What We Are Reading

Claiming Your Place At The Fire: Living The Second Half of Your Life On Purpose, Leider & Shapiro

The metaphor of fire is used in the book because the author proports that nothing is more essential to the human experience. Our most distant ancestors depended on fire for survival and the use of fire is what separates humans from non-humans. Now, more than ever, we need new elders among us. New elders are different from societies perception of “the elderly.” What we need in life is available only if we know how to look for it. The book endeavors to be a guide to self-actualization in the second half of life and to help others understand that what really matters in life depends on giving it all back.

We aspire to a purposeful sense of self in elderhood. Now more than ever, we need new elders among us. New elders are natural resources needed today by family, community, organizations, and the Earth.
1. Identity: Recalling our stories
a. Principle: Wisdom
b. Fire starter Question: Who Am I
3. Community: Re-finding our place
a. Principal: Intimacy
b. Firestarter Question: Where do I belong?
4. Passion: Renewing our calling
a. Principal: Caring
b. Firestarter Question: What do I care about?
5. Meaning: Reclaiming our purpose
a. Principal: Meaning
b. Firestarter Question: What is My Legacy?

The 4 flames of vital aging are Identity, Community, Passion, and Meaning.
Identity: Recalling our stories
c. Principle: Wisdom
d. Fire starter Question: Who Am I
To set a path for the second half of our lives, we have to know where we’ve come from in the first half. The end of our explorations “will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” (T. S. Eliot)

Elders teach by story. However, this means more than reminiscing about “the good old days.” Rather it is an ability to touch the lives of other in a manner that brings the story alive in the present, through the past.

Many older adults try to live the second half of their lives the way they lived the first half. Modern elders accept the biology but reject the psychology. The have shifted from “age-ing” to “sage-ing”.

To set a path for the second half of our lives, we have to know where we’ve come from in the first half. Most of us have been too busy writing the story of our life in the first half to be able to read it.

By becoming better acquainted with our own story we more fully understand the stories of others. We often move from an egocentric view of reality to one that is more universal.

We either continue to grow or we die.

For many people, retirement is a roleless role. That type of retirement can turn purposeful lives into casualties. Finishing our lives is a better understood as “putting a finish” on our lives: burnishing our character to a high gloss. We may retire from our jobs, but there is no relaxing from our individual callings.

Walking is an activity that can help in the process of renewing our stories. Sage adults have long sung the praises of walking as a means of self-understanding.

The big questions are never fully answered. We should be making the same inquires of ourselves at 60 that we did at 6. Never stop wondering why we’re here. The four elements of the good life – place, people, work, and purpose – continue to beg for attention at every stage of our lives.

Let those that I love know that I love them-not for whom I expect them to be, but for whom they are.

Too many people live fully for only a short time and extend the dying process far too long. Mid-life is a time when it may be possible to recover the life we have lost in living.

We may at times be unemployed or retired but no one ever becomes uncalled.

Silence can be a conduit to understanding.

By enabling us to reconnect with our own past, it brings about a new relationship to the future.

Elderstories provide guidance to oneself and to the listener. Elderstories connect our own experience to something more universal.

The big questions are never fully answered. Living a purposeful life means continually making the inquiries.

The 4 elements of the good life-place, people, work, and purpose continue to beg for attention at every stage of our lives.

Re-finding our place. Where do I belong?
Changes in relationships work, and physical health naturally precipitate the need to reconsider our sense of place. Contemporary Western culture doesn’t do a good job of holding a place for elders; it’s up to each of us, therefore, to claim our place by focusing on that which sustains and renews us. We do this by recognizing what we have to offer our communities and figuring out the best way to share it. In doing so, we make ourselves a resource for success in our communities and carve out the place in which we belong.

Ultimately, the place we are looking for is somewhere within us. We must journey inward as well as outward to find or place in the world.

Some of the questions we can ask ourselves to determine our place involve climate, the physical environment that makes us feel at home, medical and social services, cultural activities, opportunities to express calling through community work, proximity to family.

Home is where we are most needed and our needs are best met.

Some people complain that they are no longer needed in the second half of life. Then it is important to find a way to help: community organizations, volunteer work or a pet.

Place, in the second half of life, is a moving target. We should continually introspect about where we are and what makes us feel a sense of belonging.

The Flame of Passion: Renewing Our Calling

A vital part of vital aging is passion – doing what we care about.
For many of us, the second half of life is the first real chance we’ve half to define ourselves and to live in a manner of our choosing.

