Books I Have Read in 2012

One of my favorite blog posts from last year was a look back at the different things I had read in 2011. Prior to building the list, I had no idea I head been such a prolific reader. I went back through the books I had checked out from the library (Tulsa’s Library keeps a great index of what you have checked out). I went back through my emails to remember which books I had borrowed from a friend, and of course I had the list of e-books loaded in the Kindle app on my iPad to help complete the list. It turned out to be a very extensive list! Well, I wanted to do the same thing for 2012, but this time around I decided it would be better to keep a running tally of the books along with my brief thoughts after finishing each one.

FICTION:

Replay by Ken Grimwood – I was introduced to this book by reading some of the Amazon comments on Stephen King’s time-traveling thriller, 11/22/63. The funny part was, the reviews were all outstanding. More than 400 reviews for this book I’d never heard of and nearly all of them were good. Well add me to the list. Replay is the story of Jeff Winston, a 43 year old radio journalist, who dies at his desk in 1988…and wakes up in his college dorm room in 1963. He gets the chance to live his entire life over again, knowing everything that will happen- the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, who will win the World Series- and he uses this knowledge to his advantage, living the high life until he dies again in 1988…and wakes up again in 1963. This was a very intriguing book with an excellent narrative and a great concept. I was disappointed sometimes in what the author chose for Jeff to do each replay and I wish he’d gone into more detail in some of the changes Jeff tries to make, but that is not really the point of the story. The story turns out to be a metaphor for how we live our own lives. Too often, we look back on our life and think of what might have been. Well, you only get one chance to achieve, to try, to fail, to love and to be loved and you must take advantage of it or end up looking back on your life with regret. Anyways, it’s a great book- I highly recommend it.  This was the best fiction book I read all year.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson – I’m sorry, I just couldn’t finish the third endless book in the Millennium Trilogy. My biggest complaint with Larsson’s popular first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was that he dwelled endlessly on minutae like the sandwiches Blompkvist ate and the coffee he drank. He spent endless pages describing the fascinating next generational tech of Salander’s iBook and prattled on and on about the cold. I was assured by others that it would get better as the books went on…but they didn’t. By two-thirds of the way through the third book, I’d just had enough. I put it down. I may go back and pick it up at some later point, but for now, the mystery of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest will remain unsolved.

The Litigators by John Grisham – This book is your typical Grisham legal thriller, but if that is what you like then you will enjoy every word of the story. A young Harvard grad named David Zinc quits his lucrative job at a prestigious firm and finds himself joining up with the bottom-feeding, ambulance-chasing firm of Finley and Figg, just as they are about to embark on a massive tort litigation against big pharmaceutical company Varrick and the drug that potentially kills its users, Krayyox. This felt like a return to form for Grisham, and the book reminded me a great deal of some of my favorite books- The Firm and The Rainmaker. If you like Grisham, you will probably like this book.

A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin – I picked up this first book after having it recommended by several friends who had read it, along with many people who watched the HBO series. I can see why the book is so popular, and why the series has such a fanatical following. The first book in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series is A Game of Thrones, which introduces us to the world of Westeros and the three families fighting to control it. The Starks, led by Eddard “Ned” Stark and his family, wife Catelyn, and children Robb, Sansa, Arya, Brann, Rickon and Ned’s bastard son Jon Snow. The book follows several members of the Stark family as Ned goes to King’s Landing to act as the Hand (representative) for his friend and King, Robert Baratheon. The power struggle between Ned and the family of the King’s wife, Cersei Baratheon nee Lannister, takes up a good portion of this first book and you can see the major players being moved around like chess pieces throughout the book. Far too much happens in the book’s 700 pages to give it a good synopsis here, but if you are at all interested in fantasy books with knights and dragons and magic, this series is one for you. The world Martin creates is a massive undertaking, with 9 point of view (POV) characters through whose eyes the story is told and more than 30 major characters to keep track of. If you like the Lord of the Rings, you will love this book.

A Clash of Kings: A Song of Ice and Fire (Book 2 of the Game of Thrones Series) by George R. R. Martin – Continuing the GoT series, I finished reading A Clash of Kings right before Season 2 of the HBO Series A Game of Thrones started. As mentioned in my GoT review above, this series is a masterful work of fiction, with so many deep, enthralling characters that I got lost in the book. It, too, is an excellent read and continues the story of Westeros, the Stark family, the Lannisters and the rest of the many, many characters. If you enjoyed A Game of Thrones, you will also enjoy A Clash of Kings.

