Category Archives: Discussions

Attendance: Chris, Mike, Vora, Chris D.

There is a common misconception that creativity is not important in business. In fact, some people believe creativity is frowned upon. That may be true in some cases, but creativity actually plays a huge role in business. Think of any highly successful person or business, and you will undoubtedly find that they somewhere along the way learned to be very creative.

The creative habit was the third book in our group’s five part series on productivity and effectiveness. The book was an enjoyable read, and made for a surprisingly good discussion. This is the first time so far that the group has gone the full two hours, and I think we could have kept going longer if we hadn’t run out of time.

Now allow me to be candid for a moment: My initial reaction to this text was something like this, “well this is great if you want to be a writer or a director, but how on earth does it relate to business?” It’s not that I didn’t think creativity is important, it is that this book is written by a dance choreographer, and is the subject of English and Theatre class curriculums. The majority of her examples discuss things she learned from creating her shows. Is she really writing to business people? What is here for a CEO?

Upon reading the book more thoroughly, I realized that it certainly applies to business. Even though the examples are slanted towards theater, art, and Broadway, much of the book is actually about establishing rituals, finding new ideas, leveraging history and planning projects. It is absolutely relevant to anyone seeking to become more effective.

Now, doing the right stuff is important (Drucker), and so is making sure you are getting stuff done (Allen). But just doing these things alone is not going to make you into anything exceptional. If you really want to excel, you are going to have to learn to be creative. Creativity is a skill that can take effectiveness to the next level. It is one of the few things in this world that really set apart the greats from the worker bees.

–Questions used for Discussion–

1) What is the central idea or premise of the creative habit? What are some of the problems or issues raised?

2) What role does a book by a choreographer about creativity play into a book club about business? How do you think it fits into a book series on productivity and effectiveness?

3) What are some of the ways that the concept of creativity is used in the business world?

4) Most of the chapters in the creative habit have exercises in the back. Has anyone had a chance to complete some of them? What                   was your experience like? What are some of the more interesting exercises you read about?

5) Tharp believes that rituals should be a part of our lives. What types of rituals is she considering? What importance do  you place on rituals? Why are they important in the creative process?

6) What is creative DNA? How do you think this concept of creative DNA can be leveraged in a business setting?

7) Tharp goes into great detail about the many types of memory. What is the importance of memory in business?

Scratching is the process of searching for ideas. How can you find the best ideas? How do you know a good idea when you see one?

9) Before you can think outside of the box, you have to start with a box. What do you use for box, what would go into it?

10) Tharp advocates careful planning, but cautions against blindly sticking to a plan. In your own work, do you tend to see people over planning or under planning? What are some of the mistakes commonly made with planning? How do you strike the proper balance?

11) Tharp claims that skill is one of the most important components of the creative process. Why is skill so important? What skills is she referring to? How can you develop your own skills?

12) What have you learned in this book that you can apply by next Tuesday?

Attendance: Chris, Justin, Roger, Vora

Having done a few of these meeting now, I’ve realized there is not really a standard format. Sure it is getting easier for me to make questions than at first, but different books call for different approaches. How To Read Faster in 10 Days left very little to discussion, we basically just reviewed the book which helped remember it. Drucker was much more philosophical and we spent most of the time focusing on how the contents relates to our lives rather than spending a whole lot of time in the book. Even though no two meetings are exactly the same, my goal is to walk out with a much better understanding than what I went in with.

Getting things Done was the groups 5^th book, and probably the most action oriented and practical out of all of them so far. The book has a system which is so very detailed the approach I decided to take was to spend a lot of time focusing on each of the steps in the system. This would be the only way we could all fully realize the content of the system.

The first part of the discussion we basically spent reviewing the five steps of GTD. Each person picked one of the steps, briefly reviewed the section in the book, and then explained it to the others. Doing this really makes everyone focus on each step separately.

