What I’m Reading

  1. Apparently there is a connection between happiness and education.
  2. Extrovert lies (“it’ll be fun!”) and other humorous musings about life as an introvert from Psychology Today’s new Introvert’s Corner blog.
  3. Keith Ferrazi explores how to build better relationships.
  4. Why we all need to thank Drew Brees.
  5. How to use GTD to better connect projects to next actions.
  6. Why Mark Bittman thinks soda has become the new tobacco when it comes to personal health.
  7. How to combine food and finances into a useful relationship tool.
  8. The origin of the Saint’s “Finish Strong” campaign and who they need to thank for inspiration.
Published:
February 22, 2010 – 2:28 pm
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By Brian J. Elizardi
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9 Journal Prompts for Capturing the Abstract Areas of Your Attention

When it comes to personal productivity and fulfillment, I have found my journal to be one of the killer features of my system that enables me to capture and clarify the more mundane and ambiguous items that grab and pull at my attention.

In Ready for Anything, David Allen’s follow-up book to Getting Things Done, he notes the following regarding the different levels of our attention:

We live and work on many different levels all the time. When one level is disturbed, it pulls energy and focus from the others, until it is resolved. When things are in balance, a natural and sustainable flow of creative energy becomes accessible throughout all endeavors (p. 83).

The trick therefore is to setup the tools to capture and clarify these open loops that occur on all the various levels and vectors of our lives.

Many of the more bold and courageous things I have accomplished in my life are a result of this higher altitude exploration where I use my journal writing to move from the abstract to the concrete. Despite the success I’ve had with this medium, I still have resistance to it. To combat this resistance, I have found that it’s useful to have a list of triggers or prompts to get the creative juices flowing. Here are 9 that I have collected over the years:

  1. What is grabbing or pulling at my attention that requires deeper engagement and exploration?
  2. Does it require greater control or perspective to release its hold on my psyche?
  3. What is not on cruise control that I would like to get there?
  4. What do I need to capture, clarify, decide on or handle sufficiently to get it off my mind?
  5. What is holding my attention and energy hostage? At what level is it occurring? (projects I’ve committed to, responsibilities and areas of focus, short- and long-term goals and visions, life purpose and guiding principles)
  6. What is taking more attention in my life than it deserves?
  7. What distractions that are holding my attention do I need to release and reframe as an input that needs to be captured and clarified?
  8. How can I responsibly unload and identify all of the items that are pulling at my psyche?
  9. What in my current world do I need to accept and move forward on?

For more on journaling, I would make sure check out these great resources:

What are some other prompts you use to capture abstract ideas that are pulling at your attention?

Published:
January 26, 2010 – 10:23 am
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By Brian J. Elizardi
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Using the “Fun Theory” to Improve an Everyday Process

Recently Volkswagen created a great ad campaign to inspire people to do normal but healthy everyday tasks. The basic premise was how fun could be used to alter or change people’s decision and increase participation in that particular activity. Among the examples are the piano stairway, the bottle bank arcade game, and my favorite, the world’s deepest trash bin:

It begs the questions: as a manager or leader, what process or procedure could you improve upon and increase participation in by using the fun theory? This can apply in virtually any setting including in your community or the workplace. Check out the fun theory web site from Volkswagen for more influence.

Published:
January 25, 2010 – 7:00 am
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By Brian J. Elizardi
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Practicing the Art of Influence Without Authority

I recently attended an advisory board meeting as part of my management role with the Organizational Leadership masters program at the University of Denver’s School for Professional and Continuing Studies (University College). Among the many interesting topics we discussed regarding leadership development was a noticeable trend towards a younger student population in the program.

There were many speculations about why this is occurring, but one of the more interesting comments of the day was one from one of our more senior board members and instructors on the need for young professionals to practice the “art of influence without authority.” Many of the younger students in his classroom he noticed were convinced that leadership was synonymous with a position and many were struggling with issues of influence and persuasion while lacking official authority and power.

Influence without authority, on the other hand, requires a high-touch, people focused approach that involves winning people over and requires a lot of additional energy. Any manager can easily enact a new policy that forces people to change. A true test of leadership (and a situation that many young leaders find themselves in) is to produce change without the organizational and authoritative levers and power to make it happen.

