Rothacker Reviews

Sheer Effort

I recently finished reading Annie Lamott's Grace (Eventually).  If you want to improve your writing, you should read Annie Lamott books.  This latest book has nothing to do with writing.  It is not an instruction manual on writing.  It will neither help you research, prewrite, draft, revise, edit or polish.  It will help you write better though.  Grace (Eventually), is a series of essays about hope, faith, grace, family and life.  If you let the rhythm and voice of Annie's words soak into your mind, your own writing will grow.

Feeling in a particularly Annie Lamott sort of mood, I cracked open her book Bird by Bird and did begin to search for a little advice on writing.  Bird by Bird is about writing.  Her essay titled Polaroids is one of the most inspirational pieces of writing that I've ever read.  I could easily pick out two or three ideas in this essay and write an entire post about each.  Today it is about a theme that Annie was trying to develop for an article, while attending a Special Olympics.  Throughout the course of that day, the theme that Annie so desperately searched for, came in incremental waves.  It was about tragedy transformed over the years into joy.  It was about the beauty of sheer effort.

There are not many things that bring tears to my eyes.  Stories of sheer effort though, do.  Like the time I am watching Vickie's high school basketball team, sitting in the stands next to one of our star performer's dad.  He tells me of how Chrissy would shoot two to three hundred shots a night at home.  And how at times she would have to shovel snow from the driveway first.  Chrissy was plagued by knee injuries and missed playing her entire senior season, except for one game.  She still couldn't play, but near the game's end, someone from her team needed to shoot a technical foul shot.  Coach calls on Chrissy.  She limps slowly to the foul line.  The gym turns into a library...until Chrissy drains the shot.  And then it turns into pandemonium. 

Stories of sheer effort abound in the world of sports.  Like in 1988, when Kirk Gibson hit the Home Run.  I was watching live.  I'll never forget it.  The off-season training regimen that Walter and Eddie Payton endured were legendary examples of sheer effort.  Or the movie Rudy which was based on the real life of Daniel Ruettiger.

The idea of sheer effort and writing had already been swimming about my brain this morning.  My encounter with Marissa Harshman on a RadioBack mission gives proof.  Marissa knows a thing or two about sheer effort.  If you have a chance, check out Marissa and her classmate's work at the Poynter Institute's Summer Fellowship program.  These folks will be carrying the torch into the new frontier of journalism.   

Wooden on Leadership

Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden and Steve Jamison

John Wooden was one of the greatest sport coaches of all time.  Although he logged his time in college basketball, I am convinced that Coach Wooden would have been just as successful in any other sport - or business for that matter.

I have been aware of Coach Wooden since the late Sixties and the legendary UCLA championship teams that produced Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton.  But I think it has only been in the last ten or fifteen years that I had become aware of his sport transcending abilities as a leader.  When I heard about this book I thought, oh, another leadership book.  How many different ways can you talk about leadership?  But this was Coach Wooden.  So I got the book.  I'm glad I did.

Coach Wooden's book is a story.  It is not a how to manual.  Set me up at a campfire in comfortable chairs with the Coach and, other than family, the ends of my wants would end right there.  And when you read this book, you feel like it's just you and the coach and his masterful ability to tell a story.

Coach Wooden created a Pyramid of Success using building blocks labeled with personal qualities and values that he believed were essential for a person to obtain their own level if individual excellence.  Here are the Pyramid's foundational blocks:

• Industriousness
• Friendship
• Loyalty
• Cooperation
• Enthusiasm

The coach describes each value in depth and goes onto provide chapters devoted to lessons in leadership.  Here are a few chapter titles:

• Good Values Attract Good People
• Call Yourself a Teacher
• Little Things Make Big Things Happen
• Seek Significant Change
• Don't Look at the Scoreboard

At the end of each chapter former players tell stories about the Coach reinforcing these personal qualities.  This is a nice touch.

Coach Wooden was known for keeping detailed and fastidious notes throughout his career.  He shares many pages from his notebooks in Wooden on Leadership.

John Wooden inspires me with how he treats people, his careful attention to preparation and his note taking penchant.  If you are a non basketball enthusiast you need to have a copy of this book.  If you are a basketball enthusiast you should already have one.

Slacker Manager: Bren Evolves

Wow!  Bren sold Slacker Manager and is stepping away.  From the very first time that I read Bren's stuff in 2004, neon signs shouted, "He gets it!" 

Gets what David?

Gets life. 