The highlights of the five steps found in GTD are:

1) Collect – This is the phase where you gather all of the stuff in your world into a common place. You are not allowed to think about what you will do with it at this point. The idea is just to throw it all in one place. Gather all your papers, write down all the stuff you know you need to do. After your initial implementation, you need to maintain an up to date inbox by putting items in it as they come in.

2) Process – You now most likely have a huge pile of stuff. You will go through each item in order and ask “What is this?” Assuming the item is actionable and not reference material, you can do three things with it, a) Throw it away 2) delegate it 3) defer it. If you can’t throw it away or delegate it, he suggests if you can do it in less than two minutes then go ahead and do it. If you can’t do it in less than two minutes then you need to put it into your organizational system.

3) Organize – Here you are putting all of your stuff into your system. The suggested system is heavy on lists. When you walk out of this process you will wind up with a set of all of the next actions, projects and contexts that make up your life.

4) Review – A big part of the system is constantly reviewing it. He suggests a weekly review in which you review your projects, next actions, and commitments. During the review you will not be doing any of the actions. You are just making sure your system is in order, because if you fail to keep it up, you will soon quit trusting and using it.

5) Do – Now that you have your whole world organized into a system, how do you know which thing to attack first?

He suggests evaluating the following components in order:

A) Context – Where are you? Most tasks require you to be at a certain place. Filter out your tasks by where you are.

B) Time – If you have a meeting in 30 minutes, why start a task you know is going to take you 3 solid hours? Instead knock of the task that will take you 30 minutes.

C) Energy – Some tasks require more energy than others, assess yours and pick the task most fitting.

D) Priority – Now that you’ve established you are at the right place, have the time and energy, what are the priorities of the remaining tasks?

After fleshing out the details of the system, we were able to move on and evaluate the high level premise of the book. Roger had this one covered and presented a long list of metaphors he had found throughout the book. The metaphors present an overall state desired by becoming more organized. The two that stuck in my head were “Ready for Anything” and a “Mind Like Water.” Ready for anything is like a martial arts practitioner standing in a ready state. He is calm and ready to attack. And a mind like water is having the perfect reaction to any disturbance. Picture a rock being thrown into a calm pond. The water will handle the disturbance and then return to a calm state.

The other metaphor I had been thinking of was David Allen’s use of the term RAM and Open Loops. To much stuff floating around in our head causes stress and loss of productivity. A catch all system of organization allows one to get rid of the typical contents of RAM and instead focus on the specific actions at hand.

We also discussed various other time management philosophies such as Stephen Covey, and how it differs from Getting Things Done. The traditional time management philosophies have always taken an approach of working with an overall purpose, then longer term goals, and then aligning our specific actions with those goals. Allen thinks that this is an unrealistic approach. We can blue sky all we want, but if we don’t have our life in order, how are we ever going to be able to focus on longer term goals? Instead, he suggests focusing on your “runway”, and then working your way up to specific projects, and then moving up from there. The point is not to ignore the higher levels, but instead to have our life organized first, and then work your way up higher.

At the end we finally got to discuss our plans and struggles with the implementation. I thought that how the system would turn a lot of people off by it’s complexity but surprisingly, everyone wanted to try it.

So far this week I have made a lot of progress with mine. I got the cheapest PDA on the planet (pocketmod.com), and dumped my head into an online GTD system (Nozbe).

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Review Exercise: Five Step Process

Assign each of the following sections to a person or a group. Have them briefly study the section and then each will present this section to the rest of the group.

Collect pg 25

Process pg 31

Organize pg 35

Review pg 45

Do pg 48

1) Without going into the details of the methodology, what is the overall central idea or premise behind Getting Things Done? What are some of the problems or issues are raised?

2) After Explanation of Collect in the Review Exercise: The first phase of implementing GTD consists of gathering “your world” into a common inbox. Have you ever tried to do this? What can you imagine this experience would be like? Does it cause anxiety just thinking about it?

3) After Explanation of Organize in the Review Exercise: Processing and Organizing seem to have a lot of overlapping concepts, do you see any ways in which the concepts are different?

