Issue No. 41 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting reports on a fascinating golf book and a summer reading program idea. It’s one more way to delegate your reading. For great book ideas (or even gifts for Father’s Day), see my mini-reviews of more than 40 books at the Buckets Blog at www.JohnPearsonAssociates.com.
Make a $25 deal with your direct reports this summer. Buy e-card, e-mail or paper gift certificates at www.Amazon.com for your team’s summer vacation reading. Whether they buy management books, biographies, fiction or a new Bible version, just ask them for a brief verbal or written report at a future staff or department meeting. Question: what new insight did you gain about yourself, your family, your colleagues or the world?
In that spirit, my company bought me Tales From Q School: Inside Golf’s Fifth Major by John Feinstein, the bestselling sportswriter. He chronicles the agony and the ecstasy (to borrow a cliché) of the winners and the losers at the 2005 PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, often described as professional golf’s fifth major tournament. It’s an annual competition for the 30 new spots available each year on the PGA Tour. In 2005, more than 1,200 already vetted golfers paid up to $4,500 each for a shot at the big time.
The book is a page-turner and the management and personal insights are frequent. Former Vice President Dan Quayle (a seven-handicap golfer) wrote the book review in the Wall Street Journal and appreciated Feinstein's “retelling of classic catastrophes like Joe Daley's two-foot putt in 2000, which somehow went to the bottom of the cup and then popped out like a jack-in-the-box (he missed getting a card by one stroke).”
Q School attracts top amateurs and veterans like 1987 Masters champion Larry Mize, “who failed to finish in the top 125 money-winners the previous year and were tossed back into the Q School pool. (Mize's 10-year tour exemption for winning the Masters had long since expired.)” The golf stories are memorable, but if you’re not a golfer, you already know not to buy this!”
Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience
When the next visionary in your organization comes down off the mountain and announces that God has told him (or her) to start a new program, give that person this list of 10 questions to ask about program capacity and sustainability. Check the three most important questions for your organization:
1. Does this program align with our mission statement?
2. Does this program align with our Big Holy Audacious Goal (BHAG)?
3. Does this program have written goals that meet the S.M.A.R.T. test (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-dated)?
4. Do we have the people capacity to both launch the program and maintain it (a staff champion, support staff, volunteers, etc.)?
5. Have we answered the five questions Peter Drucker said every organization must ask?
6. Have we invested adequate time and money in researching “Who is the customer?” and “What does the customer value?”
7. Does this program align with our culture and our core values?
8. Have we conducted the due diligence to assess the program’s sustainability (including revenue and expense) over the next three to five years?
9. Under what conditions do we agree that we will “pull the plug” on this program, if the goals are not achieved by the target dates?
10. Have we been diligent in asking our inside circle for constructive criticism—or have we spiritually hyped it so much that all naysayers have been silenced?"
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: The Delegation Bucket
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1.In your opinion, what current program, product or service do we currently offer that experienced the most effective pre-launch due diligence?
2. What question (of the 10 above) do we need to focus on more rigorously before we launch new programs, products or services?
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Note: Future dates will be announced in June for the Management Buckets Workshop Experience (two days) and the Nonprofit Board Governance Workshop (one day) at the scenic Blue Lantern Inn in Dana Point, Calif. If your organization would like to co-host a workshop, please email me.
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