Weekly Bookmarks
56th Edition — March 1, 2020
Your life is about to change, and things are about to come at you very fast. But just let this sink in a bit when you lay down at night after another nine-hour training day
Kobe Bryant – Letter to My Younger Self
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1. She Worked Closely With Both the Creator of the IBM Executive School and W. Edwards Deming and is a Friend of Verne Harnish
The business world needs to hear the stories of Kate McKeown, an entrepreneur and co-author of Beyond IBM, a book I’ve been nibbling on the past two weeks.
I struck gold earlier this week when I interviewed her for nearly 90 minutes, and that conversation will be released on an upcoming podcast. While hard to narrow down my favorite topic during our call, I especially enjoyed her take on how not to learn where she uses the acronym RAMIT. RAMIT stands for regurgitate, acculturate, memorize, isolate, and threaten. According to a white paper Kate has written entitled Giinius Unchained,
You will not be a winner in the education system today if you want to trust your own mind, think for yourself, question what the authorities say, and have an opinion or put someone else’s success about your own.
You can download Kate’s white paper at Giinius.com.
2. Everything That Can Be Invented Has Been Invented
That quote above has been traced to a patent clerk in 1899.
Those were my exact thoughts after buying and reading Ryan Hawk’s Welcome to Management this week. I mean, another management book? Really? What else is there to say about management? Hasn’t everything been written about management that we’ll ever need to know? Yet, I bought it because of Ryan Hawk.
While he’s not a household name (yet), he has a strong stage presence and speaks with confidence and authority–there is no rah-rah bravado in his presentations.
If you are a young or new financial leader, or if you’ve only read a few management books, this one reads fast and his very digestible. Even best-selling author, Dan Pink, gives this book a thumbs up.
Ryan if you are scanning this newsletter, consider reading Range to balance out your thought process on the 10,000-hour rule.
3. Are Home Depot’s Q4 Profits a Signal or Just Noise?
This week, Home Depot reported higher quarter-over-quarter profits in spite of lower sales. Every business news outlet I read generally painted this information in a positive light. But is this a signal or just noise? If you chart the data, you’ll probably find it’s the former.
While I own every Donald Wheeler book, consider adding Davis Balestracci’s, Data Sanity (2nd edition) to your antilibrary which is a bit more technical than Wheeler’s books. If you are a financial or data analyst, this is great reference material.
If you prefer sampling his writing instead, you can start with his website or read his submissions at Quality Digest which I find accessible even for the non-technical reader. Here’s one example entitled Beware of a Common Financial Trap.
4. Do You Love Your Job?
That’s the question I asked as I was being waited on by a distracted Walmart checker.
While she was scanning my groceries at a snail’s pace, I was hearing all the fun things she’d be doing with a friend that evening. Oh, she was talking to her while I was standing on the other side of the counter wondering if this transaction would ever wrap up (and the conversation too).
I asked that question when her friend (finally) walked away. The clerk just shrugged and smiled back. Was that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ or did she think I was some crazy and impatient shopper expecting good customer service?
That encounter reminded me of Joe Pine’s, The Experience Economy that I’ve been re-reading this week. I still think this book plays out better as a speech or a course. But I recommend it for anyone in retail, food service, and professional services.
And, I recommend it to every Walmart manager and clerk across the globe.
5. Investing vs. Giving
Vanessa Bryant’s moving and touching speech at this past week’s memorial for her husband and daughter reminded me of a letter that Kobe wrote to his younger self. Written in 2016, a Letter to My Younger Self includes some deep undercurrents of what he was probably going through with his family.
I know very little about Kobe Bryant, the man, but his comments about investing in family as opposed to giving to them are coming from the mind of someone with depth and wisdom.
Invest in their future, don’t just give.
Kobe Bryant, Letter to My Younger Self, July 20, 2016
These are not shallow words.
I want to thank Bruce Reed, the CFO of PracticeLink, for being a part of the new podcast, CFO Audio Bookmarks. Let us know what you think.
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Thank You For Reading
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Take care and have a great week. Always be learning.
Title Photo Attribution – by Erik Drost, and thank you very much.
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