General: PLI Required Reading List

There is a great new book titled "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time." The authors have put together a fabulous collection and did a great job in the book of summarizing the main points of these classics and new-classics. I personally have my reading to-do list done for the year, as I have only read 31 of the 100.

The other great benefit of this book to our PLI teachers and trainers is that it inspired a "PLI Required Reading List." This list certainly isn't all-inclusive, but it is a great place to start to get your students doing some out-of-class, non-curriculum PLI reading.

Again, the following books are all in Jack and Todd's new book. So, you can get a quick synopsis of each by reading their new book. Click on the ^ after each to go directly to that book's 800CEOREAD page, where you can read about the book and/or buy it. If there is more than one book listed in an Essential, I put an * to donate the one I would recommend most.

Vision
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will^
What Should I Do With My Life?*^

Integrity
Questions of Character^

Innovativeness
The Art of Innovation^
The Innovator's Dilemma^
Orbiting the Giant Hairball*^
The Creative Habit^

Wise Judgement
Influence*^
The Power of Intuition^

Service Mindedness
(This being a business book list, there isn't a book about service leadership. All the service books listed are about customer service.)

Goal Processing
Getting Things Done^

Skill Assessment
Now, Discover Your Strengths^

Emotional Maturity
Emotional Intelligence^

Fostering Relationships
How to Win Friends and Influence People*^
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team^
The Team Handbook^

Masterful Communication
Made to Stick*^
The Story Factor^
Never Give In!^

Following is a list of the books that I would recommend you have your students read, but they just don't fit nicely into one of the Ten Essentials:

General
The Leadership Challenge^
Leadership Is An Art*^
The Leadership Moment^
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People^

Innovative: The Magic of SNL

Weekend Edition is an ongoing skit on Saturday Night Live. The process that the writers go through to create the jokes that make it on the short bit teaches a quick lesson on finding creative ideas and solutions.

1. Each week, the three main SNL writers create 800 jokes for Weekend Edition. 800.

2. The head writer (Seth Meyers) for SNL then whittles that list down to 200ish that he thinks are W.E. Worthy.

3. Lorne Michaels, the head guy at SNL, then chops that down to 18-20 jokes that actually make the cut.

To get to 20 working lines, they have to come up with 40 times that many. So, next time you either think you can't find an answer or need a more creative idea, look a little harder.

Innovative: Get In The Box

Pick up the January 2008 copy of the magazine Fast Company and flip to Chip and Dan Heath's monthly article (Made to Stick authors).

Basically they are making a point for getting in the box instead of getting out of the box when you need to get specifically creative. The secret is to just pick the right box.

I experienced this recently with the phenomenal student leaders known as the Wisconsin and Indiana FFA State Officers. Every fall I work with FFA leaders to create content and sharpen their delivery skills for spring banquet talks. These students will reach thousands of FFA members traveling their respective state.

Part of the training includes helping the students develop their speech topic, their main points and a list of potential supporting material. This creative process is exactly what Chip and Dan are talking about. Any moments of inspiration and innovative content creation came from working on a specific part of a speech. The inspiration didn't come from staring at a blank sheet. It was born from thinking about how to say this word better or that concept in a new way.

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. What area or project in your life needs some innovative or creative thinking?

2. What time and environment will allow you to just focus on this task?

Innovative: Fish Smoking

Find a creative way to say the same old thing and you are moving closer to earning attention instead of stealing it...

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. What is one topic or issue that people talk about so much that it gets ignored by most?

2. Come up with ways to express that topic or issue in a new way that grabs people’s attention.

Innovative: Dr. Burt Smith's Blog

My fellow NSA-Oklahoma peer, Dr. Burt Smith, is a marketing guru and a brand new owner of a blog! Check out his recent post on how it doesn't take much to be innovative...

http://www.drburt.com/Blog/2007/09/25/just-how-innovative-do-you-need-to-be-anyway/rt.com/Blog/2007/09/25/just-how-innovative-do-you-need-to-be-anyway/







Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:


1. Why is it important to be innovative?

2. When have you been innovative in the past?

3. What is something you use or do on a regular basis? How can you make it better?

Innovative: How to Create a Powerful Student Leadership Retreat

Denise Vaniadis is a master teacher, administrator and Student Council advisor (on the local, state and national levels) in Oklahoma. Her school has created a powerful student leadership retreat that is so popular they actually have to hold a lottery to decide which students get the privilege of attending. Only about 5% of their 4,000 student population can attend.

If you are interested in taking your local, state or national event to the next level, take some notes from Denise and her crew. This post is labeled under the PLI Essential of Innovative. Interestingly enough, you might not find her comments below that innovative. That is because it's not the ideas that make their event innovative. It is in how they approach the application of these points. The creativity lives in their passion, enthusiasm and attention to detail.

