Schaffner Media Partners

How many times in your career has your team decided they needed a bold new strategy to recapture lost momentum or get unstuck from the myriad hassles of daily operations? So you go on a retreat, get a facilitator, talk for hours about a strategic plan, form committees, summarize your findings to the group. Someone writes the plan, doles out assignments, and you’ve signed up for a burst of change.

How often did that work?

In his new book Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries (Simon & Schuster Free Press April 2011), Peter Sims suggests starting very small, with just a “little bet.” As he explains:

“a little bet is a low-risk action to discover, develop, and test an idea. Little bets are the at the center of an approach to get to the right idea…without getting stymied by perfectionism, risk-aversion, or excessive planning.” (CONTINUE READING)…

Occasionally, if you ignore the book title, you will find a great, useful book. That is the case with Hank Gilman’s recently published You Can’t Fire Everyone And Other Lessons from An Accidental Manager.

In contrast to the title (which I found off putting, and off message), Gilman, a deputy managing editor at Fortune Magazine, never fired people cavalierly, and was hardly an accidental manager. He was driven to be a top editor and became one early in his career.

But put that aside, and you’ll find a book with fresh insights for managers on how to read and handle creatives, lone wolves and other people who have no interest in being part of a “team.” Gilman explains how to lead “teams of rivals”–journalists, editors, and other creative professionals who work largely alone, who want to be or have to co-exist with stars, and who create a record of performance tied to their own names. CONTINUE READING…