Harry Tucker Reviews Impactful Books

Where Good Ideas Come From

2010-10-07T12:08:00.001-07:00

In my years as a Wall Street strategy advisor and as a life-long student of that which propels us towards our greatest potential, I am fascinated by an interesting structural tension when it comes to personal and professional excellence.

We have at our finger tips, some of the greatest knowledge, tools and processes that can help propel people and organizations towards excellence and yet despite this vast wealth of information, many people (and the organizations they are associated with) struggle.

After exploring many theories over the years, I think I just realized why this is the case and I am staggered by the implications.

I have just finished reading “Where Good Ideas Come From” by Steven Johnson (author of “Everything Good is Bad For You” and “The Invention of Air”) and found the ideas contained within to be of staggering profundity.

A Different View on Creativity

With no offence intended towards well-intentioned individuals within organizations who come up with interesting ways to help us be more creative, I have often struggled with the value of some of the ideas they have come up with. Some examples come to mind, including the time I flew across the country for a mandatory, all-hands meeting where we played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey or another time when I travelled across the country for a mandatory meeting where the primary thing that was accomplished was a competition to see who could build a toy helicopter out of Lego Blocks the fastest.

When I asked people why we were doing these things, I was informed that it was to help us learn to be more creative. I learned something alright but it was not what they hoped I had learned. By the way, I won the helicopter competition, so there are no sour grapes here. :-)

As I read Steven Johnson’s book, I realized why we struggle with how to be more creative.

It’s because we spend too much time trying to experience an extrinsic-centric learning event when we should be refining the foundational components of what makes a human being a source of unlimited creativity.

As I read his book, I realized why we are often more hit-than-miss when it comes to increasing our potential for creativity. His book also helped me understand why our creativity sometimes grows in leaps and bounds while at other times, we seem unable to recreate this experience, making our growth in creativity seem frustratingly random or lucky.

Seven Key Principles

Mr. Johnson’s engaging writing style guides us through seven key areas that must be understood in order to maximize our creativity, the key areas being:

1. The adjacent possible – the principle that at any given moment, extraordinary change is possible but that only certain changes can occur (this describes those who create ideas that are ahead of their time and whose ideas reach their ultimate potential years later).

2. Liquid networks – the nature of the connections that enable ideas to be born, to be nurtured and to blossom and how these networks are formed and grown.

3. The slow hunch – the acceptance that creativity doesn’t guarantee an instant flash of insight but rather, germinates over time before manifesting.

4.Serendipity – the notion that while happy accidents help allow creativity to flourish, it is the nature of how our ideas are freely shared, how they connect with other ideas and how we perceive the connection at a specific moment that creates profound results.

5. Error – the realization that some of our greatest ideas didn’t come as a result of a flash of insight that followed a number of brilliant successes but rather, that some of those successes come as a result of one or more spectacular failures that produced a brilliant result.

6. Exaptation – the principle of seizing existing components or ideas and repurposing them for a completely different use (for example, using a GPS unit to find your way to a reunion with a long-lost friend when GPS technology was originally created to help us accurately bomb another country into oblivion).

7. Platforms – adapting many layers of existing knowledge, components, delivery mechanisms and such that in themselves may not be unique but which can be recombined or leveraged into something new that is unique or novel.

Insight That Resonates

Mr. Johnson guides the reader through each of these seven areas with examples that are relevant, doing so in a way that hits the reader squarely between the eyes. I found myself on many an occasion exclaiming inwardly “This idea or example is brilliant in its obviousness and simplicity”.

“Where Good Ideas Come From” is a book that one must read with a pen or highlighter in hand as nuggets pop out and provide insight into past or current challenges around creativity and problem solving.

When someone decides to explore ways of helping you or your organization be more creative and they are getting ready to explore a rah-rah session, an offsite brain-storming session or they are looking to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, ask them if they have explored the foundational reasons behind what makes us creative.

And then buy a copy of this book for them.

