The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life (J-B Lencioni Series) by Patrick Lencioni

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (September 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787995320
• ISBN-13: 978-0787995324

From Publishers Weekly

Lencioni (The Three Signs of a Miserable Job) makes an eloquent case for applying business tools to manage scattered and stressful home lives. He observes that even successful people who apply strategies and long-term thinking at work neglect to implement plans and goals for their own families, noting that family chaos is just part of life and so we accept levels of confusion and disorganization and craziness at home that we would not tolerate at work. Lencioni invites readers into the lives of a fictional family, describing how overwhelmed stay-at-home mom Theresa brings greater serenity into her home by integrating business pointers into a three-step plan in which her family identifies what makes them unique, their top priority or rallying cry (a big project that can be worked on in two to six months) and a regular time to discuss their progress, preferably 10 minutes a week. Although Lencioni admits that his own family's experience using these tools has been limited, his book is a worthwhile if brief attempt to grapple with a particularly thorny problem facing overextended families. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Memo to mom: "if my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they'd be out of business." So says the management-consultant dad in this slim but thought-provoking volume. BlackBerrys are blurring the line between work and home. Why not apply business principles to "the most important organization in your life"? It's hard to argue with the idea that family goals should be carefully articulated. Likewise, a weekly family meeting can only help team spirit. But please, let's draw the line at pink slips.

Product Description

In this unique and groundbreaking book, business consultant and New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni turns his sights on the most important organization in our lives—the family. As a husband and the father of four young boys, Lencioni realized the discrepancy between the time and energy his clients put into running their organizations and the reactive way most people run their personal lives. Having experienced the stress of a frantic family firsthand, he and his wife began applying some of the tools he uses with Fortune 500 companies at home, and with surprising results.

From the Inside Flap

The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family
Theresa Cousins had never been so mad at her husband. Ironically, the comment that sparked her anger wasn't really directed at her specifically, and certainly wasn't meant as criticism. In fact, he said it without maliceor emotion.
"If my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they'd be out of business."
In this unique and groundbreaking book, business consultant and New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni turns his sights on the most important organization in our lives—the family. As a husband and the father of four young boys, Lencioni realized the discrepancy between the time and energy his clients put into running their organizations and the reactive way most people run their personal lives. Having experienced the stress of a frantic family firsthand, he and his wife began applying some of the tools he uses with Fortune 500 companies at home, and with surprising results.
Like Lencioni's other books, The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family is written as a fable, using realistic and humorous characters and plotlines that will keep readers turning pages with anticipation while they're learning how to bring sanity to their lives. And they'll be amazed how just a little bit of structure and a few minutes of follow-through each week can make the difference between drudgery and fulfillment at home.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family
"A guidebook for frantic families who want to reduce stress, tension, and pressure, and make the adventure of family life more exuberant."
—Frances Hesselbein, chairman and founding president of Leader to Leader Institute, formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit
Management; former CEO, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.
"This is terrific. Just like he does in his business books, Lencioni combines great fiction with uncommon wisdom and practical advice. He provides simple toolsthat will help any family reduce stress and increase vitality."
—Tim Tassopoulos, senior vice president, operations, Chick-fil-A, Inc.
"By interjecting concepts like strategy and organizational values into families, Lencioni may just revolutionize the way we see our roles as leaders at home. This should be a classic."
—Jim Levine, author, Working Fathers: New Strategies for Balancing Work and Family
"Finally, a family book that doesn't bore me with academic jargon or make me feel inadequate as a parent. I loved it and put it to use immediately."
—Patty DeWitt, school teacher, wife, mother of three
"Patrick's delightful story is as engaging as it is powerful. He elevates the difficult role of managing a family to the place where it belongs."
—Elisa Morgan, CEO, MOPS International; publisher, FullFill

About the Author

Patrick Lencioni is a New York Times best-selling business author of seven books including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. He is also a husband and the father of four boys. As president and founder of The Table Group, Pat has consulted to CEOs and leadership teams in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies and start-ups to churches and non-profits. In addition to his books, Pat has written or been featured in publications like Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Leader to Leader, and USA Today.

