Rothacker Reviews

No Yelling

No Yelling by Wally Adamchik

Wally, a former US Marine Officer, writes a book about the nine secrets of Marine Core Leadership.  I began to read No Yelling and sort of bogged down.  Through my experience with leadership and management, I've become familiar with all of Wally's secrets with the exception of Commander's Intent.  I shelved the book after the first chapter.

The book sat on my shelf for a couple of months, staring at me, eye level.  A little voice inside said to finish reading it.  So I did.  I think it was due in part to my experience in interviewing and hiring military veterans.  Most have been bright, possess integrity and have a solid work ethic.  The other part involves the complete and utter respect that I have for folks who have joined a branch of the armed forces and defended our country...especially those who've traveled to foreign soil to do so.  I figured, here is a veteran who is also writing about business and leadership.  I owe it to him to finish his work.  I am glad I did!

There is something about learning business lessons from a Marine Corp Officer.  One feels an absorption of military discipline and ethics and the desire to take them into your work environment.  Wally takes nine behaviors necessary for leadership, devotes each to a chapter and weaves story, narratives by others on military and civilian experiences and his own experience to build a well-detailed case. 

If you are like me and have read extensively on leadership, your shell hardens and tends to deflect.  Been there, done it, know it.  Well, Wally paints the picture of leadership from an angle that is slightly different.  And this angle cracks the shell, allowing light to bathe and refreshen your leadership perspective.  Thank God too!  Because it reminds me of how much I do not know.

Pick up a copy of No Yelling today.

Special thanks to Sarah Kocks for turning me onto Wally's book!

 

The History of Business: We're Living it now

How many folks who lived through the thirties, forties and fifties, do you suppose can recant from actually living through those times, great stories of business?  While some might be reminded by books written about that time period, how many can do it from being tuned in then?

It is different today.  Between all of the Internet avenues, books, magazines and alternate media of today, we enjoy a rich, learning environment that should make a difference as we drift toward our twilight years.

"Yes Bobby, even though the year is 2027, and Bill Gates is going on his thirty-fifth year as the richest person on the planet, I remember when Warren donated a few dollars to his and
Melinda's foundation."

"Of course I remember those two fellows from Stanford and that Internet company that they started."

In addition to scoring stories from Fast Company, I've found books like Customers.com, The Long Tail, The Search, The Anatomy of Buzz, The Purple Cow and a plethora of more, to provide snapshot-stories of today's business scenes.

These are the times of our lives.  Enjoy them, soak them in and thirty years from now when Sammy your grandchild is browsing the bookshelves and finds your copy of Wikinomics, you smile and think to yourself: I remember the early days well, who would've thought that this was the basis for completely altering our school system as we knew it.

Design: What it Means to me

Bruce Nussbaum writes an enlightening article on design and designers over at Business Week Online.  David Armano takes the post and deftly illustrates it.  I was drawn into expressing an opinion on design by both my infatuation with the raw concept and something that Bruce said:

But how do people who've spent a lifetime using their left-brain, suddenly shift to using both their left and their right?

Well Bruce, this was me at the dawn of my experience with the Internet in 1996.   I was a complete stranger to my right brain with one brief exception over thirty years ago when Rosemary and I began to date.  She was a prolific poet.   I gave it a try, wrote a couple of poems and quickly scurried back to the comfy confines of my left brain...until the Internet.  For two years I wrote stories and engaged in conversation on other folk's websites.  I didn't think of myself as a writer, only as someone who wanted to express an opinion and ventured to the land beyond delight when others engaged back in conversation.  And then Rick Levine and the boys rode into town on a glorious white stallion:  The Cluetrain Manifesto

I was not alone in the universe.  I reveled in the mutual thoughts of others who also signed the 95 Thesis statement.  So for me, I became acquainted with my right brain through conversation online with others.  The Cluetrain Manifesto validated my beliefs.  Not to mention it stirred emotional thoughts of revolution, thoughts of slaying the ivory tower dwelling ole coot beasts of status-quo business, but that's another story...

So I continued to write, by this time on my own site.  Each comment gave me a toe hold to move up higher and inspired confidence on my climb towards the peak of the cliff side of clear articulation.  No longer did I scurry back to my left brain.  Instead, I lingered around and drank the sweet wine of folks like Roy Williams.  Roy, through his Wizard of Ads trilogy, inspired me to Free the Beagle, get to better know my right brain and while there, play.  Although dormant to my conscious at the time, Roy also introduced me to the concept of design.  The illustration, texture and design of his books created an emotional bond for me to his content.  It created an experience.