A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice and Fire (Book 3 of the Game of Thrones Series) by George R. R. Martin – The third book in the GoT Series is a phenomenal book. After the second book, which tended to drag in places, the third book was filled with action, intrigue and several “holy $#%@ moments. It continues the story of the War of Kings, the Stark family’s struggle against the Lannisters and introduces dozens, if not hundreds of new characters and storylines that interweave an intricate tapestry of fiction, one that grips you from the beginning and doesn’t let go until the end.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – This was a fun throwback to the 1980’s. The book is a new one, but is set in a dystopian future where everyone interacts together in a massive video game called OASIS- think World of Warcraft, except EVERYONE is using it for everything- business, food, exercise, dating, basically nothing exists outside of the game. The game’s creator, James Halliday, dies leaving a video will that bequeaths ownership of the game to the person who can solve his riddle, find the keys he has hidden throughout OASIS and locate the Easter Egg he has hidden somewhere in the world. Years go by with no progress made until high school student Wade Watts AKA Parzival stumbles across the first key and reignites the hysterical hunt for the prize. The book is a fun adventure set in a video game but as a child who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s the best parts were the many pop culture references from that time period- Street Fighter and Galaga and EverQuest and Back to the Future and a hundred other things that reminded me of my childhood. The storyline is gripping and moves at a very quick pace throughout. I enjoyed the heck out of the book. If this sounds at all like your thing, I think you will too.

Amped by Daniel Wilson – Another dystopian future thriller (I’m starting to detect a pattern), this one set a few years in the future at a point when medical technology has begun to be implanted into human beings. At first, the technology is used to heal otherwise sick people, recover brain function in people who would otherwise be disabled, etc. The main character, Owen Grey, was given a standard implant by his brain surgeon father in order to stop his debilitating seizures.  Soon, though, there is a mass resistance to the implants and those implanted, known as Amps. When the US Supreme Court rules that Amps are not citizens and are therefore no longer subject to the Bill of Rights, Owen finds himself out of a job, out of a home, and on the run to try and make sense of a world where he no longer fits. He finds a home with other Amps before discovering that the implant his father gave him might not be so standard after all, and before long Owen finds himself in the middle of a brewing war between the Amps and the rest of the humans. If the plot sound fun, that’s because it is. But sadly, the book doesn’t do much to live up to the plot. It moves relatively quickly, but gets bogged down by stilted dialogue. It was difficult to identify with the characters, even when they were being tormented by un-implanted humans. The story is intended to draw parallels to the civil rights movement or even the gay rights movement, but falls far short. It’s a below-average action thriller, but not one I’d recommend reading.

Batman: Knightfall comic book series – I went back through and revisited the “Bane” storyline highlights this summer before seeing The Dark Knight Rises.  It was good, but lacked the impact it had on me as a teenager in 1993.

HUMOR:

Bossypants by Tina Fey – Now this was a fast paced, hilarious semi-autobiography by Tina Fey. I love Fey’s show 30 Rock and knew this book would bring the funny. It did not disappoint. Many parts of it are not for the faint of heart, but the book as a whole is hysterically funny, especially Fey’s so-accurate-its-scary description of being a parent.

Go the F*** to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, read by Samuel L. Jackson – I’d heard this book was funny, if inappropriate for children. It is definitely that, and is probably pretty spot on for most parents of small children (like me)…or anyone who has had children…or anyone who knows children…or likes children. Come to think of it, this book is pretty funny for just about anyone.  Like I said, vulgar, but very, very funny, especially when read by Sam Jackson.

S*** My Dad Says by Justin Halpern – Based off of the infamous Twitter feed of the same name, Shit My Dad Says tells Halpern’s story of moving back in with his parents, and the insanely hilarious things his dad says to him on a regular basis. I found myself laughing out loud often while reading this book and making my wife listen as I read passages aloud. It is irreverent and vulgar and just might be the funniest thing I’ve read in years.

I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern – Halpern’s follow-up to his first book details his lifelong struggle interacting with the female species. He starts as a kid and tells story after story of how he failed to do just about anything right until he met the girl who is now his wife. The book is funny, but the best parts are again the stories that star Halpern’s hysterical father. Unfortunately, his dad takes a backseat in this book too often, leaving Halpern unable to keep the funny going without his cantankerous father’s comments. This book is also humorous, but lacks the gut-busting laughs of his first book.

In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks by Adam Carolla – A 200-page book of Adam Carolla’s rantings. If you’ve ever heard Carolla on radio or TV or listened to his podcast, you know what to expect. Sadly, he isn’t nearly as funny in print as he is on TV, and the angry white man schtick gets old fast. By the time I got to his one to two page rants about every topic and product under the sun, I found myself skipping whole sections of the book because I really didn’t care about why Adam was so angry about white bread or blenders. Also, the constant references to his wealth (“My wife’s Jag cost $70,000” or “I paid more than a million bucks in taxes last year.”) serve only to alienate the reader, who is more likely to appreciate Adam when he was a poor construction worker than now as a rich comedian. Skip it.

Not Taco Bell Material by Adam Carolla – See above. Not worth spending the time to read.

BUSINESS:

Getting Things Done by David Allen – I have read and re-read this book several times in an effort to keep my workflow managed. It, combined with something called “The Secret Weapon to GTD” (see below) have revolutionized the way I manage my day and allowed me to be ten times more productive than I was before utilizing this system. If you feel overwhelmed by your workload, this is a phenomenal method to try.