4) After Explanation of Do in the Review Exercise: Getting Things Done suggests a four criteria model for doing. The specific criteria to be evaluated are Context, Time Available, Energy, and Priority. How do you usually decide what to work on at a given time, and do you see yourself adopting this model instead?

5) People have been writing about time management for years, why do you think Allen felt it necessary to write another book on the subject. What separates this book from the rest?

6) Getting Things Done has been criticized as being overly complex. Do you think this system is realistic is it just another thing to manage? Is the effort involved with organizing worth the results and why?

7) Getting things Done leaves a lot of the specific implementation open to the users of the system. What are some of the more ways you can think of implementing GTD? Has anyone tried any specific methods or software?

To what degree are you likely to implement GTD into your life? What changes would be required in order to do so?

Book Discussion: 3/15/09

Attendence: Chris, Saad, Roger, Mike

I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion of Peter Drucker’s Effective Executive. The overall theme of the book is to help the reader understand what a person can do to make his or her contribution to the organization more effective.

The content of the book was well suited for discussion, but we also tried a new discussion technique. Instead of reading the questions out-loud myself, we each took turns reading the questions. This really seemed to keep everyone involved in the discussion and contributed to the overall flow.

Here are the questions we used for discussion:

1) Why do you think Drucker felt it was necessary to write a book on the topic of effectiveness?

2) Does the Effective Executive offer a central idea or premise? What are some of the problems or issues are raised?

3) Paraphrasing Drucker, “the realities of an executive’s situation can easily push their efforts into futility.” What realities do you think the modern knowledge worker deals with that pushes efforts away from effectiveness?

4) One reality Drucker discusses is the notion that many activities in an organization are often time wasters getting in the way of effectiveness. What time wasters commonly pull against you, and how could you go about reducing them?

5) An excerpt from the book:

When asked“And what do you do that justifies your being on the payroll?” The great majority, he reports answer: “I run the accounting department,” or “I am in charge of the sales force.” Indeed, not uncommonly the answer is, “I Have 850 people working under me.” Only a few say, “It’s my job to give our managers the information they need to make the right decisions,” or “I am responsible for finding out what products the customer will want tomorrow,” or “I have to think through and prepare the decisions the president will have to face tomorrow.”

What is the difference between looking downward and looking upward? Looking at your own job, do you tend to focus downward; can you think of how you would perform your job differently looking upward?

6) As a crucial step in becoming more effective, it is suggested that an executive ask ones self “what can I contribute?” Can you or the author offer solutions to answering the question?

7) Drucker has noticed that many times an organization tends to deal with “the problem of the day”, spending more time focusing on putting out fires than on developing real strategy. He advises us to instead “feed the opportunities and starve the problems.”

Do you think this is a realistic goal? Who’s responsibility is it to achieve this?

In the chapter first thing is first, Drucker says if there is any secret to being effective, it is concentration. What does he mean by using the word concentration, and what are some suggestions for obtaining it?

9) The latter part of the book discusses decision making. How do you think people can make better decisions? Do you think organizations are effective at making decisions?

10) Do the issues raised in this book affect your life? How so—directly, on a daily basis or more generally?

11) What did you learn from this book that you can apply this Tuesday?

Book Discussion: 3/1/2009

Attendance: Chris, Justin, Harry, Saad

The discussion of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich was very interesting. While two hours was not enough to cover the book in it’s entirety, we did get to cover a substantial portion of the philosophy. For this blog, I just wanted to go over the questions that were posed to the group and provide a very brief synopsis of the answer.

Many of the discussion questions came from a discussion guide at www.ideamerge.net.

1) What do you think is meant by “thoughts are things?”

No matter how big or small, achievements begin with a basic thought. One of three things can happen with the initial thought:

-it can be dismissed

-it can be kept as a wish or dream

-it can be acted upon

The focus of Hill’s work is on the third action. A large part of success depends upon the thoughts that one has and how they are nurtured and cultivated.

2) Are thoughts alone enough? What else do you need to do to be successful?

