Related posts:

1. Book Review: Never Eat Alone
2. Book Review: Beyond Bullet Points
3. Book Review: New Job, New You
4. Getting Unstuck — Book Review
5. Book Review: The Executive Rules

Just a quick note. If you have been following updates here on the site, you know that I’ve been working on a book – I’ve Landed My Dream Job — Now What???

I’m really happy to report that the book is now available for sale on Amazon in both paperback or Kindle version. The link to the book’s page is here:

http://amzn.to/c1xkJD

While the title talks about your Dream Job, the reality is about what to do to ensure your success in starting any new job, whether the job is in your current or new company. What I do is provide you a way to ensure your work is valuable to your new employer – and to ensure your new job is right for you.

The book provides you week by week objectives to complete and the type of work you need to do to complete them. The work focuses on your new manager, team, stakeholders and customers plus what you need to do even before you start your new job. The last chapter is “Decision Points” and helps you determine where you are at in your new job and where you think the new job fits with what you want to do for your work.

Here again is the link to the Amazon page for the book (in paperback or on your Kindle). Take a look.

http://amzn.to/c1xkJD

I’m really excited about finally getting the book published. It really focuses on the person working in the corporate cubicle and what it takes to succeed in a new job.

Related posts:

1. I’ve Landed My Dream Job — Now What???
2. I’ve Landed My Dream Job – Now What?

Start a new career! Get out of that old job and move to something new!

Appealing, isn’t it, just dumping one career you don’t like for another that you’ll love?

Appealing, but not practical. Until now.

Alexandra Levit gets jobs and careers and she has a new book out called New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career. The key to this book is it helps people thinking about a career change to practically go through how to get to the new career.

Changing careers isn’t easy. There are simply too many risks for people thinking of changing and a dearth of knowledge to figure out where to even start. Little knowledge combined with risk is usually a losing proposition. That’s why this book is so great: you can get the knowledge and then understand the risks.

Here’s what the book provides:

The common motivations for changing careers

Everyone is motivated to change for different reasons. Breaking them down, Alexandra discovers the common reasons for changing:

• Family
• Independence
• Learning
• Money
• Passion
• Setback
• Talent

The book has sections for each one of these areas so that you can explore what is feeding your need to change careers.

Real people, real career changes

Each chapter has the stories of five people who began their careers in one line of work and then, because of these motivations, changed their careers. These are not marginal career changes either. Here’s one: from Writer, to Tennis Promoter, to Sponsorship Salesperson. Tough time planning that one, wouldn’t you say?

Or, how about this one: Visual Merchandiser to Mortgage Broker to Gallery Owner. This is precisely why the interview question, “what do you see yourself doing five years from now?” is such a stupid question. You can’t visualize going from a Visual Merchandiser to a Mortgage Broker to a Gallery Owner, much less plan for it, that easily.

Putting the Career Change to Work

Each section looks at the different types of motivations you may have for changing careers and then provides an area of what you can do right now to start implementing changes. This includes things you can do in your current position as well as some offerings on different types of jobs that fit into each of the motivation areas.

This is important because many people are not aware of the multitude of jobs out there and how they fit into what you are looking to do. This part of the book gets you looking in the right direction for the career that is right for you.

The resource toolkit

Alexandra also offers a resource section of both websites and books to help support each area of the book. So this book is not a one stop shop for what you need, but a launching pad that gets you pointed in the right direction with the right questions, possible solutions and more resources to help you dive right in.

Cube Rules Rating: Five Stars, a must to own and read

Look, every one of us will go through multiple jobs and multiple careers. Few of us understand what is motivating us or how to go about a career change. In the Great Recession, many people will change careers because they are forced to do so in order to work.

Even fewer of us understand our motivations and what drives us about work. It takes effort to work through the type of corporate experience we need to make our work not only livable, but enjoyable.

New Job, New You gets to the heart of career change and offers a practical way to help you get it done.

