Rothacker Reviews

One Small Step Can Change Your Life

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer.

Motivated by the questions, How do people succeed?  and How do successful people stay successful? Robert writes a book about change utilizing Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement.

Robert's mantra is to perform small steps of continuous improvement.  One gaze at the chapters in his book and you will begin to get a feel:

Why Kaizen Works

Ask Small Questions

Think Small Thoughts

Take Small Actions

Solve Small Problems

Bestow Small Rewards

Identify Small Moments

Kaizen For Life

I like this book!  It is small, portable, digestible, believable and most importantly, doable.  You can crack it open, read five minutes and actually start to put it to work.  Really.

Rothacker Reviews has been going through some change.  I created a journal for guidance.  One thing that I try to write in it each day is...one thing.  What one thing can I do today that moves me into the direction of accomplishing my goal?  Thank you Robert for providing that one thing thing that has helped...your book.

Tampa: Marketing Solutions

One more day at work for the MAN is one more day too many!  It's time to take your education and work experiences and put them to work - for You, Inc.  It's time to start your own business.

You hook up with your lawyer and accountant buddies.  They give you some good advice.  You launch.  You startup.  It's official.  It really is now You, Inc.  Cool!

The first day you hang out your shingle.  Boy did that feel good!  You get busy doing your thing.  It sure does feel good!  But then a stark reality begins to set in.  How am I going to get customers to my door?  You drive up and down Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and and a second cold, stark reality sets in.  There are four other businesses just like yours!  Yipes!  What do you do??

You call Jason and Jennelle.  That's what you do.  Right now. Jason Wilson and Jennelle Diaz Sherman own Full Circle Marketing Solutions.  Jason and Jennelle are two of the most passionate people I've ever met.  Their desire to help business owners just like you is off the charts. 

What I really like about these guys is that they're not going to storm into your business and tell you what to do.  No, they are going to sit down and talk with you.  They are going to learn what you and your business is all about.  They will ask questions.  You will sense their concern.  And you will feel their energy.  And you will begin to envision customers lining up at your door.  You will.  But they won't, if you don't contact them.  Contact them today!

 

 

Management Podcasts: Communications & Authenticity

Nick McCormick, author of Lead Well and Prosper, writes about management at his site Joe and Wanda on Management.  Nick recently kicked off a new podcast gig titled, Management Tips.  He plans to have accomplished managers, business coaches and authors talk about leadership and or management tips.

Nick's first guest was fellow JJL author, Slacker Manager & Make it Great! author Phil Gerbyshak.  Phil talks about how as a manager, it's important to know and understand what you bring to the table.  And, what you cannot bring to the table.  A firm grasp of the latter is the foundation to building a vibrant team.  I"ll not deprive you of Phil's fresh perspective and his beaming smile (you can see it right through your ears!), but I must add that his thoughts on a leader's capacity to be true and authentic in regards to his own abilities, which provide a pristine example for his team, is spot on!

Nick's second guest was Wayne Turmel.  When I think of Henry Ford I think of the assembly line.  When I think of Thomas Edison I think of the light bulb.  When I think of management I think of Rosa Say.  And when I think of podcasts I think of Wayne Turmel.  Wayne is host of the  Cranky Middle Manager Show. 

Wayne picks up the mike and talks about communications.  Or perhaps I should say that he illustrates about communications, with a big fat paint brush, using gorgeous, neon colors.  Wayne uses the human heart to frame a compelling visual that leaves an impacting imprint on those of us eager to learn.

I was about to hit publish this morning when I noticed that Nick was up late last night with his third show in the series:  Trevor Gay on Being Bold.  Trevor, our friend from across the pond, is the proprietor of the Web site Simplicity and author of four books.

Trevor says that one key to success is to be bold.  He goes on to make sure we do not confuse that to be bold is not necessarily to be arrogant.  I am pretty sure I get exactly where Trevor is coming from.  His message reminds me of the day when I was a shy, awkward young lad who was very much attracted to girls.  I held great battles with myself.  After going dateless for months I became weary with the war.  Finally, I banished all thoughts and fear from my mind.  I picked up the phone, dialed the number and began to talk without worrying about what I would say.  I think a younger dave and students of Trevor would benefit from Nike's words of wisdom: Just Do It!

