I finished reading the next chapter in our book couple nights ago and was able to create the mind-map. The chapter on “Attitude” is relatively small and straight-forward.

Hope to see you all on the 6th.

Here’s a link to the mind-map: MindMap for chapter 6, “Attitude”

Since only Ram and I were in attendance, we thought we could talk about Problem Solving again.

We had a great discussion and stayed on course with the help of the Mindmap I created last week. We really enjoyed all the great (funny) stories that Mr. Maxwell referred to in this chapter. ClearContext came up again as we were talking about step 2 of the Problem-Solving process, “Prioritize”. Mr. Maxwell insists that one should face one and only 1 problem at a time to make sure it gets your complete attention. I strongly believe that with the awesome filing and organizing features available in ClearContext, the dream of focus is achievable (at least in Outlook for now). Ram is going to give it a shot.

We ended the conversation on a philosophical note as we tried to dissect and understand the “Socrates method” of problem-solving/analysis/conversation. I plain admit that I don’t understand it completely, although it sounds exotic. I will definitely research further into it and if you are passionate about Socratic communication, please join us next time so we can have a healthy debate.

Here’s the MindMap for chapter 5, Problem Solving. Enjoy!

I visited another local book club meeting Thursday night to pick up some ideas for our own club and got hooked to the book they were discussing that night -

I got so immersed in the book (a little too intellectual for my taste, I must say) that I read 60% of the book overnight and started compiling mindmaps for each of the five minds that Howard describes.

Here’s the first mindmap of the series: The Disciplined Mind. Enjoy!

Mind Map for The Disciplined Mind

As I was reading the December 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, a small but prominent article on page 21 caught my eye.  The article was titled “The Best Advice I Ever Got“.  This article is an excerpt from an interview with Hans-Paul Burkner conducted by Daisy Wademan.

Hans-Paul Burkner, President and CEO of The Boston Consulting Group starts off by saying that good advice often comes in the form of deeds, not words.  He goes onto talk about his role model, Tom Lewis and his leadership style.

The best part of the article, for me, however, was Tom’s subtle articulation of team-building philosophy.  Hans-Paul quotes several examples in the article about how Tom lead extremely diverse and opinionated team members to great success against all odds, even as a very modest and empower leader.

This article is a must read for any developing leader!  Unfortunately, this is copyrighted material from Harvard Press.  So, you can either buy a copy of this article for $4.50 here or borrow a copy of the December 2007 issue of HBR from your local library.

I came across this wonderful and very insightful interview with Sandra J. Sucher in the latest edition of Harvard Business Interview.  In the interview, Sandra shares some very thoughtful and interesting views on how and why bringing executives together to read and discuss literary works can be a potent leadership development tool.

This interview is very relevant to what we do every time we meet and what we hope to accomplish through the book club!

Here’s the link, one more time: http://tinyurl.com/27f7dn

We started using MindMaps to capture the essence of each book chapter.  The results are looking good so far; you can check out the first episode (Chapter 4: Creating Positive Change) right here:

http://bizbookclub.net/mindmaps/developing_the_leader_within/MindMap.php?maptitle=Creating%20Positive%20Change

****(Remember to use Internet Explorer 6.0 or better and download the MindMap plug-in when prompted)****

Problem solving is one of the most important functions of a Leader (especially in my role).  I hope we can get together one of these days and brainstorm further based on this mind map:

http://bizbookclub.net/mindmaps/developing_the_leader_within/MindMap.php?maptitle=Problem%20Solving

****(Remember to use Internet Explorer 6.0 or better and download the MindMap plug-in when prompted)****