You would think that more than 3000 reviews averaging 4.6 would lead you to a great book. Instead, in this case, they led me to an awful book. The Power of Discipline is a slipshod bit of work. The writing/editing is terrible and the “evidence” supporting the author’s statements is often inaccurate. Let me be more specific. I bought a copy of The Power of Discipline based on Amazon reviews. I understand that many people who read self-help books don’t worry too much about either writing or research support as long as the material is inspiring. I am definitely not one of those people. I pushed ..read more

There’s just no way that you’re going to be able to do everything that’s asked of you all by yourself. So, don’t act stupid. Ask for help. Ask for help from your boss. Ask for help from your team. Ask for help from your peers. Ask for help from anyone who might be able to help. This is only one of 347 tips in my ebook, Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time. Just promoted from individual contributor? Check out my ebook, Now You’re the Boss: Making the Most of the Most Important Transition in Business ..read more

It was the day of the Great Fishing Contest. I was about seven years old. We lived in a small town with a creek that ran right through the center of the town square. Every year, the town held a fishing contest. There were prizes for the most fish, the biggest fish, the smallest fish, and all sorts of other things. There were prizes for different age groups, so I had a chance. I had been fantasizing about winning one of those prizes for months. My father offered to teach me some things. I told him I didn’t need any help. After all, he and my mom had scraped together enough on a small-town past ..read more

A New Way to Think reminded me of an old joke. In the joke, a man goes to his doctor and says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” The doctor replies, “Then quit doing that.” That’s the premise behind Roger Martin’s book, A New Way to Think. He says this in the Introduction. “When executives and managers find that a given framework, general practice, theory, or way of thinking—what I will call a “model” for short—doesn’t lead to the desired outcome, they almost automatically assume that the model in question wasn’t applied rigorously enough.” Naturally, the response to thinking that way is t ..read more

People are people. Obvious, right? But that statement has some profound implications for you. People have emotions and they bring them to work. People are unique, not interchangeable parts. People have relationships and knowledge. People have lives that overlap their time at work. People aren’t good at the things machines and computers are good at, but they’re perceptive and creative, things no machine can match. Bottom line: expect people to be people and revel in the wonder of it all. This is an excerpt from my ebook, Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time. Just promoted from individual con ..read more

Want to succeed as a leader? Pay attention to the people around you. Technical skill is important. So is strategy. But you can be the world’s greatest technical expert and have the biggest brain and still fail if you don’t pay attention to the people. In the end, that’s what it’s all about. People are Not Things People are not parts. They are not machines. People show up with emotions that affect how they act. People have lives outside business that affect what they’re like when they show up. They have memories of how you and previous bosses treated them. They have their own brains and can th ..read more

Leaders are readers. Reading helps you discover ideas to try and expand your mental models. In this post, I point you to reviews of recent business books. You’ll find pointers to reviews of Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It, Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, Experiential Intelligence: What It Is and How to Grow It, Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High, and Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace. There’s also Michael McKinney’s look at gre ..read more

Everyone has questions, but some people don’t ask them. So, when one of your team members asks a question, assume that others have it, too. Take the time to answer and check for everyone’s understanding. This is only one of 347 tips in my ebook, Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time. Just promoted from individual contributor? Check out my book, Now You’re the Boss: Making the Most of the Most Important Transition in Business ..read more

Used car salesmen don’t have a good reputation. Jack Scheberies was a big exception. Friends told me that he and his brother, Jerry gave people the best deals on the most reliable used cars. I’d never heard of them, even though they were running the business their father started in 1942. Maybe it’s because they never advertised. A friend drove me to his car lot. Jack wasn’t anything like the stereotypical “used car salesman.” He looked to be in his sixties. He was about my height but stocky, with the kind of hands I remembered from my uncle, the cop. They both had hands like padded concrete b ..read more

Joan Crawford screamed, “No more wire hangers!” I’m screaming “No more ‘run faster’ goals!” “Run faster” goals are the ones where you decide to “increase sales” or even “increase sales by 51.25396 percent” and the only change is that you’ll “do better.” Those are truly weak. If you make your goal, you pat yourself on the back without knowing how you succeeded. If you don’t, you tell yourself that you tried. Set a goal with a behavior in it. Like making an additional sales call every day or thanking everyone on your team for their effort at least once a week or making notes about what worked a ..read more