The reaction from many of these young leaders is one primarily of frustration, specifically slanted towards positional authority as an end goal to producing change and becoming a leader (“if I only had the authority I would be a great leader”). Influence requires an entirely different skill-set and is one that is great (if not essential) to practice. The next time you get frustrated with your lack of authority to produce change, think about what this situation is trying to teach you and how you can practice the art of influence to win people over.

Are there times when you’ve been frustrated with your lack of positional authority? What are some additional ways you could practice the art of influence without authority?

Published:
January 23, 2010 – 11:09 am
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By Brian J. Elizardi
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A New Metaphor for Work/Life Balance

Photo courtesy of Renzo Ferrante

When we speak of balance and harmony in our lives, we often view it as an either/or paradigm between work and life: if I work too much, then I have too little time for my life outside of work and vice versa.This model reflects a singular vision of work where we are constantly sacrificing and battling between work and play in a zero-sum end game.

In his book Total Leadership, Wharton Professor of Management Stewart Friedman sums up the problem with this outdated metaphor for achieving balance in our lives with an image of two scales in balance. The problem with this metaphor, he writes, is two-fold:

First, it suggests that we need equal amounts of competing elements to create constant equilibrium, and for many people, equality in the importance of and attention to the different parts of life makes no sense. Second, it signifies trade-offs: gaining in one area at the expense of another…thinking about work and the rest of life as a series of trade-offs is fundamentally counterproductive.

This image of two competing ends of a scale doesn’t work for me because I rarely find myself in a situation where I’m in perfect equilibrium and all of the domains of my life (career, body, work, play, relationships, etc.) are perfectly in balance and harmony. In actuality, my universe is constantly in flux with a steady stream of data and input that constantly changes and alters my reality. What was true when I first woke up this morning was shot to pieces when I got into the office and started checking email and returning voicemails (new input continually creates cognitive dissonance).

With our dynamic lives we are often forced to juggle fast-paced careers with continuing education commitments, kid’s soccer schedules, social media, and a 24/7 on call mentality (yes, we want it all). We need a new framework for looking at balance in our lives that is not so dualistic and is instead reflective of the universal nature of work in the 21st century.

Friedman goes on to present a new model for work/life balance that takes into consideration these important elements. “A better metaphor for our quest comes from the jazz quartet. Becoming a…leader is anlagous to playing richly textured music with the sounds of life’s various instruments. It is not about muting the trumpet so the saxophone can be heard.”

The idea of each instrument playing it’s part not equally but uniquely seems to fit better with work in the new era. There will no doubt be times in our lives when the bass plays louder than the keyboard or the saxophone and trumpet work together to create harmony in their own ways.

The book is a great collection of examples of people who strive to achieve harmony in their lives. It’s an enjoyable read, especially for students of leadership and anyone seeking to change their frame of mind when it comes to professional and personal success (hint: they’re not mutually exclusive).

How do the areas of focus in your life work together to create harmony? What are some other ways to think of creating and maintaining harmony with all of the “instruments” in your life?

Published:
January 21, 2010 – 5:24 pm
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By Brian J. Elizardi
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Design Thinking & Business School Reform

As a result of the recession, many business schools are pondering the role they played in the largest financial crisis of our generation. One such entity that has taken bold steps to think differently about how to prepare future business leaders is Roger Martin, who is leading a revolution in design and integrative thinking at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Martin is the Dean at Rotman and has written a number of books on the topic including “The Opposable Mind,” which is one of my all-time favorite reads, and has a new book out titled “The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage.”

The New York Times has caught on to his efforts and did a great piece about Martin and Rotman’s innovative practices with integrative and design thinking in this last Sunday’s paper. The article gives some great examples about how Martin and Rotman are thinking differently about delivering a business degree and preparing future business thinkers and leaders (hint: it’s not all about how to prepare a spreadsheet). It’s an engaging read that has many implications for the future of management and how we are trained to use mental models (see Senge).

If you’re interested in the topic of business school reform, there has been much discussion on the topic in the last year and I would highly recommend the following articles:

What are some other ways b-schools could be reformed? Would you want to see your business school take a multidisciplinary approach to business training? What have I left out?

Published:
January 12, 2010 – 10:12 am
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By Brian J. Elizardi
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My 10 Favorite Business Books of 2009

I set a goal this past year to read 50 books and while I didn’t quite reach my goal, I did read some great business books that are worth sharing. Listed below in no particular order are my ten favorite business books I read in 2009, some of which were published before this year.

