Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Scour, the search engine that pays you

I have been playing around with Scour today, and it's pretty interesting. Scour is a very powerful search aggregation engine, in that it will search for terms, images, or video across the top 3 search engines and weights your results according to Scour's own algorithms. What? You know of other search engines that combine results from multiple sites?

Let me tell you why Scour is different. When you search, you're given the chance to sign up as a member. If you choose to do so, you become an advisor to Scour, which means:

  • You can review and provide feedback (by voting) on the quality and relevance of the searches you received. Scour then folds this feedback into the mix for future searches to make them better.
  • You can earn points for ever search, comment, or vote you contribute to the site.
  • You can invite others to join, and get points for the stuff they do on the site, as well.
  • You can redeem your points for Visa gift cards.

It seems pretty cool so far, and it's free. One nice thing: if you're busy and just want to use it as a search engine, there is no pressure to do more than that. And you still earn a minimum of 1 point per search.

Sound interesting? Click here to sign up for Scour and start earning points for searching (if you use this link, I'll get some points for what you do). And once you're signed up, you can invite other people and get points for their activities.

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[Review] The Offsite

"Do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. could have rallied a nation if he'd said 'I have 10 measurable objectives' instead of 'I have a dream'? I haven't had much discretionary time lately, so my "To Read" stack is a bit thick lately. However, on a cross-country flight this past Thursday, I read Robert H. Thompson's book: "The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable."

As the name implies, the book is about a leadership offsite, and it's written in a narrative, fable form similar to books like Lencioni's "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" (another great book that I've read a few times but haven't reviewed here).

The Offsite is a bit slow at the beginning - there is a lot of setup to help you get to know the characters better - but it gets interesting about a third of the way in, including some unexpected drama that happens away from the offsite, which the story even more interesting.

The Offsite takes us through a set of techniques through which a couple of "flatlining" organizations seek to break out of their performance problems. Through the story, I really felt myself identifying with a couple of the characters and was nicely drawn into the story. In fact, I wanted to go find the VP of Sales in the story and shake him for being such an idiot at one point!

5 Practices for success

Through this story, I learned about 5 "practices" that help people become excellent leaders:

  • Model the Way
  • Inspire a Shared Vision
  • Challenge the Process
  • Enable Others to Act
  • Encourage the Heart

These 5 simple titles don't really do justice to the ideas they represent, but I think the author does a good job of bringing out the essence of each of them in the book. These practices are based on The Leadership Challenge, which was created by Barry Posner and Jim Kouzes.

The concepts in this book helped me better understand "servant leadership," which I've heard a lot about but haven't yet researched enough to do it justice (but I assure you I will now).

Clicking concepts

Overall, this book was a great read and went very quickly. In addition to driving me to dig into an assessment tool called the "LPI" (Leadership Practices Inventory) which figures prominently in the book, I really liked several concepts from the book.

  • The Commitment Circle, which deals with expanding the people involved in your decisions, projects, etc. to bring in a much broader perspective within your sphere of influence;
  • Several exercises that are modeled in the book, dealing with establishing goals and specific actions to achieve them (yes, I know - every personal development book has that - but this one does it well);
  • A tremendous illustration about the power of being "vulnerable" to you staff and letting them know what you need help with, what you are struggling with, etc.

Compelling visions

One of the anchors presented in the book is a clear, inspring, unifying vision (whether for one of the many teams you may be a part of, or for yourself). A couple of sentences from the book sum it up nicely:

"Do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. could have rallied a nation if he'd said 'I have 10 measurable objectives' instead of 'I have a dream'? Leaders share their dreams, folks. They breathe life into their visions and communicate clearly for understanding."

The Offsite is a great addition to your reading list if you want to become a better leader, are struggling with ineffective leaders in your organization, or want to learn techniques to energize and unify a team.

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[Updated] Getting David Allen and GTD — On Demand

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I enjoyed a regular "refresher" to get re-connected with David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. At the time, my touchstone was to listen to David's 8-CD series, "Getting Things Done Fast," which was a recording of one of his live seminars. I later found that my copy of this wonderful program is quite rare, and they have been out of print for at least 2.5 years. That's a shame, since the program was a great resource. I've loaned it out to a few close friends, but that doesn't scale very well.

You are no longer out of luck

I've got good news, though. I recently ordered a copy of a new offering from David and the gang - it's called "GTDLive!" and it is a 10-CD recording of a live seminar that David conducted about GTD. At $395 US, it's not cheap but it is...

  • cheaper than going to a live seminar;
  • better than the old GTD Fast set since it comes with a bit more material and a set of laminated GTD templates;
  • reusable on-demand, any time you need a refresher.

I just finished listening to this over the course of my daily commutes (it took over a week to get through it all - there is a lot here), and it was a shot in the arm to get me back on the wagon with some of the GTD habits I've been neglecting.

Check it out - and you, too, can have David Allen talking to you with the push of a button.

P.S. GTD Connect members get a pretty good discount on this program.

[Updated]
P.P.S. If you already have the original GTD Fast set, I don't think this one is worth the extra cash since they are very similar in the fundamentals of GTD. However, if you don't have the old one I think you'll love this new GTDLive! set.

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A resource for the travel-weary

I can't believe I never knew about it, but I just found out about a wonderful resource for frustrated air travelers. This is particularly handy for those of us in the northern hemisphere, since we're getting into the height of over-booked, under-experienced travel: summer vacations.

The resource I learned about is the "Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights" (CAPBOR). They can be reached in the US by phone at 1-877-FLYERS6 (1-877-359-3776), and they are staffed by volunteers who specialize in helping you deal with problems you encounter during air travel. Add it to your address book, just in case.

CAPBOR helps you understand your rights, formulate your requests in the best way to circumvent rigid airline policies, and if you have a canceled flight they will even help you find out flight status / alternate flights, help you book hotels and car rentals, and find out weather information.

You can find out more about CAPBOR and their mission at flyersrights.com, and learn about the services they can offer. They also have an excellent blog at strandedpassengers.blogspot.com. Both are well worth checking out.

Related items:

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On the trail to learning

You may not have noticed it since I 'pre-wrote' some posts here that went live automatically, but last week I was on a 200-mile horse trek with my son and a bunch of other folks. It was an awesome learning experience, with no phone, no email, no electricity, etc.

There was pletny of time to work hard, reflect, enjoy the scenery, and recharge on that trip. There was also a ton of new things to learn.

I had the chance to share a few insights from that trip in this month's "Rapid Fire Learning" roundup at Joyful Jubilant Learning (JJL). Click through to JJL find out what I learned, and please share your top 5 learnings for June in the comments of that post.

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