as a leadership tool in his role as chief energy officer through team development of annual business game plans with varying themes (i.e. clarity of purpose, investing in myself, taking it to the next level). The leadership team ensures that all staff knows their roles in its execution.
Yost’s bottom line: Life and business isn’t about where you are; they’re about knowing where you’re going and doing what you need to do to get there.
Jim Pawlak is a nationally syndicated book reviewer.
