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Phil's Books blog

New Book: Love & Loss in the Time of Covid

Oct 31st, 2021 | Books | 0 Comments »

“This accomplished experimental novel centers on loss, connection, and trying to heal in a pandemic. Dourado manages to balance tragedy and comedy in this intriguing debut that reimagines the novel in the context of Covid-19.”

– Publishers’ Weekly Book Life Supplement, November, 2021

“A moving and funny memoir of love & loss in a time of turmoil.”

Front cover.

My new book, published by Steelhouse Publishing, is available as a paperback and a Kindle eBook on these links:

Love & Loss in the Time of Covid (UK)

Love & Loss in the Time of Covid (US)

Or search the book title on your local Amazon site.






TOP REVIEW FROM THE UNITED STATES





donna d  5.0 out of 5 stars 





Beautifully written – a must-read





Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2021





This story follows the intimate journey of Matthew, who has lost three important people in his life during Covid, in succession, and how he navigates how to cope with his loss and grief. I found his journey along the Thames to be so symbolic – from putting the pieces of the kayak together to the navigation down the River, in the water – perhaps a search for rebirth. Having sought solace and peace in nature during lockdown (and still now), I could understand why his early morning time, drifting along, breathing in fresh air, were key to his search for healing.





The book offered humor where it was needed to give us some comic relief within a heavy subject matter. I found this book to be easily relatable, having lost friends and loved ones during the pandemic (and at other times too). Being separated from my mom for 6 months as her apartment building was in total lockdown, I could relate to his concerns for his own mother. Forced to wave to my mother from the sidewalk up to her 8th floor window was heartwrenching, but necessary for her health and protection. The author writes in an intimate, honest tone that I appreciated. There is no sugar coating to the pain from loss.





I totally understood how the main character used books, films, nature, videos, Ted Talks, science, grief counsellors, journals and articles written by others who have suffered grief – any avenue he could – to help him in his pain of loss and help him find a way forward to light and hope.





We live in a different world now – still in Zoom for many things where we used to have human contact, and finding ways to accept this way of life and find some positivity in it. The daily news lead off story is still about Covid and we can either fall into the darkness of it or choose light and hope for a better future.






I so appreciate that this book was written in real time. I loved this book.





TOP REVIEWS UNITED KINGDOM





Mrs T 5.0 out of 5 stars 





Can’t put this down 5*





Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2021





I know it’s a cliche, but I can’t put this book down. I’m three-quarters of the way through. My dog is staring at me with his legs crossed, needing his walk. My son and his family are due for Sunday lunch. So, I have to put it down and get up for both of those. But, then I’m really looking forward to getting back into it. The grief theme and how the main character tries to work through it when he loses several people at once makes complete sense to us. My husband lost both his parents very close together and, when that happens, you haven’t been able to grieve full circle for one before you start again. It just all comes at you at once. Intensely moving and surprisingly funny book.










Barbara 5.0 out of 5 stars 





An unforgettable, extraordinary book.





Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2021





Superbly written, original, intensely personal, moving, funny. One of the most evocative, extraordinary books I’ve ever read. We’re inside the central character Matthew’s head as he encounters, remembers and confronts his experiences of grief, loss and powerful love. I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s also great if you read in bitesize chunks – if you can bear to put it down, or simply have to, such as during a commute to work. But believe me, you’ll actually long for the journey time because every chapter sings. Unforgettable.





READ AN EXCERPT





You can read an excerpt by going to the book’s page on this link Publishers’ Weekly Booklife Site and clicking on the ‘Download excerpt‘ button. 







				


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The Hospital CEO who went Undercover as a Porter

				
Apr 12th, 2017 | Books, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
In her book How to Have a Good Day, psychologist Caroline Webb draws on behavioural science to improve our understanding of why we behave the way we do at work.


How to Have a Good Day (Book)


It helps redefine the very tired ‘personal productivity’ canon of business and self-help books, whose main insights after decades and hundreds of books seem to be:


1) Make lists (Dave Allen) and


2) Focus on only a few things and ignore everyone and everything that tries to push you off track (great for collaborative working, dontcha think?)


What Caroline Webb does is recognise that the people we work with are, guess what, people.


How you behave is key


Caroline Webb


Webb spreads the net of personal and team productivity to include not just WHAT you do but HOW YOU BEHAVE.


Of course checklists are useful, says Webb. But then gives us a psychologist’s insight into the little burst of ‘feel good’ chemicals you get when you tick a box, and how that’s addictive and you’ll tick till you’ve finished your list (sometimes) and go home thinking ‘job done’ under Dave Allen-type personal productivity thinking, which is completely self-centred and shallow (that’s me dissing Dave Allen, not Caroline Webb).