Thoughts of course are not enough. There is an essential ingredient list of success. Most of these ingredients are a result of thought. Thought is a huge component because it will determine how one responds to the other essential component of success; action.

3) Why is desire the starting point for all achievement?

Success requires hard work. There are very few actual stories of “overnight success.” You must carefully listen to your desires before you will be able to develop the intense focus needed for achievement.

4) What value do you place on your thoughts?

5) Why is it important to choose a definite goal?

The human mind is very powerful and it is constantly thinking. The problem is, for most people this thinking is unfocused. Lack of focus is a real inhibitor when it comes to achieving things. Listening to your desires and developing a definite goal will help you to develop the focus needed to make your endeavors successful.

6) What separates successful people from unsuccessful people?

Successful people are focused. They generate plans, then act upon them. They do not let Unsuccessful people go from one thing to the next and allow life’s noise to be the main driver of their efforts.

7) What should a person do who has a definite purpose but know plan?

Put your purpose onto paper and repeat it aloud once in the morning, and once at night. Picture yourself as already possessing the definite purpose. This will allow your brain to go to work and figure out the steps needed to accomplish your purpose.

How does hill specifically suggest a person develop faith and plans?

Hill has something called the self confidence formula. It is based off the principle of auto suggestion which consists of believing that one can accomplish his goals, reading aloud his goals and imagining himself in possession of his goals.

9) What does it mean to be truly educated?

The example given in the book is the story of Henry Ford in court who exclaims that it is a waste of his time to memorize useless facts because he has an army of staff that can provide him any answer he wants if he should he have a need to know.

An educated person does not need to know everything already, but instead he needs to have the skills and resources needed to obtain information that is required.

10) Why is imagination the “hub” of all of the lessons in the book?

One can have desire, and action and plans, but all of these may be rather meager without imagination. Imagination allows the mind to create things that may be of value which are not in existence.

11) How is marketing yourself similar to marketing merchandise?

People are judged in similar terms to that of merchandise. Think of the qualities that people look for in merchandise and they will most likely apply to your work as well.

12) What is the single most important thing in developing persistence?

A definite chief aim is the most important thing in developing persistence. Without this, one cannot truly be persistent. The problem is, very few people actually have a definite chief aim. Napoleon Hill contends that 98 out of 100 people do not have a definite goal.

10 Days To Faster Reading

Attendance: Chris, Harry, Justin, Nathan.

Overview

This book is designed to help your everyday untrained average reader learn skills that will improve his or her reading ability. It guides you sequentially through different techniques that enhance your reading skills and it has exercises and tests to try a long the way.

Commentary

Everyone seemed to enjoy this book quite a bit. I know that I did. Now I have skills that are going to help me keep up with all of the reading I plan to do without killing myself to do it. As far as discussion goes, it was very straightforward. The whole point of the discussion was not really to help anyone gain any new insight on the material, but just to activate another part of the memory to help remember the contents.

Because the goal of the discussion to commit the material to memory, I simply asked a series of questions that took us through the book. This resulted in lots of flipping through the book and reviewing the different concepts outlined within. I actually used the opportunity to finally take notes on the big post it flip chart paper.

Many people are at first skeptical of this book. But after reading it, I can truthfully say it has been very useful to me. I can now easily keep up with the reading that this group will require.

For me, the most useful techniques were:

1) Previewing — This technique is fantastic. It is basically a method of trying to find the authors outline so you can quickly go through a book or chapter and get the main points. I have really started doing this a lot.

2) Using a notecard as a pacer – This helps assure that you are not wasting eye movements looking back up at what you previously read, or trying to find your place. It also makes you keep up a constant pace.

3) Looking for Keywords – This method basically boils down to “read the big words.” Most smaller words add very little content to a sentence, and the meaning of the sentence can be derived from the bigger words. By training yourself to look for the bigger words you can cut down on about half of the words you are reading.

There are many more techniques in this book, and exercises to go along with them. The exercises were all easy and very helpful to practice the material. My reading skills have definitely improved as a direct result of this book. Unless you are already a really good reader, it is worth your time.