I absolutely love Nick's management tip graphic!!

Remarkable Leadership

Remarkable Leadership by Kevin Eikenberry

Do you work for a living?  Buy Remarkable Leadership now!  Next.

"Jeepers Dave, we're not sure we got our money's worth with that review."

"Let me get this straight, you're paying me for this review?"

"Well, errr, uhhh..........no, but could you tell us a little more?"

Dave is a softy, he relents.

After reading Remarkable Leadership the first time, I closed the book and the first word that popped into my mind was prolific.  Remarkable Leadership is not just a book, it is a work.  Kevin focuses on thirteen core competencies.  They constitute Remarkable Leadership.  Each competency gets a chapter and Kevin weaves within each chapter components that entice you to participate.

"Participate Dave?"

Yes.  Kevin begins each chapter with a self-assessment.  This technique sets the stage for the book to become a conversation.  Then he provides in depth content on topics like continuous learning.  Kevin sculpts out each chapter with:

• Skill areas
• Your now steps
• Bonus Bytes
• Your Remarkable Principles
• Remarkable Resources

Bonus Bytes and Remarkable Resources direct you to an accompanying Web site that is packed with extra information.

If you are a teacher, mentor, manager, boss, coach, executive or otherwise bigwig, this book is for you NO QUESTIONS ASKED!  Jack Welch could benefit from reading Remarkable Leadership. 

"Daaaaave, we're feelin' a twist in the road ahead"

Do you know why Jack Welch could benefit from reading Kevin's book?  Because he isn't a bigwig anymore.  If you work, you need this book as much or even more than your manager does!!  Two reasons:

1. By understanding how your manager is trying to lead you, you'll become more effective.
2. You can become more effective.

Do you know that little guy who is dressed in white and sits on your shoulder?

"Now Dave, keep it together.  Don't loose it buddy."

Well, he kept asking me one question as I read the book.  He said, "Dave, what if you dropped the word leadership?"   I knew exactly what he meant.  I had the same thought myself.

"Your toast."

If  you approach reading Remarkable Leadership with the intent to become more effective, you will.   Nearly everything that Kevin talks about, can be instructive learning for every working person out there.  For instance, Kevin devotes time to the act of Listening.  Now, as much as you hope they would, do you think only leaders could benefit from advice on listening?  How about learning, dealing with change, communicating, telling stories, building relationships, networking, customer service, building values, creativity, innovation, collaboration, teamwork, problem solving, making decisions, responsibility, accountability, projects, processes and goal achievement?? 

"Dave!  You rebounded son!!"

Remarkable Leadership is a prolific book.  I would bind it with good, hearty stock, cover it in leather and cherish it for a lifetime.  But that's just me.

Remarkable Leadership was Smoked-n-Signed.

Hey Coach: Shouldn't we be running suicides?

Carla Rothacker:  "Hey coach, if girls were late last year Coach P made us all run suicides."

Vickie started playing softball in 1986.  Since then Rosemary and I have gone through twenty-two years of coaches with the girls.  They both played softball and basketball.  (Carla is a sophomore playing basketball for a Hillsborough county high school).  Last year she played for Coach P., who is in our top three of best all time coaches.  Coach P took over a troubled girl's basketball program.  He was tough love.  He left the program to pursue other scholastic athletic endeavors in the State of Florida.  We miss him dearly.

Carla's coach this year is well intentioned.  He wants to win and he wants the girls to do well.  I believe that this is his first year at the high school level.  He displays a public temper and lacks discipline amongst the troupes.  His temper is obvious.  That he lacks discipline comes from Carla's comment about the fact that she misses running suicides if girls are late.  Carla's remarks pierced my nearly thirty years of management experience like a hot knife cutting through soft butter.  My dear friend Rosa Say, from her book Managing With Aloha:

When a leader is respected, he will find that others want to be guided, and he's the one they choose to lead the way for them; he's the one that others are naturally compelled to follow.

