Welcome to Your Brain - Book Review

Title: Welcome to Your Brain : Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Behavior
Authors: Sandra Aamodt, Sam Wang
ISBN-13: 9781596912830
Published: March 2008

If you want to know a LOT about how your brain works, this book’s for you. Written in a light-hearted, yet heavily neuroscientific way, the authors easily shift from silly brain-facts, to detailed physiological descriptions, to fascinating insights and implications ... and back again.

Indeed, the book starts with a 20-question “How Well Do You Know Your Brain?” quiz, which includes such teasers as:

1. When are your last brain cells born?
   a) before birth
   b) at age six
   c) between the ages of 18 and 21
   d) in old age


2. Which of the following strategies is the best one for overcoming jet lag?
   a) taking melatonin the night after you arrive at your destination
   b) avoiding daylight for several days
   c) getting sunlight in the afternoon at your destination
   d) sleeping with the lights on


3. You are in a noisy room attempting to talk to your friend on your cell phone. To have a clearer conversation, you should:
   a) talk more loudly
   b) cover one ear and listen through the other
   c) cover your ear when you talk
   d) cover the mouthpiece when you listen


4. Which of the following is the hardest thing your brain does?
   a) doing long division
   b) looking at a photograph
   c) playing chess
   d) sleeping


5. What percentage of your brain do you use?
   a) 10%
   b) 5% when you are sleeping, 20% when you are awake
   c) 100%
   d) varies according to intelligence

The book, divided into six parts, then goes on to explain why things are so. “It’s a complicated subject,” say the authors in their introduction, “but we think it doesn't have to be intimidating. This book will give you the inside scoop on how your brain really works – and how you can help it work better.

• “In part 1, we pull back the curtain to show what is happening behind the scenes and explain how your brain helps you survive in the world.


• “In part 2, we take a tour of our senses, explaining how you see, hear, touch, smell, and taste.


• “In part 3, we show how your brain changes through life, from birth to old age.


• “In part 4, we examine your brain’s emotional systems, focusing on how they help you navigate life effectively.”


• “In part 5, we discuss your reasoning abilities, including decision making, intelligence, and gender differences in cognition.


• “In part 6, we examine altered states of your brain – consciousness, sleep, drugs and alcohol, and disease.”

And they do, in considerable detail! To give you a taste, here are a few excerpts, of note:

Is your brain like a computer?
“Today, people tend to talk about brains as if they were a sort of biological computer, with pink mushy ‘hardware’ and life-experience-generated ‘software’. But computers are designed by engineers to run like a factory, in which actions occur according to an overall plan and in logical order. The brain, on the other hand, works more like a busy Chinese restaurant: it’s crowded and chaotic, and people are running around to no apparent purpose, but somehow everything gets done in the end.” Additionally, “computers mostly process information sequentially, while the brain handles multiple channels of information in parallel.” So, no, you brain really isn't like a computer.

Myth: Blind people have better hearing
“When tested, blind people are no better at detecting faint sounds as sighted people. “ But, “blind people do have better memory, especially for language. They also are better than sighted people at language tasks, including understanding the meaning of sentences. In addition, blind people are better at localizing sounds. Blind people seem to improve these abilities by taking advantage of brain space that isn't being used for vision. In blind people, verbal memory tasks activate the primary visual cortex, which is involved only in vision in sighted people.” One of the language tasks that blind people do especially well: The ability to generate verbs.

Practical Tip: How can you protect your brain as you get older?
“The most effective approach to keeping your brain healthy with age turns out to be something you probably wouldn't expect: physical exercise. Regular exercise, of the type that elevates your heart rate, is the single most useful thing you can do to maintain your cognitive abilities in later life.”

Myth: Women are moodier than men
“What most people don’t realize is that men are moody, too. In fact, their moods vary as much from hour to hour as women’s moods. How do we know this? When psychologists give beepers to men and women and ask them to write down their mood whenever it goes off, men and women report similar variations. Curiously, both men and women tend to remember women’s mood swings better, so if people are asked later to remember how moody they or their partners were in the previous week, more mood swings are reported for women than men.”

The Dalai Lama, enlightenment, and brain surgery
In 2005, the Dalai Lama spoke at the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience. During the Q&A, one of the book’s authors (Wang) asked him if he’s in favor of neuroscience research could someday helping people achieve enlightenment through artificial means such as drugs or surgery. His answer: If such a treatment were available, it would have saved him time spent in meditation, freeing him to do more good works. He even pointed at his own head, saying that if bad thoughts could be stopped by removing a brain region, he wanted to “Cut it out! Cut it out!” He did say, though, that that’d only be acceptable if it left one’s critical faculties intact (thus ruling out frontal lobotomies, to the relief of conference attendees).

