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Review by Jennifer Dawson What do Napster, Alcoholics Anonymous, Wikipedia, the Apaches, Skype, the abolitionist movement in Britain, the Animal Liberation Front, and al Qaeda all have in common? According to Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, authors of The Starfish and The Spider, they are all examples of “starfish” organizations: open, decentralized systems that achieve globe-changing outcomes, all without a front-and-centre call-the-shots leader. A starfish doesn’t have a head. Cut off its leg and it grows another. And sometimes a second starfish grows from the severed limb. This is in stark contrast to the “spider” organization: a coercive, closed, top-down system that dies when its (figurative) head is chopped off. Brafman and Beckstrom propose that, with the advent of the Internet, starfish organizations have incredible capacity to engage individuals on a planet-wide scale, sometimes at a great cost to large, multinational spider companies. They propose a vision for a new, “hybrid” organization that blends the democratic, decentralized, community-minded spirit of the starfish organization with the structure, control and profitability of a...
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By Keith Rosen Review by Jennifer Dawson Management is dead. Keith Rosen admits it’s a bold statement, but it underlies his innovative approach to creating sales champions and is certainly a thought-provoking sentence to slide into the opening chapter of his book. Since Rosen isn’t advocating for flat organizational structures or axing all sales management positions, it might be more accurate to say that management is on life support. The prescriptive, problem-focused, and punitive approach of traditional management, Rosen asserts, is failing today’s salespeople. Enter coaching, which Rosen defines as “the art of creating new possibilities.” Coaching’s collaborative, creative and solution-focused approach, while not a quick cure for managerial ills, promises to breathe new life into any sales department. Rosen spends a significant amount of time outlining the principles of coaching, the qualities of a “masterful coach”, fatal coaching mistakes, and describing traditional managerial approaches and why they don’t work. The key learning from the book, however–and this is where Rosen pens his second memorable phrase–is his assertion that “the question is the answer.” Why questions? In the role of coach, a sales manager engages in meaningful one-on-one conversations with salespeople which correspond to the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the talking is done by the salesperson, and 20 percent by the coach. In order for this to happen, the coach spends most of his or her time asking insightful, solution-focused questions and listening carefully to the answers, which invariably become the basis for further questions. It makes sense, then, that Rosen’s book is packed with examples of illuminating questions (including an appendix full of one-sentence gems). It’s a long book, but chapter 9 (“Facilitating an Effective Coaching Conversation”), chapter 12 (“Develop an Internal Coaching Program”) and the question-loaded Appendix are worth a careful read. It can be difficult to reconcile Rosen’s advice to focus a coaching session on the salesperson’s values, goals, and needs with the fact that the financial viability of a company depends largely on meeting and exceeding externally-dictated sales targets....
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This was written by Jennifer Dawson under my direction for Sage Portfolio Group. I like her work so much I wanted to share it on the bookshelf. Yet another of the inspirational books making the rounds at Sage Portfolio Group is Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations, a quick read that uses concrete examples and evocative phrases like “let silence do the heavy lifting” to move us from conversation avoidance to conversations that, as Scott asserts, can change the trajectory of a business, a career, a marriage, or a life. Conversations are symbolic of the relationship: superficial conversation equals superficial relationship, deep conversation is indicative of a real and meaningful relationship. A conversation is not fierce because there is unconstructive conflict and winners and losers, but because those involved have the courage to be honest, open to alternatives and collaborate on a solution. Get...
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Write a Book Review I am super excited about adding a virtual bookshelf to the Crucible Bookii. We are all readers and it is great to hear what people think of books before I invest the time to read them. I am not a book reviewer–just not my thing–but I would like to invite you to submit book reviews of books you love–especially in the categories that fit the Crucible audience. Categories are: Business, GLBT, Cooking and Food, Travel, Art, and Fashion We reserve the right to edit your submissions and we are going to ask you only to submit fairly positive reviews. The format: Category (All time favorite, New–less than 1 year old) Genre (Business, Branding, Food, Fashion, Queer, Art, Literature, Gender) Book Title Author Publication Date Short Synopsis What you liked What the challenges were with the book Your other comments Rate on a scale of 1-5 A link to the book online A 5 sentence writer bio The rules: We reserve the right to publish only those reviews that fit the Crucible Bookii brand and to edit all articles. No more than 1000 words We don’t pay for our reviews–we hope you will do them out of the goodness of your heart. As a guideline for the tone: totally honest, totally kind....
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Dear Diary, Yesterday was a crazy day. And by that, I mean that I made myself a little crazy. I created a world I don’t really want to live in–but only in my head. It has been a tough week. I have been sharing the Crucible with a focus group and I also took some entries to my writing group. Then, one of my kids told me “gay” is a bad word. We talked about it, and then I talked with the vice-principal to try to figure this out and to help the kids understand why they shouldn’t say “you’re gay” but not because “gay” is a bad word. All this has been going on, and then I sent out a page of the Crucible as a way to “come out” to a new friend about our family. I sent the page to her on Friday with a note that said how vulnerable I felt sharing it with her. Mostly I felt vulnerable because she is religious, and I honestly never know how some religious people will respond to our family. I say this, and yet in our little world, we have been extraordinarily safe. We simply haven’t come across many people who don’t like our family because we are queer. That said, I don’t test friendships with religious people very often. But we met some people we really liked and we had them over for drinks. It became clear to me that it was time to tell them. So I sent a page that described The Crucible Bookii and waited to hear back. Five days passed and I heard nothing about what I had sent her. I really couldn’t believe it. I am accustomed to the world surprising me with its acceptance. Could it be that she actually wasn’t going to respond to my coming out at all? I sent her the link on Friday, and by Wednesday I was pretty upset. I decided to send one more note, “Did you read what...
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