The Introverted Leader -- book review

Cover via Amazon

Jennifer B. Kahnweiler is a "champion for introverted professionals," her website says. I've just finished reading her book, The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength. I really appreciated the book's approach. Most people giving advice to introverts start from the assumption that introversion is some kind of disease. Don't worry, there's a cure... or you'll have to grow out of it. I don't want to be cured, thank you very much and I don't want to grow out of who I am. What I want is a way to deal more effectively with situations where introversion is preventing me from achieving some of my goals.

Kahnweiler appears to have a much greater understanding of the introverts' strengths and as the title indicates, provides an approach that builds on the introverts' strengths.

Some of the advice appears to be a little contradictory. To have "presence," you have to be yourself, but you may also have to learn to "act" in order to push yourself to pretend that you're not paralyzed in social settings. I can reconcile that by trying to act like the confident and assertive version of me that I can imagine but doesn't show up very often.

Most of the advice is very sensible and not too difficult to act upon if you don't try to do it all at once. I really liked the chapter about "managing up." Whether your boss is an introvert or an extrovert, being proactive in managing the relationship is very likely to pay off.

The basic framework for the book is the 4 Ps of Preparation, Presence, Push and Practice, but the chapters are arranged around specific situations, such as public speaking, project management and meetings, all situations where success may require introverts to push themselves beyond their comfort zone. The 4 P's are repeated throughout the book and you can't help but remember them and what they refer to. I liked that I'll remember 80% of the advice just by remembering the 4 P's as a trigger for much more. The sections of the book are peppered with short anecdotes, descriptions of real settings and people who have either struggled with various aspects of introversion or found ways to succeed not so much in spite of introversion but using some of their introvert advantages.

Nowadays, you can't write a nonfiction book and hope to sell lots of copies without an accompanying consulting practice, and a blog (The Introverted Leader). It's more likely that the consulting practice existed before the book and the book is a way to reach out to potential customers (as well as a source of income).

I also picked up a few references mentioned in the book:

• Annette Simons, Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins.
• Jay Conger, "The Art of Persuasion," Harvard Business Review.
  
• Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed.
• Scott Mastley, The Confidence Zone.
• Cliff Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points. (a book and a blog)
  

Brainstorming a Book Title

Book titles are important ... They sell the book. Or is it the cover that sells the book? Forget about all the work put into writing something of quality. It's all in the cover and the title (?).

I've been stuck on Learning Log as the title for my book, but I've never been 100% sure that it was the right title. In the process of thinking through what would be an author's introduction to the book, writing a short white paper about how KM instructors might use it in structured training, and thinking about how to "sell" the concept of the book to a publisher, I've had to look at the book from a 50,000 feet perspective.

Talking about the book to people has forced me to explain and to focus on the big picture. That in itself has been very useful.

As I was doing all this thinking and drafting an author's introduction, I was reminded of a book that had a significant influence on me a while back, Donald A. Schon's The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.

It dawned on me that the main character in Learning Log is a "reflective KM practitioner," or at least she tries to be.

Now I have more than more titles to consider and I still don't think I've got the right one.

• Learning Log: A Knowledge Management Novel (current title)
  
• The Reflective Knowledge Management Practitioner: A Novel

Let's go a little crazy now!

• RKMP Certified: A Novel
• Experienced RKMP Wanted: A Novel
• The Learning Organization: A Novel
• The KM Practitioner's Guide to Thinking while Doing: A Novel
• The (learning) Loop: a Knowledge Management Novel
• A Year in the Life of a KM Practitioner: A Novel
• The Knowledge Manager: A Novel
• Deputy Chief Learning Officer: A Novel
• The Deputy: A Knowledge Management Novel

Wow... now I can't stop. There could be variations in the subtitle.

• ... An Introductory Novel
• ... A Novel for Beginners
• ... A KM 101 Novel
• ... A Novel to Demystify Knowledge Management
• ... A Novel for KM Practitioners
• ... A Practitioner's Novel
• ... A Novel Introduction to Knowledge Management

A hint of humor wouldn't hurt.

Related resources:

• How to Write a Book Title Using a Few Simple Brainstorming Techniques
• Brainstorming a Working Title
• Six Keys to Choosing Your Book Title
• Seven Ways to Select a Book Topic that Sells
• Eight Ways to.... (just kidding!)
• Selecting and Protecting the Title of Your Book
• The Importance of Selecting a Great Book Title
• Choosing the Title for Your Book
• How to Choose the Right Title for Your Book
• Choosing the Right Name for Your Story
• How to Choose the Title for Your Story: Four Tips for Naming Your Books
  
• Choosing the Best Title for Your Story

Now think for a second... aren't these article titles a reflection of how I searched for information on the web? Wouldn't you want your book title to reflect how people might search for topics related to your book?

There are so many people on the web with advice, it's amazing. I feel perfectly justified in adding to the cacophony.

Here is my piece of advice regarding book titles: If you are trying to find a good title for your book, brainstorm first, then read all the advice articles listed above (and more). Reading the advice first might kill your creativity.

Book Review: The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance

I can't remember exactly when I started this quest to better understand didactic fiction. And I'm not keeping track of how many business novels and business parables I've read to date.



At times, I've used the term "business novels," but didactic fiction covers much more than business novels. This latest didactic novel gives me an opportunity to touch on the distinction. The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, belongs to the broader didactic fiction category but it is not a business novel. It is an "economics novel."