We need to be needed: An inordinate percentage of older adults die with 24 to 36 weeks of retirement. People feel they have nothing to live for and soon, they don’t.
The real key to aliveness in our later years is to touch the lives of others especially those younger than us. From the perspective of youth, there are lots of old people who talk about the past; there are fewer new elders who engage in issues relevant to the present. Being an elder is more about growing whole than growing old. Hope is most powerfully stimulated by taking part in something that will bear fruit in the lives of others.

The Flame of Meaning: Reclaiming our Purpose
Most of the new elders interviewed for this book are proud to be an elder, not ashamed. They appreciate the deepening of creativity and ripening of soul that is impossible in earlier years. Caught up in the eternal quest to stay young, we are often unaware of the growth and transcendence possible in the second half of life. Everyone interviewed for this book referred to an event that heightened awareness of their mortality. During the second half of life purpose is on our minds.

One of the things that happens as we age is that we get closer and closer to those who came before us. Whatever your theological or spiritual bent, you will do well in the second half to find new ways to attune to your spiritual side. This wellspring of emerging spirituality becomes a source of greater power and fulfillment.

Many people fear “having lived a meaningless life.” Naming one’s purpose helps us overcome this fear and is perhaps the most critical activity we can engage in the second half of life. Crafting a personal purpose statement can answer the questions “What do I stand for? What is my core?”

Keeping the Fire Alive: Claim Your Place At The Fire
There are at least three times when we ought to be required to go off on a retreat to sit by a fire and reflect on the next stage of our lives: when we choose our vocation, when we choose a life partner, and when we contemplate retirement. Something happens when we sit before a fire. New feelings and visions emerge.

Growing older offers a distinctive opportunity for growing whole. If people in the second half of life are not encouraged to deal with their aging as a vital stage of growth, the rest of us are cut off from the wisdom that only the most experienced among us can provide.

New elders and elderly are not the same thing. New elders today have more time to age before they become elderly. “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. The last of life for which the first was made.”

The Trust Edge, David Horsager, 2012
Summary by Steve Malone

Chapter 1: The Trust Edge
• Trust is defined as the belief in an entity to
o Do what is right
o Deliver what is promised
o Be the same every time in spite of the circumstances
• Trust is being reliable dependable, and capable. A confident belief in a person, product, or organization.
• Trust takes a long time to grow and can be easily lost.
• The two dimensions of trust are time and depth.

Chapter 2: Impact of Trust
• Larger companies gained trust in the past. Today, smaller, more agile and accountable companies gain trust.
• Trust is the currency of business and life.
• Trust is built on habits that can be formed.

Chapter 3: Barriers to Overcome
• Conflicts of interest
• Low customer loyalty
• Media coverage of scandals
• Speedy social networks
• Technology – lack of understanding breeds skepticism
• Individualism – is prized interdependence is undervalued
• Diversity

Chapter 4: Pillar One, Clarity
Vision and Purpose
• A clear shared vision unifies and motivates.
• If you are not sharing your vision at least every thirty days, your team doesn’t know it.
• Do one or two things well.
Expectation & Communication
• Clarify expectations.
• Mean what you say and say what you mean.
• Expect conflict “If we are all exactly the same, we are not all needed.”
Daily Tasks
• Clarity gives focus to Daily Actionable Tasks.

Chapter 4: Pillar Two, Compassion
• One of the biggest reasons for trust is the perception that someone is concerned beyond themselves for the greater good of the whole. Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
• We’ve moved from a shareholder to a stakeholder world. Make them feel valued.
• Caring leads to trust.
• 4 Laws of Building Trust
1. Listening
a. Patience. Resist the opportunity to have something ready to say.
b. Be present.
c. Avoid the electronic interrupter.
d. Hold one conversation at a time.
e. 360 degree trust assessment.
2. Appreciate
a. Write a handwritten note.
b. Catch people doing good work and encourage, appreciate, and thank them.
c. Focus on the person, not the situation.
3. Wake Up
a. Be present, in the moment.
4. Serve Others Selflessly
a. Put others first.
b. Truly care for others.
• Consider the success of your leadership, your organization and life is about serving others and the greater humanity. Take a global view.

