Take Your Life For A Test Drive

Are you hiring manager? Want to hunt the best talent? What is the most effective and efficient technique? Is there one?

Yes, there is. The technique is called “Hiring Smart”.

by apesara

In his book 45 EFFECTIVE WAYS FOR HIRING SMART: How to Predict Winners and Losers in the Incredibly Expensive People-Reading Game Pierre Mornell outlines 45 techniques for hiring smart. My favorite is #45 - “Design Your Own System”.

For me the easiest way to design my own system is adopting working one and adapting it to my needs. So here it is, below is the template I adopted form the book. There are many techniques from the template I already use and they are effective for me. Some look way farfetched like #27. But I still leave it in the list - some day I might decide it is exactly what I needed. Use “TODO’s…” column to capture actual facts. Use “What I think” column to write down assumptions, conclusions, and questions. Enjoy.

Think it is too time consuming? Think twice and listen to those who are in the know:

“You cannot spend too much time or effort on “hiring smart”. The alternative is to manage tough, which is much more time consuming” - Gary Rogers, Chairman & CEO, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream

Happy hiring.

• How do you keep up with the exponentially growing pace of our time?
• How do you cope with tons of information in interconnected, interdependent flat world?
• How to overcome the failure of hierarchical organization structures (search “Knowledge Worker Age” on the page)?

You continuously learn.

by lexdenn

These three questions are the core reasons that make learning a core capability according to Peter M. Senge and his book titled The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.

Keep up with the exponentially growing pace

Set your own pace. Find Your Strengths, Know Your Life Purpose. Build an architecture of your own life. Develop yourself iteratively and in cycles.

Cope with information in interconnected world?

Paradoxically, I started to read more lately. I mean I started to read books. Yes, I am ashamed I never did it before. Here is the list of books I have read recently:

1. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
2. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
3. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
4. Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service
5. Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond with Some Brands for Life
6. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
7. The Leadership Pill: The Missing Ingredient in Motivating People Today
8. The Handbook of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Inspiring Others to Achieve Results
9. The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
10. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
11. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Ok, this one I read few years ago)
12. Overachievement: The New Model for Exceptional Performance
13. 45 EFFECTIVE WAYS FOR HIRING SMART: How to Predict Winners and Losers in the Incredibly Expensive People-Reading Game
14. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
15. The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking

Reading books is time consuming. The following resources and techniques are much more effective and efficient for me:

• “Read” audio books utilizing drive time.
• Regularly read JD’s The Book Share where he distills gold nuggets from the books he reads. And he reads a lots of books.
• Subscribe to www.getAbstract.com/.
• Practice ninja techniques for RSS consumption. Readers do not read the Web - they scan the Web. This might be a good tip for bloggers to publish more readable or should I say scannable blogs with eyes friendly and effective layout.
• Never read in depth emails with knowledge nuggets, store it in dedicated folder for further re-use.

I am also regular reader of Mike King’s Learn This blog were he passionately shares new stuff he learns.

Consider adapting software performance engineering practices to day-to-day life. Here is an example how caching can improve your response times - The Fast And The Peaceful.

Overcome the failure of hierarchical organization

Find organization that resonates with your values. Speak your manager’s language and then Manage Your Manager For Fun And For Profit. Check periodically asking yourself One, Two , Three - Is This Manager For Me? Offer your work echo-system best Experience you can offer. There is no reports and managers. There are team members that are responsible for each one’s part. Build A Tag Team. Become a superhero, it is easy.

Footnote

“There are no mistakes in life, there are only lessons to be learned: Advice to the Youth.” - Mark Twain

Have a look at one of the most viewed videos to learn more. It might make you decide to start learning differently - Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age

Fear of public speaking? Are you getting freaked out in front of the audience? I know the feeling. Been there too. Not any more. I adopted Dale Carnegie’s basic skills of effective speaking fundamentals.

by s-t-r-a-n-g-e

In his timeless book The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking Dale Carnegie shares proven practices for that matter. Among other basic fundamental skills I loved these the most:

• Keep your goal before you.
• Seize every opportunity to practice.

