I was honored to discover that Liz Strauss at Successful Blog has chosen Genuine Curiosity as a "Successful and Outstanding Blog" and I'm now able to display (proudly) my badge as an official SOB.
I've been a fan of Liz's work and insights for quite some time and am happy to be part of the club.
I'm especially fond of Liz's series of posts on "Bad Boys of Business" and "Customer Think." Check it out and I'm sure you'll add Successful Blog to your favorites - if you're new to it, start with the "Popular Posts" list - nicely arranged by category.
Thank you, Liz!
Read MoreLaugh, learn, cringe. Seldom does a book evoke such a combination of reactions. But that's what I got from the book "Warriors, Workers, Whiners, & Weasels: Understanding and Using The Four Personality Types To Your Advantage," by Tim O'Leary. I also came away with a better understanding of Weasels.
The book is an easy and fun read -- O'Leary's style is very comfortable and entertaining. The book is also loaded with great stories and examples.
What's your "W"?
The gist of this book is that each of us fits in one type within the "circle of life." In O'Leary's model, they're all defined by a "W" word. Here is how I paraphrase each of these types in the book:
- Warriors - People who drive people to do things (and get results themselves). High ego, high integrity, highly competitive.
- Workers - The people who respond well to the warriors to get things done. Point-and-go, get things done people - supporting cast that help the movie stars do what they do.
- Whiners - People who have lots of excuses for not getting things done, and it's never their fault. Organizational cancer.
- Weasels - Sneaky, two-faced people who never take responsibility for their immoral / amoral ways. High ego, low integrity - wolves in sheep's clothing, often deluded into thinking they are Warriors.
The book helps you determine your type (I'm a Worker), and has some guidance on how to deal with other types and maximize the value of your type - assuming you are a Warrior or a Weasel, at least.
Well Worth the Read
This is a fun read, particularly if (like me) you've worked with or for Weasels and don't quite know how to deal with them (for Warriors, I think this is easier - but not for us Workers, who tend to be more on the 'keep the peace' end of the scale). O'Leary's office is a few blocks from mine in Portland, Oregon and I wonder if we happen to know some of the same weasels.
Some of my favorite sections:
- "The Way of the Weasel: Four of My Favorite Weasel Stories" (this alone is worth the price of the book!)
- "Get Over It! Five Rules to Live By to Avoid Being a Whiner"
- "The Weasel Tax: The High Price We All Pay for Rodent Infestation"
And, if you have your own weasel story to share, you can do so at "www.exposeyourweasel.com" - an irreverent companion blog.
O'Leary's own blog is a more reverent resource, if that's more your style - check out his recent post on "The Whining Effect" for a taste.
Related items:
Read MoreI know people who are "extreme backpackers" that are always looking for ways to shed weight from the gear they carry when they go backpacking. While I'm not quite as much of a zealot for measuring how many ounces everything I carry weighs, I do always look for ways to decrease the weight and bulk of the things I carry for business.
My gadget freak bias means I carry a lot of chargers, cables, and similar accessories. I've found a few that have made a big difference for lightening my travel bag and I will start sharing some of my finds with you periodically, with a series of posts that I'll call "Travel Light." Today, I'd like to introduce you to Boxwave's line of charging and synching cables for mobile devices.
I carry a Treo 650 as my PDA of choice and wanted an easy, lightweight way to charge it while I travel.
I cycled through a couple of cheap, no-name USB sync & charge cables but I had problems with them because they didn't "grip" my Treo well enough and wouldn't stay plugged in reliably. As a result, I had quite a few experiences where I plugged my Treo in to charge before bed in a hotel room, only to wake up and find that the connection hadn't been maintained through the night and my phone was not fully charged for my busy day. Not good.
Then I found Boxwave's miniSync retractable Sync and Charge cable. These folks know how to engineer a quality product. It's compact, retracts very well (some of the cheaper ones I tried often wouldn't retract fully after a few uses). Most importantly for me, it really grips the phone and stays plugged in even if the phone gets jostled. Heck, I can even make phone calls while the phone is charging with this thing. And, as the name implies, it also syncs my Treo (it's a Palm-based PDA) with my computer to keep things accessible when I'm out and about.
They make accessories for a bunch of other devices including cables, cases, and screen protectors. If you are in the market for anything like that, Boxwave is where I'd start looking.
Related posts:
Read MoreAs of today, I've switched to FeedBlitz as my main provider for sending out email updates of this site. Your older, RSSFwd-based subscriptions will continue to work, but I've swapped to FeedBlitz going forward (no pun intended).
Check out the link in the left navigation bar if you want to get my posts in your inbox.
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On a recent flight across the country, I devoured a terrific book. The book was "Focus Like a Laser Beam : 10 Ways to Do What Matters Most," by Lisa Haneberg. As you'd expect from a book with a title like that, the book itself is very focused and un-fluffy, though it contains a lot of poignant stories about the advantages of focus, and the disadvantages of unfocused activity.
In the 90's, I was involved in an organizational change initiative in which there was a lot of discussion about "getting all the wood behind the arrow" as a metaphor for focus and alignment. Lisa takes us a giant leap forward in her book, using laser light's focused, aligned, and congruent particles as mental model to remind us to focus our goals, thoughts, and actions on specific goals to accelerate our success.
Part One: Excite and Energize
The first section of the book begins with methods to assess your individual focus, as well as how to assess your organization's level of focus toward a unified set of goals, then discusses how you can create a stronger connection with your employees and peers by tapping into the power of emotion and openness in your communication.
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