Yes, there was a long gap between the two meetings, but that actually served us well. I had a lot of time to mull over the diverse and frank opinions expressed during that night’s conversations.

For a change, there was a humongous opinion difference in every topic we discussed that night. Right from providing encouragement to understanding what motivates people. We extensively studied some of the characteristics of our colleagues in an attempt to understand what works and what does not. The conversation, by no means, came to a conclusion. Case in point: we covered only a fifth of the chapter that night!

Some take-away points from that night:

• We will soon be switching to afternoon meetings (same weekdays) because majority of the regular attendees are from Fiserv-Hillsboro anyway and there has been a growing demand to cater to the family folks
• We are going to focus more on actionable items while debating the pros and cons of the countless ideas that seem to spring during the conversations
• I will add a new section on the blog to collect these actionable items

Anyway, I loved the energy and opinion differences that night and hope to continue on that path for a long time to come.

Here’s a link to the MindMap for our all important chapter: Chapter 7: People

I just finished reading the next chapter titled “Developing your most appreciable asset: People” from our book.  I have to say I am pretty pumped up:)  This is one of the biggest chapters in the book and obviously resulted in the largest mind-map so far!  There are a lot of generalizations and possible hot topics in this chapter and personally this topic is very close to my heart.  Honestly, if you missed all the previous meetings and even if you cannot make it to the remaining 3 meetings (for this book), I highly recommend joining us tomorrow.  We can have an explosive conversation on this topic…

Hope to see you all tomorrow.

Here’s a link to the mind-map: Chapter 7: People

We discussed the importance of “Attitude” in our daily lives, especially for leaders.  As with many of Mr. Maxwell’s principles and ideas, this topic was inspirational and the stories he used were relevant.

Rajeev brought a very unique perspective to many of the principles through his association with Chinmaya Mission Study Group.  Through his opinion, he instilled some much need humility and spirituality in me

We agreed that reinforcing any of these principles was one of the most important tasks for them to be most effective and long-lasting.

Happy reading and we hope to see you all on February 20th as we explore chapter 7: People.

Here’s the link to yesterday’s MindMap one more time: Chapter 6: Attitude

In this chapter Mr. Gardner focuses mostly on respecting people from other cultures and backgrounds; which is critical, again in a global workplace.  Mr. Gardner focuses on the education of respect right from infancy to adulthood.

I probably didn’t capture the entire chapter into the MindMap because there is a lot of detail around specific examples; so you might be better off reading the chapter anyway.

But just to give you a head-start on the topic, here’s the link to the MindMap: MindMap for the Respectful Mind

The third in the series of the “Five Minds for the Future” MindMaps is here!

Although I want to be more on the creative side, I end up being the synthesizing kind most of the time; not a bad outcome, but I strongly believe that truly innovative and revolutionary changes emerge from a creative mind only!  So, I am hoping I can stretch my creating mind as I reach my mid-30s

Hopefully this chapter and the MindMap can help me and other people in the same boat. 

Anyway, here is the link to the MindMap: MindMap for the Creating Mind

The second in the series of the “Five Minds for the Future” MindMaps is here!

Check out synthesizing mind, which I believe is one of the most important in the 21st century of globalization and limitless information!

Here’s the link to the MindMap: MindMap for the Synthesizing Mind

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

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)****