Webb introduces the need to inspire yourself and others with reasons, like the ‘personal why’. The neat little story is below as an excerpt. We at the Leadership Hub like this story as it illustrates an aspect of leadership we feel is vital and rarely practised: Leaders need to be where the business is actually done, as often as possible, not shut in their meetings in offices, a distant figure to the rest of the organisation.


(You can be everywhere virtually, by the way, with one of our digital leadership communities that make your top team ‘present’ in all corners of the business, regardless of geography, but that’s just a gratuitous plug). 


Here’s the Story:


Hospital


“….I once heard a nice example of this kind of ‘personal why’ from a community hospital CEO.  David was new to his organisation and still not a familiar face to staff, so he decided to spend a day working under-cover as an anonymous orderly to get some insight into how it felt on the front lines of his organisation.  David busied himself ferrying patients from the emergency room to wards and from wards to operating theatres, learning a little more about his hospital with every step.


At one point, he came across a guy who was prodding a swinging door with a screwdriver.  David asked the handy man what he was doing.  The man looked up and said ‘I’m fixing the hinge so it opens more easily; it’s too stiff so when you’re pushing patients on gurneys through the doors, it gives them a nasty jolt – that’s not going to help them get better, is it?’


Of course, the handy man had been handed a task list for the day by his boss and he was steadily working through it. It could have been dull, a grind, but in his mind the goal was not just to fix the door, it was to reduce harm to patients. Making the connection to something he cared about encouraged him to treat the tasks more like his own, intrinsic goals, giving him more satisfaction and, all the evidence suggests, resulting in better performance too.”


I love the way the emerging behavioural sciences are re-defining productivity for leaders and managers. The further away we move from the self-serving ‘get the monkey off my back and onto someone else’s’, the closer we get to collaborative leadership that serves the organisation, its people and customers, rather than our own career and need to get things off our desks to appear productive and in control. 


Because that isn’t leadership. That’s the illusion of control.

				


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Phil’s Picks for March – Morrisons Marketing Director recommends my book

				
Mar 30th, 2017 | Books, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
Mike MorrisonsHoban, Morrison’s Marketing Director, has just recommended my Seven Secrets of Inspired Leaders book, along with The First 90 Days. Mike says there are too many books out there and that these are the two books marketers should be reading.


Here’s the link >>


Glad to see that leaders are still finding the book useful, as it’s 12 years old now. The community behind that book – the Inspired Leaders Network – brought together leaders who were achieving extraordinary results, from Body Shop founder Anita Roddick to First Direct founding CEO Mike Harris.


That ‘share great and emerging practice’ principle is what underlies our online communities now. >>


Seven Secrets Book


If a book of collated learning from 12 years ago is still invaluable to these senior leaders, it’s just another reminder how powerful emergent peer-to-peer learning is.


Phil


 

				


 

				

			


		
			

				
Phil’s Picks for September: The God Complex (Do you have it without realising?)

				
Sep 13th, 2016 | Books, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
Podcast: The God Complex


We’ve been experimenting with podcasts in the online leadership development community we run for a FTSE 100 company, but most of them are too long and rambling. 


Make or curate?


We don’t see the point in making them if we can ‘curate’ them: find great ones that are relevant to the organization’s leadership competencies and what the community tells us they want to focus on, and point them at the podcast.


Our proposition is ‘micro-lessons’ for leaders who don’t have time; so they come into our community for just a few minutes to pick up a ‘micro-lesson’ several times a week. 


Enough 70/20/10 already: it’s old news!


We think 70/20/10 is ridiculously old news and describes what was not what should be. This is the new way to go: picking up lessons a few minutes at a time several times a week, then trying it at work on the fly.


We need to break the barriers – the lean-to-the-right slashes – in 70/20/10; not assume you have to work with those barriers.


We use a development approach of ‘pick up a new thing, try it, see if it works, add it to your leadership toolkit and tweak it if it does, reject it if it doesn’t and try something else tomorrow or later in the week’ .


This approach busts 70/20/10 and consigns it to history, where it belongs.


Stop trying to work within 70/20/10 confines: that was last century for crying out loud.


Anyway, enough preaching.


The great short podcast segment I’d recommend – and we’re using it for our online leadership community we run in an intranet for a FTSE 100 company’s global community of leaders – is economist Tim Harford’s ten minute segment on…


Complex systems thrive on trial and error


It’s perfect for the community we facilitate, as Harford leads in with describing The God Complex : the inability of leaders to admit mistakes or say ‘I could have done that better’.


Until leaders can openly do that, the people they work with won’t either. And it has to happen if Senge’s old Fifth Discipline – the constantly learning and improving organization via Systems Thinking – is to be achieved.


We use tabloid-style headlines like “The God Complex: Do you have it without realising?” to grab the attention of busy executives and get them to buy into spending a few minutes examining that thought, reflecting on how they lead, and testing it.