Chapter 6: Pillar 3, Character
• There are two sides to character
1. Integrity – being the same in thoughts, words, and actions.
2. High morals – People want to trust someone who believes in something beyond themselves. Moral character often comes from a deep religious conviction.
• Like any element of trust, character takes time, intentionality, selflessness, and discipline.
• Great leaders keep their word and take responsibility. They do what is right over what is easy.
• Is this right? Am I doing the right thing?
• Be good, not happy. Being good will lead to greater happiness and fewer regrets.
• Choices that maintain our integrity are often made in private.
• Good input leads to good output. If you feed you mind with garbage, that is what will come out.
• Accountability:
o Set clearly defined expectations of behavior and outcomes
o Have the group create objectives
o Make objectives visible
o Measure results
o Regularly ask people how they are doing with projects
• A major way to increase accountability is to reduce anonymity.
• Habits are made by what you do in private.
• Integrity builds trust in you – the first trust in trusting anyone.
• Doing what needs to be done reduces stress.

Chapter 7: Pillar 4, Competency
• The average life span of today’s top companies is less than a decade. Market leaders often fall into a “continued success” mentality that keeps them from learning and succeeding. They lose a sense of urgency and can find it difficult to stay fresh, motivated, and innovative.
• Stretch your mind with new ideas, fresh thoughts, and different viewpoints.
o The ability to learn quickly, amidst rapid change and crisis is more important than learning any specific skill.
o People trust the humble, not the arrogant.
o Without humbling yourself to new ideas, you will become stagnant and lose The Trust Edge.
o Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.
• Throughout history, great leaders have done their best work by removing themselves from their common distractions.

Chapter 8: Pillar 5, Commitment
• When it comes to commitment, actions definitely speak louder than words.
• Committed leaders seek something beyond themselves.
• Take personal responsibility when things go wrong and spread praise when things go right.
• Under promise and over deliver.
• Without commitment from the leader, the players will not win.
• History’s leaders who have made the biggest impact were willing to sacrifice for the greater good.

Chapter 9: Pillar 6, Connection
• “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou
• The secret of the magnetic person is that they’re grateful.
• The single greatest commonality of happy people is an attitude of gratitude. People find that attractive.
• Transparency in teams = Trust. The better team members know each oterh’s backgrounds, beliefs, ideals and other personal aspects the more likelty there will be empathy and understanding within the group.
• Team building, celebrations, off-sites, and social events help build transparency within the group.
• Trust is all about relationships.
• Ask great questions. Listen.
• Care beyond yourself.
• Be genuine

Chapter 10: Pillar 7, Contribution
• Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work – Thomas Edison
• Two hundred great ideas are worth less than one good idea carried out to completion.
• Key strategies for being a daily contributor
1. Plan tomorrow today
2. DMAs (difference making actions)
3. Bundle
4. Email efficiency
5. Enjoy a clear desk
6. Make meetings matter
7. Make a flight plan
8. Optimize your computer
9. Practice the power hour
10. Decide now
• You must deliver results to be trusted.
• The more you give the more you receive.
• Reward results.
• Delayed decision-making increases confusion, clutter, and stress.

Chapter 11: Pillar 8, Consistency
• With consistency comes trust
• You will never get one big chance to be trusted in your life, only millions of small ones.
• Deliver the same every time, and you will become trusted.
• Don’t agree to anything you can’t deliver.

Chapter 12: Extending Trust
• What is expected of a person is likely what they will do.
• People, employees, and leaders all need someone to believe in them.
• I have worked for controlling micro-managers. However, trust always motivated me to do my best.
• Believing in people and trusting them usually brings out their best.
• Trust is a great motivator.
• A culture of trust will improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Trust inspires more trust.
• Don’t let fear rule your life

Chapter 13: Globalization and Trust
• Get to know people individually rather than stereotyping
• People are more likely to trust others who are like them.

Chapter 14: Trust in and Online Age
• The public’s trust can change quickly
• Customers trust each other more than they trust propaganda
• Create and implement strategies for a trusted online presence

Leading Change, Kotter, 2012
Transforming Organizations: Why Firms Fail:
• Allowing too much complacency: Overestimating how much big changes can be forced. Underestimating how hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones. Not recognizing that leadership actions can inadvertently reinforce the status quo. Lack of patience. Becoming paralyzed by the downside possibilities.
• Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition: To be successful the coalition must be powerful – formal titles, information, expertise, reputation, relationships and capacity for leadership.
• Underestimating the power of vision: Whenever you cannot describe the vision of a driving change in two minutes or less and get a reaction of understanding and interest, you are in trouble.
• Under communicating the vision: both words and deeds. Deeds are more powerful.
• Permitting obstacles to block the new vision: avoiding confrontation of obstacles disempowers employees and undermines change.
• Failing to create short-term wins: Successful transformation requires obtaining clear performance improvements, establishing goals, achieving the goals, and rewarding the people involved with recognition, promotions, or mone.
• Declaring victory too soon:
• Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the culture: change sticks when it becomes “the way we do things around here”. Show people how specific behaviors and attitudes have helped improve performance. Ensure the next generation of management personifies the new approach.