The New Realities by Peter F Drucker

The New Realities by Peter F Drucker

Firnando Chau Review

The Logic of Life: Uncovering The New Economics of Everything by Tim Harford

The Logic of Life: Uncovering The New Economics of Everything by Tim Harford

The website http://timharford.com/logicoflife/



Table of Contents:-
Introduction
Chapter One: Introducing the Logic of Life
Chapter Two: Las Vegas
Chapter Three: Is Divorce Underrated?
Chapter Four: Why Your Boss is Overpaid
Chapter Five: In the Neighborhood
Chapter Six: The Dangers of Rational Racism
Chapter Seven: The World is Spiky
Chapter Eight: Rational Revolutions
Chapter Nine: A Million Years of Logic
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

---


About the Book



“Life often seems to defy logic. When a prostitute agrees to unprotected sex, or a teenage criminal embarks on a burglary, or a smoker lights another cigarette, we seem to be a million miles from what we would call rational behaviour. None of this makes sense – or does it? Tim Harford thinks it does. And by weaving stories from locations as diverse as a Las Vegas casino and a Soho speed-date together with insights from an ingenious new breed of economist, he aims to persuade you that we are all, in fact, surprisingly logical. Reading this book, you’ll discover that the unlikeliest of people – racists, drug addicts, revolutionaries and rats – comply with economic logic, always taking account of future costs and benefits, even if they don’t quite realise it. It even explains why your boss is overpaid…”

The Logic of Life was named a 2008 book of the year by both The Economist and The Financial Times.


Other Reviews

Financial Times and Slate.com columnist Harford (The Undercover Economist) provides an entertaining and provocative look at the logic behind the seemingly irrational. Arguing that rational behavior is more widespread than most people expect, Harford uses economic principles to draw forth the rational elements of gambling, the teenage oral sex craze, crime and other supposedly illogical behaviors to illustrate his larger point. Utilizing John von Neumann and Thomas Schelling's conceptions of game theory, Harford applies their approach to a multitude of arenas, including marriage, the workplace and racism. Contrarily, he also shows that individual rational behavior doesn't always lead to socially desired outcomes. Harford concludes with how to apply this thinking on an even bigger scale, showing how rational behavior shapes cities, politics and the entire history of human civilization. Well-written with highly engaging stories and examples, this book will be of great interest to Freakonomics and Blink fans as well as anyone interested in the psychology of human behavior. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Money Wise: How to Create, Grow, and Preserve Your Wealth by A. Michael Lipper & Douglas R. Sease

About the Book:-
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press (September 2, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312373775
ISBN-13: 978-0312373771

Firnando Chau Review

Amazon Review

From Publishers Weekly

Musings on the creation, preservation and use of wealth devolve into rambling in this personal finance guide from a seasoned Wall Street investor and inventor of the Lipper Averages for mutual funds. In his search for the eternal truths of creating wealth, Lipper addresses the needs of only the very wealthiest Americans, suggesting that investors hire a supermanager to watch over their regular advisers if they have more than three. Focusing on the emotional and psychological aspects of wealth management, Lipper broods upon the reasons why people invest, wealth psychology and the various investment personalities (absolute, confident, uncertain, relative, fiduciary, bored, guilty). In a book marked by a paucity of practical suggestions, readers will likely notice—and be dismayed by—the lack of research to support the author's claims. While Lipper competently addresses the responsibilities of great wealth—including handling charitable donations and coming to grips with one's own mortality through decisions regarding wills, trusts and heirs, the long-winded slog to get there is not worth the haul. (Sept.) 

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

From the New York Times

And after reading the book, you may not come away with new insights about how to select someone to help you manage your money, or about how to invest in general.

You have probably heard views like that for years. So what makes this book by the founder of Lipper Analytical Services — now Lipper, a division of Reuters, which provides information on mutual fund performance — so worthwhile?

It’s the unusual path he has chosen to follow. These days, most investment books are trying to make the not-so-rich rich, with titles like “The Automatic Guide to Making Money in the Coming Crash” (my concoction). But Mr. Lipper has taken a different approach, by not aiming at people who are trying to become wealthy. He has written this book, with the help of Douglas R. Sease, a former editor at The Wall Street Journal, for those who are already well off and want to stay that way.

Such people are likely to find his straightforward and often unconventional advice extremely appealing. And so, too, might the rest of us, who can take advantage of at least some of the strategies that Mr. Lipper offers.

Consider the approach he suggests for one of the most fundamental components of financial planning: figuring out your net worth. 

Typically, as part of this exercise, you are told to make a conservative guess of what your house would sell for today, deduct the mortgages against it, and add the difference to the asset side of your personal ledger.