I believe this book should be mandatory reading for every student, teacher and leader.

We are all students of Life.

We all at some point, teach others.

And if we accept that a leader is someone who influences others and we acknowledge that everyone influences someone at some point, then we are all leaders also.

Educational institutions, governments and corporations should make this book mandatory reading for everyone within their walls.

“Where Good Ideas Come From” is a fun read as well as a profound one.

May your creativity blossom as a result of exploring it.

Create a great day.

Harry

8 Ways to Great - Peak Performance on the Job and in Your Life

2010-01-05T09:20:00.001-08:00

My inbox is awash these days with thoughts on New Year’s resolutions. It’s either from friends telling me what theirs are, asking me what mine are (here’s a hint – I don’t make any) or from people promising a mystical way to make New Year’s resolutions manifest.

It’s all wonderful from the standpoint of tradition.

However, I think many people are once again being set up for their annual disappointment when their quest for the best job ever, the best weight-loss results ever or their “best whatever ” initiative fails to manifest for another year.

As a strategy advisor to Fortune 25 companies, I have watched many companies and projects also set out to achieve their best project ever, only to fail for the same reasons.

As human beings, we are more predictable than we would like to believe.

So when I first took a look at Dr. Doug Hirschhorn’s book “8 Ways to Great”, I thought “uh huh – another self improvement book to go into the pile of books promising me eternal youth, unlimited wealth, dinner with the Queen and the Pope and just about anything else people dream up.”

How wrong I was.

Dr. Hirschhorn is a performance coach and executive trainer who works with high achievers in the trading business. He has conducted workshops at financial institutions and corporations across the US and has been a guest on many TV programs, including the Today show, The Big Idea, Fast Money and Power Lunch. His background is as a trader AND a sports psychologist – a powerful combination when it comes to personal improvement. This book is described as “hard hitting and pragmatic”.

With my many years on Wall Street, this background and description intrigued me. My ultra-left-brained outlook on personal improvement needed to know more. After all, I like to give others an occasional cranial defibrillation – I was overdue for one myself.

I was not disappointed.

As a matter of fact, it was Dr. Hirschhorn’s pragmatism as well as his deep insight that makes this book so powerful.

He opens with a powerful self-exploration of what your life passion is. In other words - “Why do you think you are on this planet?”. He doesn’t focus on what you think you do well, After all, many of us do things well that we absolutely hate and therefore wouldn’t want to be trapped into a lifetime of doing it. If I just inadvertently described you, then you REALLY need this book.

As the author notes:

There’s nothing magical about why why works. It’s all a matter of perspective. Knowing why you want to do something shifts your perspective from the negative to the positive. Instead of getting that sinking feeling in your stomach because you’re asking “How am I ever going to be able to do this?” you’ll be buoyed up by knowing “I have to do this because …..”

In essence, if you can’t get passionate about it, how will you ever put the energy and action into it to produce the results you want and what will give you the fuel to persevere when you encounter challenges and obstacles?

All things being equal, your passion will carry you across the goal-line.

Having determined your “why”, the author walks you through the steps to translate your “why” into goals that follow the CHAMP® system. Dr. Hirschhorn suggests that your goals must be:

Controllable
Hard
Accountable
Measurable
Positive

What a breath of fresh air this system is. Most people go about setting goals that are fuzzy, indefinable, immeasurable or rely on some alignment of the stars or their personal connection to the cosmos. No wonder when you meet these people every year, they are still working on manifesting the same goals (and you hear “but this year, it’s going to be different”).

Dr. Hirschhorn brings us back to reality – a way of defining goals that are within our ability to achieve.

In the rest of the book, he guides you through the steps to bringing your goals alive, to move towards them with unwavering precision and to grow your inner confidence as you achieve your goals and aspire towards greater ones.

