Three Star Leadership

Three Star Leadership Letter

The Three Star Leadership Letter will arrive in your email box about 50 times a year. The blog is the place for commentary and opinion, so the newsletter contains very brief tips and pointers to resources and information. The idea is that you will be able to read the whole thing in five minutes or less and get something of value.

Click here to subscribe to Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Here's a sample of material from a recent letter.

The Princess and the Timer

Once upon a time there was a Princess who suffered an injury to the L3 and L4 nerves. Even walking became difficult.

As part of her therapy, the Wizard of Chiropractery suggested (with all due respect) that the Princess begin walking for fourteen minutes in the Enchanted Bog Garden. He suggested (with all due respect) that she add two minutes to her walk each day and track how far she walked.

The Princess took her Magic Digital Timer to the Enchanted Bog Garden and walked with her manservant the Dog Walker. On the first day, in fourteen minutes she made it almost half way around the Garden and back.

The next day she added two more minutes. Each day she walked a little farther. She began walking faster trying to cover a bit more ground in the same time each day. Then her back began to hurt again.

The Wizard of Chiropractery had sage advice. "You are pushing yourself too hard," he admonished (with all due respect).

And so the Princess began walking at a comfortable pace. She left the timer at the Palace. She walked farther and probably faster, but she was not driven by the timer.

Measuring performance and trying to beat your previous best can be a good thing. But sometimes it's best to get rid of the measurements and just walk through the Enchanted Garden.

Most of the time we define our own goals and our own measurements. We can change them when they no longer work.

Web Resource: Alltop

Alltop is a new project of Guy Kawasaki. Here's how they describe themselves. "You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a 'digital magazine rack' of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed." I'm honored that my Three Star Leadership Blog appears in the Career section.

Reading Resource: Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices

Peter Drucker wrote reams of wonderful, helpful stuff. Some of it is buried inside books that don't get read much anymore. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices is one of those books. Chapter 39 is titled "Controls, Control, and Management" and it's the best single review of how to create and use effective measurements and controls that there is. This chapter, alone, is worth the price of the book.

Working Supervisor's Support Kit

I've taken everything I know about how to do a great job as a supervisor and put in into this e-kit that contains a book, a workbook, forms, and reminders to help you get better. If you're a supervisor, if you train supervisors, or if there's a supervisor in your life you care about, you should check it out.

That's a sample. You'll get similar stuff 50 times a year or so if you subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Letter. My goal is to give you something helpful that you can read in less than five minutes.

We use a double opt-in system. So when you subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Letter you will receive an email asking you to re-confirm that you want to receive it. If you want to receive it, use the confirmation link in the newsletter. If not, just delete the email.

One more note. We do not archive the newsletter contents on the site. That's because the newsletter contains lots of links, pointers and other short items that would require a huge effort to keep current. If you've seen something in a newsletter but you've can't find it, email me using the form below and I'll hunt it down for you.

Click here to subscribe to Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.