Plan • Do • Reflect

Welcome to Friday … and another edition of The Weekly Wrap. It’s been a good week.

This week we’ve been listening for gold — trying to spend a little bit less time talking, and a bit more time looking for people with something to say. More importantly, we have been trying to create a safe place where people can speak up and be heard. How did it go? Did you help someone find their voice? 

What else you can glean from your experiences this week? Take a few moments on Friday afternoon or Saturday to reflect on what you accomplished and what you learned. While you’re at it, give yourself a pat on the back for all that you managed got done. Don't be shy about reveling in your progress.

1. How would you rate your productivity?
   On a scale of 1 - 10 (with 10 being the highest) how productive were you?
2. What were your major accomplishments?
3. Who did you coach, mentor, or help out this week?
4. How well did you honor the person you are trying to be?
5. What did you to stop / start / do differently this week?

Ideas of Note

Slate: How to Get Ahead as a Woman in Tech: Interrupt Men

I came across a fascinating — albeit informal — study on the frequency of interruptions at meetings. Over the course of four weeks, Kiernan Snyder, a senior leader at a large, high-tech company, set out to discover who talks over whom in meetings at her company. While not surprising, her results are more dramatic that I expected.

She discovered:

• People interrupt — a lot!
• Overall, men interrupt more than women.
• Men are almost three times as likely to interrupt women as they are to interrupt other men.
• Women interrupt each other constantly, and almost never interrupt men.
• The more senior the speaker, the more they interrupt.

The interesting exception was the three women in the study who had risen to relatively high levels of leadership in the company. These three women were not afraid to interrupt anyone. In fact, they were among the highest interrupters observed! Hmmm. Senior-level women who just happen to interrupt a lot in group conversations. Coincidence?

News and Events

Lady’s and gentlemen, we have ourselves a book club

We have a winner! Our next book, with 50% of the votes, is Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. In second place was The Startup of You. Third place was a tie with Never Eat Alone and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. 

Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist and behavioral economist who studies the psychology of decision making. He shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. Thinking, Fast and Slow first came to my attention last fall when Tom Peters tweeted,

I believe unequivocally that Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow is the most important book of the last 25 years for EVERY professional.

Peters had previously tweeted a similar sentiment:

Re-re-re-read: Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast and Slow.” Get it out of your head that you even vaguely think straight.

High praise, indeed.

How to Participate

1. Buy the Book! I'll be reading the Kindle version.
2. Join the LinkedIn Group where we’ll be holding our online discussions.
3. Download the Reading Schedule.
4. Start reading along with us the week of September 01.
5. Engage in the vibrant online discussion.

How the club works: We’re using a private LinkedIn group to host our online conversations. Every Monday morning I’ll start a new ‘discussion’ with a few questions relating to the latest chapter(s) in progress. Anyone in the group can comment, ask further questions, explore, and discuss using the LinkedIn discussion features.

Stay tuned for a separate announcement about Never Eat Alone. This book is just too good  — and the concepts too important —  to not be reading it concurrently. Take a look at the Table of Contents and you’ll see what I mean.

Things I Learned En Route To Other Things (TILERTOT)

From 2003 through 2012, the 449 companies in the S&P 500 index that were publicly listed during that time used 54% of their earnings — a total of $2.4 trillion — to buy back their own stock.

Source: Harvard Business Review – Profits Without Prosperity.

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.