Book Review: QBQ

For emerging leaders, the idea of personal accountability can be uncomfortable - particularly if you come from a background where "being accountable" meant being in trouble.

Real accountability, however, is an empowering experience. It's about realizing and owning your own responsibility and ability in the world - the exact opposite of the blame game that so often passes for accountability.

Personal accountability is the topic in today's book review subject: QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and In Life by John Miller.

The Question Behind the Question is a clever way of talking about how often we automatically cast ourselves as victims and how we can reframe our situation by asking a different question. Specifically, Miller suggests a formula for asking questions that puts you at the center of the action and highlights your ability to act.

This way of asking questions about our circumstances is transformational. At first, you might feel like a powerless victim of circumstances, but reframing your circumstances in the form of the QBQ puts the power to act firmly back in your hands. It is a simple process that yields huge benefits.

The QBQ is not a blame-shifting device. It is not a "blame the victim" way of thinking, but a "hey, I don't have to be a victim - I can do something here" change in thinking.

I recommend the Question Behind the Question if you:

• are a newer leader or manager
• feel trapped or helpless to outside forces
• feel overwhelmed
• feel ignored, taken for granted, or abused
• feel like you're going in circles

This book is a very quick read and it doesn't take long to grasp the main idea and method. Don't let the ease of the idea fool you. If you regularly experience the feelings I've described, this can be a life-changing book!

For an even more in-depth resource on personal empowerment and responsibility, you might try: The Oz Principle

Happy Reading!

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David shares twenty years experience teaching, coaching, leading, and managing in youth service, education advocacy, city governance, and faith-based nonprofits. He currently serves as Chief Operating Officer for Colorado UpLift and enjoys helping others discover and realize their own potential.

Book Review: Good to Great

This week's book review is really a two-for-one. Jim Collins' Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't was a follow-up to an earlier work called Built to Last. In part, Good to Great is the focus of this review, but really, of all the books in this series, the most powerful may be Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great.

Collins wrote the Social Sectors Monograph after many nonprofits asked how he would apply the concepts of Good to Great to Social Sector organizations where shareholder profit is not available as a metric.

His answer to that question is page-for-page one of the most richly packed 35 pages you'll ever read. I recommend the monograph for any manager or leader, whether engaged in nonprofit or for-profit business.

In Good to Great and the Social Sector you will find a distillation of Collins research of thousands of organizations and his team's conclusions about the critical factors that help organizations make the transitions from "good" to enduring quality and impact. 

One of the most critical points Collins makes in this monograph is that a vital key to lasting organizational impact is discipline - and that discipline is not an automatic characteristic of for-profits or nonprofits.

Rather, discipline is a characteristic of great organizations - and is too often lacking from businesses of any stripe.

He goes on to suggest that social sector organizations can assemble a core set of metrics to which they consistently hold themselves accountable. I once heard Collins express the idea like this: You want to assemble a body of evidence such that a jury would have to find you guilty of being effective.

In my opinion, this principle works as well in for-profits as nonprofits. Impact is more than profit.

Good to Great (and the Social Sector) emphasizes a combination of leadership and management principles found in enduringly great organizations. These businesses feature leaders with a "paradoxical combination of humility and professional will". 

The organizations' management is very clear and stays focused on what drives their economic engine - the thing they are able to do better than anyone else in their sphere, yet they change quickly and firmly when innovation is required.

Leaders and managers work together to create a culture of excellence, discipline, results, and impact through a series of small wins which build into momentum with a life of its own.

There is something for nearly every reader in Good to Great and the Social Sector. The section of leadership and results-oriented accountability alone is worth the price of this very small book for any growing leader and manager.

Happy Reading!

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David shares twenty years experience teaching, coaching, leading, and managing in youth service, education advocacy, city governance, and faith-based nonprofits. He currently serves as Chief Operating Officer for Colorado UpLift and enjoys helping others discover and realize their own potential.

Four Practices of Effective Managers

Photo by ntr23

At its most basic, management involves a few set of practices that are deceptively simple. As the old saying goes: it's not hard, it's just hard work. When we struggle as managers, it is often because we have failed to do one of the following:

1. Set clear expectations.

Most often when I observe managers (including myself!) experiencing difficulties, it is because we have not established clear expectations. Expectations come from many sources: the team itself, the manager, the organization. Regardless, if they are not clear, they will not be met.

2. Train and equip.

After clear expectations, the next pitfall is in assuming that everyone has the knowledge or skills to meet those expectations. Ensure your team members are set up for success!

3. Reinforce expectations.

Most of us are flooded with information. Think about how easily you get distracted. We all need reminders from time to time about where we're going and why we're going there.

4. Celebrate and practice accountability.

Accountability doesn't only mean discipline - real accountability celebrates our accomplishments and gives us course corrections as needed. We can easily demotivate our teams by failing to acknowledge success or by not holding everyone accountable.

Whenever I find myself challenged with a management issue, I first look to these four steps for a solution.

*Bonus Practice: #5. Get out of the way.

If you have a team of motivated people and are consistently practicing the first four steps, it's time to get out of their way and watch what they accomplish!

David M. Dye

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David shares twenty years experience teaching, coaching, leading, and managing in youth service, education advocacy, city governance, and faith-based nonprofits. He currently serves as Chief Operating Officer for Colorado UpLift and enjoys helping others discover and realize their own potential.