Successful change and the force that drives it
• The eight step process must be implemented in sequence.
• Projects within projects: Most projects are a multistep process. At anyone time pieces are in different stages, like wheels within wheels.
• Successful transformation is 90% leadership and 10% management.
• Overmanaged, underled culture p. 31
• It is enormously difficult to enact by sheer force the big changes needed to improve organizational performance. Transformation requires sacrifice, dedication, and creativity, none of which comes with coercion.
• Leadership often begins with a small group that needs to grow over time. Organizations are too complex to be transformed by a single charismatic individual. Many people need to help with the leadership task by modestly assisting with the agenda.

Establishing a sense of urgency (stage 1)
• In an organization with 100 employees at least 24 must go far beyond the normal call of duty to produce a significant change.
• People will find a thousand ingenious ways to withhold cooperation from a process they sincerely think is unnecessary.
• When employees see no tornado-like threat, urgency is low.
• Data from external stakeholders is critical.
• Never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and help maintain the status quo.
• Increasing urgency demands that you remove sources of complacency. For example: eliminate signs of excess, set higher standards, change internal measurement systems that focus on the wrong indexes, vastly increase the amount of external performance feedback everyone gets, reward honest talk and people willing to confront problems, stop baseless happy talk from the top.
• Ways to raise the urgency level
o Create a crisis by exposing managers to major weaknesses, competitors, or allow errors to blow up instead of being corrected.
o Eliminate obvious examples of excess.
o Set productivity, customer satisfaction, and targets so high they can’t be achieved by business as ususal.
o Stop measuring subunit perfomance based on nawwor goals. Insist that more people be accountable for broader measures of performance.
o Send more data about customer satisfaction and performance to more employees.
o Use consultants to force more relevant data and honest discussion into management meetings.
o Put more honest discussion of the firm’s problems in newsletters, and senior management speeches. Stop senior management “happy talk.”
o Bombard people with info about future opportunity and the rewards for obtaining them. Also, emphasize the organization’s current inability to pursue those opportunities.
• It is better to create problems yourself then waiting for one. Then help people see the crisislike nature of the situation without inducing crippling losses.
• A majority of employees and 75% of management and all top executives need to believe that considerable change is essential.

Creating the guiding coalition (Stage 2)
• The guiding coalition team must include: position power, expertise, credibility, leadership.
• A guiding coalition made up of only managers will fail.
• Avoid: Egos and people who create mistrust that kills teamwork.
• Teamwork requires trust. The most common vehicle now used is some form of off-site set of meetings. Talk, analyze, climb mountains, and play games for purpose of increasing mutual understanding and trust.

Developing a vision and a strategy (stage 3)
• Vision is a picture of the future with commentary on why people should strive to create that future.
• A good vision
o Clarifying the general direction for change
o Motivates people to take action in the right direction
o Coordinates the actions of different people
o Characteristics of an effective vision
o Imaginable: conveys a picture of what the future will look like
o Desirable: appeals to the long-term interest of stakeholders
o Feasible: Comprises realistic, attainable goals
o Focused: Is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making:
o Flexible: Is general enough to allow individual inititative and alternative responses in light of changing conditions
o Communicable: Is easy to communicate; can be succefflully explained within five minutes
• A good vision captures the head and the heart, takes some time, involves a group of people, and is tough to do well.

Communicating the change vision (stage 4)
• The real power of a vision is unleashed when most of those involved have a common understanding of its goals and direction.
• The emotional work is the most difficult: letting go of the status quo and other future options, coming to grip with sacrifices, trusting others.
• Key elements in the effective communication of vision
o Simplicity: all jargon and technobabble must be eliminated.
o Metaphor, analogy, and example: a verbal picture is worth a thousand words.
o Multiple forums: big meetings and small, memos and newspapers, formal and informal interaction – all needed to spread the word.
o Repitition: Ideas sink in deeply only after they have been heard many times.
o Leadership by example: Behavior from important people must be consistent.
o Explanation of seeming inconsistencies
o Give and take: two-way communication is more powerful than one-way.
• The challenge of simple and direct communication is that it requires great clarity of thought and courage.
• The vision is first created by the guiding coalition.