Dan Pink said I could be a designer.  God, did this liberate my soul!  I have the artistic ability of a pile of dirt.  But I have the deep appreciation for design as a collector of fine art does for his gallery.  Dan suggests creating a design notebook, capturing samples of both good and bad design.  The more I tuned into design, the more I craved.  I believe that this practice helps to build texture into my writing.  For me to reach that level of emotional bonding that Roy Williams effuses though, I'll need to connect with an illustrator, whose inevitable partnership lies within my future.

For me, design is a way to broaden my universe.  I can weave disparate concepts and ideas into my thought patterns and expand my way of thinking.  Design also presents an opportunity to broaden my being through connections that emotionalize and bring life to inanimate stuff.

 

 

Emotional Zing

What are your strengths?  What are you really good at?  What is your genius?  What do you want to be when you grow up?

When I sit down and try to answer questions like these, no matter how hard I try, my mind continues to run in neutral, I simply cannot pop the clutch.  Sure I can throw out some half-baked ideas.  But I'll start doubting them in about twenty seconds.   I've been this way as long as I can remember.  About twelve years ago however, I began to put forth an effort to figure out questions like these.  Stacks of self-help books are littered about my office, giving testimony to my decade long stay at the Woodstock-Figure-it-all-out-Festival in my mind.  The intense rain, lack of food and no answers finally wore me down.  Funny, I thought bell bottom pants would have gone out of style by the 80's.

It took all of this time to sink in, but I finally agree with what most gurus say:  The answers lie within.  So instead of trying to perform a self-induced extraction by sticking my finger down my mind and spew forth these answers, I've decided to simply start watching myself.  Dick Richards calls it Notice Yourself in his book Is Your Genius at Work?  Marcus Buckingham provides some resource material in his book Go Put Your Strengths To Work that finally woke me up enough to get off my butt and do something.  The goal is to make note when I find myself doing something that I really like.  And to make note of stuff that I find really interesting, stuff that zaps me with an emotional zing, out there in the universe.  Dan Pink first planted this seed in my head in his book A Whole New Mind when he suggests to keep a design notebook.  Maybe I'll even try to write about them here...

Help Sick Children in Tampa Bay

Have you seen photos of sick and under-nourished kids in third world countries?  Sure you have.  Your heart breaks.  The TV commercial says to send a dollar and your dollar can help.  I'm sure it can.  But what about kids in your own country?  What about unfortunate kids right here in the Tampa Bay area?  What about the kids who need medical attention whose parent or parents have no insurance? 

I don't know about you, but when I see or hear of kids under these circumstances, my heart not only breaks, the accompanying percussion overwhelms my soul.  I think, man I gotta do something!  But the next day comes and goes by and I haven't done a thing.  Well I am proud to say that I am finally putting the brakes on that run away train.  And you can too!

Think about joining Rosemary and I this coming Sunday at the A La Carte Event Pavillion in Tampa.  The folks from All Children's Hospital Tampa Guild have put together a Sunday afternoon event for charity that you will not soon forget.  Here's the gig:

Iron Chef....Tampa Style

In addition to the sumptuous samples of all you can eat food provided by the amateur chefs, here is what else is going on:

• Entertainment by renown jazz guitarist Les Sabler
• Master of Ceremony - Andy Bowen of Clearview Communications
• Silent auction (you gotta check this stuff out!!!)
• Art Gallery auction*
• Open Bar

*Warning:  What I am about to tell you will cause a warm glow to surround your heart and tears to flood from your eyes.  Proceed accordingly.  Some of the artwork that will be auctioned off has actually been created by kids in All Children's Hospital.  These particular renderings were created upon the theme of what inspires them to get well.  Now hang with me here, I am told that one child has portrayed what cancer can't do in his or her piece of art.  Can you even envision what sort of internal fortitude it takes for a child to tell us what cancer cannot do to him or her?  Forget for one moment all of the wonderful stuff that the hard working folks from the Tampa Guild have put forth.  I think I might pay the price of admission to just hold this one painting in my hands and reflect upon the Miracle that God has given us in each and every one of these kids!!

So, what do you think about joining us this Sunday, March 25th, to raise some money and help area kids?

Register Here

On Vacation

So, I am on vacation this week.  What's different about this vacation as opposed to every other since the early nineties is the anticipation of such a beloved event did not drive me totally insane last week.  There was no urge Friday to bolt from my office as if the devil himself was nipping at my heels.  For further proof, I actually worked on Saturday.  It's not euphoria on this new job, but it's not gut wrenching nausea either. 

I took this week off because Victoria is coming to town to team up with Rosemary and compete in an Iron Chef contest.  Other than chasing around a few errands for the girls, I am pretty much free this week.  And, as Rosemary will be preoccupied with Vickie around, preparing for the event (she's involved in organizing for her chapter of the All Children's Hospital charity), editing both of her books and involvement with our HOA, I really will be flying under the radar.  She won't even have time to read this public display of gut spilling.