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You have to love a book on business that uses SWAT teams to make business points, don’t you? Timothy L. Johnson‘s book SWAT: Seize the Accomplishment tells the tale of our hero, trying to lead a dispirited, skeptical team that needs to solve difficult issues. And doing it while being undermined every point along the way by a politics-playing, nasty manager.

Just like real life.

The story

Timothy shows us the principles of his work through these stories because they allow for a little dramatic license — and people remember stories, not dry theory. This story teaches us the need to do Systems Thinking in our work to solve problems. Indeed, many business problems are caused by single systems not working — and by multiple Systems Not Working Together.

And the SWAT team angle? It turns out that SWAT teams, whether they are formally practicing Systems Thinking or not, need to perform in very precise, coordinated steps with no wondering about what’s next. They need to secure an area, capture the bad people in the area, and protect the innocent lives in-between. Then turn around and figure out what went wrong and what needed improvement.

I’ve had a great time this past year as Timothy has posted some of his work with the local police SWAT team in his hometown. Plus he’s been able to take (I was going to say “shoot”) pictures of some of the SWAT practice sessions he’s shared. All the while wondering how all this bad-ass stuff was going to fit into his next book.

Fit, it does. The story is perfectly readable and along the way you get good insights into Systems Thinking and how they apply to real business situations.

Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking is the premise that there are inputs into the work you do that gets transformed into outputs from your work. You can examine it on an individual level, a team level and then take the same concept to other departments. Your output becomes someone else’s input.

All of these inputs to process interact with each other. Plus, multiple processes interact with each other. Hence the need for Systems Thinking; nothing really happens in isolation.

When you complain that another department isn’t getting you accurate information and you make errors because of it, you have an input into your job (your process) that isn’t working. Or, if you had twenty people doing a job and now there are ten because of layoffs with the same volume coming in your door, there will be a significant strain on the system, not to mention you.

What Systems Thinking does is focus your attention on your outputs, then work back along the process to your inputs to see where systemic problems lie. Usually, unfortunately, we just identify a problem, implement a fast solution and not understand the impact on other business processes. “Why did that department change it? Now we have twice as much work to do…”

Instead, see how the processes interact with each other and figure out how to do them best.

Systems Thinking isn’t happening

In the Great Recession, the need for good Systems Thinking has never been more needed. As companies have lopped off divisions, pared back operations, changed credit policies and laid off millions of workers, what were inputs and outputs to systems have significantly changed. I doubt management has had enough time to really analyze what the company’s processes are now, much less if they have Systems Working All Together. As an employee, you are paying the price.

Timothy’s book is a timely reminder that we can’t really improve our businesses (or job satisfaction) until we embrace Systems Thinking into our work. Without it, all we do is solve one problem — and cause two more.

Dominate.

Cube Rules Rating: ***** Five Stars — Go buy it!

Related posts:

1. Book Review: New Job, New You
2. Book Review: The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan
3. Book Review: Beyond Bullet Points
4. Book Review: Making It All Work
5. Book Review: Two Weeks to a Breakthrough

I started practicing this method when I read David’s first book, Getting Things Done – the art of stress free productivity. By the time I hit the third chapter, David had pretty much described my life – too many e-mails, too many tasks and getting lost in the weeds of work. As for figuring out why I was on the planet – who had time?

Getting Things Done saved my sanity and I gladly implemented what was in that book into my life.

But the Getting Things Done method was taking something on faith – you can see it working, know how to make the method better for you as an individual, but you don’t necessarily understand the mystery behind the method. To be fair, perhaps David didn’t either at the time.

In the years since Getting Things Done was published, the followers of “GTD” have taken off – because the method works. Getting Things Done is the first organizational method that works in the information age where everything is coming at you fast and furious.

But the “knowing” of why GTD works was still a work in progress.

Enter Making It All Work. In this book, David lays out the reasons the GTD method works. In addition, the years between Getting Things Done and Making It All Work have shown how to make the framework of the method easier to understand.