Here are Denise's five top reasons why her students are so emotionally tied into this annual two-day leadership training event...

1. Cascading Recruitment. We began with our Leadership Class students and recruited about 20 more kids we could identify as potential leaders. These numbers have continued to rise to the current level of 200+.

2. Curriculum Variety. While our focus is always character development, school spirit, personal development, and servant leadership, we vary the actual activities each year so that we could have kids for four years.

3. Indoctrinated Adult Staff. I am blessed to have a Principal who is a former Student Council advisor. He naturally buys in BIG TIME to what we do. Besides him, I went after the kids' favorite teachers to staff the retreat.

4. Amazing Setting. The camp ground is a fantastic environment with space for large and small group time plus recreation facilities.

5. Campfire Time. We built the evening campfire time to have a purpose and focus on tradition, school spirit, and legacy. The emphasis is passing the torch to the younger kids. They are instructed to give their "wish" to their class, their school in general, or to the underclassmen. They bring a "wish stick" to the campfire as a symbol. It's a very simple exercise, but it works powerfully year after year.

Denise would never add this sixth one, but I will tell you that her extreme professionalism, meticulus planning and over-the-top belief in the goodness of her students and in the power of high-level leadership training is a huge reason this event is a hit every year!

Innovative: SCAMPER for more ideas

Next time you and your team need to break out of the mold and create new, fresh and deeper ideas for an existing project, follow this formula...

S - What can you substitute?

C - What can you combine?

A - What can you adapt?

M - What can you magnify, miniaturize or multiply?

P - What can you put to other uses?

E - What else? Who else? Where else?

R - Can you rearrange or reverse?


Remember, risk always comes before value. Making these changes will require guts and a core belief that you can and should create something exceptional out of something good.

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General: Grant Me Leadership...

God grant me...


Vision to see opportunity.

Integrity to be what I say.


Innovativeness to create value.

Wise Judgment to choose right.


Service mindedness to be significant.

Processed Goals to live purposefully.


Emotional Maturity to act with control and grace.

Skill Assessment to engage my strength.


Fostered Relationships to experience the richness of life.

Masterful Communication to bring clarity into an unclear world.

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Innovative: Student Creativity

We just spent a great three days in Utah with the Utah Career and Technical Student Organizations. Part of our training schedule for them included sharpening their presentation skills. We accomplished this by giving each of the seven teams a piece of our content, 15 minutes and the microphone. These students rocked our world. The creativity they brought to bear was impressive. Why?

1. They wanted to perform well for the simple purpose of performing well. Not for a promotion, not to impress someone, and not to be better than another person or team or division. This purity allowed their creativity to flow.

2. They allowed their 15 minutes to be fun. When you get to do fun work or when you seek to purposefully make your work fun, creativity is watered.

3. They weren't afraid to try something new. They risked boldly. Risk always comes before value, but especially when it comes to creating something new or changing/improving something old.

Thanks for a great week Utah HOSA, TSA, FFA, FBLA, SkillsUSA, DECA and FCCLA!

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Innovative: Risk Before Value

While conducting a recent leadership training, my speaking associate Kelly Barnes summed up the missing link in people who aren't creating the level of value they have the potential of creating... RISK. Risk always come before value. If you are looking for a surefire way to create a more positive influence on those around you and create something valuable that didn't exist before, then dig down deep and identify what you are holding back on. Then take a leap, make a move, take a risk...

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The Unmade Leader: What does unmade mean?

The past few posts have focused on a new approach to the answer of "Are leaders born or made?" The idea is this...

"Leaders are born and then unmade."

Each post is built around a question. Here is the current list...

Born with what?

What is a leader?

Are leaders born with everything they need to lead?

Today's question is "what does unmade mean?"

The "unmaking" that this concept speaks to is the process of a person, who is born with most of the natural gifts and qualities that they need to positively influence others, experiencing moments in their life where they dilute, change, damage or downright lose these gifts and qualities. Here are a few examples (the trait we are born with is first and the moment of unmaking is second).

Curiosity of life - The "Knowledge Jar" Moment. As we progress through life we are learning constantly. At some moment, something changes and we begin to think differently about this learning process and begin unmaking our curiosity for life. We begin to see our knowledge as being contained in a jar and once that jar is filled with the knowledge that we need to do what we are doing now (personally and professionally), we put a lid on it and stop being curious. Effective leaders have many jars and few lids. They are constantly examining old knowledge, replacing bad knowledge with better knowledge and adding new jars to fill with new knowledge.

