Tag Archives: ” Tony Schwartz
What We’ve Lost… is Stopping Points (insight from Tony Schwartz)
In my old life, when I was in ministry, it look a lot of intellectual and emotional energy to preach a new sermon every week (many times, 2-3 new sermons per week). And, the moment one sermon was finished, I had to work on the next one…
In other words, I was never “finished.” I could never “stop.”
Tony Schwartz writes about this in his HBR article, The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time. Here’s a key quote:
What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It’s like an itch we can’t resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.
It’s the first line that is the best: “What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries.”
A preacher I knew used to print the church bulletin every week. He would print it on Friday nights. I mean an old, get ink all over your fingers kind of printing. I asked him once why he did not have someone else print the bulletin. He said, “I want to do one thing a week that, when it is done, I know I finished something.”
Don’t we all wish for that? – some kind of stopping point, when we can say, “I finished that.”
Feeling “never finished” really can make you tired and less productive.
Read the Schwartz article. Think about your own work habits. We all need to find ways to build in regular stopping points. They might just make us easier to get along with, a little more sane, and a lot more productive.
The Power of Positive Deviance – One of the Two Good Books for this Friday’s First Friday Book Synopsis
Bob Morris, my blogging colleague and general all around font of amazing knowledge and wisdom, reads books by the bushel full. I read fewer – far fewer.
And, more times than not, in the last couple of years, I have chosen a book that Bob tells me “would be a good one for the First Friday Book Synopsis.” This Friday I am presenting The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems by Richard T. Pascale, Jerry Sternin, Monique Sternin — one of Bob’s suggestions. An excellent suggestion! Look at this hint about the book:
(A Leadership for the Common Good book.
Published in partnership with the Center for Public Leadership). (Read Bob’s review of the book, on our blog, here).
It will take me a while to process all that the book says. The book presents the principles, the “guts” of “Positive Deviance,” and then illustrates the concept with story after story of breakthrough findings that flesh out the concept.
By the way, Monique Sternin, one of the authors of the book, leads the Positive Deviance Initiative. Read about it here.
Here are some key quotes from the book, setting up the concept:
As a problem solving process, this approach requires retraining ourselves to pay attention differently…
What matters far more (than the “what”) is the “how” – the very particular journey that each community must engage in to mobilize itself, overcome resignation and fatalism, discover its latent wisdom, and put this wisdom into practice. This bears repeating: the community must make the discovery itself. It alone determines how change can be disseminated through the practice of new behavior – not through explanation or edict.
People are assumed to be rational, and their social system adaptable, and it is sufficient to “give them the answer and expect them to get on with it.”
The standard model is probably the best course of action for roughly 70 to 80 percent of change problems encountered. But when empirical experience leads us to conclude, “we’ve tried everything and nothing works,” harnessing local understanding may be the only way to break the impasse.
Pay attention differently
Focus on the “how” – results matter!
Don’t assume that people are rational. You can’t just say, “do this,” and expect people to do it. “They” (any group that needs a breakthrough) have to discover the “it” from among themselves.
These are just some of the lessons of The Power of Positive Deviance. More to come as I finish my reading of the book.
If you are in the DFW area, come join us this Friday morning. My colleague, Karl Krayer, is presenting his synopsis of the new Tony Schwartz book, The Way We’re Working isn’t Working. These are two really good books, and you really can learn the key content and transferable principles from these books at our event. Register here.
Energy (Schwartz, et.al.) and Positive Deviance – Coming for the October First Friday Book Synopsis
We had a wonderful gathering this morning for the September First Friday Book Synosis. Karl Krayer presented the best-seller, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh (of Zappos fame). I presented the provocative book The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida. Both of these synopses will be up soon on our companion web-site (with audio + handout) at 15minutebusinessbooks.com.
For next month, October 1 (the First Friday of October), we have chosen these two books:
The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance by Tony Schwartz, Jean Gomes, Catherine McCarthy Ph.D. (synopsis to be presented by Karl Krayer).
and
The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, Monique Sternin. (I will present this synopsis).
In his review of the Schwartz book on our blog (read his full review here), Bob Morris wrote this:
Schwartz suggests that there are four categories of energy needs that must be accommodated for people to work at their best: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Only by fulfilling these generic needs can we fulfill corresponding needs: sustainability, security, self-expression, and significance. The illustration of all this on Page 9 bears at least some resemblance to Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.”
