Monday, April 2, 2007

Lead Well and Prosper

Busy weekend. Friday night I played duplicate bridge (lost badly). Saturday morning I had a bicycle fitting. It took over 2 hours. I had never done this. interesting process. Of course it rained for the rest of the weekend so I did not get out to try it with all the adjustments. Then a house party at friends who live 5 miles away so long walk too. Sunday I did run 8 miles. Other than that, there was the usual email volume, quotations and because it was month end, lots of month end reporting to do. I also have to rework all the budgets because of the Redmond acquisition. The weekend could have been longer. I needed the time.

I read a book called, Lead Well and Prosper, 15 Successful Strategies to Becoming a Good Manager by Nick McCormick. This is one of those simple, short, easy to read books. It is less than 100 pages and would take a slow reader not more than an hour to read. Of course at this length it lacks depth.

It has many obvious lessons and gets backs to the basics covering things like adopt a serving attitude; set goals -- plan and execute; learn to the right thing, etc. The lessons are obvious, although it never hurts to reinforce them. Common sense is not too common which is why it is a good book.

This book is also such a simple read that it is the type of book that many companies would get for all of their middle management people. The lessons would be easy to build a leadership training program on.

I have become discouraged over time that most people do not read so you have to give them very short and easy to digest like this to get them to read. On the other hand, I am feeling behind on my reading. I have just been way swamped.

1 comment:

  1. A lot of people don't spend much time reading traditional books any more. However, I think it is interesting to note that years ago, much of the literature that changed the world was written as short pamphlets of less than 10 pages. For example, much of the writing that motivated the American War for Independence was small pamphlets, single print sheets and newspaper articles.

    Mark Shead
    Leadership501.com

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