The problem with that, Mr. Lipper argues, is twofold: Few people can count on converting their house into cash quickly, so whatever equity they have is far from a liquid asset, especially these days. More to the point, if you sell your house you still need a place to live (unless, of course, it is a second home). That expense — a liability on the balance sheet — is usually not included in the statement of net worth.

Not only do people overestimate their assets, Mr. Lipper argues, but they also underestimate their liabilities.

“Do you intend to fund education expenses for your children, or grandchildren?” Mr. Lipper asks. “Is your health going to be perfect until you suddenly drop dead? Do you intend to travel, eat in fine restaurants, and engage in other lifestyle indulgences after you retire? They’re all liabilities on your personal balance sheet, and many of them are, like some of your assets, difficult to estimate. Yet it is important that you make the effort because your estimate of your liabilities drives the way in which you arrange your assets.”

Other conventional wisdom when it comes to wealth is also misleading, he says.

Yes, of course, you want to invest in good companies with strong fundamentals, but Mr. Lipper says that “one of the rules that I try to follow is not to make a serious investment if I cannot find someone who has been in the same room with the principals of the company under consideration and seen them under some pressure.”

Mr. Lipper spends a great deal of time urging investors to be truly honest with themselves as they think both about their financial futures and their abilities. 

Three quick examples make the point:

•“I know most people talk about cutting back on expenses when they retire, but they seldom make significant reductions.” His advice is to figure that once you quit work, you will continue to spend as you do now, and to plan accordingly.

•“Most investors at one time or another in their lifetime try their hand at trading stocks or other financial instruments. If you pay attention to nothing else I have written, pay attention to this: Don’t trade with a lot of money.” You are not likely to be good at trading, he says, no matter how smart you think you are.

•“The biggest mistake that I see people of wealth making is having a single-minded focus on investment returns with no thought about their spending patterns. At the end of the day, expense control plays a larger role in the success of a financial program than the entire array of specific investments.” His point is that you can certainly offset lower returns in the market, by living on less.

HIS thoughts even extend to raising children.

“If your child really wants an advanced degree in poetry,” he says, “consider that you might want to use the assets that would pay for the degree to instead set up a trust to help pay the cost of living until the child is economically independent.”

One last point also makes the book stand out: his focus on constantly asking what kind of financial legacy you wish to leave. 

Competent estate attorneys can create your will and establish the necessary trusts, but it is up to you to decide whom or what you want to benefit.

The result of all this is a book that may help you preserve whatever money you have and think carefully about what you want to do with it.

—Paul R. Brown

From The Seeker

After many years of discussion with family, friends and colleagues, A. Michael Lipper, CFA, has written a book, Money Wise: How to Create, Grow, and Preserve Your Wealth (September 2008, St. Martin's Press) with former Wall Street Journal Money and Markets Editor Douglas Sease. The book is a delight to read not only for what it tells you about investing per se but because it's a witty tome about life's lessons. By the way, these lessons apply to investing, too.

Many clients of wealth managers will know the Lipper name, attached as it is to many mutual fund indices and fund performance statistics, often with the phrase, “according to Lipper.” Reuters bought Lipper's data company, Lipper Analytical Services, Inc. in 1998, now known as Lipper, Inc. As president of Lipper Advisory Services, Inc., and Lipper Consulting Services, Inc., Mike Lipper continues to engage in his philanthropic endeavors, to manage money for a select group of wealthy individuals and institutional investors, and to consult with financial companies.

Lipper is a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the book, he talks about what he's learned in the course of getting to know the physicists and professors there, and the parallels between physics and investing.

He sat down with Wealth Manager's Editor in Chief, Kate McBride, at his home in New Jersey in early June. [Full disclosure: The writer has known Mike Lipper for the better part of two decades, and worked for him for many years.]

In the book, you talk about science and the uncertainty of life, about change, and this ties in with your work with Caltech and the physicists there. How do you draw some of the parallels between physics and investing?

It has to do with probability and certainty. In physics you hope to discover or use a law that is totally repeatable and that anyplace in the world, somebody else can repeat it and get the same result not only today but forever. We know now [that] some of the past scientific laws weren't forever, but you're looking for [the ability to reproduce results] 100 percent of the time.