Our young basketball coach will eventually learn this.  But his adventures cause me to look inside.  Is the grip that I have upon the helm of my own ship firm enough?  Honestly?  It hasn't been.  I've let the excuse of my health and nagging self doubt allow my grip to slip.

Note to dave in the future:  davie,  at this time you are working with the most passionate, hungry-to-learn group of people that have ever been under your tutelage.  You got your head out of your ass and recognized this.  You grabbed hold of the wheel...with conviction.  Your people loved that you would tell them to run suicides if you needed to!

Warrior Skills

Why must it take the skills of a warrior to obtain and retain customers?

I had an opportunity five years ago to take over a consultant's business.  The target market in this industry was less than five percent of the entire industry.  The actual users of this gentleman's service and others like him totaled less than one tenth of one percent.  I had asked my friend how did he do what he did?  To be on the road over two-hundred fifty days a year and maybe score a couple of new customers.  But mostly, how did he deal with all of the ignorance and resistance?

He said, "David, you've got to get in the ring and knock them upside the head. You have to battle and pound sense into them."

My friend loved that part.  He lived for the battle.

I am sure that it helps to be passionate about what you are selling.  For me, I long to sell a service or product that folks take delight in, that folks love to buy, that doesn't involve big corporation, that doesn't involve me conforming, that doesn't involve me dressing up like a monkey - where I can just be myself.

Here is a little story that involved me years ago, working in the aforementioned industry.  We had a customer who for years experienced extremely uncomfortable areas in his home that no other company could remedy.  We proposed a solution that he said was the equivalent price of taking his family of four to Disney World.  Comfort or Disney World?  This customer and his family chose to remain uncomfortable.

I just don't have the strength, stamina or will power to battle prospective customers.

Here is proof that this goes beyond my industry and actually inspired these words.

The Inside Advantage

The Inside Advantage by Robert H. Bloom with Dave Conti

Bob Bloom was once US Chairman and CEO of Publicis Worldwide, as in advertising firms, BIG advertising firms.  One might think, "how could Bob relate to my company and its whopping seventy-five thousand dollars in sales?"  Bob is of the age and comes from the era where folks from different class and management levels did not associate with each other.  After reading The Inside Advantage however, I get the feeling that Bob would be open and share with others - even if they migrated to the round-table from the levels of subterranean management.

This point is important to me.  If the author is an arrogant snob, I don't care how poignant his message is, I have no use for him.  And I suspect that nearly all Gen X and Y'ers along with a few Boomers feel the same way.

This book is about growing your business.  Bob hooks me on page one.  He says that it is likely every company has at least one underutilized strength that can be the centerpiece of a powerful growth strategy.  This fact so resonates with me.

Now, pull your chairs in a little closer and listen up.  Or, put another log on the campfire and tighten up the circle, because Bob's discourse is conversation over lecture.  In the rest of the book Bob describes The Growth Discovery Process.  It is very simple, clear and not only pertains to both large and small companies, it pertains to the individual entrepreneur.  Basically it involves identifying:

Who is the core customer?

What is your uncommon offering?

How is your persuasive strategy different from others?

Own It! is the series of imaginative acts that will celebrate your uncommon offering and make it well known to your core customer.

The Inside Advantage is a no-brainer for companies of all sizes.  Reading along though, I couldn't help but to think, if applied, how Bob's strategy could help those of us with personal Web sites.  Think about asking these questions with your site in mind and ideas that you hadn't thought of before will come forth!

On one other note.  Good, clean design and graphics enrich my reading experience.  I love what Bob does with the graphic of a combination lock throughout this book.  It begins on the book's cover.  He then dedicates a single page graphic to identify each of the four questions.  It is simple, it is attractive, it is in black and white and it is very cool!

Here is a free e-book download of inspirational quotes from the folks who are helping Bob out.

Fun Works

Fun Works by Leslie Yerkes.

