Why did you choose to read Traction as the first book for #MyHeightInBooks?
The bottom book of the stack would need to have excellent grip to the ground to ensure the pile to come doesn't fall over. The word nerd in my couldn't go past a book named Traction being the first book to read.
Traction is regarded as something of a business classic and had been sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of years having ordered it on the recommendation of a friend. It felt like a core reading I needed to be across.
Traction provides a series of mud maps or templates on how to run a business. From how to structure a meeting, writing an organisational chart,? how to solve problems, how to create accountability,? how to develop vision and core values, it's all there.
Yes! It was interesting reading it now with a mature business as opposed to a few years ago when things were a bit more helter-skelter. I feel it is best to be read by small business owners who are three or more years into their business ownership journey in order to most readily be able to apply the key points.
What - specifically - did you learn form it?
These are some of the highlighted phrases were I've attached an asterisk in the margin:
- You are not your business. Your business is an entity in and of itself.
- If you're not happy with the current state of your company, you have three choices. You can live with it, leave it, or change it.
- Above all else, your leaders need to be able to simplify, delegate, predict, systemise, and structure.
- Long-term predicting is not really about foretelling what will happen; it's making a decision about what you will do tomorrow based on what you know today.
- When your people don't embrace your core values, their actions hurt your cause more than help it. By not defining what your values are, you have no way of knowing who believes in them and who doesn't.
- Find your core focus, stick to it, and devote your time and resources to excelling at it.
- Do one thing and do it better than anyone.
- The right people are the ones who share your company's core values. They fit and thrive in your culture. They are people you enjoy being around and who make your organisation a better place to be.
- What gets measured gets done.
- A high level of trust is the foundation of what makes teams healthy and functional.
- The ability to create accountability and discipline, and then execute, is the area of greatest weakness in most organisations.
- The bottom line is that you need to work on the biggest priorities - your Rocks - first. Everything else will fall into place.
- When people know someone is going to check up on what they committed to, they do it.
- Great leaders have a habit of taking quiet thinking time. That means escaping the office on a regular basis for an hour or so.
What will you apply from it to Fullarton Park Dental
?
- I want to bed down our values. Currently they're understood and implicit in our behaviours and how we go about our work, but not explicitly documented.?
- The suggestion that too much time is spent discussing a problem and not enough identifying what the problem is at its core was an interesting one we can definitely implement. Solve the disease, not treat the symptoms.
- I'm going to re-develop our organisational chart too as we are not the same business we were twelve months ago, and with a few projects in the works over the next twelve months we will look different again then.
What I'll remember from this book forever is....
- My four year old daughter asking me if I wanted a bookmark for my book. I said yes, then had a snooze, and woke up with all the sides of the book drawn all over with a highlighter and my daughter proudly declaring: "Here you go Dadda, I gave you a book mark!" She was so proud ??