The Secret Weapon to Getting Things Done by Braintoniq – This isn’t so much a book as it is an addendum to Getting Things Done for the year 2012.  Essentially, it explains how to set up GTD in your email (Outlook or otherwise) and using Evernote on your smartphone to keep everything in the buckets recommended by GTD.  Nearly everyone has a smartphone now and that smartphone can be used to surprisingly powerful effect.  TSW teaches you how.  Also, it’s free and it’s a quick read- about twenty pages- and will revolutionize the way you approach your productivity.

Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin – What if what we consider “talent” was nothing more than just exceptional skill, honed over the span of years?  If there was no such thing as talent, what could we become capable of in our own lives?  This is the theory Colvin posits in Talent is Overrated and frankly, it has changed the way I look at my professional life.  In the book, Colvin discusses some of history’s great talents- Tiger Woods, Jerry Rice, Chris Rock, Mozart, Jeffrey Immelt, Steve Balmer, and more. The common thread between these successful people was not their innate talent, but that they started to work at something at an early age and put in the hard work and sacrifice until they became amongst the best in their fields.  Colvin argues that the reason Woods is one of the world’s best golfers isn’t because he has some innate talent for golf, but that his father started teaching him to golf when he was six months old, and that Woods put in the hard work and practice to become great at such a young age.  But he goes further than that, saying that in our own lives, if we are willing to put in the hours of hard work and deliberate practice in order to expand our abilities and broaden our horizons, we too, can become great at what we do.  There is a long segment of the book dedicated to explaining why people become proficient at their jobs, but never become great.  This section alone is worth the purchase price of the whole book.  The book certainly shares a common theme with Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, so if you enjoyed Outliers, Talent is Overrated will open your eyes to what your potential could be if you are willing to put in the hard work.

Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni – Patrick Lencioni is one of those new age motivational workplace gurus whose specialty lies in teaching executives powerful lessons through interesting fables. In Death By Meeting, Lencioni tackles that thing that so many of us dread- meetings. Endless, directionless, pointless meetings seem like they take up so much of our workday, yet Lencioni posits that they should actually be the most interesting part of our day. Through his fable, Lencioni shows how meetings should be run to make the most of them, and easily gives you lessons on how to integrate these items into your daily life.  Interestingly, when my organization went through a massive reorg earlier this year, I suggested we change our meeting structures too- and we have! It’s been, in my opinion, a huge success because instead of sitting through endless staff meetings every week, we have cut down the amount of time spent in staff meetings to fifteen minutes per day, every day (the morning stand up). It is a phenomenal change over what we used to do.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Dan Pink – Pink’s book, which I read after seeing his famous TED talk on motivation, was an eye opener. As someone who is firmly entrenched in the modern workplace, I often found myself questioning why some people are more motivated than others and how I might go about motivating my coworkers.  Enter Pink, who says that the old world motivational methods of carrots and sticks are no more, and frankly weren’t all that effective to begin with. Instead, Pink suggests the three things that motivate everyone- autonomy, mastery and purpose. I discussed this in a previous blog post, so I won’t belabor the point, but if you can find a way to give your employees autonomy, mastery and purpose in their work lives, you will find your organization successful beyond your imagination.

A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink – Honestly, I should have written my notes on this book back in April when I read it because now, thinking back on it, it was completely unremarkable.  The thing I remember most after reading it was thinking, “He really just rehashed everything he wrote in Drive and tried to repackage it in a new book.”  I do not recommend.

Good to Great by Jim Collins – This was not the first time I read Good to Great. The first time was actually in late 2007, shortly after starting work at Spirit. Collins describes a multi-year study in which he and his team analyzed companies that went from good performers to great performers, in all cases outperforming the stock market by a large margin. He details what it was about these companies that caused them to go from good to great. You have probably heard many of the terms he created in this book if you’ve been around business at all in the last ten years. Things like “Level 5 Leaders” and “Hedgehog Concept” and “Get the Right People on the Bus.” What makes Good to Great such an exceptional review of business success (and failure) is his correlation of the good companies to their comparison companies. The comparison companies were often competitors of the great companies- faced the same economic challenges and market hurdles, but the Good to Great companies excelled while the comparison companies faltered. This is a book I plan to revisit several times over the year to help instill the lessons in my own life and work. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn how to become great.

How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins – After finishing the excellent “Good to Great,” I decided to pick up another of Jim Collins’ more recent books, this one “How the Mighty Fall.” It is sort of a follow-up to his 1994 book that focused on the things successful companies did to stay successful over long periods of time. The thing about “Built to Last” and “Good to Great” is that he wrote them in the 1990’s and picked out several companies (Hewlett Packard, Sony, Merck, Circuit City, Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo) that later fell from grace, in several cases filing for bankruptcy or receiving federal bailout money. “How the Mighty Fall” is a follow up in that Collins goes back and looks at those companies again to figure out what went wrong. In a nutshell, failing to follow the principles that brought so many of these companies to greatness caused their eventual downfall. Collins is a staunch proponent of effective management that looks at the facts. Arrogance and ego have no place in business, yet all too often, leaders find themselves at the top of the hill and think they can never falter. In fact, Collins calls out a specific example of the banking CEO’s in 2008 being so arrogant that they thought their businesses could never fail. We now know how that turned out. HTMF is a shorter book, and a relatively simple read. I enjoyed it because it was a great follow up to many of the questions that arose as I read “Good to Great.” It’s a thumbs up for sure, but I recommend reading Collins’ previous books to develop a background in what he is talking about before diving into this one.

