March Bonus Book: The Go-Getter

Summary

The Go-Getter feels a bit out of place in our 21st Century world, but has a tiny core that remains applicable to any age.

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I first heard about The Go-Getter by Peter Kyne, an  old (published in 1921), small (62 pages) book, on the EntreLeadership podcast. Like QBQ!, which I wrote about previously, it is  required reading at the Dave Ramsey company, and also like that book, it can be summed up in a pithy aphorism: Never give up. And it tells the story of a person who won’t give up.

This may be the oldest instance of the modern day business book as fable, and so the likes of Ken Blanchard and Patrick Lencioni owe a great deal to Peter Kyne. But in being first, there is a clunkiness to finding its way. Some of the language is odd and purposefully convoluted for comic effect. There are political commentaries our contemporaries would wisely leave out. And there are wisps of schmaltziness, such as the hero’s unnamed hero who is most likely being the person to whom the author dedicated the book.

It’s difficult to find offensive a book that requires so little, so let’s give it the benefit of the doubt and abstract its lesson. In the words of Winston Churchill, Never never never give up. A phrase, to be fair, uttered some 20 years after this book saw its day. This may be the truest way to truly have an impact.

And yet there is something disagreeable about this book that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would be hard pressed to find someone else who admires the kind of on-the-job hazing that Cappy Ricks employs in to award his underlings his “Degree of the Blue Vase.” And it is in face of the impossibility that our hero becomes admirable. Our hero, by the way, is a 1-armed amputee war hero from The Great War who limps along with a surgically shortened leg. He’s seen some stuff, including pulling a diamond ring worth about $32k in today’s money off a dead woman he found in a building he had just bombed during the War.

It’s not just that our hero has to face impossible circumstances that only a person someone we would readily classify as a sociopath could overcome, but that he faced this situation because of his loyalty to his boss who put him there. That is, the boss to whom he pledged his fealty took advantage of him–and all his top-drawer directs–in order to see what they are made of. And when all is revealed to be “just part of the test,” our hero rightly wants to put the man who set it up in the hospital. (Imagine getting walloped by a one-armed man, and you can imagine the fury involved.)

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, an esprit de corps that I don’t share, something, I hope, that has been lost to the ages.

Perhaps we can sit back in our comfortable chairs and think, “Glad that’s not me”, or “I’ve never had to face something so horrible,” and that may be the point. Perhaps that is why this book has stayed somewhat current. We can see someone go through terrible times in a business setting and imagine ourselves doing the same. In that sense, our hero’s triumph is our triumph.

Books Referenced

The Go-Getter: A Story that Tells you How to Be One (also available for free via Project Gutenberg)

 

March Books: Accountability

Summary:

Winning with Accountability, though not one of the big well known books in industry, has a lot to offer, while QBQ! had a lot of bluster.

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This month’s discussion theme for my mentorship group is accountability. At the beginning of the month, I happened to hear the Entreleadership podcast episode where Chris Hogan and his guest kicked off their “Leaders are Readers” month with a discussion of QBQ! The Question Behind the Question. They could not have given it a more ringing endorsement, including noting that Dave Ramsey notes it as a favorite and requires people who work for him to read it. I have a lot of respect for Dave Ramsey and for Chris Hogan. I’ve been listening to the Entreleadership podcast for about a year now and they always have something to think about, something to chew on.

However, this book really fell flat for me. It touts itself as a path towards accountability, but it’s really a viewpoint of being pro-active in difficult situations. Rather than “whining”, John G. Miller suggests you ask questions like, “What can I do here?” Personally, I don’t think every bad situation can be cleared up by personal action–sometimes the universe is just messing you over and you don’t have control over it at the moment. You can try not to stress out, but you may need to be productive elsewhere until the storm blows over. I like the idea of trying to take control, but I didn’t need a book, even one as brief as 116 pages with lots of white space, to get me there.

Here are the takeaways: Begin questions with “what” or “how”, contain an “I”, and focus on an action. Don’t try to change people, and don’t waste energy worrying about things you can’t fix, or asking, “why”, “when”, or “who” questions. At its core, this is a book prompting the reader to be more empowered to take action and not freak out about when things aren’t going your way.

Unlike QBQ!, Winning with Accountability had no great pedigree of recommendation, but it is a fine, brief read (just 92 pages). If you are familiar with SMART goals, then you’ll find Henry J. Evans‘s model a slight expansion on a proven methodology. But in addition to SMART(ER) tasks, Evans posits this idea, which I think is sorely lacking in a lot of literature (and audio and video) about accountability: not only are the directs accountable to the leader, but the leader is accountable to her directs. Evans talks about building a culture of accountability, which begins with the individual and can be seeded by the individual. Contrast Miller’s QBQs, where one seems to be the lone agent in a big, weird world. I like Evans, because he discusses the network effect of accountability. It is within networks that one can have the biggest impact.

Evans has a 4-part model: Requests must be clear, time-specific, have a single owner, and are communicated to others. It’s within the clarity section that he discusses SMARTER goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-Oriented, Trackable, Ethical, and Recorded. The “ethical” part goes without saying for me, but Evans deals with a broad audience.

Two other bits I liked. Evans talks about “front-loading” goals with accountability.by making sure the expectations and measures of success are communicated. He suggests having the listening reflect back in their own language what the request is. I know from my days in teaching that this is a strong method of checking understanding. The second thing I really liked is that Evans talks about timelines, not deadlines. Timelines connote progress, whereas deadline connote completion. While completion is important, you can build a relationship by following up on timelines as the work does or does not get down.

Respond:

What are you favorite books on Accountability? Leave your tips in the comments.

Books in this post:

• QBQ! The Question Behind the Question
• Winning with Accountability

Make Human Systems Infallible

Summary: Use stories to teach people lessons so that they remember lessons in high-stress, high-emotion situations.

Read: People can really mess things up. Really smart people can mess things up really badly, even when they know better. Blame the emotions for that one. Our amygdala and the rest of the limbic system can really steer us in the wrong direction, either through panic, distress, depression, sadness, or otherwise mind-clouding confusion. So how can you work with this fog and make better choices?

This is a conversation my wife and I have a lot. She is constantly looking for new systems to instill to help her company get better, be better, and perform at a higher level. And, in the absence of being able to document systems and patterns for every small deviation–systems that must be taught and memorized–she was looking for methods that could help her and others, especially during crunch times.

It is easy to provide short, pithy responses like “keep the big picture in mind,” and, “work as a team,” but it is also easy to dismiss these are fortune cookie type recommendations. How do you get people to act on these? How can you make sure people act in the right way and make logical choices when the limbic system is going crazy?

Here’s my solution: Humans are hard-wired for stories, and so by telling vivid stories that illustrate what happens when things go wrong or when they can go right, you develop a common language that is easily recalled and referred. Lessons have been taught through stories for millennia: around the hunting fire, around the hearth, and around the pulpit. When you can’t account for every possible action, guiding stories are a good way of teaching how to think through a range of situations.

Stories don’t have to take a long time to tell–they can be relayed in 5-10 minutes during a team meeting–and they can serve a touchstone. A vivid story can put someone into a situation, and when similar situations are encountered, that emotion–and its lesson–is easier to access. In this way, you can make very fallible human systems more infallible.

Where to find stories? They are all over. Look at the history of your team and your company. Look to industry publications. Read the stories of people and corporations either in your field or in divergent fields. Stories are everywhere. Make use of vivid details when retelling them. Emphasize the lesson. Let them become a part of your personal and team lore.