What Is Important In a Career

I was being interviewed recently and I figured I would share some of my thoughts here.

Stephen Covey said adults are essentially big kids and I agree. While I also agree that we can act our way into a new way of thinking, I also believe that essentially our default emotional response is a reflection of our personality established very early on. Don't get me wrong, I have personally validated that we can drive personal growth at any stage in life, embracing the concept of our power to choose our response to any stimulus.

I was asked what industry I wanted to work in, given a choice. My response was industry is not important because skills are easy to acquire so long as a person is sharp and committed. What is truly important is how one relates to others, how one works with others and how one leads in group dynamics.

Richard Pascale On Adopting A New Way Of Thinking

In Execution: The Discipline Of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy quoted Pascale as saying "People are much more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking than to think their way into a new way of acting."

James Mirasol Ramblings

Things have been really hectic latelty, so I have not had time to post a new review (yes, it's that tight) but I thought I would share a ramble with you anyway...

Stephen Covey rightly said that most of the world's work is accomplished through organizations and most people are members of organizations (Teams) even if it's as part of a family. Jim Collins also said that people are NOT an organization's greatest asset-- the RIGHT people are. The keys are, to find the right people first, then finding them the right seat on the bus based on their unique mix of innate talents and then ensuring that they have the right opportunities to enable them to flourish. Easier said than done? Yes but it is the JOURNEY that makes all the "effort" a transcendant mission.

More again soon!

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Good to Great is delivered in such a direct and unpretentious voice that it is essentially conversational. That may explain why it was over all too fast.

The real value of Good to Great is its data-based approach to discerning what truly works and more significantly, creating the flywheel framework that elegantly encapsulates the sequential approach that was rightly inspirational to Stephen Covey's The 8th Habit.

Beyond the Flywheel framework, Good to Great does not generate anything new. The findings make perfect sense and are consistent with many other works reviewed here but the research validation does add an extra dimension of credibility that is truly appreciated.

Good to Great's one weakness is that it is a bit dated already and in the interim much has transpired that exposes the stated "facts" as pure editorialization. Most prominent are the cases of Circuit City and Fanny Mae --enough said there.

There's lots of valuable practical gems here that also align well with Bossidy and Charan's Execution.

Overall I have to say it is a must read. 4/5 stars.

Execution: The Discipline Of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

Like a lot of other management and leadership books, there is nothing genuinely new or groundbreaking in Execution but it does deliver value by codifying a simple, executable approach to assessing an organization, planning direction and then keeping it moving.

Execution presents its ideas using a framework of 3 core processes namely strategic process, people process and execution process that translate roughly to Stephen Covey's 4 Leadership Behaviors of Modeling, Path finding, Aligning and Empowering plus the 4 Disciplines of Execution that are encapsulated in Focus & Execution. In fact, this book, admits Covey, was inspirational to his The 8th Habit book- which is one work that I unequivocally recommend in another review altogether.

Execution is loaded with real-world management anecdotes from high-powered teams. There are plenty of gems that, again, codify practices that are, yes taught in MBA school and essentially intuitive, but which generally need to be experienced to a high degree to be deeply internalized. Nice to know the all-stars go through essentially the same challenges the rest of us do.

The real value-add comes from the simple language that underscores the no-fuss approach related by Bossidy and Charan. The section on running a world-class management review was particularly engaging for me. I thought the idea of sending a follow up email documenting commitments right after the meeting particularly powerful simply because recent experiences have driven home to me just how effective this simple habit is.

Execution's 3-process framework is a simple and yet effective management audit approach that works. Certainly, as Stephen Covey said, we must always begin with the end in mind and this is ultimately vision that drives his 2-step creation paradigm.

Then comes the task no leader can afford to delegate- the people process which is making sure you have the right people in the right seats and on the right bus. This invokes Marcus Buckingham's talent and strengths-based people approach. As with Buckingham and Covey, Bossidy & Charan drive home that this can only be truly effectively implemented if the Leader has the emotional maturity, security and fortitude to carry it through. It's always best to find out if you have a good fit sooner rather than later, I always say when interviewing candidates. Later on, if the partnership ultimately is not working out, then separating the person from the problem liberates both the manager and subordinate from any personal emotional misgivings about what needs to be done—for benefit of all parties. The way to think about this situation that so many managers are not comfortable with is to remember you are liberating the subordinate from a poor role-talent fit that ultimately stunts their potential.

The bottom-line is that there is so much material on vision and strategy but its the hand-to-hand combat of execution that ultimately delivers success or is the root-cause of disappointment.

I made copious highlights of their experiences and perspective to share with teams.

4/5 stars.

Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury, Bruce Patton

As authors Roger Fisher, William L. Ury and Bruce Patton essentially state, there are probably little, if any, truly new concepts in this book. Like Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the real benefit of this material is to organize or codify the underlying principles that generate results.

In Getting to Yes, the authors provide real value in coining the terms BATNA and Negotiation Jiujitsu, as they make it easier to keep these critical negotiation tools top of mind.

They also provide usage scenarios that really drive home practical application. Furthermore Getting to Yes provides real-world negotiation tips including deciding where to conduct negotiations (your place or mine) and even where to sit at the table.

The meat of the advice is strikingly aligned with Stephen Covey's advice of "Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood" as means generating a feeling of openess in order to work around position-based negotiations.

Getting to Yes also effectively illustrates the real value -or lack thereof- of power in a negotiation. The illustration of a wealthy tourist negotiating with a street hawker resulting in weaker position to the tourist truly works.

They also bring home the value of separating the person from the position and this also aligns well with Stephen Covey's "Think Win-Win" and "Abundance Mentality" concepts. This truism is again brought home in the section that essentially restates that personal attacks or criticism can be viewed as actually and genuinely beneficial inputs, helping us to appreciate better our blind spots transforming the experience into something truly positive. Again it's Think Win-Win.

Getting to Yes is not without flaws though. One part of the book cautions against falling for good cop-bad cop routines and advises that turnaround is fair play. If your counterpart invokes this tactic towards the end of what seemed like productive negotiations, you should feel free to take it as an opening to consider all prior agreements as preliminary and yet later in the book they advocate invoking precisely the same tactic as a means of ensuring one does not later regret an agreement they have mutually developed but which may later be regretted as rash.

In sum, it's a worthwhile read, just don't expect any epiphanies. I rate this work at 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Business Book Reviews by James Mirasol

This is the first post of what, time allowing, will be a relatively comprehensive review of acclaimed business books.

I'll be posting reviews of The Utlimate Question by Fred Riechheld, Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, The Toyota Way by Jeffrey K. Liker, The One Thing You Need to Know, First Break All the Rules, Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Bukingham, Getting to Yes by Fisher, William L. Ury and Bruce Patton, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman and so on...

So stay tuned. My goal is to add one review per week.