Empowering employees for broad-based action (stage 5)
• The biggest obstacles are usually: structures, skills, systems, and supervisors.
• Attitude training is often as important as skills training.
• Empowering people to effect change
o Communicate a sensible vision to employees: create a shared sense of purpose.
o Make structures compatible with the vision: unaligned structures block needed action.
o Provide training employees need:
o Align information and personnel systems to the vision.
o Confront supervisors who undercut needed change.

Generating short term wins (stage 6)
• Characteristics of a short term win
o Visible, lots of people can see if the result is real or hype.
o It’s unambiguous; there can be no argument over the call.
o It’s clearly related to the change effort.
• Quick performance improvements undermine the efforts of resistors.
• The job of management is to win I the short term while making sure you’re in an even stronger position to win in the future.
• The essence of management: systematically targeting objectives and budgeting for them, creating plans to achieve the objectives, organizing for implementation and controlling the process to keep it on track.

Consolidating gains and producing more change (stage 7)
• Whenever you letup before the job is done, critical momentum can be lost and regression may follow.
• Running twenty change projects simultaneously is possible is a) senior executives focus mostly on the overall leadership tasks and b) senior execs delegate responsibility for management and more detailed leadership as low as possible in the organization.
• Eliminate unnecessary interdependencies.
• Stage 7
o More change, not less: the guiding coalition uses the credibility from short-term wins to tackle additional and bigger change projects.
o More help: more people brought in, promoted, and developed to help with changes.
o Leadership from senior management: maintaining clarity of shared purpose and keeping urgency levels up.
o Project management and leadership from below
o Reduction of unnecessary interdependencies.

Anchoring new approaches in the culture (stage 8)
• Culture changes after you have successfully altered peoples actions, after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, an dafter people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement. Thus, most cultural change happens in stage 8, not stage 1.

The organization of the future
• A high urgency rate is essential to complete all the stages of a transformation process.
• Systems cannot be designed to make the organization look good. They need to be created to provide honest and unvarnished news, especially about performance.
• The combination of valid data from a number of external sources, broad communication of that information inside the organization, and a willingness to deal honestly with the feedback will help squash complacency.
• Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we have to become more skilled at creating leaders.
• Managerially empowered employees.

Leadership and lifelong learning
• The best leaders develop their leadership capacity and other skills with the power of compounded growth (professional development).
• Mental habits that support lifelong learning
o Risk taking: willingness to push oneself out of comfort zones.
o Humble self-reflection: honest assessment of successes and failures.
o Solicitation of opinions: Aggressive collection of information and ideas from others.
o Careful listening
o Openness to new ideas
• The best lifelong learners and leaders have high standards, ambitious goals, and a sense of mission in their lives.
• Union rules discourage personal growth.
• People who are attempting to grow, become more comfortable with change, develop leadership skills are driven by a sense that they are doing what is right for themselves, their families, and their organizations. That sense of purpose spurs them on and in spires them during rough periods.

The Little Big Things, Peters, 2012

Summary:
The book is a compilation of Blogs, articles, and observations by the author. He contends that “soft is hard” meaning that relationships, courtesy, recognizing success, and demonstrating values are as important as strategic planning and execution through the traditional business model hierarchy.

The soft skills can be learned. Managers ultimately improve themselves by improving those around them.

A major theme of the book is to hire excellent employees and treat them well. Facility and organizational design should focus on employee job satisfaction. Happy employees will naturally exhibit superior performance, provide extraordinary service to customers and advance organizational goals.

Attention to detail is another theme of the book. Tasks and services should exceed expectations. This is accomplished through hard work. However, the author also notes that some tasks are best left as “good enough” so that time can be allocated to more important issues.

Story telling is one of the “little big things”. Leaders should develop their personal story and tell it often. Leaders should consider presentations, executive meetings, and interactions with employees or customers as an opportunity to tell stories. A good story is the best form of communication, connects with the audience, clarifies purpose, creates meaning, and motivates others to action.