In essence, stress free productivity centers on two concepts: control and perspective. One needs control to know all of the moving parts and where they are in your life. One needs perspective to determine if those moving parts make any sense to be part of your life. While control and perspective appear mutually exclusive, they are, in fact, interdependent. You can’t have control if you don’t have perspective and you can’t get perspective if you don’t have control.

The best of control and perspective makes you “Captain and Commander” of your life.

The book goes through each portion of the GTD methodology and explains why each works. Implementing the method as you read the book would help you do the practical implementation steps of the method while simultaneously understanding why that particular portion of the method makes sense.

Making It All Work gives you the ability to set up a GTD system that works for you, but I view it as a book that lays out the reasons the method works. If you were curious if this organization method would work for you (and it will), buy the book to see the strategy and tactics that make GTD work. If you decide to seriously implement the method, you may find that also buying Getting Things Done will help you set up your systems in a way that the context of Making It All Work explains.

Cube Rules Rating: Five Cubes (everyone should have this book)

We’re not going back to a world where one big thing a month happens to you. We are past the point where a simple “to do” list is enough to track your commitments. “ABC” priorities don’t make sense when your manager changes your priorities every day. Getting Things Done is a method and a set of tools that help you maintain your productivity while reducing your stress. Everyone should look at the method and see how it can be implemented in their lives.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Two Weeks to a Breakthrough
2. Book Review: Never Eat Alone
3. Book Review: Beyond Bullet Points
4. Book Review: New Job, New You
5. Getting Unstuck — Book Review

“Outliers: The Story of Success” is no different, but the book has implications for knowledge workers. Lots of implications.

The premise of Outliers

Outliers is a book about how success is achieved. It attacks our assumptions about how success is attained at all different levels; whether it is luck or hard work or class or culture, all assumptions are examined.

And the studies and the approach are riveting; I couldn’t put the (Kindle) down.

The implications for Cubicle Warriors

10,000 hours

The first and most fascinating (to me) fact was there seems to be much truth to the “hard work” aspect of becoming successful. It is the “10,000″ hour rule. In order to be truly successful in any field, it is not talent, not ability, but hard and purposeful practice. 10,000 hours of purposeful practice, for precision.

Studies of musicians show that the most brilliant in the field purposefully practiced (to get better at their instrument) over 10,000 hours while those that practiced only 3,000 hours became teachers of music.

The Beatles are arguably one of the best bands ever. Their 10,000 hours came because they played in Hamburg, Germany, early on and had to play eight-hour sets. Yes, eight hours, six nights a week for months at a time.

Opportunity

Besides the purposeful practice, opportunities were presented that were taken advantage of by these people. Hamburg was a chance opportunity for the Beatles.

Closer to Cubicle Warrior home, Bill Gates loved to program code and, because of the school he was enrolled and the summer bake sales to support school programs, he happened to have access to one of the very few remote terminals to a mainframe in the country.

Since there was always access at three in the morning, Bill would get up and program away, using his opportunity to build ten thousand hours of purposeful practice.

Culture

One of the most fascinating studies is the fact that Asian students are far better at math than their Western counterparts. It turns out that it is not due to talent, but their willingness to work on a problem to solve it much longer than other students. Their persistence pays.

Where does their persistence come from? Most likely from their work in rice paddies over thousands of years. Most Chinese families that farm rice have rice paddies that are no bigger than three hotel rooms. Since they can’t get more land, they have to increase the yield from the field.

On average, they spend over 3,000 hours a year tending this three hotel room size stamp of land working the rice. This compares to Western farmers who spend one third the time in the fields tending Western crops.

This persistence, attention to detail (rice paddies, for example yield more when they are perfectly flat) and focus translates into an overall willingness to spend more time trying to solve problems — like math problems.

Cube Rules Rating — Five cubes, a must read

Outliers will change your perception about success and how we run stuff. Your view of successful people will change because you can now infer how they became successful — and how you can too.