And in his review of The Power of Positive Deviance (read his full review here), Bob Morris wrote this:
As for “positive deviance,” Richard Pasquale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin explain it as an awkward, oxymoronic term. “The concept is simple: look for outliers who succeed against all odds…The basic premise is this: (1) Solutions to seemingly intractable problems already exist, (2) they have been discovered by members of the community itself, and (3) these innovators (individual positive deviants) have succeeded even though they share the same constraints and barriers as others.”
We have a wonderful community of learners gathering on the First Friday of every month. If you are in the DFW area, come join us. (You will be able to register for this event from this web site soon).
“What Three Books Should I Load On My Kindle For My Cruise?” – w/update
So, here’s the request that came in an e-mail:
We are going on a cruise in September and I want to load my Kindle with three books. What are the three best books you would recommend for my reading? The request came from a very sharp, keen-minded, successful, independent business consultant. He attends one of our book synopsis events. This is my attempt to answer his question.
I am tempted to simply list some of my all time favorite reads (not necessarily the best books I’ve ever read, although they are close — but definitely books that I am very glad I have read), like: The Doorbell Rang, one of my favorite Nero Wolfe mysteries, by Rex Stout; and The Powers That Be and The Reckoning by the truly great David Halberstam; and Defining a Nation, edited by the same Halberstam.
And then there is this: what are the business books from the last few years (and even a little longer ago) that should be on your “I’ve definitely read that book” list? I would certainly include Good to Great by Jim Collins; something Gladwell (it’s tough to choose — probably Outliers); Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf and The Leadership Engine by Noel Tichy; almost anything, but definitely at least one thing, by Peter Drucker. Add to this The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, and a major personal favorite, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp.
But – I still have not answered the question. If I had but three books to load on my Kindle for a September cruise, what titles would I choose? Here’s a list of five; you will have to narrow it down to the three that most interest you.
Choice #1: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize winner with his earlier book Guns, Germs, and Steel, has written a tour de force in Collapse, sweeping us through the societies that collapsed, and providing warnings regarding the decisions societies make. An important book!
Choice #2: Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia by Carmen Bin Laden, or, The Looming Tower: Al-Queda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. Of course, the Wright book is the heftier of the two; it won the Pulitzer, and provides an amazing education about the rise of Al-Queda, what went into their thinking, and especially their animosity toward the West. But there is a personal tone and a very personal take on life in the strict Muslim world of Saudi Arabia in Carmen Bin Laden’s book — the former wife of Yeslam, one of the brothers of Osama Bin Laden. It is a captivating read, and noticeably shorter than The Looming Tower. (You can tell, from this response, that I think we ought to seek to understand this “other” culture that is so foreign to our own). 
Choice #3: OK, which two business books to put on the list? Not necessarily which books to read for enjoyment, but which books provide the most important and useful information? I list two choices. I would put The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life by Robert Cooper, because everyone would benefit from reading an occasional “let’s aim high, and take things higher” book. Unfortunately,
this book is not available for the Kindle. (Yes, I checked on all the others). So, for this category of business book, I recommend The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. (I haven’t yet read the new Schwartz book, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance, which could be a better choice). And, for the other business book, I would have to go with The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande, just because I think it deals with the complexity of this age and provides really valuable suggestions. (And, it gives every patient going in to surgery an important question to ask his or her surgeon: “do you use a checklist?”).
These are the five. You’ll have to reduce it to your three. And, of course, you may be asking others for their suggestions, and reject my three altogether.
And you will notice that there are no novels on my list. I read about a novel a decade (except for my relatively frequent re-reading of the Nero Wolfe mysteries). But I have actually bought a novel – in the past week. It is: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I might actually read it – one of these days soon.
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Two personal footnotes:
#1 – thanks, Tom, for providing a great idea for a blog post. I apologize for answering you in this fashion.
#2 — And, it would be interesting to have Bob Morris give his list of “only three” in response to this request? I’m pretty sure he would have different titles – all absolutely worth the investment of a Kindle purchase and a few hours of reading. So many books… so little time!