The author contends that all of the “little big things” can be learned. Leaders can become more effective through deliberate practice of the specific skills and behaviors recommended in the book.

Comparison to Other Authors:
• McGregor’s Theory Y: managers assume that given the right conditions, employees are ambitious, self-motivated, and exercise self-control.
 

• #11 Get China and India on your mind. This not a call to action so much as a call to awareness. China is not a threat; it is a reality, a part of our lives vs Friedman’s The World Is Flat, which I interpreted as inevitable hostile takeover

• Primal Leadership: Learning To Lead With Emotional Intelligence, Golemen, Boyatzis, McKee:
o Great leadership works through emotions.
o Leaders manage meaning for a group.
o The resonate leader puts into words what everyone is feeling in their hearts.
o Seventy percent of how employees perceive their organization’s climate can be traced to the actions of one person: the leader.

Evaluate:
Pros: ability to skip around while reading, practical ideas easily put into action, sound advise.
Cons: I don’t like the writing style: bold, repetition, fragments. Mostly opinion and little research base.

I have many “take-aways” from the book. I’m glad I read it.

The Path of Least Resistance for Managers, Fritz

Summary

The author asserts that the underlying structure of an organization will determine its success or failure. Energy follows the path of least resistance, which is determined by the organizational structure.

Structures determine how people will act. Changing structure will change employee behavior.

Implementing organizational change without structural change leads to temporary change or oscillation whereby after initial advancement, people return to their original behaviors. The leader is responsible to view the long-term performance of the organization and monitor structure.

Structural tension begins by comparing the desired state to current reality. The difference, or structural tension, is a powerful force to moving the organization toward its goals. Establishing goals is a prerequisite to creating structural tension.

Structural tension charting is a technique where by each goal is compared to reality. Then, an action plan is developed to move the organization toward each goal. Knowing where we are in relationship to our goals is the most powerful force an organization can have.

Telescoping adds further detail to the structural tension chart by treating each step in the action plan as a goal with its own corollary action plan.

Organizations change because of structural conflicts. Senior leaders must establish a hierarchy of competing goals. For example if change is the primary goal, discontinuity will ensue and one of the action steps should be to manage continuity.

The structural tension process also applies to the purpose or vision of the organization.      The difference between desired and current action creates the tension necessary to achieve the stated purpose.

Leaders are responsible for ensuring an organizational vision. A shared structural conflict relative to that vision in synch with senior executives is the most powerful means to creating and sustaining a great organization.

Structural dynamics and systems thinking both promote holistic vs fragmented thinking. Tension resolution is associated with structural dynamics and is best suited for management design and implementation. Feedback loops are associated with systems thinking and better at understanding complexity through causal loop mapping.

The text includes checklists to assist in developing goals, current reality, and action plans. Laws of organizational structure and chapter summaries are included to review major points.

Analysis

Margaret Wheatly, Finding Our Way

• Organizations are living systems and have the capacity to self-organize.
• Self-organizing systems have the capacity to create for themselves the aspects of organization we thought leaders had to provide.
• Life reacts to any process that inhibits its freedom to create itself.
• Life has two forces.
  • The desire to create something original (creativity)
  • The need to link with other life

This contrasts with Fritz’s view that self-organizing systems seek stability.

Evaluate

Pros

Easy to understand, examples, book summaries. Brings it al together: Senge, Sergiovanni, Collins

Easy to apply

Cons

Broad, could have been two books: one about structural conflict and one about senior leadership implementing purpose.

Overwhelming at times.  Could thwart autonomy

Creating Innovators, Tony Wagner

Summary

The basis of the book is survey research and the opinion of the author. The population selected for the book was young innovators, their parents, and their mentors. Additionally, the author interviewed business and military leaders to solicit their opinions regarding innovation. Most of the book is case studies.

Innovation is defined as a process by which new things take place. The author surmised that play, passion, and purpose was a common theme among young innovators. The process begins by parents empowering children to pursue their interests in favor of traditional schooling or societal expectations. Several of the parents described the challenges of balancing free choice vs. the discipline of developing skills and supporting failure. Most parents instilled the value of “giving back.”

Schools should support innovation by abandoning ‘Race To The Top’ in favor of application based project learning. Every student should maintain a digital learning portfolio and advance based on demonstrating knowledge. Effective school cultures include: collaboration, multidisciplinary learning, risk-taking, and support for intrinsic motivation through play, passion, and purpose.