Dick Richards trumps the fish.  Browsing through Fun Works I notice the first story is about the fish place in Seattle.  I wanted to shelve the book.  Corporate America embraced the fish place.  It bought its workers the book.  "Read it.  We will be a fun place to work.  File a weekly report.  Fun surveys at month's end."

But, as is my custom, I read the pages towards the book's end.  (Rosemary hits me when she catches me doing this).  I notice that Dick writes a page on what fun is to him at work.  Dick trumps the fish.

Thank God for friends like Dick.  This is a good book.

Actually, there are two other reasons that I dug into this book.  Berrett-Koehler, the publisher.  And the fact that Leslie works in Cleveland.  I remember reading a Fast Company article in November of 2005, about BK.  (FC's archives are screwed up.  The article isn't available).  I believe it was how they interacted with their authors that caught my attention.

Leslie originally published Fun Works in 2000.  She discusses eleven principles that are found in fun companies to work for.  Here are a few:

• Give permission to perform
• Trust the process
• Value a diversity of fun styles
• Expand the boundaries
• Hire good people and get out of the way (my favorite!)
• Be authentic

Each principle gets a chapter and a case study on a company that best exemplifies it.  As the book was originally published in 2000, Leslie includes a 2006 update.  She includes a page of reflection following the updates.  This produces a nice, clarifying effect.

A couple more distinguishing characteristics of Fun Works.  Plenty of white space.  White space helps me get physical with my books.  Pictures, graphics and an overall clean design sets this book apart.

There is a fun / work fusion inventory at the book's end.  I see this survey as a perfect complement to Marcus Buckingham's Measuring Stick survey from First, Break all  the Rules.  The manager takes Leslie's test and the workforce takes Marcus's.

Pick up a copy of this book and see what kind of fun folks are having at work.

Finding Your Tune

Please read this  Download SSRN-id229931.pdf and then come back.

Thank you!

This paper was written by Robert F. Bruner, Dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia.  Is the anecdote that Robert leads his paper with precious or what?  To those of you who are not teachers, I bet you couldn't help but to substitute your present position for that of teacher.  I couldn't. 

Here are a few words extracted from Robert's work:

That teaching should be the hidden dimension in a summary of professional work is curious.

Finding the tune in teaching should be a matter for both individual candidates and institutions. 

An excellent vehicle for this is the teaching portfolio...

It surveys teaching assignments, philosophy, style, accomplishments, innovations, and evidence of teaching effectiveness.

...and perhaps argues for better work to come.

So, what is your tune?  What is that internal tune, when deployed, makes you most effective?

Robert's blog
Robert's home page
Robert's teaching portfolio paper: Download SSRN-id230099.pdf
Robert's paper are logged with the:  Social Science Research Network  (more resource info than you can use)

Robert's home page is a blueprint (or most excellent idea) for personal branding.  If you have an opportunity, scope out the information contained in his Resource section.  And, if you are not a teacher, pretend that it is directed to you, a biz coach, a marketer, a manager, a designer.

I attempted with this post to move away from our biz-as-usual world. That Robert is Dean of the Darden Graduate School of Business, keeps us in the same solar system but offers an alternative perspective.

Don't Treat Them Like Children

Allan Chochinov is a partner at industrial design firm Core77.  He writes an essay here titled Those Who Can, Teach.  1000 words of advice for design teachers. 

I am going to assume that undergrad students in design school mostly fall into the Connected Generation.  Even if you are not a design teacher, you probably either work with or manage folks in this age group.  Read this article through those lens. 

Along with this Allan tip: Talk to undergrads like they're grads; talk to grads like they're undergrads: This one is my favorite:

Don't start your class with your lesson.

There is only one way to start a design class: Ask your students what they did the past week, what they read, what design shows they attended. Communicate that design learning is not confined within class (or campus) walls, and give them license to go out and learn all the things we don't possibly have enough semesters to teach. I go so far as to say "You can bring in less homework next week if you just go see something." And some of them take me up on it. (Precious few, sadly.)

Remember, read this article and substitute your current role for that of design teacher.  Great stuff!!