Tag Archives | books

Stamp Out the Blah, Blah, Blah: A Podcast with Dan Roam

By on January 3, 2012 in Consulting Process, Podcasts
Dan Roam

Dan Roam

“We have become so enamoured of our ability to talk that we often delude ourselves into thinking that, if we can talk about an idea, we understand it well.”

In this podcast, I talk with Dan Roam, author of BLAH, BLAH, BLAH: What To Do When Words Don’t Work. Roam’s mission is to help us solve problems and sell ideas more effectively–not just with words, but by tapping the power of visual communication.

He’s written two other bestsellers on that topic: The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Picture, and Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures.

Dan gives us some great (and easy) pointers for clarifying complex ideas and finding workable solutions to tough problems–using pictures!

The tools you use can be as simple as the picture below. To visit Roam’s site and learn more, click here or on the image below.

Dan Roam

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Interview: David Maxfield

By on June 20, 2011 in Organizational Change

I interviewed David Maxfield, co-author of Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success, for Management Consulting News. Maxfield is vice president of research at VitalSmarts, a corporate training company that helps clients with operational improvements. The team at VitalSmarts also wrote the bestsellers, Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations.

Maxfield and his team studied the science of personal change through their work with over 5,000 people. I asked Maxfield what he learned from his extensive research, why change is so hard, and the first step anyone can take toward successful change.

Get the podcast interview with David Maxfield.

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Want to Change Something? Read This Book

By on May 19, 2011 in Books

I like it when a book makes a bold promise. Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success starts off with this one:

“If you apply the principles and tactics we outline, you can rapidly, profoundly, and sustainably change your own behavior (even long-standing bad habits). And by learning how to change your own behavior, you can dramatically improve results in most any area of life.”

Five people wrote this book, which is probably a story in itself. But then, these guys are used to teamwork. Before Change Anything, they wrote three New York Times bestsellers that you may have heard of: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

One of the five authors, Kerry Patterson, wrote a six-part series about crucial conversations for my newsletter, Management Consulting News. And I interviewed Al Switzler, co-author of Influencer.

This latest book, which offers a research-based approach to making personal change, suggests that we have less control over our behavior than we believe. But we can control the six influences that govern our behavior. And that’s how we can make change happen.

The authors lay to rest the myth that willpower is all we need to make a change in our lives. We need more than grit and determination to alter behaviors, and the book offers four strategies to do that.

  • Identify Crucial Moments: Identify the specific temptations that distract you from your primary goal.
  • Create Vital Behaviors: Establish rules for avoiding temptations in advance of the time you encounter them.
  • Engage All Six Sources of Influence: Change your environment, for example, and turn your enablers into allies.
  • Turn Bad Days into Good Data: Don’t use failures as a reason to give up. Learn from them and push on.

The book is full of interesting, well-written case studies about people who’ve made dramatic changes in their lives, from shaking a bad habit to making career changes. More than anything, the book gives you a roadmap for making just about any change you decide on. And who couldn’t use that every now and then?

I liked the book so much that I recorded a podcast with one of the book’s authors, David Maxfield. I’ll let you know when it’s available.

This book’s a keeper.

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Book Review: Speaking PowerPoint

By on May 4, 2011 in Books, Speaking

michael mclaughlinWhen I started reading Bruce Gabrielle’s book, Speaking PowerPoint: The New Language of Business, I was skeptical. I wasn’t sure I could get through another book about PowerPoint, especially since there are so many good ones out there already.

But Gabrielle’s book grabbed and held my attention–once I understood its purpose: To offer design techniques for presentations targeted at boardroom audiences (decision makers), not ballroom audiences (conference attendees).

That is, the presentation design techniques in the book help the reader build presentations for audiences who will actually use the slides for discussion and decision making. Think final presentations for consulting clients, for example.

Gabrielle calls his approach the Mindworks Presentation Method, and it includes three parts: Story, Slide, and Design. The book emphasizes the logical structure of a persuasive presentation and uses lots of examples to demonstrate the important concepts. Toward the end of the book, I was able to use Gabrielle’s method to diagnose the problems with the example slides included in the book.

In the back of the book, Gabrielle included a Mindworks Presentation Method Manager’s Checklist, which is a handy reference guide to keep nearby as you prepare a presentation.