(PLI Essential of Innovative)

Courage to risk boldly - The "Two-Steps Back" Moment. As a child and an adolescent, we possess unbridled and sometimes reckless courage. At some moment, we begin letting our fear of pain and embarrasment from the negative results of this courage change the way we think about risking boldly. We begin taking two steps back for every one step forward and we begin unmaking our courage to risk boldly. Effective leaders learn to embrace this fear and embarrasment and are emboldened by it. They learn to flip the equation... they take two steps forward for every one step back.

(PLI Essential of Emotional Maturity)

This process of identifying what we are all naturally born with that is at the core of effective leadership, attaching a moment that changes things and then highlighting strategies and tools for overcoming these moments (and/or avoiding them) is the core focus of our new book that will be coming out in a few months. If you would like to receive a personalized first-run copy, just shoot me an email at rhett@yournextspeaker.com.

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Innovative: Quotes

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
Albert Einstein

“Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there is no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.”
Rudolph Flesch

“The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams.”
W. Arthur Porter

“Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined.”
Peter Drucker

“You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization.”
Denis Waitley

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Innovative: Disapprovers vs. Improvers

Not long ago I facilitated a six-hour brainstorming session with the student organization leaders of a Missouri high school. Our purpose was to develop a community service project that all the organizations could work on together. It was an awesome experience and a great idea!

After four hours the students voted to re-model and re-open their run down city park. Two seconds after the vote was cast, the negative talk started.

"We've tried this before. We will never get this accomplished while we are in high school. There are too many local and state regulations. The city will never cooperate."

The next hour was filled with a crystal clear picture of what really kills or energizes the enthusiasm in ideas and people - disapprovers and improvers. The students focusing only on the negatives and the reasons why the idea was bad were acting as disapprovers. Those students who chose to view the negatives as challenges and focus more on the positives were acting as improvers.

With a little persistence (and a guiding hand from the facilitator), the improvers outweighed the disapprovers and the disapprovers agreed to get behind the idea and work together to accomplish the common goal. The students were left with two thoughts:

1. The park idea is a good or a bad one based solely on whether they think it is good or bad. Their approach in thinking to the situation defines the situation.

2. The quality of their effort as a school in completing the project will be based in large part on how effectively the disapprovers can get as passionately behind the idea as they were able to get so passionately against it.

When a new idea or project comes your way, even if you do not totally agree with it, make the good choice to agree to disagree and choose to be an improver. Believe me, this world has enough disapprovers already!

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Innovative: The Innovation Petri Dishes

We have identified four personal attributes/habits/skills of consistently creative people.

Fluency - When posed with a question/situation/challenge/problem, the consistently creative person seeks out and tries on tons of potential answers.

Flexibility – The consistently creative individual not only thinks out of the box, but attempts to color the box, turn the box into an airplane, finds the box maker, studies the history of boxes, gets back in the box and then back out, etc.

Awareness – There are very, very, very few problems that individuals, companies, communities or organizations face that are brand, spanking new. The creation of something new requires an examination and appreciation of that which is old.

Originality – This may seem like a no brainer, but it is actually exactly the opposite. Your grey matter is totally unique from every other person on earth – 1 in 6 billion. No one has experienced, read, seen, heard, spoken, felt, smelled or touched exactly what you have. That means that you have the opportunity to create authentic output. Don’t be afraid to do it. Exercise that muscle often and it will be one of your greatest strengths!

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Innovative: The Barriers To Creativity

Innovative: The Barriers…

There are three major barriers to individuals not exercising their innate ability to be creative and innovative...

Barrier #1 – Fear of Failure

This one drives the other two and by itself is a creativity killer. The bigger discussion is identifying the true source of this fear. Is it pride? Is it job security? Is it past experiences? Is it simply saving face? More than likely it is a combination of all. However, the truth is, that if you overcome these issues, you will surprise yourself by your creative output!

Barrier #2 – Not My Job

The lack of personal responsibility rears its ugly head everywhere, especially in leadership circles. Many positional leaders lifted to their current status because of a cocktail of taking responsibility (more than likely on things that no one else wanted to do) and of dodging personal responsibility (in order to protect what they have built – career, project, friendship, etc.). It is amazing what gets created that wasn’t there before simply because someone, somewhere said, “That’s not my job, but I will take care of it.”

Barrier #3 – I’m Not Creative

There is a great keynote that was delivered at TED by Sir Ken Robinson [Download video here] last year about the dynamic in America’s school where the system is basically built to serve the student from the neck up and slightly to the right. This is to say that it shouldn’t be a surprise when your people (or you) are not used to being creative or have a self-perception of not being creative. Ever since early in our youth, we have been taught to color in the lines, memorize the correct answers, sit still, etc. All of which are important for creating clones and all of which are horrible at creating creativity.