Innovative leaders must redefine authority by promoting the free flow of information throughout the organization, support innovation, and engage all employees. Innovation requires that authority that has some expertise, listens well, asks good questions, models good values, and creates a shared vision with collective accountability.

Analysis

Fritz, The Path Of Least Resistance To Managers advocates for maintaining structural tension to move the organization. Wagner advocates for “creating a shared vision with collective accountability.” What if the shared vision, developed by employees, is to keep the status quo? Furthermore, the public schools have more stakeholders than employees such as parents, community members, and students. Also, achieving “collective accountability in a public school” is likely unobtainable.

Evaluate

Poor survey methodology. Not a random sample of the population.

It would be interesting to know how many young innovators had traditional upbringing and are making a positive difference in the world with passion and purpose.

The Managerial Moment Of Truth, Bodaken & Fritz. 2011

Summary
The book describes a method whereby managers can hold individuals and teams accountable and improve their performance. The Managerial Moment of Truth or MMOT includes four steps:
1. Acknowledge the truth
2. Analyze how it got to be that way
3. Create an action plan
4. Establish a feedback system
The four steps are sequential.

The author provides examples of each step in the context of a dialogue between a manager and a subordinate. Recommendations for the manager to lead the discussion based on various employee responses are also included.

The basis of MMOT is to remediate poor performance. However, the process has a powerful application in leading the superstar employees to understand the process used to obtain success. This ensures continued success for the high performing employee and often reveals a model that can be replicated throughout the organization.

The book includes examples of how to apply MMOT to an array of employee types and explains how the process can work in a team setting. The author notes that the MMOT structure is a guideline and should be adapted to suit the personality and judgment of the manager.

Comparison To Other Authors
Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance asserts that structural tension begins by comparing the desired state to current reality. This is similar to MMOT in that each goal is compared to reality and an action plan is subsequently developed.

The steps necessary to create change, according to Kotter Our Iceburg Is Melting), align with the four steps of MMOT.
Set the Stage (MMOT Step 1: Acknowledge The Truth)
1. Create a Sense of Urgency - Help other see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.

2. Pull Together the Guiding Team – Establish a powerful team to guide the
group with leadership skills, credibility, communications ability, authority, analytical skills, and a sense of urgency.
Decide What to Do (MMOT Step 2: Analyze How It Got To Be That Way)
3. Develop the Change Vision and Strategy – Clarify how the future will be different from the past and how you can make that future a reality.
Make it Happen (MMOT Step 3: Create An Action Plan)
4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy In – Be sure many others understand and accept the vision and the strategy.
5. Empower Others to Act – Remove barriers so those who want to make the vision a reality can do so.
6. Produce Short-Term Wins – Create some visible, unambiguous successes as soon as possible.
7. Don’t’ Let Up – Press harder and faster after the first successes. Be relentless with initiating change until the vision is reality.
Make it Stick (MMOT Step 4: Establish A Feedback System)
8. Create a New Culture – Hold on to the new ways of behaving, and make sure they succeed, until they become strong enough to replace old traditions.

Evaluate
Pros
MMOT is easy to read and remember. The book includes many practical examples.

Cons
Employees/teams could view MMOT it as scripted at first until it becomes part of the culture. MMOT is only one dimension of leadership and excludes vision, buy in, systems thinking, and culture.

Smart Leaders Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results

By guest blogger Mary Ann Nelson

Most every leader in education appreciates the value of effective teams, but this book suggests why very smart leaders often create less-than-smart teams. Schwartz suggests that sometimes a leader’s mindset and well-intended but misguided actions get in the way of success. Sound familiar? In this book, Schwartz writes about his findings as a consultant in organizations around the world—the results might be helpful to your own leadership development. Busy leaders will especially appreciate his advice for how to create great teams because the book is filled with tips and examples that are practical, clear, and doable.

Schwartz’ basic framework is that leaders of effective teams operate with a “mutual learning mindset” (as opposed to a “unilateral control mindset”). If your team members view you as the one leader in the room with authority and obligation to fix problems, it’s likely this leads to their getting stuck, with results that turn out to be unproductive or negative. Schwartz advocates instead for a mutual team learning approach based on 5 core values (“transparency, curiosity, informed choice and accountability”) and 5 specific assumptions:

• “I have information; so do other people
• “Each of us sees things others don’t
• “People may disagree with me and still have pure motives”
• “Differences are opportunities for learning”
• “I may be contributing to the problem.” (See chart on pp 84.)