That’s the key first step – grab their attention for just a few seconds, pushing everything else aside – in an ‘Attention-Based Learning Model’, which is what we use in our online leadership development communities of practice.


So, thank you Tim Harford!


Phil

				


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Phil’s Picks for August: Nathan Lozeron on Deep Work

				
Aug 15th, 2016 | Books, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
Things I noticed this month that look useful for leaders …


Nathan Lozeron on Deep WorkDeep Work, Cal Newport


I continue to be impressed by Nathan Lozeron’s animated book summaries. And the one-page pdfs he creates to go along with them.


Unlike the big, corporate, paid-for book summary services, which appear to be written by robots, Nathan’s strength is in engaging with the ideas and highlighting the most powerful stuff AS HE SEES IT – using his judgement.


 Read the rest of this entry »

				


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Phil’s Picks for July: Break out of the metaphors

				
Jul 4th, 2016 | Books, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
A couple of leaders I work with and respect (thank you Lincoln Barrett and Joerg Boeckler) sing the praises of this book.


I had a quick look at an interview with the author, Liz Wiseman, that John Mattone’s team did. And bought the book, based on Wiseman’s explanation of how leaders are either ‘multipliers’ or ‘diminishers’ in their impact on others.


No surprise there, but there’s real learning in how she explains that we can go around thinking we are multipliers when we are actually unintentional diminishers.


Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter


'Multipliers' Book Cover


I loved Essentialism, and Greg McKeown, author of that, is involved with this book, too.


What particularly appeals to me about Liz Wiseman’s thinking is that it focuses on unintended consequences. Most leaders, in my experience, haven’t yet got to grips with complexity (though they think they have) and still see a clear ’cause and effect’ mechanism in place with themselves, usually, being ‘the cause’.


‘Make it so’ is a myth


This ‘make it so’ assumption in leadership (Jean Luc Picard, the captain in the later incarnations of Start Trek, remember?) is a fallacy and always has been.


But, the need to show that ‘yes, indeed we made it so due to you, dear leader, telling us to’ is so strong in most corporate cultures that it generates a kind of mythical story about what is happening, which runs alongside reality and slightly separate from it.


Until reality wins.


Think ‘acts of leadership’ not ‘leader’


Leadership is in acts that people do within complex large systems. Those acts of leadership emerge and are directed by and within a web of common purpose. Leadership does not sit in a person ‘at the top’ of the organization, making decisions, which the rest of the organization enacts.


Even ‘the top’ is a mental construct. There is no ‘top’. There is no physical height.


When Stephen Covey said “The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, looks around and shouts down ‘wrong jungle'”, he wasn’t making a literal height-based point; the top of the tree equating to the top of the organization.


Our minds are so full of metaphors and constructs about how organizations work – pyramids, top of the organization, front line, middle managers – based on imposing physical shape – verticality in particular – on something that doesn’t have a physical entity, that we start to act and think in those metaphorical terms.


Break out of the metaphors and be real!


Wiseman’s book helps us break out of this tired (but persistent: take away the ‘vertical’ model of thinking and people get scared and want their ladder-like framework back) old view of structure – where the analogy becomes ‘real’ in our heads, with bosses somehow at ‘the top’ of something.


Another thing I spotted this month


Well, actually, it was the tail end of June, but it had its impact on me this month.


Words of wisdom on leadership from Queen Elizabeth II, aged 90, who said this last week: Phil'sBlogQueen




“One hallmark of leadership in a fast-moving world is allowing sufficient room for quiet thinking and contemplation, which can enable deeper, cooler consideration of how challenges and opportunities can be best addressed.”




Wow; smart woman our Queen 🙂 . The faster markets move, and the more overwhelmed with ‘incoming’ information we are, the more we are tempted to respond with ever-faster decision-making.


Obviously that’s appropriate sometimes to avoid missing a fast-moving opportunity or to sidestep a fast-moving market threat.


But, we are in danger of losing the discipline of taking time to think properly, and making fast knee-jerk decisions to clear the modern equivalent of our in-tray.




“You call it procrastinating.


I call it thinking,”


– Aaron Sorkin




Phil

				


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A Book Distillery: Whole leadership books in 5 min animations

				
May 12th, 2015 | Books, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
From 30SecondsMail (who have undercut me by 30 seconds, but I don’t care as it’s a great idea).


“We recently launched our “Book Distillery”: We create super short and crisp 5 minute animated video abstracts of famous business books. There’s no easier and funnier way to digest a whole book in such a short time. And it’s 100% free (and always will be) 🙂 We thought maybe your readers would like to know about it.


There will be one new “video-book” every week.


Here is our first video “Zero to One – by Peter Thiel”


Coming up: The Lean Startup, the 4-hour work week and many many more.“ – Ajie


30Seconds


Check out Aije’s site by clicking here, or try a video by clicking the picture.