Keep your goal before you

To frame the goal and the overall course of presentation or public speech use one of the following simple frames:

KFD

• What you want your audience to Know? For example, “WordPress plug-in X is deprecated.”
• What you want your audience to Feel? For example, “Do not panic, relax. It has support grace period.”
• What you want your audience to Do? For example, “Install our new version of the plug-in. The beta is open for subscription.“

OMA (this one I adopted from J.D. Meier)

• What are your Objectives? For example, “Improve SEO of your blog“.
• What are your Messages? For example, “You can do it yourself right away“.
• What are your Asks? “Tell your friend about Alik’s blog where he shares similar useful and practical nuggets“.

Other great write-up I always use when preparing to my presentations and public speeches is PickTheBrain’s  Nail Your Next Presentation with these Classic Principles of Public Speaking. It helps me checking the flow of my speech against timeless principles outlined in the article.

BTW, does not it remind you the structure of the post? Don’t you want your reader to know something new? Do not you want your reader to connect emotionally to your messages? Do not you want your reader to take action, like leaving comment, subscribing, or actually doing what you have just written?

Seize every opportunity to practice

This one is impossible to overestimate. Understanding stuff does not mean it can be presented smoothly and flawlessly. Knowing stuff by heart IS the way to relax on the stage. Blogrdoc mentions a quote from Dr. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled

“Only once we constrain our freedom through discipline can we experience freedom most abundantly”

The other quote to support learning by heart is Anthony Hopkins’ quote mentioned by Pierre Mornell in his book  45 EFFECTIVE WAYS FOR HIRING SMART: How to Predict Winners and Losers in the Incredibly Expensive People-Reading Game:

“I brainwash myself with a scene. I go through each one 200 times”

Is not it perfectly explains The Secret Behind GTD and why it works too?

There is much more to effective public speaking - like storytelling skills and keeping your audience engaged - but these two are absolutely fundamental:

• Keep your goal before you.
• Seize every opportunity to practice.

Result

After performing few high visibility speeches I admit that focused and polished speech is most effective for me. How I measure effectiveness? I get business leads, I get invited to more sessions to present, I get nice evaluation forms from the attendees. Here are few comments I’ve got:

• “…excellent pace.”
• “perfect blend of presentation and demos.”
• “…His presenting skills were also good with a healthy dose of humor.”
• “great session with enough fun in it and a serious message“

I get less flattering comments too. These give me more food for thought and desire to learn and improve.

Are you part of a team? How do you build a tag team? How to achieve flawless execution of each member and the whole team?

by Karpfish

Here is my take

• Plan Ahead Or Plan Your Back Up Plan.
• Hire potential, not skills.
• Commit on shared values.
• Build vulnerability-based Trust in Your Teams.
• Each member is an Eagle, not a Duck.
• Share knowledge and opportunities.
• Practice Emotional Intelligence Core and High Order Skills.
• Grow Quality - Not Quantity
• Personal accountability is key.
• Provide and ask for contionous feedback.

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” - Henry Ford

Stomp Out Loud is my vision for how tag team should look like.

Why you keep returning to the same restaurant? Why you keep buying at the same supermarket? Why you marry to some brands for life? The quality and the prices are comparable any place else. Then what turns you into Raving Fan of the brand?

Experience is the answer.

by Clearly Ambiguous

I just started reading “Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond with Some Brands for Life” book by William J. McEwen. This is what I read on the second page “Marty isn’t just buying a coffee. He’s buying an experience.”

What if I’d offer to all of my customers best experience they ever had? Would not I become their superhero?

• I want to give my customers best experience.
• I want to give my manager best experience.
• I want to give me colleagues best experience.
• I want to give my reports best experience.
• I want to give my wife best experience.
• I want to give my kids best experience.

What I’d get in return? My emotional, mental, and spiritual reservoirs will be filled with energy and my personal power will skyrocket.

I am on my quest to offer most valuable product - experience.

How?

My take is Win the Heart, the Mind Follows

What’s your take?