August Reading Marathon

Heaven help me.

August 1 marks the first day of my 35 books in 35 days professional reading marathon. Thank goodness I have a hiking/writing vacation planned immediately after the marathon concludes. In three cases, I will be doing a deeper read of a book I have previously skimmed.

I've selected seven themes for the reading, and my plan is to post interesting quotes and insights via Twitter as I read each book. Once I've finished all the books in a theme, I will compose a longer blog post that highlights the various texts, compares and contrasts, etc. Here are the themes and titles:

1. Work and organizations

Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
Elsewhere USA by Dalton Conley
Why Work Sucks by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson
Saving the World at Work by Tim Sanders
The Levity Effect by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher

2. Internet culture and its impact

Free by Chris Anderson
And Then There’s This by Bill Wasik
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Grown Up Digital by Donald Tapscott
Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

3. Creativity, design, and innovation

In Pursuit of Elegance by Matthew May
The Element by Ken Robinson
Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod
Get Back in the Box by Douglas Rushkoff
The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

4. Society, the world, and the economy

Life Inc. by Douglas Rushkoff
The Tyranny of Dead Ideas by Matt Miller
The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz
The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo
The Necessary Revolution by Peter Senge
Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
Enough by John Bogle

5. Decision-making

Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Judgment by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis
Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe

6. Thinking and attention

The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom
The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin
A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman
Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner
Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

7. Leadership

Tribes by Seth Godin
Leading with Questions by Michael Marquardt
The Introverted Leader by Jennifer Kahnweiler
Sala, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age by Juana Bordas

The saddest part of it all? It still leaves me about 40 books unread.

Time to Move from "If Only" to Only If"

They must be the two most frequently spoken words on the planet: if only.

If only we had more time, we could develop better strategies for the future.

If only we had more money, we'd be able to add lots of special touches to this project.

If only we had a few different board members, we could be much more innovative.

But we don't have those things and most likely we won't have those things. So letting what we know we can't have get in the way of managing what we do is a copout.

It's time to move from if only to only if.

We'll develop better strategies for the future only if we create systems and have conversations that effectively use our limited time.

We'll add lots of special touches to this project only if we make better use of the dollars we have available or identify creative additions that don't cost much at all.

We'll be more innovative only if we develop a better relationship with the board so they will feel more comfortable supporting ideas they currently see as risky.

Powerful Presentations Tip #7: Prepare to be Present

I hope you've enjoyed these seven tips/steps to more powerful presentations. Currently I am designing a PDF booklet that expands on each of the tips and provides additional examples and supportive material. I'll announce on the blog when it is available.

I'll be doing a three-hour workshop exploring the 7-step design process on Monday, October 19, from 1:15-4:15 p.m. in Washington, DC. Registration is limited to 30 participants and information can be found here. It will be an interactive afternoon filled with lots of idea sharing and additional tips to strengthen your your workshop/presentation design and facilitation capabilities.

Now on to the final step/tip: Prepare to be present.

While the previous six steps/tips are each critical to creating a more powerful learning experience, they must be buttressed by the power of presence, the ultimate presenter gift to participants.

We’ve all been in a session in which the room crackled with energy and insight. That doesn’t happen when presenters are so tied to their slides, notes, and outline that everything runs according to script. In the best sessions the learning happens in the center of the room, in that space where participant and presenter contributions collide, mix, and form new meaning and understanding.

That only occurs when you as the presenter have prepared exhaustively resulting in your ultimate command of the content and your total ease with modifying format and focus on the fly based on participants’ needs and energy. Facilitating learning is an improvisational skill. The best presenters take every offbeat line and curve participants throw at them and respond, “Yes, and” just as great improvisation requires. Saying no stops the energy, the flow, and ultimately, the learning.

This is why great presenting is so difficult, but so worthwhile. It requires you to prepare so thoroughly that you can effortlessly reorder your content or change the learning format for a particular segment without participants knowing you have done so. It demands the deepest listening and awareness … to what is being said now, to what has been said before, to what is not being said … and to connect these thoughts in real-time to the overall content you are presenting. On days when I have been most successful as a presenter, I finish the session completely spent from the external conversations I have had with participants and the internal discussions I have had with myself.

So once you complete a session design that you find satisfying, direct your attention to all the questions you need to answer and the actions you need to takes o that you can be 100% present during the presentation. Turning off your cellphone isn’t enough. You have to turn off the rest of the world so that nothing interferes with the incredible opportunity you’ve been given … to turn on the learning and understanding participants come to us seeking.

Taking Care of Yourself

What you eat matters.

Building your strength, endurance, and flexibility through exercise matters.

How much sleep you get matters.

Taking time to relax and rejuvenate matters.

Laughing matters.

Time with people important to you matters.

Hobbies matter.

You can read professional journals, participate in webinars, have the very best mentors, and attend all the conferences you want, but if you don't take good care of the person behind the professional, it won't matter.

A Kinder Garden for Better Thinking

I've been doing a lot of reading on the power of play and the positive role it plays in learning, strategy development, creativity, and innovation.

Doing so caused me to do a little research on the word kindergarten. German in origin, it literally means children (kinder) and garden (garten). Friedrich Froebel, the German educator who coined the term, created in 1840 a Play and Activity Institute. He renamed it kindergarten two years later, envisioning the kindergarten educational experience as a garden for children where they could grow and develop, as well as interact with real gardens and nature.

I like the origin of the word and think the garden metaphor is ripe with opportunities for talking about how ideas are planted, nurtured, and harvested in an organization.

But what has most stayed with me is seeing the word split into its two roots: kinder and garden. While the Germanic meaning of kinder is clearly children, seeing the word for its other meaning—being more kind—also holds great relevance for the power of play.

We will only produce breakthrough thinking and innovative solutions if we treat our colleagues, stakeholders, and thinking partners with greater kindness and respect and increase our willingness to play and think with just about anyone instead of the usual suspects or the proven partners whom we may now favor.