Outliers isn’t a book about career management. But it will feed your craving for learning about what it really takes to be successful.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan
2. Book Review: Never Eat Alone
3. Book Review: New Job, New You
4. Getting Unstuck — Book Review
5. Book Review: Confidence

Preparing for a new position in business is important as well. Yet, there is little out there that has a solid preparation plan for Cubicle Warriors to plan for a new position.

“The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan” is a book that outlines the plan for an executive transition to a new role. Think at the CEO or Senior Vice President titles in a larger corporate organization and you have where the book focuses. I’ve used these types of books for my own personal management before and I wanted to try this one as a guide for knowledge workers in preparing for a new position. The book offers up the right stuff:

• A seven-step process to use for managing the 100-day transition to a new role
• Downloadable forms to use as a way to document the 100-day transition
• Focus on relationship building and not just organization charts
• Understanding the politics of the organization and ensuring a good communications plan
• Excellent techniques to determine information about the company and the role being taken

The book even addresses the importance of SMART goals and how to use them in a performance review, a personally important point as I include it in the How to write your performance review course in Cube Rules Products.

Alas, when the authors state their case for the new leader, they really do mean CEO’s and other corporate executives. The information in the book was tough to translate for the leaders of where business meets the cubicle.

Cube Rules Rating: Two Cubes of Five where I didn’t see much value; you might

The book basically outlines the types of consulting services a corporate executive would use (isn’t it great that they can use consultants to plan their job?) in transitioning to a new position. Some of the techniques and steps could be of use to a new manager going into a new position, but would be tough for knowledge workers to use.

Related posts:

1. The single most important action to take on your performance review
2. Book Review: New Job, New You
3. Book Review: Beyond Bullet Points
4. Book Review: Never Eat Alone
5. Book Review: The Executive Rules

In “The Integrity Dividend: Leading by the power of your word,” Tony Simons makes the case for what he accurately calls “behavioral integrity.” Not only does he describe behavioral integrity from an intellectual view, he works to prove there is a bottom-line real money reason for leaders to do so.

The book is divided into three major sections:

What is the integrity dividend?

This section provides a clear definition of behavioral integrity and begins the evidence to show how the behavior makes a difference in leadership. He also provides examples of where the integrity has paid off for companies – and their employees. And if you think that small mistakes in your integrity do not have a big cost, he will set you straight.

Managing your own behavioral integrity

This section is devoted to three areas of developing your own trust and credibility, the cornerstones of integrity. While none of us may become executives in a corporation, we all have leadership capabilities in our work as individual contributors and as part of a team. Building your own integrity through these methods will make you much more effective in your career.

Building and sustaining a leadership culture of integrity

Tony takes a hard look at what it takes to build a real culture of integrity. For managers, this section is about building a culture of accountability in appraisals, training, coaching, and how to work with disagreements on policy.

For individual contributors, this section tells you how to build integrity for yourself and your team – and judge if there is integrity in how you are being managed. Integrity, of course, is a two-way street and a management team that does not have integrity isn’t worth working for in your career.

Cube Rules Rating: 5 cubes out of 5

A five cube rating means that this book is a must read for both managers and individual contributors.

The book is filled with facts – and true stories in each of these applications of integrity from real world companies and their managers. And though the book is written in more of an academic style than most, it is highly readable. I learned a great deal from this book.

This review is a mere two weeks before the national election in the United States. The amount of lying in the face of integrity is thought to not make a difference in our perceptions of the candidates. It does.

The government just agreed to the largest bailout of companies in the history of the United States and offered an initial proposal that contained not a shred of integrity until being significantly modified and thought it made no difference. It does.

Companies are telling their shareholders and employees their view of the company and spinning the story to be looked at in the most positive light, not the light of integrity, and thinking no one will find out anything differently. They will.

Executive leadership needs to lead with integrity and not just strategies and spin. Managers and employees need to re-learn the lessons of integrity. We need to re-learn how integrity impacts our career. We need to re-learn what integrity in the moment really means to our relationships.

