Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

Had almost reached the end of this book and was thinking that (whilst it did contain some worthwhile information), it did not totally do it for me….

The Book	What we thought
“Know-How: the 8 skills that separate people who perform from those who don’t” by Ram Charan	Solid, not stellar – but the letter’s worth reading!

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…and then I reached his “Letter to a Future Leader”, included at the end of the book (p265) …

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A whirlwind trip interstate this week to see some existing clients, and some potential new clients, provided a few hours on the plane to catch up on some reading.

Amongst the things I read was “What brain science tells us about how to excel” by Edward M Hallowell in the December 2010 issue of HBR.

Given we have set some ambitious goals in terms of where our bus is headed, and that I have learnt (the hard way) the value of getting the right people on the bus, and in the right seats, I read this article with great interest.

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We’ve had these books in the library at work for a couple of years.

Some time ago some of the guys who were working with us at the time had a read and gave their reviews. Unfortunately the core message was lost in translation – hence, I did not (at that time) form a favourable opinion of the books.

More recently I’ve started reading through them, and found they are well worth a read.  In my view they don’t form the whole picture of what needs to be considered (more on that later), but they do provide valuable insights.

Rather than review each separately I have grouped them together here.  I’ve only read two currently, and so might update this post later, whenever I have had time to read the others.

“First break all the rules” by Buckingham & Coffman	“Now Discover your Strengths” by Buckingham & Clifton	“The One Thing you Need to Know” by Buckingham	“Go put your Strengths to Work” by Buckingham
	Have not read it yet		Have not read it yet

Frequent visitors to the blog might be asking yourself “Why so many book reviews”? – if so, see here…

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Some time ago, I read this excellent article by Clayton M Christensen entitled “How will you measure your life” in HBR July-August 2010.

Since that time it’s sat in my “well worth reading” and “might post about it later” trays.

This morning I read the editor’s note in the October 2010 issue, where he noted two things – that the article had proved very popular, and that Clayton had experienced a couple health scares in the meantime.  This has prompted me to make this quick post – not because it relates to our company in particular, but moreso because I believe it can be of benefit to anyone who’s reading this blog (and who has not seen the original article already.

The main premise of the article is that one can gain a great perspective on life by pondering the answers to the following three questions: read more »

This is the 2nd post on the topic.

The first post was made almost 2 months ago, and remained incomplete whilst I focused on higher priority issues (such as the recruitment of our GM DDD WCW).  In the meantime, we have had several conversations internally with respect to the implicit responsibilities of the position.

This post is intended to be a starting point, from which further refinement can be made once our GM DDD WCW has started with the company.

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The self-made man and his rags-to-riches struggle is often glorified in our society, especially in Australia.  The most endearing is the story of Donald Bradman: his relentless practise with a cricket stump and golf ball leads to one of the most illustrious careers in sporting history.

The Don is a perfect example of an outlier.  His batting average is a freakish 4.4 standard deviations above the mean, a statistical anomaly that hoists his success well above any other sporting hero. Michael Jordan has nothing on Donald Bradman.

The story of The Don is also typical of an outlier.  He emerged from Australian bush leagues to make a lasting mark on international cricket.  His habit of hitting a golf ball against a water tank has become part of Australian lore.  We attribute The Don’s success to the hard work he put in as a youth - he is self-made. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell contends that there is much more to success than a bit of hard yakka.
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I believe in synchronicity.  Yesterday, I experienced another small example:

1)  As noted recently, we’ve streamlined our working week to set aside Fridays for working ON the business.

2)  As part of Autopsy 2, we have all accepted personal responsibility for a range of tactically-focused projects designed to deliver “quick wins” within the scope of our current levels of competence.

3)  Hence, just yesterday (Friday) we had a number of meetings organised by a couple of different people as part of their role in gathering input & stimulating discussion in their areas of responsibility.

None of the meetings were outstanding, in terms of the input received, or outcomes generated.

So it was a very welcome point of input to open Scott Berkun’s book “Making things Happen” at the place I had last left off (p206), and read the following: read more »

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In the book “The Myth of 9-to-5” the authors note that it is a mark of growing maturity when an individual can reconcile the truth in two apparently paradoxial points of view.

Given this is aligned with my own personal philosophy, and the fact that I’m likely to need to refer to this point again-and-again, I thought it would be easier to extract this point to a separate post (here). read more »

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Paul Klaptocz pointed me at this interesting blog post from Stephen Few entitled “Malcolm Gladwell, modern problems, and the analytics age”.

With us having read two of his books many months ago (Blink and the Tipping Point – sorry, no book reviews up yet) and having previously discussed the follow-on from his 3rd book (Outliers) in my post about the 10,000-hour rule, I was curious to read further. read more »