Juggling Elephants by Jones Loflin and Todd Musig – Jan 2012

 Productivity  1 Response »
Jan 292012
 

Juggling Elephants: An Easier Way to Get Your Most Important Things Done–Now!  by Jones Loflin and Todd Musig ★★★★★

Ah, business training parables. I have read too many of them. I guess I am more than a little cynical when I pick one up anymore. Most are contrived stories, about 100 pages of large font type, teaching some simple concept with the care and tenderness of a treasured faberge egg. While they teach the principle in an format that is easily digested, they don’t delve into the topic enough to provide much knowledge, background or depth. They tend to be like a quick sugar hit, the Krispy Kreme of the self improvement world.

Juggling Elephants follows this same format. We are told the story of a man who takes his daughter to the circus even though he is overwhelmed with everything in his life pressing down on him. He has so much to do, he feels guilt for taking time to take his daughter out for the evening, but knows he should be spending more time with her. As “luck” would have it, he ends up sitting next to a ringmaster from another circus, there to check out how a friend’s troupe is doing. The ringmaster instantly reads him and suggests that he needs to stop “juggling elephants” and get his “circus” in order. Naturally, the ringmaster invites the man back the next day to teach him the secret of being a ringmaster.

The rest of the story lays out how a ringmaster controls the show and how it applies to managing personal lives. The man quickly adopts the practices and becomes a master of controlling everything around him, becoming hyper-productive and accomplishing all his wildest dreams. He even loses all the weight he has always wanted and improves his marriage. Amazing.

The book is filled with little “pearls” of wisdom, each on its own page with a nice picture of an elephant. Some of these include:

The result of juggling elephants is that no one, including you, is thrilled with the performance.
The ringmaster cannot be in all three rings at once.
The key to the success of the circus is having quality acts in all three rings.
Every act must have a purpose.
Intermission is an essential part of creating a better circus performance.

So why did I give this short book four stars? I usually won’t give this type of parable more than two at best. Well, to my surprise, I learned a concept I find useful. I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. In order to have good performance, I should have a prioritized list of acts (multiple meanings to this word… get it?) for each ring of my life and be able to move between them with speed and ease. A ring represents an area of focus, such as career, relationships and self. GTD teaches this as well, using the weekly review as a mechanism to plan and prioritize the task lists. I like the concept of grouping the many areas of focus into three rings, though. That is a number I can keep in my head easier. Lining things up by priority puts the most important things on stage first. That is good thing to remember.

Juggling Elephants is a short read, a couple hours or so long. I think this one may be worth it.

 Posted by Dan at 7:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

Six Sigma Memory Jogger II by Ginn, Finn, Ritter, and Brassard – Jan 2012

 Business  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 


Six Sigma Memory Jogger II: A Pocket Guide by Ginn, Finn, Ritter and Brassard ★★★★★

I haven’t been formally trained in the ways of Six Sigma, but I have been around it enough to know some of the basics. We used it at SuperValu/Albertsons. I saw it accomplish some amazing savings through several projects.  Simple, small process changes that were shown to save millions of dollars because of the scale of the operation. I worked closely with a few black belts on projects and their grasp of analysis was admirable. I always wanted to be one, but never got the chance.

One project I knew began with an idle comment from a vendor that the company purchased more small item shipping bins than anyone they knew. This was a huge expense each year. Why were the bins disappearing? That was the answer the Six Sigma team was tasked to find. Using several analysis tools, they quickly discovered the root cause was no process or procedure for returning the bins from the stores to the distribution centers. The bins were stacking up at the stores until the manager got tired of having them in the way and tossing them in the trash. A simple process change later and the bins were flowing back to the distribution centers on the empty trucks to be reused hundreds of times.

The Six Sigma Memory Jogger was recommended to me by my manager. It contains an alphabetical listing of all the tools and tricks the Six Sigma black belts use to do their work. Each tool and method is laid out in a concise discussion of what it is, why it is useful and how to employ it. It even includes a few examples of each. It is short, just 266 pages, but it has one of the most complete listings of analysis tools I have seen. Now that I have read through it, I can draw upon the multitude of tools, except for a few intense statistical functions that were beyond my brain. The rest, however, are useful in all sorts of settings. Having this handy reference close at hand means I don’t have to remember everything, but can do a quick review and get the results I need quickly. I have used several over the years in different situations and have found them invaluable. I

If you have to do any kind of analysis of business process in your job, this book is a great one to have in your toolbox. Recommended.