Item Last
And why do we lose our car keys but never forget how to drive?! In large part because while we tend to think of our memory as a ‘single phenomenon’, it actually has many parts, each using different regions of the brain. So, “a skill such as driving a car uses a number of brain regions but does not require the temporal lobe system,” which is where we learn, remember (and forget) new facts and events.

If your a "neuro-nut", you'll likely want to read this book from start to finish. But it works equally well for those who prefer to just pick a page - any page - and see what you find. Either way, you'll likely learn some interesting things about your brain ... and have some excellent new topics to talk about at your next backyard bar-b-q or networking event.

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Correct Answers: 1d, 2c, 3d, 4b, 5c. (So, how'd you do?!)

The Power of Ren – Book Review

Title: The Power of Ren: China’s Coaching Phenomenon
Authors: Eva Wong, Lawrence Leung
ISBN-13: 9780470822159

While modern-day coaching has its roots in the Western world, one might say that much of coaching has to do with getting in touch with one’s Eastern sensibilities. As such, I was very eager to read The Power of Ren to see how authors Wong and Leung applied Western coaching techniques in China. And while this book might not appeal to people who aren’t already coaches, it nevertheless has some keen insights to share about coaching and the impact it can have on people, regardless of culture or geography.

“The bedrock of Chinese thought is shaped mostly Confucianism, but also by Buddhism and Taoism,” say Wong and Leung. “And while these three philosophical traditions are in many ways vastly different, they all share a preoccupation with harmonizing the inner and outer self.” So, too with coaching. “Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism can all be used in developing one’s potential. Their focus is the betterment of things through the betterment of the person.”

The authors share numerous examples of how clients from a shoe company, a chain of beauty salons, a jewelry dealer, manufacturers of fertilizers and high tech circuitry, department stores, restaurants, and more, all successfully capitalized on the burgeoning Chinese economy by using their Nine-Dot Leadership model – nine core beliefs and attitudes that are essential to effective leadership – to help build their businesses:

Dot One - Passion – “A passionless person is like a pebble that, when dropped into water, creates no ripples. Those who lack passion always retreat in the fact of challenge.” The components of Passion are:

(a) True Values – “Only those who are absolutely sincere can fully develop their nature.”

(b) Freedom of Choice – “We have complete freedom to determine your self-worth and our attitudes.”

(c) Self-Expression – This is “revealing the self without a mask, and being as sincere as possible.”

Dot Two – Commitment – “In shunning commitment, we reveal only a lack of self-confidence. Commitment uncompleted through action destroys our credibility, but shying away from commitment robs us of the opportunity to build credibility.” Elements of Commitment are:

(a) Self-Discipline – “Whatever we commit to do … we have to impose discipline on ourselves to ensure it happens.”

(b) Integrity – “Our past actions form the basis of other people’s expectations of us. It is on the basis of these past actions that people decide whether they can take us at our word.”

(c) Focused Attention – “Generally, it is not outside factors that prevent us from reaching our goals, but something inner.”

Dot Three – Responsibility – “We tend to be much better at identifying what *others* should be responsible for than we ourselves.”

(a) Non-Separation – “The reason we are unwilling to take responsibility is because of our sense of separation from others and from things.”

(b) Willingness – “When responsibility comes from the heart, it comes with a spirit of willingness, and this is a way of saying that responsibility is an attitude.”

(c) Initiative – “When we willingly take initiative, our hearts are light and we don’t complain.”

Dot Four – Appreciation – “We have to learn appreciation that transcends good or bad, and beautiful or ugly … appreciation is an affirmation of others.”

(a) Love – “Appreciation out of love entails paying attention to the other person and loving his or her strengths. It is not about projecting your values on to others.”

(b) Cherishing Ourselves and Others – “Appreciation means choosing to see people’s strengths and the good sides of situations. It means cherishing what we all have, and suspending judgment.”

(c) Acceptance – “Appreciation cannot be expressed through refusal; it is expressed through acceptance.”

Dot Five – Giving – “For most of us, giving is conditional – we expect something in return. But this kind of giving is actually a form of taking. True giving is just what it suggests – we give unconditionally, expecting nothing back.”

(a) Selfishness – “A feeling that most of us can related to is the feeling we get when we donate to a worthwhile charity. We expect nothing in return, but in fact we do get something. Giving is always selfish, in this sense.”

(b) Joy – “You may be unhappy because you’re not making other people in your life happy.”