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update: I definitely should have put The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis into the mix — as the book I would recommend to help you understand the financial meltdown of the last couple of years. So now I am up to six to choose from, to then narrow down to three. Sorry about that.
Energy Management and Full Engagement — insight from Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
The range of what we think and do
Is limited by what we fail to notice
And because we fail to notice
That we fail to notice
There is little we can do
To change
Until we notice
How failing to notice
Shapes our thoughts and deeds
• Psychiatrist R. D. Laing (quoted in The Power of Full Engagement)
I spoke at the second Take Your Brain to Lunch session today in Dallas, hosted and organized by our blogging colleagues Sara Smith and Cheryl Jensen. I presented my synopsis of The Power of Full Engagement, (The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz). It is a book that I have not revisited for quite some time. It is quite a book! A good book – useful helpful, clear.
Here’s a key quote:
We live in digital time. Our rhythms are rushed, rapid fire and relentless, our days carved up into bits and bytes. We celebrate breadth rather than depth, quick reaction more than considered reflection. We skim across the surface, alighting for brief moments at dozens of destinations but rarely remaining for long at any one. We race through our lives without pausing to consider who we really want to be or where we really want to go. We’re wired up but we’re melting down. We survive on too little sleep, wolf down fast foods on the run, fuel up with coffee, and cool down with alcohol and sleeping pills. Faced with relentless demands at work…, we return home feeling exhausted and often experience our families not as a source of joy and renewal, but as one more demand in an already overburdened life.
We walk around with day planners and to-do lists; Palm Pilots and BlackBerrys, instant pagers and pop-up reminders – all designed to help us manage our time better. We take pride in our ability to multitask, and we wear our willingness to put in long hours as a badge of honor. The term 24/7 describes a world in which work never ends.
As productivity rises even as unemployment rises, more and more people are having to accomplish more and more in essentially the same amount of time as before. Using time well is truly a survival skill. But the authors of this book argue that energy management is really the secret behind good time management.
The authors recommend that we all seek to become “corporate Athletes.” Here is what such a person focuses on:
• YOU MUST BECOME A CORPORATE ATHLETE®
1. Principle 1: Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
2. Principle 2: Because energy capacity diminishes with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.
3. Principle 3: To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.
4. Principle 4: Positive energy rituals – highly specific routines for managing energy – are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.
If you are feeling a time squeeze, it is likely that you are actually experiencing an energy squeeze. Check out this fine book – it could be quite helpful and useful.
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You can purchase my synopsis of this book, with audio and handout, from our companion web site at 15minutebusinessbooks.com.
Take Your Brain to Lunch
Cheryl: On August 12, 2009, over 90 women and men attended the inaugural event of Take Your Brain to Lunch focusing on women’s business topics. We were honored by the positive and insightful survey results at the conclusion of the event and will host these every other month starting in January 2010.
Today we announced our second event in 2009 where we will review 2 relevant business books on the consuming theme of work/life balance. This program is open to everyone, not just women. We will continue to focus on the topics which seem top of mind for today’s women; so guys, come on over and hang out with us to learn the inside scoop! On November 11, 2009 Randy Mayeux will deliver 2 books synopsis over lunch at the Park City Club, Dallas TX. The books are The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stressfree Productivity by David Allen.
While I haven’t read David Allen’s book, I read The Power of Full Engagement a few years ago and have frequently recommended it to coaching clients. When I read books, I use a yellow highlighter. On page 5, I found “To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.” You can tell I was hooked right from the beginning; this truly resonated with my own experience. When I’ve found myself “in the zone” so to speak, these characteristics have been present in spades. Perhaps my favorite toward the end of the book is “When we have blind spots, we can blind side others without even being aware that we are doing so.” How true this has been when I was open to feedback regarding my blind spots, ouch! I loved the stories of “corporate athletes” and found much of the advice regarding changes simple, straight forward, and common sense; and of course, challenging! Simple does not mean easy. Come join us for lunch on Wednesday, November 11 to hear the wisdom in this book along with what Randy will share from Getting Things Done. Networking, good books, dialogue with smart professionals, and lunch, YUM!
Sara is taking some well deserved vacation this week. She will be at Take Your Brain to Lunch!
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Click here to register for the November 11 event.