As he guides you, he enlightens you on what he believes are The “8 Ways to Great”:

1. Let your true passion be your core motivation.

2. Develop self-awareness and use what you know about both your strengths and weaknesses.

3. Set goals and game plans-and learn to love this process, because it is all about the process.

4. Identify your competitive advantage-what sets you apart and what will turn the odds in your favor.

5. Develop inner confidence that keeps you from judging yourself based on other's standards and expectations.

6. Keep your cool-and don't let emotions dictate your decisions.

7. Take risks yet act intelligently with imperfect information.

8. Be accountable.

They are powerful when applied effectively!

Having this book at your side is like having a high-priced, high-performance coach sitting there with you, guiding you through the process of lifting your life to a new level.

What I also appreciate is that Dr. Hirschhorn is not just spouting off some goal-setting mantra that so many authors re-hash and cast off as something new.

He is sharing a process that he has repeated over and over with successful people. His track record is impressive.

Who wouldn’t want to have access to a personal coach like this?

After my many years of providing strategic and tactical guidance to corporate leaders, I found much within “8 Ways to Great” that I didn’t know.

For that, I am grateful for Dr. Hirschhorn’s book.

I think you will be as well once you have read it.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

The Roadmap Home – A Book Review

2009-11-26T12:07:00.001-08:00

Home.

For many of us, there is a sense of comfort in the word.

The word conjures up feelings of family, a place of safety, a place that contains some items of importance or perhaps it is a place where we can feel like we can really be ourselves.

But home is not just a physical place, a physical structure that contains or enables these things.

Oftentimes it can also be a state of mind, a place within our own sense of spirit where we feel safe, where we can be ourselves and where we feel most comfortable.

For many of us who accept that such a place of spiritual centeredness exists, there have been many times when we felt that we were not “home”. Perhaps there were times when we were not only not home, but we had no knowledge of how to get home.

Finding Your Way Home

For all of those people who wonder how to find their way home, “The Roadmap Home – Your GPS to Inner Peace” may be just the book that one needs.

The author, Leonard Szymczak, has been a psychotherapist and educator for over 35 years. He has impressive credentials, including Director of The Family Therapy Program at the Marriage and Family Centre in Sydney, Australia, and later serving as a senior affiliate therapist with the Family Institute at Northwestern University.

I could say that Mr. Szymczak’s writing style is engaging for it is indeed that.

I could also suggest that his insights into the challenges of finding our way home are profound for they are incredibly powerful.

I could even suggest that his exercises in self-exploration are powerful and resonate with the reader because they definitely do that also.

However, the thing that I found to be most impactful in Mr. Szymczak’s book is his incredible, personal story.

Many authors tell a story of the path to personal growth or freedom but they do it from the standpoint of “I have never had these challenges but since you do, I think this is the best way to solve them”. Such books leave many readers disconnected from the author as the reader thinks “what do you know of my journey?”.

Such is not the case with Mr. Szymczak’s life journey.

Consider this from the opening pages:

Home is about belonging – to a place, a group of people, a wellspring of love. A place where one is comforted, nurtured and protected. Where one can feel safe and secure and can gather strength in the face of adversity. Most importantly, it’s a place to live one’s truth.

That was not my home. Mine was a place ravaged by my father’s mental illness, domestic violence, blaming parents, and their impending divorce. It was a place riddled with conflict, fear and anxiety. Home was not a fortress of protection. Rather, it was a crumbling castle with dragons spewing hot flames. I felt insecure and unsafe, and realized later that I had lost a more sacred space – that place of inner knowing where I had inalienable rights – the right to exist, to feel, to think and act, to love and be loved, to express myself and be heard, to see my potential and have it recognized and blessed. That home was clearly lost by the time I visited the orphanage.

I knew as I read these opening lines that this was going to be an intimate, heart-to-heart sharing.

I was so unprepared for what followed.

Beginning the Journey

As you read this book, you feel like you have a life-long friend beside you, guiding you back to your place of inner peace. You feel like you have a mentor who has lived your life in the past, been blessed and challenged by those experiences and now wants to share his observations and lessons with you.