(c) Selflessness – “In selflessness, the other person is most important.”

Dot Six – Trust – “When we think about trust, we think about other people. But is that really the way it should be? When we are the initiators of trust, the behavior of those who receive it doesn’t affect us.”

(a) Creation – “When trust is offered unconditionally, it is a form of creation.”

(b) Fearlessness – “Fearlessness is an external manifestation of a deep ability to extend trust.”

(c) Relinquishing Control – “Only *we* determine whether or not we will trust, and on what basis we chose to do so. Distrust, on the other hand, is a form of control. When we mistrust others, we have a powerful need to control everything.”

Dot Seven – Win-Win – “Imagine a wrestling match. To be sure, one of the wrestlers will lose, but the winner will suffer a great deal of pain too. But let us imagine not a wrestling match, but a tango, where competition is replaced by a smooth back-and-forth collaboration.”

(a) Perspective – “Every piece, no matter how small, is an essential part of the whole.”

(b) Respect – “When we respect others, we don’t force them to do what they don’t want to do; and when we respect ourselves, we don’t allow others to force us to do what we don’t want to do.”

(c) Compassion – “As Confucius put it, ‘Noble men may differ in views but they are in harmony, while the ignoble share similar views and are disharmony.’”

Dot Eight – Enrollment – “A spirit of enrollment is defined as stimulating people’s dreams and rousing them to take action accordingly. Leadership enrolls action, not though commands or compulsory means, but by inspiration to join in a meaningful game.”

(a) Dreams – “If we want people to change their behavior, we have to touch their hearts.”

(b) Manifestation – “We become willing to adapt our behavior when we can see the advantages of doing so from observing other people’s experiences. We hope to share that experience, and we become enthusiastic about enrolling.”

(c) Inspiration – “If enrollment is a force that shines through belief and conviction, inspiration is the active follow-up that clear others’ minds of the confusion that is standing in the way of their becoming part of the mission.”

Dot Nine – Possibilities – “Possibilities are like water, which can take on infinite forms – in a cup, it takes on the form of a cup; in a river, it takes on the form of a river and flows to the seas, where it takes on the form of the sea. In fact, life is like water – it is fluid and ever changing. It is limited only by our beliefs, by the possibilities we can see in any given situation.”

(a) Nothingness – “To embrace possibilities, we need to abandon models, strip away boundaries, and look to nothingness. We need to think of nothingness not so much as avoid but as a space that allows us infinite room for movement.”

(b) Humility – “I know. I don’t know. I know what I don’t know. I don’t know what I don’t know. The first is an expression of a limiting world view; the last three statements are expressions of humility.”

(c) Inquiry – “A path of continual learning, as Confucius understood, is the only path to wisdom.”

Improv Wisdom – Book Review

Title: Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up
Authors: Patricia Ryan Madson
ISBN-13: 9781400081882

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I did with Improv Wisdom – and I’m glad I did. Turns out, it was really clever, practical, insightful, and fun.

Patricia Ryan Madson, its author and an award-winning Senior Lecturer Emerita at Stanford University, has been teaching acting and improv for 40+ years. And it’s clearly been a labor of love – and mastery – for her.

In Improv Wisdom, not only does Madson share her considerable expertise on the topic, but she endearingly shares a very engaging way of thinking with us, as well. “Life is an improvisation,” she says, “and if we are lucky a long one!”

I don’t even know this woman, but I like her! I really do!

According to Madson, improv has 13 ‘maxims’ – and they apply not only to improv, but to life itself. They are as follows:

1. Say Yes!
2. Don’t Prepare
3. Just Show Up
4. Start Anywhere
5. Be Average
6. Pay Attention
7. Face the Facts
8. Stay on Course
9. Wake Up to the Gifts
10. Make Mistakes, Please
11. Act Now
12. Take Care of Each Other
13. Enjoy the Ride

Life is an improv, indeed!

Some of my favorite snippets:

• “Saying yes is an act of courage and optimism: it allows you to share control. It is a way to make your partner happy. Yes expands your world.”
• “The spirit of improvising is embodied in the notion of ‘yes and.’ Agreement begins the process; what comes next is to add something or develop the offer in a positive direction. Avoiding this step is a form of blocking.”
• “The habit of excessive planning impedes our ability to see what is actually in front of us. The mind that is occupied is missing the present.”
• “Fear is not the problem; allowing your attention to be consumed by it is.”
• “Make a list of five places that are your ‘hot spots,’ places where the important things in life happen for you. Why not put the book down, pick one of the places on your list, and show up there?”
• “There’s no need to find the right starting place. With a big task or a confusing problem, when you don’t know where to start, begin with the most obvious thing, whatever is in front of you.”
• “The improviser focuses on making that idea into a good one, rather than searching for a ‘good idea’.”
• “When asked to uncover what is obvious to you, count on the fact that your view is already unique.”
• “Life is attention, and what we are attending to determines to a great extent how we experience the world.”