BIOGRAPHY:

Decision Points by George W. Bush – One of my goals this year was to read several biographies of people I might be interested in. I was a W. supporter in 2000 and 2004, and supported his Presidency despite the many missteps along the way. Decision Points is President Bush’s response to many of the events that defined his Presidency. Events like the 2000 Election and the “hanging chads.” 9/11 and the beginnings of the War on Terrorism and the War on Iraq. Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Hurricane Katrina. The list goes on and on. I enjoyed listening to the President’s take on things, which often differed from what was played out in the media. I have never felt President Bush was an evil or incompetent man, but that he was faced with a great many challenges during his eight-year Presidency that, when taken as a whole, prove that he was simply outmatched. The most terrible terrorist attack on US soil in history, followed by a massive two-war front that was initially supported by the American people followed by the most destructive natural disaster in US history followed by one of the worst worldwide financial meltdowns of the banking system…President Bush faced a more challenges during his time in office than any other President in history that I can think of . I don’t think he handled all of the challenges well. Looking back through the lens of history, the War in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina, and his failure to prevent the financial meltdown will be what he is long-remembered for. I don’t know many children who grow up saying “I want to be President someday,” and this book should be a sure reminder of why that job is no longer coveted. Because even though the Presidency is the leader of the free world, it is also a more stressful and painful job than anyone can imagine. I salute the President for standing strong to his values during his eight years in office, but I look forward to a day when I feel that the person holding the office can actually handle the job itself.

My Life by Bill Clinton – I read this shortly after finishing Bush’s Decision Points and I was shocked at how reasonable President Clinton seemed throughout most of his book.  Growing up in a staunchly Republican household, I had been taught that Clinton was a bad person and a bad President, and since he left office before I really got interested in politics, I didn’t have any reason to doubt that.  But Clinton’s book was a good read, if only to serve as a reminder that the people who serve in the Presidency are still human.  That said, the book is clearly his attempt to whitewash history and to gloss over his serious mistakes with Monica Lewinsky, and his battles with the Republican Congress.  That said, I did enjoy it, despite his delusions about his role in the Lewinsky scandal.

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden by Mark Owen – Holy wow, this was a gripping book, even moreso because it is the true story of one of the SEALs who took down Osama bin Laden.  The book is written in first person by Owen, a pseudonym, and as such, it puts you right on the ground from the get go.  Owen opens the book mid-mission on May 2nd, 2011 and grabs your attention before settling in to tell the story of how he got there.  He tells about his upbringing, hunting with his father in the Alaskan wilderness, and of deciding to go into the military, and joining the Navy SEALs.  He tells of previous missions he went on and of the training and build up to the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.  Even though I knew how it ended, the book was one of those page-turner, can’t put it down books. Definitely recommended.

Boys Should be Boys by Meg Meeker – This is a book about raising healthy boys in a day and age when there are so many threats out there to raising good, healthy boys. Things like pornography, violence, overprotective parenting, negligent parenting, and many other things that act as a danger to boys who should grow up to be kind, caring, considerate young men. As a father of a boy who is already growing up too quickly, this was a good book to both reinforce many of the beliefs I already held about my son (let him play outside, keep him away from pornography and violence) and opened my eyes to other aspects of parenting that I might have missed or not led much credence to.

The Revolution Was Televised by Alan Sepinwall – Notable internet TV critic Alan Sepinwall explains how television was fundamentally changed, starting in 1997 with HBO’s Oz, continuing through The Sopranos, and dedicates entire chapters to some of the greatest TV shows of the last fifteen years- Lost, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, Breaking Bad and a great deal more.  Sepinwall doesn’t just tell us how the show’s changed the landscape, he demonstrates it in great detail, and uses his connections to show runners like David Chase and Matt Weiner to give us detail into the creation and run of these shows that would not come from anywhere else.  I picked up this book because I had read a snippet online about Lost, which was one of my favorite shows right up until the ending.  This book explains that ending, and much more.

And that sums up everything I read in 2012. I know, it’s kind of a long list. One of my favorite things to do is wake up early, sit around the house with a cup of coffee, and just read. It’s when I get a lot of my reading done. The other “reading” I do a lot of is listening to audiobooks when I’m at the gym or driving. I like to make efficient use of my time, and that is a good way to get it done.  All that said, here is a partial list of books I intend to read in 2013.

Books to Read in 2013

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport – This book is a bit of a follow-on to Talent is Overrated, and I’m partway through it right now.