Question to self:  So Mr. Free and Easy, how will you be spending your time this week?

I'll get up between four and five o'clock, head into my home office and rip off a sheet or two of morning pages.  What I like best about MP's is there is no structure, no protocol, you just let your subconscious stream upon the page.  By this time I am on the second cup of my customized half vanilla, half regular 8 o'clock coffee concoction.  Next, it is off to about three hours of reading.  I just started reading Dan Brown's Digital Fortress in order to break up the mainline of business non-fiction that I inject into my brain everyday.  I am reasonably sure that all of the non-fiction that I've read over the past nineteen years has come to make David a fairly dull boy.

Wherever I go, I carry around a pen and notebook or paper.  If I am inspired by an idea, I write it down.  This, together with my morning reading time is an example of two experiences in which I get ideas to write about.  The third is what I do next.  Fire up the computer and check in on my favorite writers. 

Next, I write.  My best writing comes when I take the time to cluster a subject.  Once the cluster is complete, I put is aside and come back to it a day or two later.  Other times I forego the cluster and fire up typepad and go to town. 

Well, that's as far as I've gotten today.  I'll have to tell you about the rest.  One cannot plan this type of vacation, one must live it.
 

Teach Your Children

In my lifetime, I've gone through at least seven or eight basketball backboards.  I loved to shoot hoops.  I shot in rain, I shoveled snow from the driveway to shoot, I shot at night and I even shot with my dog trying to guard me.  I practiced and got pretty good.  Then, I'd go to the playground and hook up with other kids - like Christine Kane.  Christine puts my game in perspective.  She is Lebron James.

Rust Never Sleeps starts with a short post by Seth Godin.  Seth crisply teaches two lessons garnered from a Neil Young concert.  Christine expands, no roots out, no probes...  Christine grabs the rebound, drives coast to coast, elevates and windmills in a backboard shattering dunk, completely undressing five defenders on the way.  Christine takes Seth's thought, chips away the rust, smooths it out and unveils soul-piercing insight.  You must read this post. 

We meet folks from time to time on our journey through the universe, who God has placed there for us to emulate.  As someone willing to shovel the driveway in order to string a few paragraphs together, one of those folks for me is Christine Kane.

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by...

The River

You can't step into the same river twice.  Creative Insight # 4 in Roger von Oech's book, Expect the Unexpected.  Roger explains, "a flowing river constantly changes it contents.

Life is about the Road, at least for me.  Life is about moving forward and the Road is the right metaphor for me to visualize how life flows forward.  Although I've written about the Road in my journals for years, the notion regarding Roger's words came back to me when rereading some of Marcus Buckingham's thoughts on management. 

I picked up Marcus' book, First, Break All The Rules in 2001.  I didn't just read this book, I devoured it, again and again and again.  The words in this book were like the land of Oz for me.   The thought of such a magical place, the thought that management could be like this - perhaps the more I read, the more likely it would come true.   But there were immovable forces at the company I worked for.  And alas, my hope of engaging this type of management was beaten into submission.  So much that for the next few years I could hardly read books on management. 

I first stepped into the river and their was hope.  I continued to step in that same river of management and finally all hope was crushed.  Today I am stepping into that river again and the land of Oz is clear and within reach.  Presently, I am smoking and signing Marcus' latest book, Go Put Your Strengths To Work. 

The point here however, isn't about me and the days when my soul was ripped from my body, sealed in concrete and sent to the depths of the deepest ocean - sent to endure unnatural pressure until all visible signs vaporized into nothingness, no it is about reading the same book at different periods of your life and extracting different meaning.

David, the subtleness of your words hits me like a runaway locomotive. 

It is about the river, man.  Same river.  Same book.  Different waters.  Different meaning.  Try rereading a book and see if you aren't stepping into different waters.

When God Winks

When God Winks: How the Power of Coincidence Guides Your Life by SQuire Rushnell

How do books come into my life?  Referrals from other passionate readers.  Additional books written by a favorite author - like Marcus Buckingham.  Browsing books stores.  Browsing Amazon's Customers who bought this book also bought...   Folks who would like me to review their book send copies.  And in perhaps the most magical and mystical of ways - by random.

Although technically it falls under browsing in book stores, it truly falls into finding books by random.  The most powerful has been Julia Cameron's The Sound of Paper.  Although I have now been writing regularly for nine years and collecting books on writing, I had never heard of Julia until three years ago.  Because I am so physical with my books and journals, and the touch, texture, smell and feel of paper is so nerve-calming for me, the title of Julia's book pointed a red dot on my forehead and lasered me in.  The random part is due in part to me not finding the book in the writer's section of the store.  The second most powerful example is Wayne Dyer's You'll See it When You Believe it.