Many of you are highly experienced, so you’re probably already doing a lot of what Gabrielle suggests. Even so, you’ll learn plenty of new techniques from this book. I know I did. This one’s a keeper.

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Ann Handley on Content Rules

By on February 25, 2011 in Books, Managing Your Business, Marketing, Podcasts

I interviewed Ann Handley, author of the fast-selling new book, Content Rules, How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business.

Ann is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, which provides strategic and tactical marketing know-how for hundreds of thousands of marketing and business professionals through a full range of online media. We talked about the concepts in her new book, with an emphasis on the specific tactics any of us can implement to build a more effective content.

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Interview: Maureen Broderick

By on January 17, 2011 in Books, Managing Your Business, Podcasts

For the January issue of Management Consulting News, I  talked with Maureen Broderick, author of The Art of Managing Professional Services: Insights from Leaders of the World’s Top Firms. In the book, she draws on more than 130 in-depth interviews with top firm leaders to find out what it takes to build a highly successful practice. I asked Broderick what surprised her the most in her research, and about the key challenges firm leaders face today.

Get our podcast interview with Maureen Broderick.

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Interview with Nick Morgan

By on December 11, 2010 in Books, Management Consulting News, Podcasts, Speaking

“Audiences find lists irritating, but they love attitude and perspective.” – Nick Morgan

For this month’s issue of Management Consulting News, I interviewed communication expert and speaking coach, Nick Morgan. He’s the author of the ebook, 7 Steps to a Great Speech, and the books Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma and Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. I asked Morgan for his best advice on preparing and delivering a great speech every time.

Get my (podcast) interview with Nick Morgan (~16 minutes).

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Leading Professionals

By on December 1, 2010 in Books, Managing Your Business

With so many books on the market about leadership, I thought I’d share the four that top my list. The first two, written by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, are among the best research-based books on this topic. These books are well-written and full of practical advice.

The other two books on my list are focused on the challenges of leading teams of professionals. They both highlight the unique issues leaders must address in their efforts to build productive teams of professionals.

Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It, by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner.

The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition, by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner.

Leading the Professionals: How to Inspire and Motivate Professional Service Teams, by Geoff Smith.

When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance, by Thomas J. DeLong, John J. Gabarro, and Robert J. Lees.

If you are interested in learning more, have a look at my interviews with James Kouzes and Thomas DeLong for Management Consulting News:

Read my Interview with James Kouzes.

Read my Interview with Thomas DeLong.

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Selling Your Ideas

By on November 29, 2010 in Books, Selling

If you’re working on projects, selling your services, or just trying to get things done, you know the importance of selling your ideas to others. Want to improve your skills in getting people to hear, accept, and act on your ideas? Check out the  five superb books below on the subject.

Naturally, there are other resources out there, but these are at the top of my current list. If you have books that you believe should be on the list, let me know.

Here are my five suggestions (in no particular order):

The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics, by Michael Maslansky, Scott West, Gary DeMoss, and David Saylor.

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler.

Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, and Roger Fisher.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam

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Choke Under Pressure?

By on November 11, 2010 in Business Life, Consulting Process, Managing Projects

I blew itEveryone knows that sinking feeling of blowing it under pressure. Maybe it was when you suddenly lost your train of thought in a sales presentation, or a client meeting you flubbed. It happens to all of us, at some point. Usually, we chalk it up to a case of “nerves.”

Now, University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock tells us that choking under pressure is preventable. In her new book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To, Beilock attributes suboptimal performance when the heat is on to information logjams in the brain.

Beilock says that thinking too much about what you are doing and over-analyzing can create mental logjams that sabotage your performance. And when you try to control every aspect of a situation in an effort to succeed, that can backfire and make you choke.

What can you do to improve the odds that you won’t choke? One strategy is to find ways to reduce the stress associated with high-pressure events. We know how important it is, for example, to rehearse a speech. You can further improve your performance if, when you are rehearsing, you simulate the stress you’d experience during the actual meeting.

The goal should be to make your practice feel as close as possible to the real event. That way, you’ll avoid creating a logjam in your head, make your presentation more of a routine occurrence, and you’ll choke less.

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