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker

Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End by Manel Loureiro

The Corner Office: Indispensible and Unexpected Lessons fro CEO’s on How to Lead and Succeed by Adam Bryant

Duma Key by Stephen King

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes our Lives by Steven Levy

Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired and Secretive Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky

Mile 81 by Stephen King

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Racketeer by John Grisham

Silver Fin by Charlie Higson

One Second After by William Forstchen

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau – I’m about halfway through this book and just haven’t taken the time to finish it yet.  It’s very good, though.

As always, I am open to comments and suggestions. If you have any, please leave them in the comments!

Be More Productive Than Ever

**Note** I originally wrote this entry at the end of June and intended to publish it the first week of July.  Then my wife went and had a baby, and the last few weeks have been a blur of diaper changes and midnight feedings.  That said, none of what I wrote is any less relevant in August than it was in July.  Enjoy. -AB

If only it were this easy!

I’ve had one of the most productive years of my life so far in 2012, and the year is only half-over. During the first six months of this year, I have accomplished nearly every goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Those include personal and family goals like teaching my son or preparing my family for the birth of our daughter (any day now, seriously). Spiritual goals like daily prayer and volunteering at our church. Financial goals like getting that promotion I’ve been working towards. Giving speeches. Writing blog posts. Reading books. Of the 34 specific, measurable, attainable goals I set in January, I have achieved 27 of them in one form or another and failed at 7 of them. Goal-setting and regular evaluation of goals is an important part of my productivity.

1.) Set achievable goals, and then review them regularly.
Look back at the goals you set in January.  How many of them were specific, measurable, achievable goals? “Lose weight” is not specific. Lose how much weight? By when? “Lose ten pounds by June 1st” is specific, measurable and achievable.

2.) Do more in the same amount of time as everyone else.  
We all have 24 hours in a day. What you do with those 24 hours determines how successful you will be.  I read a great New York Times article about what CEO’s do that everyone else does not.  One of the things that popped out at me was that they get more done in the same amount of time than everyone else does. They find tiny ways to be more productive. For me, that has been eye-opening. I used to waste a lot of time on things that weren’t adding value to my life. TV, messing around on the internet, classic time-wasters. I’ve cut a lot of that out of my life and replaced it with things that I feel are more productive uses of my time.  In the mornings, when I’m getting ready in a quiet house with my wife and son sleeping, I will throw on my headphones and listen to a book.  This has helped me read/listen to more than twenty books so far this year.  They run the gamut, from fiction to business to biographies,  but each one has engrossed me and taught me something.  I write speeches for my Toastmasters group and then turn around and edit those speeches into a blog post. Twice the work in half the time.  But lest you think my productivity is limited to my personal life, I’ve also found ways to increase productivity at work, through consolidating a dozen reports into one simple easy to read report or getting a subject matter expert to explain to me a topic I am not familiar with before I dive headlong into a new project.

Find the places you are wasting time and figure out a way to use that time more effectively.  Sitting in line at the post office? Don’t check your email/Twitter/Facebook, rattle off some words you were trying to learn in German.  Playing blocks with the kid? Just kidding, when it’s play time, my son gets 100% of my attention.

3.) Find someone to keep you accountable. About once a month, a good friend and I talk by phone about our goals. We discuss the things we’ve been working on, detail our failures, and offer advice to each other. These conversations are great because they allow me the chance to see what someone else is doing (and sometimes shamelessly steal his goals as my own) and they keep me accountable because I know that I’m going to have to talk about what I accomplished and I don’t want to say “nothing.”

Sure, there are literally hundreds of other ways to increase your productivity, but these are three things that I started doing this year that have turned 2012 into one of the most productive years of my life. Wouldn’t you like to look back on 2012 in six months and be able to say the same thing?

Get To The Point

Today I would like to discuss getting to the point.

Getting to the point is a crucial skill in the business world.  It is one we must deal with on a daily basis.  I remember at one point in my career being assigned a new manager.  You already know where this is going, don’t you?  I, playing the part of the impressionable young employee excitedly went to our first staff meeting to see what new and interesting things our manager would bring to the team.  I left two and a half hours later, exhausted, dejected, and completely out of sorts.  Why? Because this manager had no idea how to get to the point.  We are all busy.  No one has time for you to get to your point in a roundabout way.  You need to be able to express yourself in a clear, concise manner in order to be taken seriously in the professional world.  Without that skill, you will find your influence is diminished or you may find that people avoid speaking to you altogether.  Neither of these things will help you be a successful professional.

I am going to present you with three ways to get to the point and get on with your day.