Early on, I read Slacker Manager at least twice a week.  And then as more business sites began popping up I drifted to recently checking in every couple of months.  Without going back to Bren's site to help remind me, here is what left a lasting impression:

Slacker Manger - Bren created this persona to help develop himself and others as effective and efficient managers.

Surfer Dude - The lad likes to hit the Pacific Ocean.

Efficient Apps - Bren would talk about different software apps he would use. The ease in which Bren discussed this stuff would blow me away.  It was and is way over my head.

Networking - Bren had an uncanny sense to get involved with just the right online communities that ramped up exposure for Slacker Manager.

The Great Northwest - You could just feel this was the area in which he lived.

Family Dude - Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you knew what was really important to Bren.

Bren had written about management for three years and his interest to continue writing about it has faded.  I so get this.  Unlike Rosa or Lisa, Bren's livelihood is not directly tied into his site.  (No doubt though, Rosa and Lisa would be just as successful without their sites).  So a move away from Slacker Manager is a move towards a direction of personal growth, personal evolution.

Bren - best wishes to you and your family brother!  You have enriched the lives of our circle of friends.

Slacker Manager Sold

Chili's: New Tampa

"Man!  There are so many to choose from.  Where should we go?"

There are seemingly a thousand restaurants within twenty minutes from our house.  Why choose one over the other?  Good food is the ticket to the concert.  Without good food you ain't getting in.  For us, that narrows down our choices to about eight-hundred.  Hey, we're normal people.  We're not some sort of Zagat zealots. 

The restaurant's environment determines whether or not we sit on the concert hall floor or up in general seating.  It must be clean and comfortable.  Knock off two-hundred more choices.  In all reality my numbers are skewered.  Selection is much less.  It is amazing how unclean some establishments are.  A very good friend of mine who is a connoisseur of customer service, goes into the restrooms prior to being seated in a restaurant.  If they are unclean, she leaves. 

So, what gets us seated in the front row?  Or more correctly, who?  Maritza Torres.  Maritza is the manager at the Chili's in New Tampa.  One word of caution prior to entering her restaurant though.  Wear sun glasses.  Because Maritza's smile just lights the place up! 

As connoisseurs of not only good customer service ourselves, Rosemary and I are connoisseurs of good management.  Good management is what we witnessed at our last visit to Chili's.  We watched Maritza supporting her staff.  The product of this support was obvious.  Nearly everyone working there acted as if they wanted to be there and that they wanted their customers to be there as well. 

One final observation.  We were waited on by a young lady and a gentleman working his first day.  She was sharp.  By her mannerisms, confidence and voice inflection, we could tell that she is in for a very successful career - in whatever line of work she chooses.  As for the gentleman, his level of customer service blew us away - considering it was his first day.  On that level he is already a seasoned professional.  I have also noticed a couple of other folks in the half dozen or so times that we've visited Chilis.  Their friendly personalities and sense of urgency stands out.

You just don't have folks like these working in an establishment unless you have a manager like Maritza Torres.  Stop into see them when you have a chance...but pack your sunglasses.

The Substance of Style

The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel

Reading this book I couldn't help but to paint a visual of Virginia.   I see Ms. Postrel wearing an Indiana Jones hat, a light green tee shirt underneath a khaki shirt with a bunch of pockets, green shorts with even more pockets and 1980 style comfortable socks jutting out from a pair of hiking boots, sporting black frame glasses.  Is this typical of garb donned by anthropologists?  Or do archaeologists dress this way?  Virginia might frown at how my imagination styled her, but, in addition to the look,  I see her as an intellectual anthropologist who had gone back in time to perform detailed research and then came back to write a report on aesthetics and their affect on the human culture in the early Twenty-First Century.

Since discovering my right brain about ten years ago and since Dan Pink said it's okay for a normal Joe to appreciate design, I have become infatuated with design.  But not as an architect or design school student would be.  In Virginia's words, "I like that.  I'm like that."  My love of design isn't anymore complicated than that.  And I can say the same thing about The Substance of Style.

Virginia:

Aesthetics is the way we communicate through the senses.  It is the art of creating reactions without words, through the look and feel of people, places and things.

I see Virginia using this statement as a torch, leading us through a world where people have embraced the beauty of things.  And whereby this love is changing commerce and culture.  Because she is so many rungs above me on the ladder of intellectuality, I struggle a bit when it comes to the people she references and their viewpoints.  For instance,

Informing many such critiques is a naive mid-twentieth-century view of how business operates: that producers can simply decree what consumers will buy, in a foolproof "circle of manipulation and retroactive need," as the Frankfurt School of Marxists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer put in an influential 1944 essay.