This is good stuff, whether she’s talking about improv or not, don’t you think? And there’s much, much, more:

• “Wishing things were different (or that I was different) simply wastes time. The improviser can’t afford unrealistic thinking. Instead, she builds bridges over rocky terrain and turns lemons into lemonade. She works with what is actually in front of her, setting aside the temptation to dwell on what it is not.”
• “Life is all about balancing not about being balanced … embrace the wobble.”
• “Some gifts are not objects, but support and encouragement we give each other… make a point of thanking people for thankless jobs.”
• “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.”
• “When I see something that needs to be done, I usually do it without debate. The improviser in me is trained to take action rather than muse over whose job it may be.”
  “Learning how to work together moment by moment without a known formula is the essence of improvisation.”
• “The improv ‘talent,’ which involves listening carefully, observing the actions of others, contributing, supporting, leading, following, filling in the gaps, and looking for the appropriate ending, can be taught and learned.”

From my own experience, I am continually amazed by what good things tend to happen whenever I just let go and … go! That’s not to say that planning doesn’t have its part to play. But Woody Allen was really on to something when he said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

And so is Patricia Ryan Madson with what she’s written in Improv Wisdom.

You, Inc. – Book Review

Title: You, Inc. – The Art of Selling Yourself
Authors: Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford Beckwith
ISBN-13: 9780446578219

I was very eager to read this, the latest book by marketing guru Harry Beckwith. After all, his “Selling the Invisible” was an indispensable resource for me as I starting building my business way back when. So when I found it while browsing in an airport bookstore one evening, I immediately grabbed it and headed toward the checkout counter.

So while I found much of its content to be quite excellent (more on that in a moment) I didn’t really care for how it was written. It felt like two separate books, actually – one written by Harry and one written by Christine – that somehow got randomly shuffled together into one. Don’t get me wrong; they each shared some wonderful stories, vignettes and lessons learned. But it felt quite disjointed to not know whose lessons learned I was reading about at any point in time – especially in the first few sections of the book. I don’t know why it was so distracting to me, but it really was.

Okay, that said, on to some of nuggets about the art of selling yourself that I highlighted while reading:

1. The first thing to sell is ... yourself.
2. The future belongs to the Communicators.
3. Ambiguity is expensive.
4. To improve your writing, read what you write aloud and revise before sending or submitting.
5. “A poor teacher describes; a good teacher explains; an excellent teacher demonstrates; a great teacher inspires.”
6. How to give an excellent thirty-minute speech: Speak for twenty-two minutes.
7. Life is not what you make it. It is how you take it.
8. How many thank-you notes did you send last year? This year, send twice that many.
9. Follow up within a day.
10. The greatest gift you can offer is your time.
11. The greatest compliment you can pay is: “I understand something deep in your heart.”
12. Give your all.
13. Keep learning.
14. Always do right.
15. Be vivid.
16. Don’t just be brief; be briefer.

Good stuff to be sure. But I really wanted to like this book more than I did. Amidst some truly helpful tips and tricks, I found it bloated with more than its share of platitudes and filler. I mean were two chapters really necessary for tips on attire, when one advised us to “buy one great suit,” and another was needed to simply add “and one pair of great shoes”?!

You, Inc. is billed as “The Definitive Guide to Career and Personal Success.” And maybe it is. Thirty reviewers on Amazon.com thought enough about it to give an average rating of 4½ stars (out of 5) – and more than half of them gave it a full 5-out-of-5 star rating!

I don’t know about that, though. I mean I did learn some things – and if you read it you will too. But, on balance, the Harry Beckwith book I’m far more comfortable recommending is his Selling the Invisible.

Surely I could go on about You, Inc., but I want to honor that last nugget I learned from it!

3qtr2007 - Book Review - Juicing the Orange

Title: Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage
Authors: Pat Fallon & Fred Senn
ISBN: 1-59139-927-0

Okay, this is another in a series of "Inside Secrets" books written by seasoned advertising pros about their unique strategies and resultant successes. And I'll admit that I really like books like this. (Other good ones include: Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, by Kevin Robers, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi; and The Trendmaster's Guide, by Robyn Waters, former VP of Trend, Design, and Product Development at Target.) Advertising-folk are just so creative and upbeat when things are going right.