Using powerful examples from his personal life that resonate with the reader’s own life, Mr. Szymczak guides the reader on a powerful journey back to their own sense of self – a place where they appreciate their great gifts and the miracle that they are.

They find a way to rediscover how incredible they are and what an incredibly important piece of the puzzle of Life that they represent.

He makes the reader feel loved and important in the greater scheme of Life.

Mr. Szymczak’s process is gentle and yet focused. He guides the reader through the process of identifying where home is. After all, you can’t get there if you don’t know where you are and where you need to go.

He then helps the reader, using powerful exercises and visualization techniques, to follow a guided journey that helps the reader identify the guideposts that assure them they are on the right path.

He adeptly shows the reader how to shake off the wounds of our past that so often are the primary obstacles that prevent us from finding our way home.

Having helped the reader find their way home, he then provides the means for helping the reader stay there, living a life of fulfillment from a place of spiritual power, personal strength and personal authenticity.

Creating a Powerful Message

The book “The Roadmap Home” is the most powerful book I have read in a long time in the genre of personal growth.

I think the book owes much of this to Mr. Szymczak’s background as a psychotherapist.

However I think most of the power of this book comes from the fact that Mr. Szymczak has been there – he has lived a life where he was a long way from home. He has spent his life journeying back to the place that he calls home and now his heart calls him to share this roadmap with others.

This is one of those books where you will want to write the author to thank him for the profound impact he had on your life.

I did.

If you want to read a book that makes a powerful impact on your life, then “The Roadmap Home” is such a book.

As I write this on Thanksgiving Day 2009, I am reminded of the power of the simple expression “welcome home”. Home is a place of personal and spiritual power - a place filled with love and acceptance of the beauty of every person.

This book can help you get there.

Welcome home.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

Overcoming Einstein’s Law of Insanity – A Review of “Drive” by Daniel Pink

2009-11-26T08:42:00.001-08:00

We have all heard variations of Einstein’s Law of Insanity – to expect a different result from doing the same thing over and over.

Unfortunate confirmation of the pervasiveness of this law is all around us:

The company who hires an expert to guide them, knowing the expert has guided all of their recent clients into oblivion.
The company that follows the same means of execution, watching their profits ride up and down like a roller coaster. Each dip gets a little lower, but they assure themselves that their strategy is sound and no changes are necessary.
The organization that struggles with making a profit and because of their struggles with revenue, insist that the only help they will accept is that which is offered free-of-charge or at below market-value. After the free resource has left, their profits dip even more, they find another free resource and the cycle continues until a catastrophic end is in sight.
The leaders who have so much ego that they cannot accept guidance from anyone and insist to everyone that everything is under control right up until the end.
The organizations that pleads “we are a not-for-profit of some type and can’t afford to pay for assistance”. Some are successful anyway but many struggle from year to year accepting whatever they can get for free or at minimal expense, loudly espousing great things while hiding from others, the opportunities they missed or didn’t take advantage of.
Organizations that have broken compensation models that don’t reward smart behavior and yet have leaders that complain when revenue is down. I personally witnessed a sales team years ago that went after a $1 million project while intentionally bypassing a $300 million project. Why? Because they had a commission model that knew how to reward one type of sale but not the other. So individual got rewarded for the small deal while the organization missed its overall sales target.

Creatures of Habit – Breaking the Habit Before it Breaks Us

Being creatures of habit, we often will not follow a different path unless we are forced to or we are offered a significant motivation to change. Surprisingly, fear of failure for many people is not sufficient motivation, since they believe that they will always save themselves right before things collapse completely.

How do we change our motivation model and therefore our results?

If you are a leader, owner or advisor to companies who suffer from the results of Einstein’s Law of Insanity, then you need to apply a cranial defibrillator to the head of the leadership team (or perhaps have someone apply it to you).

Daniel Pink’s latest book, “Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” is such a cranial defibrillator.

I found Mr. Pink’s book to be a blast (not just a breath) of fresh air.

