nonstick weblog

My current, new, absolute favorite kids’ book is Pinkalicious by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann.

It’s about this little girl who loves pink. She eats too many pink cupcakes one day and turns pink. She then eats one too many and turns red. You’ll have to read it to find out how it ends.

My kid actually sat through me reading it 3 times. And she can’t hold still for anything. She’s in bed right now. When I put her to bed, she wanted me to leave the light on so she could “read” Pinkalicious again. So, I guess it’s her favorite, too.

I just finished a new book. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.
He lists 20 annoying habits that can and will annoy your superiors, peers and reports enough to prevent you from getting ahead.

I found 8 that apply to me. I guess I should be glad I don’t exhibit all 20.

One thing he recommended to help us be accountable for changes we want to make is to have a reliable person you can call every night who will ask you a list of predetermined questions. You answer the questions, they do not comment or judge. It is supposed to be more effective to answer a live person than to write the answers in a journal.

It is really difficult for me to think of someone who will not judge my questions, much less my answers. I guess that is why therapists and coaches charge for their services.

I just finished this book, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care. It’s pretty interesting and thought provoking. It basically says that government health care like in Canada and much of Europe is not sustainable. Just like how the American Healthcare system is not sustainable. The main reason being that the patients, you and me, do not see the full cost of doctor visits, procedures and tests, except for a token copay if that. So we are prone to fill the prescription we don’t really need or get tests that are not really warranted. In order for companies or governments to keep costs down, they limit access to doctors (long waitlists to see specialists in Canada) or prescriptions (formularies).

The author, Gratzer, believes that the HSA accounts are the way to go. Kind of like giving a kid an allowance and only paying for the big ticket items once the allowance is spent. It makes people ask questions rather than blindly following a doctor’s advice. Because folks will be spending their own money, they will require better care and more information, weeding out the clinics, meds and tests that are ineffective.

It’s worth reading. I found myself nodding in agreement throughout the book. The only concern I have is instances where folks can’t get individual insurance because of some pre-existing condition, whether it is actual or there is just a small risk.

I just finished this new book, “Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die”. It’s the goal of all communicators to get the audience to absorb and subscribe to what they are selling.

I am not a communicator by profession, but I find that I spend a lot of my time trying to convince people to do something: use my program, accept an action. This book gave evidence that it’s not how great the idea is, it’s how you comunicate. There are oodles of great ideas out there that never took off until the someone figured out the right message.

They came up with this great acronym S.U.C.C.E.S. to help us remember the keys to great communication.
S – Simple – Get to the core of the idea. The one thing that is most important.
U – Unexpected – You capture people’s attention through surprise. You keep it by making the surprise relevant to the idea.
C – Concrete – It’s easier to remember concrete ideas than abstract ones.
C – Credible – Make your idea believable by referencing outside experts or providing enough details to support your idea.
E – Emotional – Focus on what matters to people. And it’s more than just food and lodging.
S – Stories – Use stories. That’s why Aesop’s Fables works and your mom telling you so, doesn’t.

I highly recommend this book. Although I outline the key elements here, the examples and stories in the book really give the concepts life. It’s like they employed their own concepts or something.

My daughter has been requesting “Tiki Tiki Tembo” for her bedtime story every night for the past couple of weeks. It’s a story about these two Chinese brothers. The older had this great, long, distinguished name. The younger, Chang. When Chang falls into a well, Chang gets saved right away. When Tiki tiki tembo no sa rembo chari bari ruchi pip peri pembo falls into the well, he stays there much longer because of his name. My daughter follows along and repeats Tiki tiki tembo’s name.

Last night, she asked my husband why the characters were all sleeping. Huh? Sleeping? Apparently, she thought they were sleeping because their eyes were represented with lines. My husband told her that it was because it was sunny. Good save, Daddy.

How do you explain to a two year old the stereotype that East Asians always look like they are squinting or that their eyes are slanted? I have loved this story since I was a kid. I wonder what other surprises await me in other stories.