What I particularly like about this book - and the Fallon Worldwide agency - though, is that so many of the client case studies highlighted are for products and companies that I not only recognize, but actually like - something I directly attribute to their, ahem, really good advertising. Examples, include:

• Those animated, music-only, story-telling tv commercials for United Airlines
• Those "No, but i did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night" ads
• Buddy Lee blue jean commercials
• The way that BMW cross marketed with Bond, James Bond
• Those wacky Virgin Mobile holiday ads
• and more

Another favorite was for a barber shop in NYC called "7 South 8th for Hair," a small business with very little money for advertising. It was Fallon's very first account and they really wanted to show how they could be creative AND effective. So, they bought a few poster spaces at bus stops near the barbershop and, on them, featured big pictures of somebody famous with really bad hair ... and a cleverly related tag line:

• Moe Howard (of Three Stooges fame) - "A bad haircut is no laughing matter."
• Albert Einstein - "A bad haircut can make anyone look dumb."
• Susan B. Anthony (from the failed $1 coin) - "A bad haircut can take you out of circulation."

Fallon's Inside Secret? What they call the Seven Principles of Creative Leverage:

1. Always start from scratch.
2. Demand a ruthlessly simple definition of the business problem.
3. Discover a proprietary emotion.
4. Focus on the size of the idea, not the size of the budget.
5. Seek out strategic risks.
6. Collaborate or perish.
7. Listen hard to your customers (then listen some more).

It struck me that these seven principles can apply to far more than just advertising. I know many of them seem to naturally show up in my coaching conversations with clients, for instance. But think about it in terms of furthering important business initiatives, as well:

• "We believe that you have more creativity in your organization than you realize, and we believe that you can find it, develop it, and use it more effectively. " (page 20)

They're probably right, you know.

Here are a few other interesting creative advertising ideas that applies to people at work - and in life:

• "Our goal as an organization is to understand culture so well that we can use its idioms and nuances to transcend blatant selling messages." (page 65)
• "You can change people's minds, but only if they first give you permission, and that won't happen if they think you're a joke." (page 78)
• "The door to most business people's right brain is through their left brain. First the smart, then the exciting. (The consumer, ironically, wants it just the other way around.)" (page 97)
• "Just as a sports team needs a handful of players who have been to the playoffs, a marketing team needs members who understand the hard work and commitment it takes to make the most of an idea." (page 123)

Success in advertising, as in business - and in life - really does required more than just talking the walk.

• "...if we truly valued our culture, then it wasn't enough to hire brains and talent. we had to cherish the people who bets embodied our ideals. We call them culture players." (page 194)

And that's why I like this book - it not only had cool advertising stories and interesting creative strategies, but it offered some important conclusions for what it takes to be a success across a wide variety of venues.

1qtr2007 - Book Review - Mindless Eating

Title: Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Should
Author: Brian Wansink, Ph.D.

"The average Person makes well over 200 decisions about food every day. Breakfast or no breakfast? Pop-Tart or bagel? Part of it or all of it? Kitchen or car?" So says the author, a Stanford Ph.D. and the director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab. "Yet out of these 200-plus food decisions, most we cannot really explain."

"Traditional diet books focus on what dietitians and health practitioners know. This book focuses on what psychologists and marketeers know." As such, it's not a book about "dietary extremism." Rather, it's about "reengineering" your food environment so that it doesn't work against you - 200-plus times a day - without you even knowing it.

From the jacket sleeve: "Using ingenious, fun, and sometimes downright fiendishly clever experiments like the 'bottomless soup bowl,' Wansink takes us on a fascinating tour of the secret dynamics behind our dietary habits." Yes he does. And at the end of each chapter, he provides us with Reengineering Strategies to implement what we now know:

1. Reengineering Strategy #1: Think 20% - More or Less - For regular meals, dish out 20% less than you think you might want; for fruits and vegetables, think 20% more.
2. Reengineering Strategy #2: See All You Eat - See it before you eat it (when people "pre-plate" their food, they eat 14% less than when they take smaller amounts and go back for seconds or thirds); see it while you eat it (think popcorn and candy at the movie theatre).
3. Reengineering Strategy #3: Be Your Own Tablescaper - Mini-size your boxes and bowls (the bigger the package you pour from, the more you eat: 20% to 30% more for most people, so repackage your jumbo boxes into smaller Ziploc bags or Tupperware containers); become an illusionist (six ounces of goulash on an 8-inch plate is a nice-size serving, but six ounces on a 12-inch plate looks like a tiny appetizer).
4. Reengineering Strategy #4: Make Overeating a Hassle - Don't bring serving dishes to the table; de-convenience tempting foods (by putting them in the back of the fridge or cupboard); snack only on a plate (making it less convenient to serve, eat, and clean up after an impulse snack).
5. Reengineering Strategy #5: Create Distraction-Free Eating Scripts - Re script your diet danger zones (eg: chew a stick of gum after work rather than heading for the fridge); serve yourself before you snack (avoid eating out of the box, bag, or serving bowl).
6. Reengineering Strategy #6: Create Expectations That Make You a Better Cook - Fix the atmosphere when you fix the food (spend the last 15 minutes of prep time on "soft" and "nice" - soft lights, soft music, soft color, nice plates, nice tablecloth, nice glasses); enhance your description of "what's for dinner?" (add words like succulent, homemade, traditional, Cajun, and they'll like your food a whole lot more - and snack a whole lot less).
7. Reengineering Strategy #7: Make Comfort Foods More Comforting - Don't deprive yourself (just eat them in smaller amounts); rewire your comfort foods (from 'death by chocolate' sundaes to a smaller bowl of ice cream with fresh strawberries).
8. Reengineering Strategy #8: Crown yourself as the Official Gatekeeper - Don't use food to reward or punish; use the half-plate rule (half of your plate for proteins and starches; half of your plate for fruit and veggies); make serving sizes official (repackage single-servings in Baggies or Saran Wrap).
9. Reengineering Strategy #9: Portion-Size Me - Beware of the health halo (the better the food, the worse the extras: think Subway - some of their 'naked' sandwiches may be healthy, but not when you add the cheese and dressings, etc.); Beware of super-sizing (think McDonald's).

Wansink recommends you go through this list and pick three changes to focus on - no more; no less. More than three and it'll feel like a diet. Do that for 28 days and you'll be well on your way to making smarter eating mindless.

I recommend you pick up a copy of Mindless Eating.

4qtr2005 - Book Review - Crisis Management

Title: Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable
Author: Steven Fink

Sometimes the best books are the ones you've already read. Re-reading them gives you another chance to see what you missed the first time through, confirm what you know, and further deepen your learning on a particular topic. So, given the impact Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, I thought it a good time to review a book about dealing with crises.

According to Fink, there are four distinct stages to a crisis:

Stage 1 - The Prodromal Stage - This is the "early warning" period. Sometimes referred to as the "pre-crisis" stage, it's when you get first glimpse of the potential of the crisis-to-come. The reasons why the Prodromal Stage is so important is that it's just so much easier to manage a crisis before it begins.

Stage 2 - The Acute Crisis Stage - This is the crisis per se. It begins once the damage has begun. How long it continues is a matter of how much additional damage occurs. The key, of course, is to minimize the amount of that subsequent damage, although that's not always possible.

Stage 3 - The Chronic Stage - Some call this the "post-mortem" phase. The damage has subsided, clean-up has begun, and now it's time to investigate what happened and what did not. It's a period of analysis, mea culpas, Lessons Learned, and recovery, and can sometimes last an extraordinary amount of time.

Stage 4 - The Crisis Resolution Stage - This is when things finally return back to normal (whatever that means!) or in Fink's words, "when the patient is well and whole again."

Fink goes on to explain that as bad as the physical damage of a crisis can get, the emotional damage is often more troubling. Emotionally-speaking, here's what we'd rather see than the 4-stage model:

But when it doesn't happen that way - and it rarely does - we can quickly find ourselves spiraling on an emotional roller coaster that looks more like this:


One of the recurring themes of the book is that crises, as bad as they can be, provide us with important opportunities to show how well we can handle the "decisive moments" inherent in them. In fact, once the chronic stage starts, the spotlight increasingly focuses on how well we do that ... or not. Former FEMA director, Michael Brown, experienced this phenomenon first-hand. So did former NYC mayor Rudy Guliani a few years ago, though, so you see it really does cut both ways.

Another of the author's keen insights is what he labels the crisis impact value (CIV). The questions to ask in assessing the CIV are as follows:

1. Is there a good chance that this situation will, if left unattended, escalate in intensity?
   
2. Might this situation foster unwanted attention by outsiders?
   
3. Is it likely that the situation might interfere with normal business operations in some manner?
   
4. Could it make you look bad or cause some people to lose confidence?
   
5. How is it going to affect your bottom line?

Simply stated, the more objectively - and accurately - you can answer these questions, the better you will be able to manage the crisis around you.

