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To Sell Is Human: Don’t Burn A Gatekeeper

Making a Connection with To Sell is Human: The Burning of a Gatekeeper

I hung up on Ken (name changed for privacy) for the last time.  At 3 am I finally decided that we weren’t going to get paid for the show my band just played.  Ken was a promoter for a good venue in Haleiwa on the North Shore of Oahu.  He had caught our set a few weeks prior and made us a good offer to play a future show.  He said he’d pay us prior to our performance and guaranteed us a decent amount – that’s uncommon.  Before the night was over, Ken had disappeared from the venue where he was not only a promoter but a regular waiter.  During my first phone call with Ken, when I started to wonder where he had gone, he said he had to go and get extra money from his house because he came up short with what he had promised...

December 29, 2012 To Sell Is Human No comments
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Good to Great #3: Confront the Brutal Facts

What it Means to Confront the Brutal Facts in Good to Great

In Good to Great, Jim Collins explains that successful organizations first start with an honest discussion of the environment in which they exist, what are the brutal facts surrounding your organization? The only way this conversation can occur on an organizational level is to create a culture, a climate, where people feel safe communicating; that they have a tremendous opportunity to be heard. Being heard is different from being able to say what you think, it means the other person listens. Confronting the brutal facts contributes to an effective decision-making process – it’s the only way to allow honest communication. If there is no open communication, problems or obstacles to an organization are rarely fully understood.

Cr...

September 5, 2012 Books, Good to Great 3 comments
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Good to Great #2: First Who, Then What

Key Points from the Book Good to Great on the Principle of First Who, Then What

  • With any team, organization, or company Good to Great found that it is more important to get the right people on board than it is to decide what they are going to do. Once you get those people on board, then you can decide where to take the organization. Yes, I know this is counter intuitive.
  • The “right people” has more to do with character and innate capabilities than knowledge, background, skills, or experience. The right people have passion and want to work hard.
  • Collins compares this to a bus. Great companies from his study focused on getting the right people on the bus, in the right seats, and then decided where to go. Not the other way around.
    The Good to Great Bus.

    The Good to Great Bus...

August 28, 2012 Books, Good to Great 4 comments
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Good to Great #1: Level 5 Leadership and Changing the World

good to great

Looking out the window to blame/credit others.

What is Good to Great Level 5 Leadership?

Level 5 leadership, as Jim Collins explains it in his book Good to Great, refers to a person who is ambitious and driven first for the cause, for the job, for the mission, and not for himself/herself. This is a direct reflection of their fanatic drive towards results, yet this type of leader simultaneously maintains a humble purpose. It is a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. For this type of leader it has nothing to do with them; greed and self-gratification are not the motives. It has everything to do with the people and organization.

An analogy used to help describe this type of leader is the window versus the mirror (see images)...

August 20, 2012 Books, Good to Great No comments
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Good to Great Preface

Good to Great: A Preface

good to great preface

My preface to Good to Great

I often find myself bringing up Jim Collins’ book Good to Great when hanging out with good friends. My wife makes fun of me, promising to buy a handful of paperback copies, getting me to write my personal testimony of the book on the title page, and then I can give them away to friends because I’m such a believer. I think I’ll save us some money and time and I’ll just write about it.good to great

So before I dig into 7 of the main principles over the next few weeks, I want to set the stage.

Upfront, this book has changed my life. It’s changed the way I think and the way I work – I’m not kidding...

August 11, 2012 Books, Good to Great No comments
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Good to Great: Why Should I Care?

Good to Great PrefaceBefore digging into some of the principles of Good to Great I want to write a bit about why I care, why I think you should care, about learning significant principles. In a broader sense, why I think I should keep writing this blog and you should keep reading. At this point, I offer three reasons why: There’s too much to experience in this lifetime, it helps in the struggle between the fear of loss versus faith in principle, and it makes life easier.

Too Much to Experience

One, like my father said in a previous posts, you cannot experience everything this world has to offer in your lifetime; as a result, you cannot learn everything there is to learn through experience through experience alone. There’s too much to read. You can’t study every field the colleges have to offer...

August 10, 2012 Books, Good to Great 3 comments
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dying coals

Blowing On Dying Coals

After many life changing events, to include the passing of my father, the birth of a child, and moving my family not only across the Pacific Ocean but across the United States, I’ve remembered this blog.  Like a fire that has some dying coals still glowing, I feel like breathing some life back into this project.

dying coals

Dying coals

I’ve spent a good part of the past year or more studying leadership and becoming familiar with a range of principles I’ve found extremely interesting and valuable.  Next few posts will be about principles I’ve found valuable in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great and making the connections between those principles and other aspects of life.


August 8, 2012 Inspiration, Uncategorized 2 comments
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