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar (Link)
Happier was one of my favorite books of the year because of it’s thoughtful exploration of meaning and pleasure in everyday life. Those who are the happiest, Ben-Shahar posits, are the ones who can balance present gain with future gain. This is a book that is widely circulated online and I highly recommend J.D.’s review from Get Rich Slowly.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Link)
I love the exploration of ideas and no one does it better than Gladwell. As is the case with most of his writing, Gladwell peels back the surface and examines what lies behind our notions of genius, talent, and success. The idea of the “self-made man” and the belief that success derives primarily from super talented individuals are among some of the themes that Gladwell explores in this intriguing read.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman (Link)
Friedman’s latest book should be required reading for business school students and anyone who seeks to understand our new energy future. It’s also a fantastic read when viewed through a macro-management lens with great recommendations for how to create sustainable systems that will last well into the future.

Group Genius by Keith Sawyer (Link)
Keith Sawyer’s book on collaboration is a great companion read to Gladwell’s Outliers. Sawyer furthers our thinking of old group and teamwork paradigms and challenges the myth of solitary genius with a number of great examples of radical and open-source collaboration.

The Element by Ken Robinson (Link)
Robinson’s exploration of how schools stifle creativity is really a continuation of his amazing TED talk given in given in 2006, which is one of my all time favorite in the series. Robinson details many wildly successful and creative individuals whose talents were either ignored or squashed while they were in school. He presents a great model for school transformation (not reformation) at the end of the book that should be required reading for any school administrator.

The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Glimore (Link)
This obscure 10-year old book deserves to be updated with some current examples now that many newer organizations such as Starbucks have learned to harness the power of the customer experience to drive loyalty and repeat business. For any organizational leader looking to use experience design to improve their customer experience, there are some great ideas and examples explored in the book that are worth studying. Of particular interest to those in the social sector is the model for creating transformational customer experiences.

The Future of Management by Gary Hamel (Link)
The notion that the human spirit can be unleased in the workplace has long been a hallmark of the social sector, but management guru Gary Hamel’s latest book on how organization’s can leverage this paradigm to maximize productivity and recruit and retain top talent is essential reading. Hamel details three such organizations (Google, Gore, and Whole Foods) who are turning traditional command and control paradigms on their head and are exploring a break from the traditional hierarchical organization. This is a great read for any manager who wants to further his or her thinking and understanding of management beyond many of the outdated models that are covertly perpetuated in organizations.

Making It All Work by David Allen (Link)
I’m a big fan of Allen’s writings and an avid follower of his systematic approach to productivity. This much anticipated follow-up to his ground-breaking 2001 book Getting Things Done (GTD) further expands on the methodology and focuses on the two essential aspects of daily work (control and perspective). The book has many layers to it that unfold with each reading (I read it twice this year).

A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink (Link)
Daniel Pink’s forward thinking masterpiece will at some point in the near future be the way we all think about work and play in the 21st century. One theme explored in some of the other titles listed here is the idea that working “harder” is not always better (see Hamel’s profile in Future of Management of Google’s 20% personal project time or read about it from this HuffPost piece). Pink beautifully expands on this theme with great examples of play and design and thinking models like l-directed and r-directed thinking. It’s a must read for anyone who wants to be on the edge of 21st century thinking.

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi (Link)
This last bonus book is not a business book as you can tell by the title, but I found it so enthralling that I wanted to included it in my year’s favorite reads. The Monster of Florence is the true story of writer Douglas Preston’s life in Florence, Italy where he moved to write a series of thriller novels. As part of his research, he quickly uncovers the unsolved mystery of Italy’s most notorious serial killer and subsequently becomes part of the story. It’s an amazing escape and you’ll pinch yourself multiple times when you realize that it’s all a true story. I was drawn to the book because my wife and I lived in Florence for a summer and all those who I’ve passed it on to have not been disappointed. In light of the Amanda Knox case, this has also become somewhat of a relevant read on the notoriously ineffective Italian justice system.

These are just some of my favorites from 2009. What have I left out? What were some of your favorites reads from 2009?

Published:
December 27, 2009 – 8:13 am
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By Brian J. Elizardi
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