New Business Book Summary Available for Darn Easy

Darn Easy instills basic principles for success with intuition and faith to create a simple yet inspiring formula for positive growth. Peggy McColl and Brian Proctor write from the perspective of successful businesspeople, providing advice and examples from their own journeys toward achieving goals. They simplify the processes of generating emotional as well as financial income, building on natural talents, enjoying work, and ultimately achieving a lifestyle of ease, so that readers can believe in their dreams and take steps to achieve them.

New Business Book Summary Available for Mind Gym

Sometimes life’s circumstances are out of people’s control. However, how individuals think, feel, and behave as a result of those circumstances is very much within their control. It is simply a matter of learning to think, react, and respond in positive and productive ways. In Mind Gym, authors Sebastian Bailey and Octavius Black share scientifically based exercises and techniques anyone can use to train the mind to think positively and productively, including resetting thoughts, taking control, deepening connections, persuading others, resolving conflict, letting creative juices flow, and minimizing stress. The result is a more successful, fulfilling life.

New Business Book Summary Available for Black Hole Focus

The toughest decision a person will ever make is determining his or her ultimate purpose in life. Most people let life make this critical decision for them instead of making their own choices. The result is that they end up focusing on short-term objectives and frittering their lives away on endless streams of small, meaningless decisions that have no real impact. Black Hole Focusexplains how people can avoid this hollow fate, decide on a purpose, and align their lives around a chosen path.

New Summary Available for HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work

Stress in the work environment is a given. However, while a little bit of stress can be motivating, too much stress can be debilitating. Most people are more than familiar with the usual advice: set priorities, manage time better, and pay attention to diet, exercise, and sleep. But sometimes these rules can be hard to adhere to, or they are simply not enough. HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work goes beyond the standard stress-reduction tips and tricks to provide useful tools that focus on creating balance, energy, and self-fulfillment. Covering a wide range of topics and scenarios ranging from flexible scheduling to dual-career relationships to how to not take a bad day at the office home, the book offers a holistic approach to keeping stress at bay and turning it from a destructive to a productive force.

New summary available for Eat That Frog!

As Brian Tracy explains in Eat That Frog!, options abound in life, but so does procrastination. People simply cannot do everything they need or want to do. Instead of attempting to complete everything, productive people select the most important things and prioritize them. Mark Twain said that if people eat frogs first thing in the morning, it will be the worst thing they do all day. Like eating frogs, the most important tasks people have for the day should be completed first. This boosts self-esteem and energy, ignites the desire to complete the next task, and becomes a positive addiction that leads to a productive, fulfilling way of life.

HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

The HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done brings together more than two dozen articles on personal productivity, including many excerpts from the pages of the Harvard Business Review. The Harvard Business School Publishing collection provides advice on prioritizing work, avoiding distractions and procrastination, managing mental and emotional energy, and developing good work habits. It teaches how to delegate effectively and secure a pay raise by aligning work with corporate objectives. Readers can choose from a number of simple tools, such as to-do lists and e-mail automation, to reduce stress.

Moving to Telework

Why move to telework? Telework has environmental and cost benefits.

According to a Harris poll, U.S. workers waste an estimated $4.3 billion in energy costs each year and generate 32 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from this energy consumption. From a business prospective, the benefits of telework include gains in productivity, the ability to access a global talent pool (including people with disabilities who find it difficult to work in an office environment), lower overhead costs, and a hedge against the risk of natural or manmade disasters.

The authors liken a successful telework leader to a symphony conductor who brings together a diverse group of musicians to play a complex piece of music successfully. The leader must be able to get all employees (both those who telework and those who do not) to work off a common platform of clear, open, disciplined, and deliberate communication.

Before even implementing a telework arrangement, the leader must ask if the workforce or team has the skills, abilities, commitment, and time to learn and use both the technology and communication skills required for telework. Then, if the company decides to implement telework, the leader must make sure that all employees understand both the why and how of telework.

The authors’ advice is to communicate, communicate, and communicate again. Since everyone processes information differently, it is important to use many different means of communication (e-mail, company blogs, podcasts, etc.) for the same message.

Closely linked to communication is change management. Leaders must work through barriers of resistance for many employees to accept telework and for telework to be successful.

Change management might include celebrating small successes, using hard data to create a case for change, and using interpersonal skills. An organization’s or team’s culture is important to the success of telework.

Culture can propel people forward in the desired direction or serve as a roadblock. Culture influences and reinforces behaviors without the need for formal documentation or guidelines.

When telework is in conflict with the corporate culture, teleworking arrangements are likely to fail.
Recognizing an organization’s culture requires recognizing what the organization truly values.

For an organization that values a lot of face-to-face time, telework is a hard fit. The authors note that although successful telework cultures vary, they generally have several things in common.

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Maximizing Personal Productivity

The author notes that success in business planning and execution relies heavily on personal productivity skills. These skills help individuals get organized for implementation, improve their time utilization, present ideas effectively, and increase their ability to delegate work.

The most common time-wasters that plague managers are crisis management, procrastination, ineffective meetings, interruptions, and lack of plans and priorities.

Individuals who are successful at time management work on priorities that are both mission-critical and time-sensitive. According to Capezio, there are three primary types of meetings in the workplace: informational meetings, advisory meetings, and problem-solving meetings.

To make meetings more productive, Capezio recommends using the TOO Method, which stands for Topic, Objectives, and Outline.

The first step is to identify the topic. A best practice is to allow only one topic to be covered per meeting.

The second step is to establish the objectives. These are the expected outcomes from the meeting.

The final step is to prepare the outline. This contains the steps that the meeting leader and attendees will follow to accomplish the objectives.

Another important skill is making effective presentations. To communicate effectively with audiences, it is essential to analyze oneself, the audience, and the situation.

After conducting this analysis, it is possible to begin formatting the presentation. Work should focus on three key components: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion.

During the presentation, managers should consider how to create a presence through appearance, language choices, pacing, and volume. After the presentation is complete, a Lessons Learned Analysis should be conducted.

When developing business plans, negotiation will inevitably occur. This type of discussion can be used to resolve a dispute, to reach an agreed-upon direction, or to satisfy diverse interests.

The negotiation style that is used will often determine the outcome of the discussion. There are three major types of negotiation styles: competitive, avoidance, and accommodating.

The competitive style focuses on winning at all costs. In contrast, the avoidance style seeks to avoid conflict and any engagement in a substantive discussion. The accommodating style focuses on pleasing the other party, but it can easily develop into a competitive style.

The most effective negotiations incorporate the interests of both parties. While this approach may be more time-consuming, it tends to create more enduring agreements.

The last way to enhance personal productivity is to strike a balance between work and one’s personal life. Capezio recommends assessing whether one’s current balance is appropriate.

It may be necessary to set explicit goals to free more time and to create a better balance. Other suggestions are to create a more flexible work schedule and to integrate work and family wherever possible.

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