Using a writing style that is engaging, informative and enjoyable, Mr. Pink takes the last 50 years of research in diagnosing and improving motivational behaviors and presents it to the reader in such a way that the reader says “Duh … of course”.

Now That We Know What Motivates and Demotivates

Having come to such obvious conclusions, then the reader is forced to ask themselves these questions.

Why am I not doing this?

Why is my organization not doing this?

How can we change how we motivate ourselves and others?

“Drive” explains what motivates and demotivates us personally and professionally. Commonly used “carrot and stick” models, even ones that people don’t realize are carrot and stick models, are shown for what they are – models that for the most part motivate for the short term but are detrimental in the long run for most situations.

Mr. Pink then discusses intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators, intrinsic being the things that motivate us from within (based on our purpose, passion and sense of self-fulfillment) versus extrinsic sources – external factors that are offered in an attempt to motivate people or artificially guide results.

Intrinsic motivators, that which we do because it gives us a sense of purpose and fulfillment and which makes use of our gifts and talents are then analyzed along three primary elements:

Autonomy

How self directed are you and your team in terms of control over time, tasks, techniques and teams when called upon to produce a given result and what are the surprising truths and myths that exist around giving people more autonomy?

Mastery

What are the laws around accomplishing mastery of knowledge and technique in a given subject area?

Purpose

How does one define, ignite and sustain a sense of purpose?

Implementing New Models

Many books in this genre tend to end the discussion at this point, leaving the reader hanging; wondering “ok, you’ve got me all excited but how do I move towards a better model?”.

Mr. Pink doesn’t disappoint. The last part of his book contains a toolkit with practical strategies and ideas to enhance motivational models for, but not limited to:

Individuals
Organizations
Parents and educators
Maintaining a fitness regimen
Compensation plans for employees

He closes his book with a wealth of guidance from experts who “get it”, the likes of Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, Gary Hamel and more.

Without a doubt, I rank this book as one of the top books in its space in terms of addressing how to motivate yourself and others.

It boils a LOT of research in motivational behavior down into practical, understandable, obvious diagnosis of modern day challenges. It then provides powerful prescriptions to help heal the motivational woes of individuals and organizations.

The next time you or your organization needs a little ummph added to the team’s level of motivation, forget about people who sell you rah-rah corporate events or tell you that you just need to communicate more effectively.

I blogged recently about how hundreds of us were once flown across the country so that we could literally play “pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey” at a corporate motivation-builder event. I don’t know how you would react, but personally I was offended for my team and I to be treated like 5-years-olds at incredible expense and my client was incensed to hear that we were out of the office for a few days for a mandatory morale building exercise that turned out to be insulting (and thus demotivating) instead of boosting our motivation.

Many of us left in the months that followed that exercise, with the exercise having proven to many that the company really didn’t understand what motivates people.

Don’t fall into this trap and don’t allow your teams to be further demotivated.

Instead, pick up a copy of Daniel Pink’s book “Drive”, strap on your seatbelt and prepare to be whisked into a new paradigm – a paradigm where we finally embrace a true understanding of what motivates ourselves and others and shows how to use that information to create greater productivity and a sense of fulfillment – both personally and professionally.

It will one of the most refreshing and informative books you will have read for a while.

And it could change your life and the life of your company.

I choose transforming my knowledge, execution and sense of purpose over pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey any day of the week.

How about you?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Overcoming Einstein’s Law of Insanity – A Review of “Drive” by Daniel Pink”, please click here.

“The Catholic Vision For Leading Like Jesus” – A Book Review

2009-11-26T08:39:00.001-08:00

“Each of us is not only called to be a leader, but we are all leaders by default – whether we like it or not.”

Thus opens one of the best books I have ever read on servant leadership and the most powerful book I have ever read on stewardship – the notion of contributing our time, talent and treasure to those who need it.

The author, Dr. Owen Phelps, is the Director of Yeshua Catholic International Leadership Institute. He is a writer, college professor, master catechist and trainer – to say the least. To see his impressive background, please go here.

