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.
I’m always on the lookout for ways to make PowerPoint more interesting. In the past, that’s been things like using “Beyond Bullet Points” and whatnot. Here’s another idea: be funny.
I stumbled across the YouTube channel of a comedian named Tim Lee, who uses PowerPoint in his act – and he is very good! Check out the video below (or use this link). If you like it, be sure and subscribe to Tim Lee’s YouTube channel. Enjoy!
Related items:
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One of the deliverables in the GTD Connect program is an ongoing series of interviews with various people. The latest was an interview with a guy named Frank Sopper who specializes in learning styles. Normally, these interviews are inside GTD Connect’s gated community but I was so intrigued with this latest interview I went looking for a way to share it with you.
I’m happy to report that Frank Sopper has a public link to the interview on his company’s web site.
If you’ve ever been accused of being OCD or ADD, this is a must-listen. For everyone else, it’s just a good idea.
Read MoreAs you may know from my past writing here, I have been a follower of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology for many years. It’s been a cycle of awesome productivity, interspersed with frustration and thrash. Why? I tend to get bored with repetition and systems, even when I see their value and GTD has been no different. Well, to be fair, it’s been a bit different because I’ve noticed that I am able to stick with GTD much longer than many other processes. But it’s still a bit of a struggle.
The promise of a book
“Making It All Work” addresses: How to figure out where you are in life and what you need; How to be your own consultant and the CEO of your life; Moving from hope to trust in decision-making; When not to set goals; Harnessing intuition,spontaneity, and serendipity; And why life is like business and business is like life.
So, now I’ve read the book – did it deliver?
First, this book is not a substitute for the original. It’s more like a sequel, building on the solid foundation of GTD and extending it with some of the lessons and new perspectives David has learned since his methodology has become a phenomenon.
If you have read the first book, you’ll find some useful thought in this book from David himself, some of which may help clear any stumbling blocks you’ve encountered in your adoption of GTD.
Some of the things I picked up in this book are simply shifts in perspective – like thinking of your lists and notes as “bookmarks” to help you go back to where you were later. I don’t do anything differently, but I find I’m more likely to “bookmark” with my lists now, and I often treat the bookmarks more like pointers than dissertations (and pointers are quicker, also making it more likely I will do this).
I was pleased to find that there are some new topics and methods in this book. For example, the section dealing with Capturing has been expanded to include quite a bit of detail on brainstorming, processing, and clarification of what you’ve captured. This section includes quite a collection of best practices.
A clearer map
David also includes quite a few mind maps that helped me, due to my visual thinking tendencies. There are maps showing how to make more effective lists, become more output-focused in your thinking, better cope with projects and reference materials, and quite a few other areas that often felt mysterious to me during my GTD journey.
There is also some solid material about weekly reviews (which I knew about but certainly haven’t perfected).
All of this converges in the book with the goal of helping you become better at managing your life by becoming better at GTD. Of course, a book can’t provision good habits and consistent practice. That’s the tough part. And that’s where my trouble lives, I realize.
If you’re committed to GTD, you’ll get a lot out of “Making It All Work.” If you’re new to GTD start with the first GTD book, then pick this one up after you have the basics down.
I just finished reading “The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By,” from Harvard Business Press. In my experience reading these Harvard Business Press books can be hit-or-miss, since some of them can seem a bit dry and theoretical. For me, The Leadership Code was definitely a hit.
Find the winning formula
The authors benchmarked a number of high performers and figured out the answers to these questions and collected some fantastic best practices along the way.
Five rules for leaders
There are five “rules” presented in the book, each accompanied by a set of diagnostic tools to help you determine where you and your organization are in relation to the high performers in the study. Some of the tools focus on your strengths and weaknesses as a leader, while others focus on how functional or dysfunctional your organization may be.
The rules are:
At this point you may be thinking, “What? Those rules don’t don’t seem very exciting.”
But don’t let these descriptions fool you – The authors present compelling content about accountability, goal setting, true leadership, staff development, dealing with conflict & alignment, and strengthening your own individual skills.
Some things to think about, and some things to do
Each of the rules is discussed in detail, beginning with the findings from the study and a summary of the key capabilities effective leaders demonstrate for that rule. After a discussion of the findings, the authors typically move into guidance on how to figure out where your gaps are in relation to the ideals.
For example, there is a “Leadership code self assessment” test to help you figure out your relative strengths and weaknesses in 5 critical areas, which map to the 5 Rules:
When you take the assessment, you’ll find you have strengths and weaknesses. The authors found that effective leaders never scored below average on their weaker disciplines.
After you determine your strengths and weaknesses, how do you exploit your strengths and improve your weaknesses to at least average? Good news: the authors do a masterful job of providing practical, actionable advice for each rule. I think the reason the advice rang true was because much of it comes in the form of stories from the high performers, who provide details on how they tackled shortfalls in each of the areas (including some war stories about when things didn’t go very well.
The stories from the high performers made the rules feel “real” and helped me understand how these best practices can be applied in the real world.
Crack the Leadership Code
One important message I took away from this is that there are repeatable best practices that can help improve your leadership in any organization. In other words, if you aspire to become a great leader, there is hope.
The other thing I noted is that the best practices were very congruent with some of the values-based leadership books that have made such an impact on me, like Managing With Aloha, and books I feature in the book list in the left sidebar of my blog.
In short, I highly recommend The Leadership Code. If you want to find out more, the authors have also provided some resources (free and fee) at their book site.
Read MoreOver the past month or so, I’ve found my sea legs on Twitter. I went from thinking it was a goofy fountain of randomness to something that is actually helping me increase my “reach” in interacting with the world (both sharing what I’ve found and learning from more people).
Want to know more about Twitter? Here is a great video that describes how it works (this is from an awesome series of videos from commoncraft – check it out). If you don’t see the embedded video, you can go there with this link.
If you want to ‘follow’ me on Twitter, you can do so by going to my Twitter page and clicking the “Follow” button. You’ll need to sign up if you don’t already belong to this crazy thing.
You can also just lurk (i.e. watch without participating), both on my Twitter page or by watching the Twitter widget in the right-hand navigation bar on my blog.
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