Time is precious.
Calendars are full.

But, not so full, not so precious, that you should not carve out some corners in your schedules for some content-driven thought.

If your leadership team is only meeting about “what are our problems this week?,” then you will never take a bigger-picture look at what you should be focusing on.

Enter the Book Briefing.

Since April, 1998, Karl Krayer and I have been reading the best business books, and presenting synopses (briefings) of these books. Once a month, two books every month, for 16 ½ years.

For each presentation, we use our comprehensive, multi-page handouts to accompany our presentations. And, after years of refining these, we have added a “My Personal Action Plan” worksheet exercise at the end of each presentation. In other words, if you attend, pay attention, and listen, and commit to follow through, you can leave with some tangible steps to put into practice.

Over the course of these years, we’ve seen key patterns emerge. And I have developed a couple of visuals to capture those patterns.

How could our sessions be useful to your leadership team?

Companies and organizations have discovered that a book briefing is a very good way to help their leadership team “think about the bigger-picture issues.” And, we have presented these in two ways. First, in a systematic learning schedule. (Kind of a leadership team up-to-date curriculum of the best business thinking). AND, we have presented these for leadership teams when they realize “we’ve got a problem; we need a briefing on this issue.”

A few of these have become the “beginning” of more extended training sessions. For example, we combine a briefing of the book Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath into a longer session on making better decisions.

So, take a good look at these two visuals The first one is one I created that captures the themes and issues that leadership teams face in thinking about their over-all challenges. (I summarize each of these “bubbles’ in my e-book, 12 Vital Signs of Organizational Health, available from Amazon).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, here is my latest visual. Think of this as a “Leadership Team Big-Picture Flow Chart.” Your team could schedule a book briefing, and either conclude “we’ve nailed this one in our organization,” or, “we’ve got work to do on this one. Help us do this work.” Again, take a good look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This chart shows the value our book briefings can bring to your leadership team. But, whether you use book briefings, or some other “let’s take a look at the big-picture” approach with some other kind of content, this chart reveals your challenge. It does little good to be ignorant of your current over-all health. It does little good to have a session, realize “we need to work on this,” and then not work on it until you solve it.

I have found that a book briefing is an effective tool to help you think about the issues you face, but all too frequently “ignore.”

If you would like to schedule some book briefings in your organization, send me an e-mail, or give me a call. My contact information is right here).