The clutch in my brain sort of stuck on this one and I really didn't feel like rereading it four times and cruising over to Wikipedia to figure it all out.  But Virginia's use of folks and viewpoints like these was not a hindrance.  More importantly, I was able to relate to her observations on aesthetics and design, relate to how I see them in my everyday life.

Tom Peters gives major reference to Virginia and The Substance of Style in his book Design.  What really syncs with me is that Tom is a "I like that, I'm like that," type of person.  Tom is not artistic but completely gets the economic ramifications of design.  ( OMG, like that's news ).  But his belief and the credence that he lends Virginia further solidifies my respect and admiration of her and her book.

Lead Well and Prosper

Lead Well and Prosper by Nick McCormick

You are bone dry High Sierra dehydrated.  You hiked too far and ran out of water too early.  You are beyond a bottle of water.   The paramedics begin an IV.  Lead Well and Proper is a manager's IV.

Nick McCormick presents fifteen strategies for becoming a good manager.  Each strategy receives a separate chapter of highly focused instruction, followed by do's, don'ts and action items.  Nick cleverly weaves brief example-stories by fictitious characters Joe Kerr and Wanda B. Goode into his teachings. 

Here are samples of chapter headings:

• Teach
• Listen
• Learn
• Share Information
• Do the Right Thing
• Always Follow up

Nick's work here is an IV to managers because it lacks dilution and can be put right to work.  This book is so well written that it could easily grace the book shelves of executive, middle and line management.  Here are two types of managers that came immediately to my mind.

A manager who lacks management training.  Unfortunately there are tens of thousands of managers at work today who have been thrust into their positions because they were good at something else.   If this manager were to implement Nick's teachings, his performance could dramatically improve.

A manager who manages other managers.  A good manager never ceases to teach.  Lead Well and Prosper provides an excellent platform for instruction.  One chapter of instruction, one half hour per week and the manager who is responsible for others will seriously strengthen his team.   

Many thanks to Phil Gerbyshak for pointing Nick and his fine piece of work my way!  Now, head over to Nick's site and buy a copy of his book today.  And, if you are a manager who is up in the food chain, buy a box of books.

RadioBack Mission: Forward

Mission.

Who Are You?

If I visit your Web site (I don't like the word blog) I gotta know about you.  I guess in some psychological way it helps me to frame and digest your content.  Most Web site authors do have an about page, a bio or a link to some personal information.  Some however, do not.

Jesica recently commented here, suggesting that I visit another book review site.  The first thing I do is to lay the mouse cursor over her name to see what the name of her site is.  Don't know about you, but I find it rare that those who comment do not have a site.  The name of Jesica's site is the same site that she suggests that I visit.  Is Jesica a spammer?  I don't think so.  I think she is someone who has built a site and is trying to drum up some traffic.  She is also like the person who is a magazine editor's worst nightmare.  You know the person.  He writes an article on landscaping and submits it to PC Magazine.

So I cruise over to Jesica's site,  Best Books Reviewed.  Not only can I not find out anything about Jesica, I can't find anything about anyone there.  Jesica, you need to write an about page and you need to spend time visiting other sites to gain a feel for how to communicate.  Good luck.

A Mother's Aura

I've been more excited about Rosemary's career and her role as a mother than I've ever been about business.  And if my head wasn't buried in the sand over the last twelve years, I might have noticed life.   Then, instead of pissing and moaning about my own plight, I could have writing about stuff that really matters.

Grassy and Wanted Wear

As much as I love to hear Rosemary's stories, now the ones about writing, I love to hear the ones about our daughters even more.

Mothers

While I was sleeping, life happened.

I am simultaneously reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman and Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott.  I read this quote by Rick Klausner in Tom's book this morning: "The most important health-care system in the world is a mother."  This quote kicked up a wind out in the Atlantic Ocean of my gut.  By the time I got to Anne's chapter about her mother titled Cheese Love, the storm had screamed into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico of my soul and raged on as a level five hurricane.

Me. Me. Me.  For the past twelve years or so I have been hell bent on trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.  I quit writing online about my work and transitioned into a more general view of marketing, business culture and leadership five years ago.  Like a small piece of metal I found myself attracted to the magnetism of certain business books and business folks I met online.  They spoke of things I didn't have.  And I found myself excited enough to speak of them.  My plan, which was one step below a blind squirrel looking for a nut, was to write and network myself into something that I was passionate about and could do for a living.  The problem with my plan was that I was a horse running in circles around a track with blinders on and no clue of where the finish line was.  I have been asleep for the past twelve years.