First of all, I have to admit that despite my openness and acceptance of many things, I have become somewhat skeptical of a lot of books in the motivational / inspirational / personal growth genre.

Why is this? It’s because many of them either say the same thing that others in the genre have already said or they promise much and deliver little. For many authors, they are merely piggybacking on the great results produced by others.

Such is not the case with this book.

This book was inspired by the book “Lead Like Jesus”, co-authored by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges.

First of all, Dr. Phelps explains that leadership is not about power or authority. In fact, he explains this way:

Effective leadership is not about formal power or money. It is about integrity. Leadership begins in the heart.

The book goes on to address four powerful questions that many people find themselves pondering over.

The first three transcend people of all creeds, faiths and beliefs:

Whom do I influence in big or small ways?
How will I be remembered? What is my legacy?
What is the source of influence with others and how can I exert this influence?

The fourth question is one that many Christians who are passionate about service within their faith ask:

How do I fit into Christ’s mission and message for the world?

Dr. Phelps answers these questions by introducing us to the concept of S3 leadership – the concept that we all act as Servant, Steward and Shepherd as we serve our fellow human beings.

Within the notion of servant leadership, Dr. Phelps explores the art of being the servant to others. What he means by this is that as a servant, we seek to influence others and help others to grow and shine. Our purpose is in the form of selfless giving to others instead of working towards our own gains and rewards as our first priority.

As a servant leader, the author suggests that when we act with our own priorities first and foremost, our ego places us in jeopardy as our sense of self-worth is based on pride-based or fear-based models.

When we move towards a servant-based leadership model , our modus operandi is transformed from being pride and fear-based to one that is based on humility and confidence in our purpose to serve and help others.

Such a model is transformational in concept and implementation and changes the very fundamental of human interaction.

The notion of steward as the second part of S3 is equally powerful. If we accept that as a steward, we assume responsibility for taking care of things that do not belong to us, then we begin to feel compelled to make a difference in as many aspects of life as we can. This responsibility covers a broad spectrum of things, ranging from the welfare of all living things on the planet to taking care of the planet itself.

The final element of S3, being the shepherd, is based on two very important concepts – the power of trust and and the power of unconditional love. If we are unable to trust and love ourselves, our ability to work with others will be severely limited. In turn, having accomplished this level of self-acceptance, it is critical to be able to establish trust and unconditional love with others in order to be able to offer help and to accept help if offered.

Just as the shepherd loves his sheep unconditionally and the sheep trust the shepherd through the shepherd’s actions, our ability to truly serve the needs of others will only manifest when we have the ability to love and serve others unconditionally and in a trustful way.

Dr. Phelps uses a quote from Scripture that summarizes the notion of S3 perfectly:

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

- 1 Peter 3:8 (NAB)

The workbook that is available for this book is equally powerful. For stewardship groups that struggle with how to get their group or parish stewardship activities engaged on a higher level, the workbook is a powerful guide.

In fact, the workbook is the best guide to stewardship that I have seen in my many years of stewardship activities. It’s flexible, insightful structure is an asset to beginning groups who need help with structure and execution and for advanced groups looking for fresh, new ideas to take their efforts to a higher level.

If you are an individual seeking to expand your stewardship activities or you represent a group looking to implement larger stewardship initiatives, this book and the accompanying workbook are a must-read.

If you are not faith-based or are Christian but not necessarily Roman Catholic but you seek to expand your leadership abilities and your ability to influence others, this book is also a must read for you.

Dr. Phelps closes his book with a quote from Scripture that I found to be powerful and made me stop and think before I closed the book:

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

- 2 Corinthians 13:11 (NAB)

The book is available from your traditional book retailers and from the publishing company directly. The publisher can also be found at www.osv.com.

I wish you well on your exploration of servant leadership and your quest to help others.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my Musings-in-a-Minute review of “The Catholic Vision for Leading Like Jesus" – A Book Review”, please click here.