In investing, a good investor wins, in terms of dollar impact, something more than 50 percent of the time. A professional should win 60 percent and a great investor 67 percent–two-thirds of the time. You can look at Buffett, Soros, Neff, Peter Lynch. When you talk with any of them privately, they talk about the fish that got away, so while searching for investment truths we have to learn to deal with investment odds. The odds on totally replicating the past [are not good]; it's the ability to absorb error that is the way to stay in the game long enough for when things come right. The big tragedy of declines is that people sell out and say, “Never again,” and they miss the upsides, and historically, in this country the upsides have been bigger than the downsides.

What got you interested in doing the work that you're doing with Caltech in the first place?

Like with almost everything in my life, it was accidental–I had heard of the school but really didn't know it. A neighbor and good friend is a graduate, bachelor's, master's and doctorate and invited [my wife] and I to attend what they call Caltech Associates Dinners where they bring in professors to talk about what they're doing, and we were fascinated–[it's] a whole different world than what I was used to–even though I was at one point an electronics analyst. This stuff was way above anything that I knew anything about, and I was impressed. I can go in there and learn something from very smart people–a lot of what I've learned is not immediately applicable. It's a different point of view; that they are the manager of the Jet Propulsion Lab opens up the concept of space and how a tiny error here on earth means that you miss a planet by zillions.

The stuff they're doing in neuroeconomics is fascinating. The theory is that they can identify the portions of the brain that make decisions–and quite probably economic decisions. Whether those are investment decisions, more work's got to be done. They have a game theory group–fascinating work. Bottom line, [they're] just a bunch of very bright people, and it happened...

A Sense of urgency by John P. Kotter

About the Book:-

Hardcover: 128 pages

Publisher: Harvard Business Press; 1 edition (September 3, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1422179710

ISBN-13: 978-1422179710

From getAbstract.com

• Why few organizations operate with a “sense of urgency”
• Why this is a problem
• How to use four techniques to foster a high-urgency culture

Complacent organizations simply cannot keep pace with today’s accelerating rate of change. Resting on your laurels is no longer viable. Competitors, evolving markets and technological developments will swamp organizations that try to sit things out on the sidelines. Today, organizations must adopt the “fierce urgency of now” ethos that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made famous in the 1960s. Business expert John P. Kotter explains why. His book tells leaders how to foster a “sense of urgency” among their employees. He contrasts “true urgency” with “false urgency” and discusses why negative pressure is counterproductive.getAbstract recommends his clear, enthusiastic book to executives who want to motivate employees, meet crucial goals and effect change in their organizations.

Firnando Chau Review

From Publishers Weekly

Author and international business consultant Kotter (Leading Change, Our Iceberg is Melting) returns with an engaging look at companies that need to overcome a lack of urgency-or a surfeit of complacency-with a proactive agenda. Kotter dissects well his seemingly simple premise, using his professional experiences to examine the inner workings of real companies. Kotter defines his terms with clear language and bullet lists, convincingly asserting that urgency "is not driven by a belief that... everything is a mess but, instead, that the world contains great opportunities and great hazards"; it is, in fact, "a compulsive determination to move, and win, now." Among suggested tactics: bring the outside world into overly insular work teams; make your deeds consistent with your words; view crises as potential opportunities; and disseminate data that "feels interesting, surprising, or dramatic," as opposed to "information so antiseptic that it flows in and out of short-term memory with great speed." Great examples illustrate real-life frustrations and successes, and a special section on dealing with the nay-sayers is full of practical ploys to overcome dissent and kill complacency. 

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Change can strike fear in the hearts and minds of businesspeople, whether frontline employee or C-suite executive. Harvard Business School professor Kotter is the master of change, hammering home his eight principles straightforwardly (Leading Change, 1996) and via fable (Our Iceberg Is Melting, 2006). Now Kotter identifies the single biggest factor to successful change, which also happens to be his number-one principle: creating a true sense of urgency. In a way that will resonate with those charged with carrying out new corporate strategies or implementing transformation, he details one streamlined strategy—appeal to the head and the heart—with four supporting tactics: bring the outside reality in, behave with true urgency every day, selectively look for upside possibilities in crises, and effectively confront what he calls the no-no’s. Stories accompany all; unfortunately, a number are repeats from The Heart of Change (2002) and stripped of detail for confidentiality. Charts and chapter summaries help connect theory to the practical question: How do we move people to act? An easy, quick read that provides good elucidation of what makes change work. --Barbara Jacobs