We can do that by implementing the suggestions in “The Integrity Dividend: Leading by the power of your word.”

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Never Eat Alone
2. Book Review: New Job, New You
3. Getting Unstuck — Book Review
4. Book Review: Confidence
5. Book Review: Outliers

In terms of trying to equate business to sports, take the simplest difference between sports and business: sports has an off-season, business does not. Yes, work is done during the off-season, but what counts are the games during the season. In business, everything counts all the time.

When I started reading Confidence: How winning streaks and losing streaks begin and end, by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, I was hoping I wasn’t going to get a rah-rah sports to business analogy that just doesn’t make sense in the real world.

Fortunately, that wasn’t what the book was about. Instead, I got the best team-building book I’ve ever read.

While one can interpret the book as what leaders do to build a team, a perfectly acceptable interpretation, the work holds great insights about teams for people who work in cubes.

The four levels of confidence:

1. Self-confidence: an emotional climate of high expectations. Success (on a team) makes it easier to view events in a positive light, to generate optimism.
2. Confidence in one another: positive, supportive, team-oriented behavior. (Success) makes people feel more engaged with their tasks and with one another.
3. Confidence in the system: organizational structures and routines reinforcing accountability, collaboration, and innovation. (Success) makes it likely to turn informal tendencies into formal traditions by building winners’ habits of responsibility, teamwork, and initiative into routines, processes, and practices that encourage and perpetuate them.
4. External confidence: a network to provide resources. (Success) makes it easier to attract financial backers, loyal customers, enthusiastic fans, talented recruits, media attention, opinion leader support, and political goodwill. Continuing to win stimulates this network to grow in size, scope, and magnitude of investment.

The book makes the case that each of these levels of confidence, starting with self-confidence, build and sustain winning teams. The author then goes on to show how each of these confidence builders can be applied to your team at work.

What this book shows is how to build adaptive change into an organization using these principles of confidence.

The reason this book is important for knowledge workers is that it shows a high-performing work environment for your job. By understanding the dynamics of what it takes to build these confidence levels, you can ask questions in the job interview that will tell you the culture you are choosing for your work.

Cube Rules Rating: 5 of 5 cubes

This is a must read book for knowledge workers to understand the type of team they are working with today and what can be done to improve the dynamics of the work place. Perfectly readable and understandable, Confidence will help you develop your winning streak in your career.

Scot

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Most PowerPoint Presentations are simply horrible. I’ve been driven to the “bullet point” presentation style and hate it. Thinking I would have nothing to lose, I bought Beyond Bullet Points.

Am I glad I did.

Cliff Atkinson takes the normal approach to creating a PowerPoint presentation and turns it on its head. The book, no kidding, is practically a page turner. How can this be?

Before doing anything with a PowerPoint deck, the book takes you through how people learn, especially how they learn a lot – like when you do your presentation. Through this research on how people learn, you finally understand why bullet points in a presentation really do turn you off. Yet, we do them anyway.

After explaining the research, the book then goes through the basic structure of a presentation – and it is the classic story structure. Building this structure out – in Word, of course, since this is a Microsoft publication! – then allows translation of your key points into the presentation.

Following the story structure and then implementing the simple steps to create the work in PowerPoint would be enough to buy the book. But Beyond Bullet Points then takes you through building a complete presentation following the structured plan.

The book even comes with its own CD that gives you the templates to follow using Office 2007.

If Bill Gates had followed the advice in this book – if most of Microsoft followed the advice in this book – presentations would be much more meaningful across the board.

Cube Rules Rating: 5 of 5 cubes

Beyond Bullet Points is a classic way to present information the right way. If you do presentations, you need to follow the process outlined in this book.

Scot

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Never Eat Alone
2. Reference Points for Your Job
3. GUST: The “Tale” Wind of Office Politics Book Review
4. Book Review: New Job, New You
5. Getting Unstuck — Book Review