Organize Your Thoughts

How often does something pop into our head and we rush off half-cocked trying to get someone’s attention?  Too often, I say.  Organizing your thoughts will help you figure our what you understand fully and what you require additional explanation for.  It will help you tease out the tough concepts and give you a chance to further deepen your knowledge before you present it to someone else.  Take the time to think about what questions someone will have for you and be able to answer those questions.  There is nothing more irritating than when someone presents half an idea and then does not have the simple basic understanding of the issue to answer questions or further expound on that idea.  Once you’ve organized your thoughts and thought up questions, walk away from it.  Then, a few minutes later, come back to it and review it again trying to come up with more questions or problems that may arise.  Being organized will help you come across as more credible and will give your opinions on the issue more weight.  Even if this means taking several minutes to jot down what you know about what you are going to report to someone, that time spent organizing your thoughts will lead to a more efficient use of your and your boss’s time.

 Be Concise

Get to the point in ten words or less.  What is the main point of what you are going to talk about?  This is the most important thing to get across to someone, and you should be able to summarize it in ten words or less.  If I were to summarize this post in ten words, I would say “get to the point, organize your thoughts, be concise, conclude.”  I’ll give you a second to count those, but I assure you, it is ten.  This doesn’t mean that all of your reports should be ten words or less, but you should be able to sum up the main point of what you are trying to say in ten words or less.  “The supplier is requesting an overall increase of six percent.”  “The contract expires within the lead time and must be extended.”  These are summaries of a broader explanation, but the main point is clear, and should always be clear to the person you are reporting to.  The best thing about being able to concisely state your point in ten words or less?  If someone needs more information, they can always ask for it.  But you’re not overwhelming them with pointless information they neither need, nor will remember.  And because you spent the time organizing your thoughts and thinking of potential questions, you will be prepared for when those additional questions do come up.

Have a Conclusion

This was my manager’s weak point.  She rambled on and on for as much as twenty minutes on a single point, throwing out random anecdotes and stores to try to help make her point clear.  But because she had not organized her thoughts and boiled the main point down to ten words or less, she ended up going on and on and only served to further confuse her audience.  Always be working towards a conclusion.  Often, ten words will be enough for your main point, but you will need to further explain the subject to your audience.  That is fine, but as Stephen Covey once opined, “Begin with the end in mind.”  While he was making the point about starting a project, it still applies to speaking before a group.  Once you get to this point, you have already organized your thoughts and boiled your main point down to ten words or less.  Now expound upon your main point, but know when to get out.  Be able to summarize your main points and any specific items that bear importance and then, shut it down.  For less complicated matters, you should be able to conclude in a couple of minutes.  Only the most intricate issues should go five minutes or more.  But regardless of how intrinsically complex your issue may be, have a point where you wrap your thoughts up in a neat little bow. Conclude.

And speaking of conclusions, that brings me to mine.  Getting to the point is a critical business skill.  We’re just too busy for you to take your time examining all of the different viewpoints of an issue.  Today’s business environment requires quick, decisive action and in order to facilitate such action, you have to be able to get to the point.  Remember to organize your thoughts, boil your main point down to ten words or less and have a conclusion in mind.  Once you have mastered these three skills, you will be well on your way to being able to successfully, skillfully, and concisely get to the point.

Revenue and Margins

Today I will be discussing some of the financial aspects of running a business.  Specifically, reading the annual financial documents released by a public company.  I will use my own employer, Spirit AeroSystems, since I am familiar with their financial statements and they are a good example of an Aerospace company with a strong financial position.  Do not worry, I am not releasing any sensitive financial data about the company.  All of this information can be found at Spirit’s website or on any of the many financial/investing websites that populate the internet.  I pulled mine from Google Finance.

I’m sure you have all seen this kind of document before.  The question is, do you know how to read it?

The answer most people will give is, probably not.  Believe it or not, these complicated-looking financial documents are actually quite easy to read when you know what you are looking for.  The first thing you will want to do is go to the company web page on whatever financial website you are using.  Like I said before, I use Google Finance.  From there, search for the company you want to learn about, in this case SPR (for Spirit AeroSystems).

On the left side of the page, click the link that says “Financials” which will bring up the quarterly financial statements.  Quarterly results are important, but for today’s lesson, we are going to look at the annual report.  Click “Annual Data” to bring up the report for the previous financial year.  For Spirit, this is 2010 data, which was released on Feb 10th, 2011.  This report compiles all of the quarterly data for the 12 months ending on 12/31/2010.

Where do you go from here?  There are several important pieces of information you want to gleam from this page of financial documents, but the main purpose of the Income Statement is to tell you how profitable a business is.

First, what is Spirit’s Net Revenue?  Net revenue is very important to knowing how a company is doing.  It is essentially the money the company is bringing in each year through sales.  Note the “Top Line” revenue.  In 2010, it was $4.172 billion.  In 2009, it was $4.078 billion.  2008 showed $3.771 billion and 2007 showed $3.860 billion.  Without looking at any other data, what does this tell us about the company?  First, it tells us that the company has grown it’s annual revenue by 7% since 2007 and other than 2008 being a down year for the company (like many companies in 2008), the company has grown every year since 2007.  This is good.  Whether you work for the company, like I do, or you are interested in investing in it, seeing net revenue growth is good.  The average growth for an S&P 500 company over the last ten years has been 3.5% (taking into consideration considerable losses in 2008, 2002 and 2001).