				


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Innovation: Starting second can end up first

				
Mar 11th, 2013 | Books, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
Who beat Amazon?


Which company created on-line bookselling in the 1990s? Amazon.com? Nope. The first on-line bookstore was set up by an Ohio-based bookseller named Charles Stack in 1991. Jeff Bezos didn’t launch Amazon till four years later.


We’re constantly being told that leaders need to foster a culture of innovation, to move into Blue Ocean spaces where no competitors exist, then profit from the customers before our competitors copy us and move into the space we have created.


Henry Ford said ‘come second to market’


Well, not always. Henry Ford used to argue that it made more sense to be second to market – let someone else take the risks of seeing if something new is what customers will buy. Then, when the market is proven, often at great expense, follow in and do it better. That’s the core argument in this book, and the authors lines up plenty of examples to prove their point.


Fast Second: How smart companies bypass radical innovation to enter and dominate new markets
Fast Second: How smart companies bypass radical innovation to enter and dominate new markets


And they do have one. The argument against them is the first mover advantage argument – That markets move so fast nowadays you need to be first to market with something new so you can mop up the customers. That may be true if there’s only room for one dominant supplier, and if your aim is to be that dominant supplier – the Amazon of your marketplace, if you will. But there’s usually plenty of room for smaller niche players who take the main innovation, tweak it a bit and find a space in the market that way. It’s like ‘the long tail’ argument.


But, do markets move too fast today for ‘be second to market’ to work?


Tom Peters argues that markets move so fast that trying to be second to market means you will just be mopping up the leftovers as those who were brave enough to lead and create a new market take all the prizes. Well, sometimes, maybe. But, not always.


The uncomfortable answer is that sometimes being first to market is the winning strategy and sometimes being second or even third, when the pioneers have proved what works and what doesn’t and lost all their money in the process, is the right strategy. 


It seems odd to say ‘Take the lead on being second or third’ but leadership doesn’t always mean being first to market. That’s my view, anyway (in synch with the authors of this book).


Balancing the risk: Being closer to customers increases the chances of success


Nobody can tell you which one works in your particular situation (a strategy of being first, second or third to market). But, the closer you are to knowing your customers’ or potential customers’ needs – to instinctively know what they want even before they know it themselves – the more likely your innovation is to be a winner.


And that, though it doesn’t explicitly say so in this book, is why leaders need to be as ‘close to the customer’ (thank you Tom Peters, even if it was 25 years ago he said it) as possible. That means interacting with customers whenever you can, not receiving reports from middle managers about the customer base, but immersing yourself in the customer base, no matter how lofty your role in the organization is.


End of preachy bit. Anyway, interesting book…


Little bit more about it here: Fast Second on Wikipedia

				


 

				

			


		
			

				
The Second Little Book of Leadership

				
Dec 3rd, 2012 | Books, Customer Service, Leadership | 0 Comments »


				

					
…just published on Slideshare. Hope you find it useful.


 




				


 

				

			


		
			

				
Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?

				
Mar 5th, 2012 | Books | 0 Comments »


				

					





















One of the reasons I like this book is that it is one of the few leadership books that recognizes that ‘leadership’ is not an ability or skill or collection of abilities or skills within some people – leaders. Leadership is a relationship between people. Others have to agree to be led.


And, at times, those others do the leading and you agree to be led.


I also like the lack of emphasis on ‘competencies’ and trait theory – that there are traits or competencies that are common to leaders – and the acknowledgement that leaders are often very different from each other – in fact have more apart than they have in common.


At a time when large organizations arae commonly trying to standardise leadership behaviour, this book is a refreshing reminder that it won’t allow itself to be. Because, again, leadership isn’t something inside a ‘leader’. It’s a relationship between people.


Here are the authors outlining the four qualities inspirational leaders share


“We’ve discovered that inspirational leaders … share four unexpected qualities:


    

  1. They selectively show their weaknesses. By exposing some vulnerability, they reveal their approachability and humanity.
    2. 

  2. They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions. Their ability to collect and interpret soft data helps them know just when and how to act.
    3. 

  3. They manage employees with something we call tough empathy. Inspirational leaders empathize passionately—and realistically—with people, and they care intensely about the work employees do.
    4. 

  4. They reveal their differences. They capitalize on what’s unique about themselves.
    5. 



You may find yourself in a top position without these qualities, but few people will want to be led by you. 


Our theory about the four essential qualities of leadership, it should be noted, is not about results per se. While many of the leaders we have studied and use as examples do in fact post superior financial returns, the focus of our research has been on leaders who excel at inspiring people—in capturing hearts, minds, and souls.


This ability is not everything in business, but any experienced leader will tell you it is worth quite a lot. Indeed, great results may be impossible without it.”

				


 

				

			


		
		

			
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