There's more good stuff in this book, including detailed reviews of what happened at Three-Mile Island, with the Tylenol tampering situation, during the Savings & Loan crisis, and around Union Carbide's Bhopal debacle. Clearly, if the book were to be updated today, it'd have much to say about our recent hurricanes, and probably something about the earthquake in Pakistan, too.

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If you've read this book and would like to share your thoughts on it - or have a book recommendation that you'd like to make - please post your comments.

3qtr2005 - Book Review - Hope and Help for Your Nerves

Title: Hope and Help for Your Nerves
Author: Claire Weekes
Link to Purchase: Buy the book

"They say it's 'just nerves' ... But it can stop you from working ... upset your personal relationships ... transform you from the busy and interesting person you used to be into someone else." So says panic disorder expert Dr. Claire Weekes about the tricks your nervous system can play on you. Whether this internal tension slows you down a little or a lot, the truth is that no one is completely immune from what fear, uncertainty, and doubt can do to you physically, mentally, or emotionally. And although this book was written for more severe sufferers of "nervous illness," it can help anyone suffering from anxiety learn its causes, better understand its symptoms, learn to relax, and finally break free.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, we have two main types of nerves: voluntary nerves, or ones that we use to consciously move our muscles, and involuntary nerves, ones that automatically control our internal organs, intestines and the like. The involuntary nervous system has two sub-systems: the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. The sympathetic system is in charge of our adrenaline - it kicks in when we are in a 'fight or flight' situation (real or perceived), increasing our heart rate and blood flow, among other things.

The parasympathetic nervous system acts in the opposite manner by balancing the adrenaline rush and enabling us to relax. When we're over-stressed, over-tired, over-frazzled, etc. our adrenaline producing nerves tend to over-produce. Indicators include sweaty palms, that sense of nervousness, dry mouth, restlessness, dread, or a number of other not-too-pleasant side-effects.

Sometimes these side-effects can become quite unnerving - especially when combined with the shock and bewilderment of not knowing what the heck is happening to us. Fist we're frightened by something so our adrenaline naturally fires. But because our sympathetic system is so hyper-sensitized, it over-fires and our secondary fear kicks in. (We're now frightened by our reaction to being frightened.) This causes another, even bigger, shot of adrenaline to fire which causes the whole cycle to repeat itself with such increasing intensity and relentlessness that a full-fledged panic attack results.

It's really tough stuff.

What Dr. Weekes offers is a way to analyze and understand these symptoms so that there is no shock and bewilderment, so that our secondary fear cycle never gets started. To recover from (or avoid) panic, she instructs, we must realize and accept that our adrenaline-producing nerves are simply over-stimulated and not read anything more into it than that. The four-step process she recommends is this:

1. Face it - You are over-tired and quite possibly exhausted.


2. Accept it - The adrenaline in your system is a result of your exhaustion and nothing more. Do not be bluffed by a physical feeling.


3. Float past it - Knowing the root cause helps you prevent secondary fear from setting in. Recognize that what you are feeling is temporary and just a matter of having too much adrenaline in your system.


4. Let time pass - As you relax and learn to prevent that secondary fear, both the amount of adrenaline that gets fired into your system will naturally lessen, and your parasympathetic nerves will be better able to counter-balance the adrenaline that still does fire. You may still get an initial jolt, but knowing what it is - and knowing how to react to it - will greatly reduce it's negative impact on you.

For some, Hope and Help for Your Nerves may be too deep a look into panic disorders and nervous illness. But if you are at all curious about gaining more control over your counter-productive thinking - or learning more about how your mind and nervous system works - it is a very insightful and meaningful read.

And, in that there are more than 20 million Americans who suffer from some sort of anxiety disorder - approximately out of every nine, according to the American Psychiatric Institute - it may be particularly relevant and helpful for you or someone you know.

Thanks to LS for the recommendation.

2qtr2005 - Book Review - Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End

Title: Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End
Author: Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Link to Purchase: (Don't) buy the book

From the publisher:

From the boardroom to the locker room to the living room--how winners become winners . . . and stay that way. Is success simply a matter of money and talent? Or is there another reason why some people and organizations always land on their feet, while others, equally talented, stumble again and again?

"There's a fundamental principle at work--the vital but previously unexamined factor called confidence--that permits unexpected people to achieve high levels of performance through routines that activate talent. Confidence explains:

• Why the University of Connecticut women's basketball team continues its winning ways even though recent teams lack the talent of their predecessors


• Why some companies are always positively perceived by employees, customers, Wall Street analysts, and the media while others are under a perpetual cloud


• How a company like Gillette or a team like the Chicago Cubs ends a losing streak and breaks out of a circle of doom

The lessons a politician such as Nelson Mandela, who resisted the temptation to take revenge after being released from prison and assuming power, offers for leaders in both advanced democracies and trouble spots like the Middle East "From the simplest ball games to the most complicated business and political situations, the common element in winning is a basic truth about people: They rise to the occasion when leaders help them gain the confidence to do it.