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Innovative: Every Friday at Hasbro

The Wall Street Journal today has an article about a creativity meeting that happens every Friday at lunch at Hasbro corporate in Massachusetts. The attendees are a combination of game designers, marketers, managers, etc. The purpose of the luncheon is to just play games. Of course one of the deliverables from the play time is ideas for new games or ways to update/revise classics. This is a great example of organized innovation. And even if nothing world changing comes out of it, what a great way to reward the people who make your organization what it is!

So, your task is to make time for innovative dialogue to happen within your organization. Whether you are chatting around a whiteboard or a game board, you are setting yourself up for some potentially great ideas to develop!

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General: Understanding the Pitfalls of Missing Links

[Click on the image to view a larger version. Print the larger version for best read.]

The Personal Leadership Insight Blog is built around our ten PLI Essentials. As you peruse through the posts, you will find each post discusses one of the ten. For deeper study into each Essential, click on an Essential in the PLI Tags list in the right-hand sidebar.

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Innovative: Blogging Basics

The PLI Essential of Innovativeness is defined as creatively adding value. As the VP of Membership for the Oklahoma Chapter of the National Speakers Association, my job is to figure out how to add value to being a member of our chapter and to coordinate the process of signing up. At our February monthly meeting tomorrow, I am presenting the Power Idea. The Power Idea will be a 7-minute piece on blogging and the benefits for speakers. Click here to view the PDF, here for the PowerPoint and go to these pages for a plethora of blogging tips...

• 8 Steps to Growing Your Blog One Person at a Time


• Daily Blog Tips


• Corporate Blogging: Is it Worth The Hype?


• Scout: Blogging Tips


• Elise's Top Five Tips for Building Blog Traffic


• 10 Ways to Use Blogs to Increase Business


• 5 Ways to Improve Your Blog


• 5 Ways to Improve Blog Performance


• 7 Habits of Effective Blogging


• Small Business Blogging Benefits
  
• Great Article in "The American" about blogging
• 23 Ideas for Finding New Readers For Your Blog
• How to Write a Blog Post
• 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch
• 49 Simple Strategies for Better Blogging
• 14 Steps to Guarantee You'll Never Make More Than 0.14 Cents With AdSense

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Innovative: Ask the Hard Questions

I traveled to a small town in Oklahoma today called Adair to encourage about 150 high school students. Thanks to the "DeLozier twins" for not only inviting me to speak, but also for creating a phenominal leadership development environment within your school and your student organizations (FCCLA and FFA). The message today was...

1. Make the most of the opportunities in front of you
2. Choose wisely what you get excited about
3. Aim high in life because you will get what you shoot for
4. They can get everything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want.

A bonus of today was that I had a travel companion (most of my trips are solo). My travel partner was a client of mine that is passionate about helping students grow and develop into postive, productive leaders. His current position allows him to make an impact, but he sought my help and advice in creating new opportunities within his organization for student development. They have good programs now, but they could have great programs if someone takes the lead and starts to ask the hard questions. Why aren't we seeking out more funding? Why do we have people in the wrong positions where they aren't given the chance to use their strengths? Why are we facing the same problems today that we faced 10 years ago?

Innovation in an organization cannot happen until people start seeking out the answers to tough questions. Once that one hurdle is overcome, many other things can fall into place.

So, what questions do you and your peers need to be asking today to take things to the next level? Engage in dialogue... check your egos and baggage at the door... create some cool!

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Innovative: Exceed Expectations

Last week I presented a one-hour "fluff" program for a group of bank managers. Literally, the client's entire expectation of me was to get the students (it was a one-week banking school) to know each other and to start the school off with some fun and interaction. Since almost 98.6% of my keynotes and workshops are fun and interactive, this was not a very difficult expectation to exceed. However, my expectation for myself was to exceed it by providing the group valuable leadership insights both at the program and afterwards via this blog.

This act in and of itself is an example of how to be innovative in the business environ. Take what is expected of you and push outside the envelope. When you force yourself and your team to do that habitually, you will in turn be creative habitually.

Click here for a short, but powerful PDF on creating a corporate environment for innovation...

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Innovative: Searching for Solutions

The sheer quantity of information that exists and is being created, indexed and searched for today is staggering. There are a multitude of statistics that show how much there is today in relation to how much more there will be in a few week from now. This is why Google, Amazon and E-Bay are the largest internet companies in the world. They exist to help us sort through the billions of options.

Today's most effective leaders exercise their innovativeness by searching for solutions habitually. They get great at weeding through all the information, surgically breaking it down, and then working diligently to find solutions. They also develop a system for capturing solutions as they appear. For example, my method is the notes funtion on my Blackberry. It syncs with the notes in my Microsoft Outlook so I have access to revisit and utilize any and all solutions that come my way.

If you want to find more meaning in your life, find more solutions...

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