In clear and easy-to-understand terms, Schwartz explains how the cycle of mutual learning builds a positive reinforcement among members’ mindsets, behaviors, and achieved results. He gives examples of how the leader can extend mutual learning to the whole team, how their behaviors will be impacted, with specific examples of potential leader behaviors after watching your team’s discussions unfold. In short, Schwartz explains how to mold a team into an effective system, in which the team structure, process, and context need to be congruent with each other and with the team’s mindset.

Schwartz challenges leaders to assess how he/she makes inferences based on observations about people or situations, to become aware of one’s own “ladder of inference” (p. 117) and how to test your assumptions.   Another new learning is that team membership is key: “if people aren’t really interdependent with each other, then a real team isn’t necessary and the leader can simply make decisions after meeting individually with members or even in the group.” (p. 149) Looking back, my work teams often functioned separately (i.e., program directors meeting as a team but in actuality responsible for separate functions), so real teamwork was blocked.   Schwartz also explains how mutual learning teams understand the power of culture with each member being responsible for how the group thinks/leads and intentionally monitoring their norms so as to hold each other accountable. Lastly, Schwartz last chapter offers specific tips for how to lead and support your team’s understanding and hopefully their decision to change, to become a smarter team, with you on the team.

The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

So if you set a New Year's Resolution to improve your life, take the advice of Oprah and Wayne Dyer and read The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.  It has been a #1 bestseller on the New York Times best seller list.  In a career where you are often surrounded by drama and trauma, it is important to not let your own thoughts contribute to the chaos around you.  Take a step back and observe what is going on in your own mind to be detached and observe what is occurring without extraneous beliefs and emotion dictating an automatic response.

Singer uses many different techniques and references to the ability to focus on metacognition.  Free yourself from limiting habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns that you might not have been aware of setting artificial boundaries to potential solutions or possibilities.  Tap into traditions of meditation and mindfulness that let you be in the present moment regardless of what is going on around you.

Steven Hayes, author of Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, recommends Singer's book.  He submits that "Developing the skill to 'step back' is an incredibly useful tool toward living life on your own terms, not just on the terms dictated to you by the voice within."  He also assures that Singer's tenets are supported by modern clinical science. 

Support a resolution to further develop your Spirit as well as your mind and body for 2016!  Even Deepak Chopra recommends its elegant simplicity.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Entertaining and informative not only about the man himself, but also about how different products developed.  The focus is not necessarily on the wide range of behaviors Jobs exhibits, although there is evidence of the disregard for how others perceive his words or dismissive attitude to those who have not met his high standards.  However, it does remind me of certain behaviors we might see in some of our students as we try to modify their behaviors. 

Driven to succeed, Jobs has the goal of creating integrated products of the highest quality and those who do not contribute to the success are not worth dealing with in his work site.  It certainly shows his employees and colleagues that they need to stand up to him and not be cowed by his "either or" attitude.  Workers might be considered the smartest idea contributors ever or the most stupid and worthless....sometimes in the same day.

Not having followed much of Apple development previously, I was intrigued by how the iTunes, iPods, and iPhones were created to keep the whole experience from the view point of the user to be the most satisfying, without frustration.  I love my iPhone and have used many downloads of iTunes without realizing the efforts put into making these easy enough for me to use.  The software and hardware connected in such a way that design is a focus as well as the technology.  I can appreciate rounded corners and different colors that Jobs insisted upon.  The product needed to match a design he had in mind and not be sacrificed to product costs.  Design was so important that items not meeting his high standards were scrapped.

His leaps of intuition when he simply touched an item and knew whether it was "right" or "not" made me think of some others I know who can do that.  Perhaps his early life of Zen meditation and travel to India in search of spiritual enlightenment had something to do with that.  His relationships with women are detailed as well as his final look back at how Joan Baez was not a real "love," but someone he cared a lot about...for three years.

Jobs's official biographer, Walter Isaacson described him as the "creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing."  Having read a great deal about Pixar and the Disney connections, I found this version from Jobs' perspective extremely interesting.

I recommend taking the time to walk back and listen to Isaccson's story of Jobs' life.  Get an unvarnished view of his passion, perfectionism, obsession, artistry and compulsion for control.  Even with his compulsion for control, Jobs gave Isaacson freedom to write, putting nothing off limits.