The next thing you will want to look at is Net Income, or “Bottom Line Net Margin.”  This number tells you how much money the company profited after taking out its expenses.  In this case, in 2010, Spirit’s Net Income was $218.9 million.  In plain language, that means that out of $4 billion in sales, the company netted almost $219 million in profit.  That money can then be used to invest further into the business, pay dividends to stock owners, pay off debt, or a whole host of other uses.  Again, seeing a company with strong Net Income is good, and Spirit has averaged $243 million in Net Income over the last four years.

That’s it.  Those two lines on an income statement are the base from which all the rest of your calculations come from.  But they are also the easiest to see and understand.  Net Revenue: How much money did the company bring in?  Net Income: after expenses, how much money did the company make?  These two simple lines require no calculations whatsoever, but can tell you a great deal about the profitability of a company.  There is one more item on an Income Statement that I want to discuss that can be helpful to a potential investor, but it requires you to break out your calculator.  If you are brave enough, continue on.

The last thing I want you to look at is the Gross Margin of a company.  Gross Margin is determined by figuring how much money the company made off of its goods sold.  You take the Net Revenue, subtract the Cost of Goods Sold and divide that by the Net Revenue again.

Gross Margins = (Net Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold)/Net Revenue

Easy as that.  The purpose of looking at Gross Margins is far more interesting.  Gross Margins give you a look into how well the company is run in comparison to its peers.  How much money did the company make off of the revenue it brought in?  How efficient is management at managing their cash flow?  For every dollar that came in, how much did the company spend to make that dollar?  Is this company well-run when compared against other companies in the same industry?  Gross Margin allows you to make an apples to apples comparison.  It is easy to say that Boeing had higher net income than Spirit, but they also have sixteen times the sales ($64 billion to Spirit’s $4 billion).  Comparing these companies in terms of their Margin is a better way to see just how the two companies stack up.

In 2010, Spirit recognized Gross Margins of 13.5%.  Not especially great, but just below average when compared against their results for the last four years.  Boeing, on the other hand, reported a margin of 19.4%.  Embraer showed 2010 Gross Margins of 17.2$%.  So by looking at these figures, you can see that Spirit could use improvement in the efficient use of their cash.  As a (relatively) new company, having cash on hand is important because it means the company can invest that cash into new programs, more employees, expanding, and many other things that are important to a company that is trying to grow.

I hope this post helped you understand what to look for on an Income Statement a little better.  I would like to write a disclaimer, any mistakes made in my calculations were inadvertent and are mine alone.  I pulled this information from the public listings for these companies on Google Finance, and from the S&P 500 page on the same site.  I welcome any comments or corrections.

Mentoring and Making A Difference

Today’s post is all about mentoring.  I have learned in my professional career and personal life that it is important to have mentors and to be a mentor to others.  A professional mentor is someone who acts as a guiding light in your professional life, offering career advice and helping you through career decisions and navigating the ever more complicated business world.  A personal mentor does the same for your personal life.  Often the two are one and the same.  I have been blessed throughout my life with a host of great mentors, some of whom I would like to discuss today.  I have also been lucky enough to have mentored some truly talented people and they have in turn enriched my personal and professional life.

The first professional mentor I ever had was my fraternity father, David.  David and I knew each other in high school, but we did not become friends until we joined the same fraternity in college.  David was a year older than me, and was chosen to be my “fraternity father.”  During my time in Sigma Phi Epsilon, I saw a great many “father/son” pairings, but none of them developed quite the same bond as David and I.  David and I worked great together.  He would often challenge my young mind, and would question my decisions when they needed questioning.  I cannot say I was a perfect 20-year-old, but I can say that I was blessed by David’s guidance.

The greatest lesson he ever taught me was to ask myself, “would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?”  In other words, would an idealistic young Aaron be proud to know that he grows up into the adult Aaron I am today?  Think about how idealistic we are as children.  We believe our parents know everything.  We believe that there is good in everyone.  We believe that, no matter what, things will work out in the end.  As adults, we know that this is not always the truth, but we should still strive to make the world a place our ten-year-old selves would be proud to live in.  Those words still live with me today.  When a I am faced with a difficult decision, these are often the first words that pop into my head.  “Would the boy I was be proud of the man I am today?”  I can honestly say that yes, a ten-year-old Aaron would be proud of the man a thirty-year-old Aaron has become.  This is the same lesson I will teach my son someday.  When it comes time for him to make difficult decisions, he should act with his conscience, no matter what.  If everyone lived this way, I believe the world would be a far better place.

David and I grew to become best friends.  He asked me to be godfather to both of his sons and he stood by me during my wedding.  He is a lifelong friend.  I truly believe that one of us will carry the others casket at our funeral.  We still talk, less frequently, but always with the same fervent passion that has always permeated our discussions.  Whether the subject is politics, work or our family, David has always been a sounding board for me and I in return to him.  It is not just a friendship, it is a mutual mentoring relationship.