I just finished this book that my husband’s friend left, Sons of Fortune by Jeffrey Archer. It was slow in the beginning, began picking up in the middle and the end was just a holy mess of adrenaline and “what the hell?” I stayed up way too late trying to finish it and was disappointed.

The book drew me in about half way through and I couldn’t put it down. One hand cooking, the other holding the book. It was difficult keeping the two protagonist straight as their stories were similar. I gave up after a while and just went for the ride. I was disappointed in the end chapters. There was too much stuff going on. I felt like the author was just trying to be clever and failed. Especially the last 3 pages where he wouldn’t tell you what happened, you had to go and calculate it yourself. Encyclopedia Brown is better at the a ha moments.

All in all, if someone left the book on a seat and you have time to kill on a lay over, it’s a good book. But it’s not worth reading more than once.

I just finished You: The Owner’s Manual. It’s by a couple of medical doctors who decided to state how your body works in laymen’s terms.

I loved it. It talks about how your body functions, what it needs to function and why. For instance, did you you know that cholesterol is the band-aid for scratches on your artery walls? But that LDLs are preferred because they are “smoother” and do not accumulate build-up like HDLs do?

Did you know that every one has cancerous cells? They are errors in cell replication and the chance of errors increase with the speed and quantity of replication. (There must be a sigma project here.) So if you take care of yourself and cells need to be replaced less often, you are less likely to have rouge cells. Did you know that most rouge cells are killed by your immune system and it’s those that slip through this safety net that become cancerous? So we should take care of our immune system as well.

Did you know that healthy poop is unbroken and S-shaped, like our colon? Another thing to praise my daughter for. “Such a good girl. Not only did you poop in the potty, it’s a nice healthy poop!”
It’s a great book. I feel like I could be a character on House.

I am reading a new book, “The First 90 Days.” It’s about what a new leader must do in the first 90 days to ensure an effective transition and succeed.

It’s pretty good so far. There are some good pointers. I can tell I will need to read it again. I have been reading it before bed and I think I have read the same passage 5 times without absorbing anything.

The part I find most useful is the situation assessment. Is it a start-up, turnaround, realignment, or sustaining situation? Each calls for different approaches. You can’t go into a realignment or sustaining situation and start flipping things on its head. Whereas you are expected to in a start-up or turnaround situation. I have seen some leaders make that mistake. Take too long to assess the situation when action was needed or acting on little to no information when they should have assessed the issue more fully.

I know I am completely behind the times. This book came out in 2002 and I have been meaning to read it since then. I just finished Chapter 3 last night and am really impressed already. The writing is not academic. I always run from business books that are too academic, because the author/publisher clearly does not understand their customer, so how well can they understand business? I love the stories and examples. It brings the points to life and gives them context. This book is not a panacea. Read this and your company will live long and prosper. But it does make you think. If outcomes are not as you expected. Why? Perhaps the concepts in this book can help. Perhaps it’s something else. At least it’s something other than saying, “Woe is me. It’s the customer’s fault for not buying what I have to sell. So, all I can do is lie here and wait for the inevitable.”

This book exposes the underbelly of why companies do not succeed. Many have great strategy. In fact, every strategy they come up with every 12 months are great strategies. So why are they changing their strategy so often? Is it because the market forces them to? In some cases, yes, but most cases, no. The strategy should take into account minor market fluctuations. It’s not everyday that something as devastating and pivotal as 9/11 occurs. So why are strategies always changing? I think it’s because they don’t work. The results aren’t there. So the strategy is to blaim.

Chapter 1 introduces the gap nobody knows, or rather no one can articulate. It starts out with a story of a CEO who gets a great group of folks together. They “did the benchmarking, got the metrics…agreed with the plan.” The plan and market were good, but a year later they missed the goal. What happened? Or rather didn’t? Apparently, the discipline of execution.