Book review: Management 3.0

"Management 3.0" is written by Jurgen Appelo, a dutch author with an active blog.

If you take a look at the blog, you'll understand where the book came from, most of the content covered in the book is on the blog in some form or other.

So, what is the advantage of the book over the blog? Well Jurgen introduces his 6 views on management and gathers/aggregates his blog entries under these 6 views, splitting each view into a chapter on theory and a chapter on practice.

The book succeeds in presenting alot of information, from a wide variety of disciplines such as chaos theory and agile. Quite often Jurgen gathers existing models and combines/modifies them to build his own model. Generally the thinking is good and gives some new insights.

I found the book hard to get through at times (and in fact I didn't quite finish it). There isn't that much of a "story" in it, and I find it could profit from some more real life examples to spruce it up. I do think it makes a great reference. If you ever find yourself wondering about this or that model, and how it all fits together with agile/leadership/managemment, then this book is a good book to pick up and flip to the relevant pages.

Delegation checklist

The following useful delegation checklist inspired on a similar checklist in the book "Management 3.0" by Jurgen Appelo (which I'm currently reading):

- are you delegating a discrete chunk of work? Is the work delegable at all?
- delegate to a person, or to a team? Explain why you are delegating to them.
- how much responsibility do you delegate? From "do it like this" to "do it anyway you want", with "let's work this out together" somewhere in between
- is the person(s) Aware of the problem or goal? Explain the why.
- does the person(s) have the Desire to carry out the task?
- does the person(s) have the Ability to carry out the task? Think skills, experience, but also tools and documentation etc.
- does the person(s) know when successfull? How are results demoed and how often. How is progress tracked?
- are budget, scope, time, and quality constraints clear?
- who is the problem/product/bsuiness owner to help out and answer questions?

When things do not work out as planned, don't shout at your team, find the item on the checklist you forgot (or add a new item to the checklist)!

A shorter version of the above is: is your delegated task SMART (specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, timebounded).

Book review: Switch, a great book about change.

Change is hard. Why? Because people resist change. Well this book is the answer. It provides a simple framework for achieving change, a recipe for change if you will.

There are basically three main parts the book focuses on: the rational mind, the emotional side, and the environment around us. For each part, three key criteria are defined that need to be dealt with to achieve change successfully.

Luckily, it's not all theory or psycho babble. The book is filled with great motivational examples of real life change, each illustrating one or more key criteria at work. This makes teh book a joy to read.

All in all, it's a must read for anybody interested in change, for example anybody in a leadership or management role within an organization.

Summary and notes on law of empowerment

Antithesis of empowering leader: undermining other leaders and looking over shoulders of own people

Only secure leaders are able to give power to others without feeling threatened

"The best executive is the one who has the sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."

To keep others down, you have to go down with them. You lose the power to lift others up.

When a leader can't or won't empower others, he creates barriers followers cannot overcome.

3 reasons for failing to empower others:
- job security. Paradox = The only way to make yourself indispensable is to make yourself dispensable.
- resistance to change. "It is the nature of man as he grows older to protest against change, particularly change fo the better". Effective leaders are change agents (for improvement)
- lack of self-worth. "You can't lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse".



The greatest things happen only when you give others credit.

The window and the mirror (from "Good to Great"). When things go well, a good leader (level 5) looks out the window to see the environment and people responsible, when things go bad, he looks in the mirror. (A bad leader vice versa)

To empower people, believe in them. If you belive in others, they will believe in themselves.

Enlarging others make you larger.

summary and notes on law of connection

A brief summary of the "law of connection" as detailled in the book "The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership" by John C. Maxwell.

To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. Heart before the head.

When speaking engage on a human level, don't give dry facts.

You must move people with emotion before you can move people to action.

Touch people's hearts before you ask them for a hand.

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Even in a group, you have to relate to people as individuals. Focus on talking to one person

Guidelines for connecting:

1) connect with yourself
Be confident, people don't heed the call of an uncertain trumpet.
Be yourself.

2) communicate with openness and sincerity

3) know your audience
What do they care about (instead of what you care about)

4) live your message
Practice what you preach

5) go to where they are
Physical location, but also culture, background, education, language, etc.
Adapt to the other.

6) focus on them, not yourself

7) believe in them
Do you communicate because you have something of value to say, or because you believe the other has value to add?
People care less for what they see in us than for what we can help them see in themselves. Everyone wants to grow.

8) offer direction and hope
Give people hope and you give them a future.
Do more than help others get to where they want to go.

Successfull leaders are initiators when it comes to connecting. They do not expect followers to connect to them because "they are the boss".

review: 21 irrefutable laws of leadership

If I were to compile a list of 21 skills that:

1) I have little or no natural talent for
2) I am not currently good in (having not developed these skills actively)
3) I have never considered very important

then this list would look very similar to the skills listed in the book "The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership" by John C. Maxwell.

I love it! I'm like a sailor lost at sea who sees an unfamiliar coastline looming on the distant horizon. Land ahoy indeed!

Every single chapter in this book offers an opportunity for me to learn and grow. It's as if John Maxwell wrote down a self improvement program specifically tailored to me.

In the appendices, there's a questionnaire allowing you to quantify your leadership ability. I filled it in and identified the skills that I'm best in:

1) law of empowerment: delegating work to others, making sure they can do it, and then getting out of the way.
2) law of victory: doing whatever it takes to win
3) law of priorities: making sure you are doing only the important stuff
4) law of connection: keeping it human
5) law of solid ground: be open and truthfull always

In the coming weeks/months, I'm going to be focusing on developing these skills into strengths as the basis for my leadership. Of course they're only 5 of the 21 but as the book itself also mentions, always focus on the 20% that gives 80% of the rewards.