Current Book Reviews

Check Out the Book Reviews posted on The Book Coach:

 Who Killed Change?  By Ken Blanchard, John Britt, Judd Hoekstra, and Pat Zigarmi

Helping People Win at Work  By Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge

Tribes   By Seth Godin  

The Noticer   By Andy Andrews 

The 5 Most Important Questions   By the Leader to Leader Institute and Peter F. Drucker 

How Full Is Your Bucket   By Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton

The Greatest Stories Never Told   By Rick Beyer

Today Matters   By John C. Maxwell

Strengths Finder 2.0   By Tom Rath

Baseball on Business?

BizBall, 3 things that baseball can teach us

 

This Thursday, I brought my management team to see the Tampa-Bay Rays take on Oakland in what I thought was a great game.  While I haven’t had much interest in baseball in the last ten years or so, I find that I am being drawn back into the game with the success that Tampa-Bay had last year and the lure of an American past-time.  Most of the action was in the last 2 innings and the top of the ninth favored the Athletics.  We had all but given up, when the Rays smacked in a two run homerun and then a RBI to win the game 6 to 5.   

 As I was sitting through the game, I remembered a statement in a Drucker Institute newsletter regarding business and work teams compared to a baseball team. I perused through a few on-line articles and also found some interesting thoughts in several other email newsletters I subscribe to. Listed below are a few of the nuggets I extracted from this research that relates baseball team practices to your team at work.  Most of these ideas are extracted from different resources, but I thought it was worth pulling them together. I hope you enjoy.

 

Individual strengths provide the greatest value to your team

“In a few years, the most predictable team will come back in fashion, the one that does research first, then passes the idea to engineering to develop, and then on to manufacturing to make. It’s like a baseball team. . . The great strength of baseball teams is you can concentrate. You take Joe, who is a batter, and you work on batting.  There is almost no interaction, nothing at all like a soccer team or the jazz combo, the implicit model of many teams today.  The soccer team move in unison but everyone holds the same relative position” – Peter F. Drucker, On the Profession of Management

 

Big visions, strategic planning, and innovative thinking are all important, but execution is where the delight of excellence can be found and enjoyed

We are paid to deliver the goods.  In baseball, when the all-star players step up to the plate, the crowd wildly applauds the ones who consistently hit the ball and score runs. In fact, when someone wins big, in baseball or business, it speaks to us at our deepest levels relating to our desire and need to succeed in what we do.  It is important to build your business through activities that do just that, but the plays are made and won only when you do them and do them well.

“Man may penetrate the outer reaches of the universe, he may solve the very secret of eternity itself, but for me, the ultimate human experience is to witness the flawless execution of the hit-and-run.” — Branch Rickey

 

When you lose, Lose Well, and get ready to play again

Extracted from Ron White’s e-zine:

Whether it is a baseball game, office promotion or political race, you can tell a lot about a person by how they handle defeat. The individual who handles defeat as a minor setback is not allowing the event to define him. On the other hand, someone who cannot handle defeat is allowing the event to define his self-worth.

Events can only define your self-worth if you allow them to.  You cease allowing events to define your self-worth when you handle defeat as a learning experience and remount the hoarse that hast thrown you for another ride.

In money, your career or love, when you lose – as hard as it may be – look them in the eye, refuse to allow the events to shape your self-worth and shake their hand literally or metaphorically as you say, “Good game.” You just might find yourself winning the next game.

-Ron White

 

Please visit- www.MemoryInAMonth.com for details about Ron White, you will be amazed.

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Seven basic fundamentals for Mission Execution

I have developed seven basic strategies for my team in achieving our mission and challenge.
While these were designed for our particular purpose as a business unit and around the things that we stand for as a company, I find that they can be applied as fundamental strategies to achieve any particular mission:

1. Respond Immediately.
This is a basic need for most people. Quick response is required to your team and your client’s needs- this is the first thing you do to differentiate yourself.

2. Partner-Up
It’s all in how you treat your people. Treat them with respect and as if they were partners in the business.
It is commonly said  “We’re all in it together” and “ Your success is our success.”
If you believe that, then you must treat your people as smart, capable,  professionals. Otherwise, stop quoting these axioms because it seems that you’re lying.

3. Perform
In the words of the legendary John Wooden, “Make everyday your Masterpiece.”
This is what you have a team for in the first place: deliver the results that are required. This requires focus and dedication to making the most of each day.
What we do today, creates tomorrow. If we procrastinate, what will be created for tomorrow?

4. Represent
You must live the motto and the values that you say your company stands for.
Talk is cheap, after all. Will you and your people actually stand up and represent what you say you believe?

5. Educate
You and your people need to have opportunities to learn and lead. Provide formal training in the areas of your business. It is essential that your team members know and understand the work that you do. In addition, varied and different experiences help grow people and leaders. However, experiences aren’t enough. The experience must be evaluated with the team members. John Maxwell states that experience isn’t the best teacher, but evaluated experience is.

6. Leverage Strengths
Each person on your team comes with his or her own traits, personality, and skill-set. What they do best can add tremendous value. The key is discovering the strengths that each person has and finding a place that they can leverage those strengths on your team.

7. Mentor
This is the final element in a strategy that focuses on people’s capabilities as the key resource to realizing growth in your business. To grow your organization, you must grow your team. To grow your team, you must grow the players on the team. Mentoring relationships provide that extra time and nurturing that formal education can’t. As part of your growth strategy, you do need formal education and training; however, to successfully grow your leaders and your teams, the extra time and attention is needed in one-on-one mentoring sessions.