"Confidence is the new theory and practice of success, explaining why success and failure are not mere episodes but self-perpetuating trajectories. Rosabeth Moss Kanter shows why organizations of all types may be brimming with talent but not be winners, and provides people in leadership positions with a practical program for either maintaining a winning streak or turning around a downward spiral.

"Confidence is based on an extraordinary investigation of success and failure in companies such as Continental Airlines, Seagate, and Verizon and sports teams such as the University of North Carolina women's soccer team, New England Patriots, and Philadelphia Eagles, as well as schools, health care, and politics."

The book was filled with a surprising number of case studies. Each one focused on a particular company and how its leadership addressed its problems. Many were absolutely fascinating and I liked how examples of failed turnarounds were also included to help add richness and depth to the materials.

Too, her central theme was a good one - that rebuilding people's confidence in each other is an essential step in ending a team's or an organization's losing streak. So was her discussion of the Three Cornerstones of Confidence, her methodology for enabling such a transition:

1. Facing Facts and Reinforcing Responsibility,


2. Cultivating Collaboration, and


3. Inspiring Initiative and Innovation.

And in what was, perhaps, the most important paragraph in the whole book - Chapter 1; Page 7 - Dr. Kanter succinctly addressed what confidence is, what it influences, and what it is influenced by:

Confidence consists of positive expectations for favorable outcomes. Confidence influences the willingness to invest - to commit money, time, reputation, emotional energy, or other resources - or to withhold, or hedge investment. This investment, or its absence, shapes the ability to perform.

Yet on the whole, I found the book to be a very long, difficult, and only somewhat rewarding read. The author took almost 200 pages to set-up her discussion on the Cornerstones, something her editor could have better addressed. Too, there were so many richly-detailed case studies that I found myself skipping over many of them just so I wouldn't lose the point the author was trying to make by including them. And, while Dr. Kanter has much to be proud of, I found her style to be unflatteringly self-aggrandizing. So it's good I read the book so you don't have to!

The important thing to remember about Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End is that if you're looking to build confidence in your team, in your team members, or in yourself, you must be willing to invest an appropriate amount of money, time, reputation, emotional energy, and other resources. That idea is definitely a keeper.

1qtr2005 - Book Review - Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness

New for 2005, this section will focus on providing you a 'quick-hit-overview ' of an interesting book I've read. I'll share with you some its key insights, information, and points-to-ponder. And, if you'd like to order a copy, there's a link to do that, too.

Title: Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness
Author: Jeffrey Gitomer
Link to Purchase: Buy the book

A real personality, Jeffrey Gitomer pulls no punches when it comes to helping people get real, sell better, and sell more. And, what's more, his recommendations are surprisingly applicable to almost everyone, regardless of what they do for a living. As example, very early on in the book, he asks: What does it take to become a sales success? His "18.5" answers, which he insists are not so much Secrets of Success, are "fundamental steps that successful salespeople and entrepreneurs have been executing for centuries."

1. Believe you can.



2. Create the environment.



3. Have the right associations.



4. Expose yourself to what's new.



5. Plan for the day.



6. Become valuable.



7. Have the answers your prospects and customers need.



8. Recognize opportunity.



9. Take advantage of opportunity.



10. Take responsibility.



11. Take action.



12. Make mistakes.



13. Be willing to risk.



14. Keep your eyes on the prize.



15. Balance yourself.



16. Invest, don't spend.



17. Stick at it until you win.



18. Develop and maintain a positive attitude.

18.5. Ignore idiots and zealots.

Gitomer goes on to write about what he calls the positive and negative "senses of selling." There are 6 positive senses:

1. The sense of confidence.



2. The sense of positive anticipation.



3. The sense of determination.



4. The sense of achievement.



5. The sense of winning.



6. The sense of success.

And then he explores the 8.5 negative senses - the ones that your subconscious mind often presents and projects when selling:

1. The sense of fear.



2. The sense of nervousness.



3. The sense of rejection.



4. The sense of procrastination or reluctance.



5. The sense of justification/rationale



6. The sense of self-doubt.



7. The sense of uncertainty.



8. The sense of doom.

8.5 The sense of "I'm unlucky."

Make no mistake, this book is definitely focused on selling. But there's still an awful lot of practical and between-the-eyes logic and advice that this guru has to offer about how to be more successful than maybe you are right now.