 Posted by Dan at 7:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

The Intelligent Entrepreneur by Bill Murphy – Apr 2011

 Business  2 Responses »
Jan 242012
 


The Intelligent Entrepreneur: How Three Harvard Business School Graduates Learned the 10 Rules of Successful Entrepreneurship by Bill Murphy  ★★★★★

For the college entrepreneur, being accepted to the the Harvard or Stanford Business Schools is the Holy Grail of Opportunity. Each year, thousands apply and only a few are accepted into these elite programs. The graduates are assured lucrative job offers and contacts for which others would kill. This book follows three HBS graduates who chose another popular route, entrepreneurship. These three turned down the six figure salaries for the opportunity of making something big on their own.

I picked up this book in the hopes of gleaning some information to feed my desire of someday having my own company. What I came away with was unexpected discouragement. I am sure this wasn’t what the author went for, but after tracing the route of these three Harvard graduates, I got the distinct impression a) I could only make it if I attended the Harvard Business School and b) if I didn’t create a multimillion dollar company in three years, I wouldn’t be a successful entrepreneur. The stories were interesting, the advice pertinent, but the loftiness unattainable.

The three chosen subjects each started Internet companies: The Ladders, Military.com and Bluemercury (an online cosmetics retailer). Each were successful through the tenacity and strength of their founders. Each survived through their contacts made at HBS. In fact, one of the lessons I learned from the book, intentional or not, is the value of high-powered contacts, both for advice and cash. It is discouraging to anyone who hasn’t gone to the elite schools to ever hope of meeting these kinds of players.

The chronicle of their respective business startups was very educational and interesting. The book is very engaging, the stories very well written. It is obvious Murphy is a reporter. His style and experience shows through – I cared about their problems and successes. I cheered inwardly as Marla made the shift from sinking online retailer to successful brick-and-mortar boutique. I applaud the success they achieved and grumbled at the poor people management decisions and bad behaviors.

I came away from the book with a fresh look at the hyper-charged life of the successful big entrepreneur, with multimillion dollar investments and even larger payoffs. What I didn’t find was much value for the small entrepreneur. It felt that the message was “if you want to be successful, you better go to Harvard or Stanford”. That just isn’t an option for me, so I was left wondering if I had any business even considering starting my own business. That wasn’t what I was hoping to find.

 Posted by Dan at 7:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson – Jan 2012

 Fiction  No Responses »
Jan 172012
 


The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel by Brandon Sanderson  ★★★★★

After years of listening to the kids talk about the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, I finally got them from Audible and listened to them. I was amazed by the richness and depth of the world Sanderson created. In a medieval world where people gain special powers by “burning” metals inside them, he tells the story of overthrowing a centuries-old ruler with god-like powers. He doesn’t just leave the characters victorious, but tells the often overlooked story of what happens after the revolution. In fact, that part is the more interesting story.

In The Alloy of Law, Sanderson returns to the world of the Mistborn, but several hundred years later, at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Taking the special powers of the Mistborn and colliding them with the modern world of machines, guns and electricity is nothing short of brave for a writer. Fantasy and magic rarely hold up in a more modern world. However, Sanderson pulls it off and the two mesh believably.

The Alloy of Law, while set in the world of Mistborn, doesn’t deal with the large, sweeping issues of the previous books. In fact, those characters are hardly mentioned at all. Instead, this book is a mystery, complete with murder, kidnappings and unexplainable disappearances. The story is well put together, the clues well hidden and the characters engaging. The action scenes are well written and exhilarating. The investigation is thought provoking and moves the story along quickly.

My son, who is a budding writer himself, told me about a podcast, Writing Excuses, that is co-hosted by Sanderson. I listened to a few this week out of curiosity. Sanderson is definitely a teacher (obviously, as he teaches at Brigham Young University). One of the discussions they had was on how to write a successful mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to his advice while seeing how he incorporated it into his novel. It made the book more interesting on more levels as I paid attention to how he revealed the story. He is a master. All of his books are highly recommended.

 Posted by Dan at 7:00 am  Tagged with: , , ,
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