Business novels and business parables are typically found in the business books section at the library. They tell the story of an entrepreneur or an employee, within the context of a company, a business. On the shelves of my local library, The Invisible Heart was classified as fiction rather than a business book.

There are two reasons for not placing it in the business section:

1) It's a real novel with a plot, conflict, tension, suspense, and interesting characters. Some business novels and especially business parables are thin on these key elements of a good novel.

2) It's about economic theory and policy, and while it touches on the role of private enterprise, it is not about any particular enterprise or business; That being said, it would have been fitting to place it in the section with economics books rather than fiction.

The author is Russell Roberts, professor of economics as George Mason University. The Invisible Heart is Roberts' second "novel," published in 2001.

The novel is accompanied by a Teachers' Guide, available on the author's website, and there are resources listed at the end of the book.

The intent of the book is clearly to teach key economic principles. In that sense, it is very didactic -- in a good way. The "teaching" is done primarily through dialogue (think Plato's Socratic dialogues), with the main character being under pressure to explain his views about economics, constantly being challenged and put to the test.

The conversation is one-sided, reflecting the author's intent and bias. So, while the purpose is clearly didactic, the reader doesn't need to be passionate about economic theory and policy to read through the book. The story stands on its own, economic theory or not.

I hope the author uses the novel in his own economics classes. The story may be partially autobiographical, or at least inspired by his own experience as an economics professor.

Russel Roberts' first novel, The Choice: A Fable of Free trade and Protectionism was published in 1994. His most recent novel, published in 2008, is The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity.

This novel is the closest I have found to what I am trying to achieve: a real novel with a story that stands on its own merits; a story I kept reading even when the economic theory and policy discussion didn't keep my interest.

Interested in knowing more about the story itself, check out this review by another reader.

The quest never ends. As I was reading one of the reviews of the latest Russell Roberts book, I discovered other "economics novels."

Next steps:

• Find copies of the other two Russell Roberts novels;
• Explore the Henry Spearman mystery series: Murder at the Margin; A Deadly Indifference; Fatal Equilibrium;
• Look for more, find some "Government Novels": Atlantis: A Novel about Economic Government
  

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• Didactic ... in a good way (knowledgefordevelopment.com)

Book Review: Ghost Story: A Modern Business Fable

Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman is the president of a consulting company -- Kinsey Consulting Services -- specializing in change management and a well known speaker on human capital issues. She is also the author of Ghost Story: A Modern Business Fable.

As the subtitle indicates, the story is told as a business fable. I have tried elsewhere to highlight the range of formats and sub-genres within the broader concept of didactic fiction (see Didactic Fiction and Related Narrative Forms). As a business fable, it is very similar to Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson.

I enjoyed reading the book but if you are interested in getting a sense of the approach taken by the author, you can view a short video clip titled "Why People Don't Share Knowledge" on the author's website. The clip introduces one of the characters and one specific issue: knowledge is power vs. knowledge sharing is power.

The main character is a low level employee (Dot, short for Dorothy) who is suddenly given a challenging task that she doesn't feel prepared for. The story takes Dot on an adventure in a parallel world (where characters include a giant finger -- hint: finger pointing behavior) where she has to face another challenge (becoming a short-term consultant). In the process of addressing that challenge, she essentially learns key lessons that will be particularly useful in addressing her real world challenge. In addition, she gains the self-confidence she needs to take on her next challenge successfully.

Most of the characters in the parallel world have exaggerated "qualities" that illustrate the types of less than productive behaviors that can be found in any organization (knowledge hoarding, finger pointing, etc... ) and a lot of the plot revolves around miscommunication, misunderstandings, lack of trust, and internal politics. The organization's well being is in jeopardy and Dot's first task is to solve a mystery involving a ghost. To solve the mystery, Dot does a sort of organizational assessment and eventually uncovers the root causes of all the dysfunctional behaviors that were putting the organization at risk. As the story progresses, Dot also collects messages that turn out to be key rules that should guide knowledge sharing behavior. The rules are essentially the business lessons or "moral of the story".

I didn't come across any specific suggestion on how the book might be used in an organizational context, but it's a quick and easy read at just over 100 pages. It would be easy to assign it to a group as reading and to organize a group discussion around it.

When I first heard of this book a couple of weeks ago, I thought it might be the closest thing to what I am trying to write. I almost panicked thinking that perhaps what I was trying to write had already been done. After all it deals with a knowledge sharing theme and the story is told in a didactic fiction format. Now that I've read it, it's become clear that it has little to do with what I am trying to write. I'm not sure if that's good news or bad news.

Propinquity... among other influence factors

Propinquity -- my new word of the day -- has to do with proximity. The "propinquity effect" refers to the impact of proximity -- or physical distance -- on human relationships. This has a clear impact on team building and efforts at fostering collaboration within organizations. How do geographically dispersed, mobile and sometimes entirely virtual teams and organizations succeed when the propinquity effect would suggest that they are bound to fail?

I came across the word "propinquity" in Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. Interestingly, I picked it up thinking that it would be a typical business / management book with lots of anecdotes and stories from the U.S. Corporate sector and the reality was quite different. It is full of examples from the social sector. All of the international examples (Grameen Bank, Soul City, Guinea worm) were familiar to me. The book doesn't mention the term social marketing but many of the examples are clearly related to social marketing concepts. It does refer to social capital.

After reading both Made to Stick and Influencer, I realized that most books published these days -- or perhaps it's only those that are successful -- have a very similar structure. They're structured around six key concepts or success strategies. Case Studies (examples) are used throughout and each core case is referred to multiple times, across chapters.