Five years ago I went into this book store in St. Armands Circle in Sarasota, Florida, in search of a Robert Frost written book with his poem The Road Not Taken in it.  Not finding it, I began to browse the self-help section and remembered that my sister had spoken very highly of Wayne Dyer.  I picked up You'll See it When You Beleive it and within five seconds came to page 41.  There I find an excerpt from The Road Not Taken.  This book has helped to frame my thoughts about the universe and has been a tablet for me to scribe bits of my life's journey upon.

When I read Rushnell's byline about coincidence, thoughts of Dyer's book overwhelmed me.  I found When God Winks at a bookstore on a discount table.  God Winks are guideposts that cause stuff to happen in your life.  They are also messages of reassurance, coming in life when you need them the most.  The author relays, early on in the book, an unbelievable coincidence that happened to him at the age of fifteen.  After reading this, I couldn't put the book down and continued on until I finished the book.

I am so tuned into everything happens for a reason, that the universe is by design and that our actions are the result of our own manifested-intent which has been in cue since the beginning of time.  When God Winks validates this thought. 

A Love Affair With Books

Why is it that, for some of us, books are so irresistible?  At least for me, books have been beacons of light along the winding and narrow dirt roadways of my life.  The written word has always represented a world of what could be.  A world that was always different from the one in which I worked.  And in the world in which I worked, not too many people were as nuts about books on marketing, networking, leadership and writing as I was.  Thank God for the parallel world of the internet!  In this world I met the folks who make up one of the most passionate sites around - Joyful Jubilant Learning. 

So, what happens when you get folks together who are passionate about books?  You get a month's worth of book delight.

Each day of this month someone takes one of their favorite books and writes a review.  Here is the roster:

March 1:
Made to Stick, written by Chip and Dan Heath
Reviewed by Tim Milburn

March 2:
Setting the Table, written by Danny Meyer
Reviewed by Rosa Say

March 3:
GRUB, written by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry
Reviewed by Mary Hunt

March 4:
Love is the Killer App, written by Tim Sanders
Reviewed by Benjamin Bach

March 5:
Authentic Leadership, written by Bill George
Reviewed by Dean Boyer

March 6:
Two Weeks to a Breakthrough: How to Zoom Toward Your Goal in 14 Days or Less, written by Lisa Haneberg
Reviewed by Dwayne Melancon

March 7:
Do Less, Achieve More, written by Chin-Ning Chu
Reviewed by Karen Wallace

March 8:
Your Brain on Music, written by Daniel Levitin
Reviewed by Steve Sherlock

March 9:
The Zen of Groups, A Handbook for People Meeting With a Purpose, written by Dale Hunter, Anne Bailey and Bill Taylor
Reviewed by Lisa Haneberg

March 10:
The Omnivore's Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan
Reviewed by Bren Connelly

March 11: Trackback Sunday. Can’t choose just one book? Now that is a great problem to have! This will be the day to trackback a post here with other book reviews published elsewhere!

March 12:
Wherever You Go There You Are, written by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Reviewed by Chris Owen

March 13:
Move Closer Stay Longer, written by Dr. Stephanie Burns
Reviewed by Beth Robinson

March 14:
Leaders’ Playbook, How to Apply Emotional Intelligence: Keys to Great Leadership, written by Reldan Nadler
Reviewed by Wayne Hurlbert

March 15:
The Sundering, Banewreaker and Godslayer, a two-volume work written by Jacqueline Carey
Reviewed by EM Sky

March 16:
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Reviewed by Nneka

March 17:
Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba
Reviewed by Phil Gerbyshak

March 18: Trackback Sunday 2. Did you miss this sign-up? Never fear ...this is your second chance to trackback a post here with other book reviews published elsewhere!

March 19:
How to Connect in Business in 90 Seconds or Less, written by Nicholas Boothman
Reviewed by John Richardson

March 20:
Seeing David in the Stone, written by James B. Swartz and Joseph E. Swartz
Reviewed by Terry Starbucker

March 21:
The Difference Maker, written by John C. Maxwell
Reviewed by Tim Draayer

March 22:
Oh the Places You'll Go!, written by Dr. Seuss
Reviewed by Dave Rothacker

March 25: Trackback Sunday 3. Still reading? Fantastic! Third chance to trackback a post here with other book reviews published elsewhere!

March 26: Rapid Fire Learning | March 2006 (boy oh boy, will we have some great sharing on this day after all these reviews!)

March 27:
StrengthsFinder 2.0, written by Tom Rath
Reviewed by David Zinger

March 28:
One, written by Lance Secretan
Reviewed by Greg Balanko-Dickson

March 29:
Think and Grow Rich, written by Napoleon Hill and newly edited by Ross Cornwell
Reviewed by Carolyn Manning

March 31:
Go Put Your Strengths to Work, written by Marcus Buckingham
Reviewed by Blaine Collins