More recently, I found a mentor through work in my immediate manager, Marty.  When I was asked to move into my current position at Spirit, I found out just how difficult a job transition can be.  I was asked to take over the leadership of a team that had been in turmoil, with more than half of the team having transferred out of the group, left the company or been fired in the previous six months.  The group was aimless and needed a strong leader.  The company believed that I was that leader, and asked me to step in.  I did so, despite having no experience in purchasing airplane parts in my previous experience with the company.  Until then, all of my experience had been in non-production roles, purchasing capital equipment or MRO parts (maintenance, repair and operations, for the machinery that does the work in the factory).  The two sides of the company, as I came to learn, are worlds apart.  MRO, while challenging, casts a much wider net over what goes on at Spirit.  It touches all aspects of the business except for what goes on in the Production side.  Despite my experience in buying machinery, contracting services or buying spare parts, I was in for a radical learning curve.

Production buying is one of the fastest-paced jobs in the company, especially on the programs I was assigned to.  We currently build thirty-two Boeing 737 airplanes, two 747’s and seven 777’s each month.  Think about that for a second.  On the 737 program alone we build more than one airplane every single day, each with thousands of parts that must be in stock ready to go.  One missed part can throw the production line off, and can throw our entire schedule into chaos.  Not to sound cliche, but in this job, failure is not an option.  What I did not realize at the time was just how challenging this adjustment would be.

Marty was my manager, but he too was new to his position as manager having just been promoted at the same time I was moved into his group.  I quickly learned that he would be a valuable source of knowledge and found myself in his office every morning with a list of questions to help me through my day.  Marty’s patience in teaching me proved to be the difference-maker in my job and with his guidance, I soon found myself navigating the difficult waters of airplane production.  Within six months of taking the position, I had reached a comfort level from which all my successes have emerged.  My team ended up saving the company a great deal of money last year through a simple inventory analysis that would prove to be the standard going forward.  I owe the ease of my transition to Marty, without whom I would have had a far more difficult time being successful.

As I mentioned before, I too have been lucky enough to mentor several young people in my career and personal life.  One of these is my close friend, Chris.  Chris and I met each other in his first year of college, after he joined Sigma Phi Epsilon.  I had graduated by then, but still remained close to many of the undergrads.  I could tell Chris was a special individual.  His outgoing personality endeared him to many and his savvy business sense showed me that he would be very successful someday.  I found myself stopping by the fraternity to sit and talk with him and we would discuss the chapter, school and his goals.  The mentor/mentee relationship developed further when Chris came to work for Bank of America, where I was working as a Personal Banker at the time.  We would often sit and bounce business ideas off of each other and I helped him develop his sales pitch to potential customers.  Chris took my lessons and excelled.  He was often, if not always, the banking center’s top referral generator.  He saw things in customers that others missed, and developed deep, lasting relationships with his customers that always turned into revenue generating opportunities.  Even after he left BofA to work at another bank, we still talked by phone and email often.  He is now a very successful banker at Commerce Bank in Wichita, and we still talk on a weekly basis.

The last mentoring opportunity I want to discuss today came in 2010 when I became a volunteer at the Tulsa Boys Home.  I was placed with a boy named John* (name changed because he is still underage) who had lived a particularly difficult life.  He had been moved from home to home and was a ward of the State of Oklahoma.  Other than that, John was a typical teenager who played basketball, listened to music and talked about girls.  I met with John once a week and we often played basketball for hours (he whooped me, the kid was 15 and played basketball every single day) or lifted weights.  I imparted some of my weight-lifting knowledge to him and he grew to trust in me and confide in me.  John was, and still is, an incredibly intelligent and gifted young man.  He was well spoken and surprisingly well adjusted considering the difficult background he grew up with.  He actually convinced the people in charge of the TBH to reconsider their policies on mp3 players for the boys.  Until then, they had been forbidden but John put together a presentation on how personal mp3 players could be beneficial to the boys and how the restrictions could be amended to allow them to be used by the boys at the top of their class.  In doing so, he encouraged other boys to work harder so they, too, could have their own mp3 players.  John told me his goal was to someday join the military and become a JAG officer, and I hooked him up with some friends who are military JAG.  After about six months, John was moved to a new home away from Tulsa.  We still keep in touch occasionally, and I look forward to the day we can see each other again.  John was, and is, a very special young man with a bright future ahead of him.

I have been truly blessed to have had some amazing mentors who taught me a great deal throughout the years.  That said, I am often surprised at how much I learn from the young men that I mentor.  The mentor/mentee relationship often turns into a reciprocal relationship with me learning just as much from my mentees as I am teaching them.

If you are a mentor, congratulations.  You have my utmost respect, because this is a truly valuable service you can provide to the people you interact with.  If you are not mentoring someone, find someone to mentor.  You can help make someone a better person and in doing so, can help yourself become a better person.  If you are in need of a mentor, go out and find one.  Don’t wait for someone to offer to mentor you, or for the relationship to develop naturally.  Go out and get it, you will be glad that you did.