Strategicwise Coaching

Providing Executive Coaching to CEOs and Senior Executives in Corporate and Nonprofit Organizations

Recommended Resources

I recommend to management the following resources:

Recommended Books

To order any of the following recommended books, log on to these websites: www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com:

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company, 2000, Boston)
An excellent treatise about the formation of trends and social epidemics. Lots of interesting insights into what makes concepts and ideas click. Interesting and an easy read.

Leadership and Self Deception: Getting out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute (Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco)
This is an excellent presentation on the role that self-deception plays in our personal and professional lives. It clearly demonstrates how our self-deception affects the lives of those we love, the lives of our colleagues and the outcomes expected by the corporations and non-profit organizations, for whom we work.

Coaching by James Flaherty (Butterworth-Heinemann, Woburn, MA, 1999)
This book provides key principles to help people who assume the responsibility of coaching others in their organizations. It abounds with good practical ways to improve one's coaching skills.

Governing Boards by Cyril O. Houle (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1989)
Here is the primer on governance. It is well written and an excellent resource for any board of directors in the non-profit world.

First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy by Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill (Simon & Schuster Fireside, New York, 1995)
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen R. Covey presents excellent strategies for organizing our daily lives. In First Things First, the authors provide suggestions and examples for managing our professional life while at the same time balancing it with our personal life. It provides a way to connect your mission with your vision.

In Search of America's Best NonProfits by Richard Stecker, Ph.D. and Jennifer Lehman (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1997)
In this time of rapid transformations in society and in our non-profit organizations, it is good to get some insight into the operations of some of the best non-profit organizations in America.

Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future by Joel Arthur Barker (Harper Business, New York, 1992)
Here is the basic book to read to understand the process of change. Joel Barker clearly explains what paradigms are and how to take advantage of them. This book should be read by managers and CEOs.

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2002)
The authors stress that emotional intelligence is the key competency for successful leadership. The case for it is carefully and soundly articulated. An excellent account of how emotions are at the heart of effective leadership. This book is filled with practical advice which is backed up by research.

Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution by Michael Hammer and James Campy (Harper Business, New York, 1993)
When faced with the necessity of re-inventing your organization, this book offers some very good strategies for implementing the process. The approach is systematic and structured.

Reinventing Your Board by John Carver and Miriam Mayhew Carver (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1997)
Here is a book that identifies key strategies to get a board focused on policy governance. It also has great ideas on getting a board to link with its director and to improve its capacity to govern.

Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1998)
This book is about the release of human potential and the ability to enable others to break free of their self-imposed limitations. It is a book for anyone with a serious interest in leadership.

Anatomy of Change; A Way to Move through Life's Transitions by Richard Strozzi Heckler (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 1993)
This book focuses on how experiences, mental and physical, affect how we function. The author's holistic approach is to get the reader to focus on our physical being as the key to dealing with stress, conflict and change. He shows how a set of practices can bring a new awareness and choice into our daily lives that will have positive ramifications for our personal and professional lives.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge (Currency Doubleday, New York, 1990)
The future for any organization lies in its ability to create a learning environment. This book focuses on building an organization's capacity to create its own future through team learning and exploration of systems theory. It is highly readable.

Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge, Art Kleiner. Charlotte Roberts, Richard Ross and Bryan Smith (Currency Doubleday, New York, 1994)
This is the "guidebook" to the concepts in The Fifth Discipline. It is a valuable guide to building communities of common purpose, collective action and continuous learning. The 'Fieldbook' is valuable to anyone leading or taking part in the transformation of an organization. However, it should be used only after reading The Fifth Discipline.

The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level by Noel M. Techy with Eli Cohen (HarperBusiness, New York, 1997)
A complement to a learning organization is the teaching organization. Noel Techy clearly articulates the role of teaching, mentoring and values in creating the kind of edge that leads to building a learning environment and a successful organization. The book includes a handbook with worthwhile exercises. The book apparently is not easy to find, but do try.

Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding by Humberto R. Maturana, Ph.D and Francisco J. Varela, Ph.D, (Shambhala, Boston & London, 1998)
Here are radical and exciting ideas about a unified conception of how mind, matter and life are intrinsically wound together. This book focuses on how cognition is not a representation of the world; rather it is a 'bringing forth of the world through the process of living'. The book is abundantly illustrated with examples from biology, linguistics, and social and cultural phenomena. While the concepts are somewhat esoteric, they are important to grasp. To top it off, the book is beautifully designed.

Visionary's Handbook: Nine Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business by Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker (Harper Business, New York, 2000)
Anyone doing strategic planning ought to read this book. It focuses on the paradoxes we all have to face in dealing with the future. It is filled with useful exercises for doing alone or with colleagues.

Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by Fritjof Capra (Anchor Books, New York, 1996)
This book beautifully demonstrates that everything in this world is interconnected. It shows the patterns of organization as they apply to all aspects of life, the biological and the physical.

You Are What You Say: The Proven Program That Uses the Power of Language to Combat Stress, Anger, and Depression by Matthew W. Budd, M.D. (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2000)
This book connects our bodies to our language and in the process teaches some key skills that underlie good communication. It has a number of very good exercises and an excellent process for developing strong communication skills.

Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards by Richard P. Chait, William P. Ryan, and Barbara E. Taylor (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2005)
This is an excellent book on governance. It refocuses our attention on the fiduciary, strategic, and generative roles boards need to pursue. A must read for boards and their CEOs.

  • Recommended Links

  • www.andante.com: Music to massage the soul.

  • www.askoxford.com: A key to good language.

  • www.boardnet.org: A source for talented board members.

  • www.boardsource.org: The prime resource on governance.

  • www.charitynavigator.org: A guide to making intelligent charitable gifts.

  • www.enterprise-design.com: An excellent professional management program.

  • www.guidestar.org: A resource for information about U.S. Non-profits.

  • www.idealist.org: A resource for the non-profit community.

  • www.joelbarker.com: America's foremost authority on paradigm shifts.

  • www.leadershipandhorses.com: An excellent resource for leadership training.

  • www.odnetwork.org: An organizational development resource.

  • www.pfdf.org: The Leader to Leader Institute.

  • www.volunteermatch.org: Find volunteer opportunities or list them.

  • www.wordsmith.com: Increase your vocabulary and improve your Scrabble game.

  • Recommended Videos

  • Nightline: Deep Dive (July 13, 1999)
  • This program provides insight into the process of 'thinking outside the box'.

  • Charthouse International: Fish
  • An example of how mundane tasks can be creatively turned into funny and productive ones.

  • BoardSource: Fearless Fundraising
  • An excellent presentation for non-profit boards about their role in fundraising.

    • Some Thoughts to Consider

    To be able to shape your future, you have to be ready and able to change paradigms.
    —Joel Arthur Barker

    ...most people define learning too narrowly as mere "problem-solving," so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. Solving problems is important. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward.

    They need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization's problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right.
    —Chris Argyris

    Our actions create our reality.

    What is happening is often the consequence of our own actions as guided by our perceptions.
    —Peter M. Senge

    The way we see the world at a particular moment determines the actions we take.
    —James Flaherty

    The more we are certain of the details of the future, the more we are likely to be wrong.
    —Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker

    Understanding your history does not change who you are, but it gives you a sense of coherence.

    You can see yourself as an unfolding organism, as a work in progress.

    As long as you are alive, you can alter your structure with new practices, with new learning.

    Learning occurs most powerfully when you acknowledge fully what you are at this very moment with truthfulness and authenticity, and also compassion.
    —Mathew Budd, M.D. and Larry Rothstein, Ed.D.

    Keep focused on the substantive issues.

    To make a decision means having to go through one door and closing all the others.
    —Abraham Zaleznik

    Learning... is a process of change. In order to learn, we must to a certain degree let go of who we think we are and what we think we know.
    —Richard Strozzi Heckler

    A productive coaching relationship begins with two people with fires in their bellies: one who wants desperately to move forward and another who yearns to help that person make that journey.
    —James A. Belasco

    Many a false step is made by standing still.
    —From a Message in a Chinese Fortune Cookie

    We all have unlimited possibilities.
    —Hsieh Kun-shan, a successful Taiwanese artist who lost both arms and a leg at age 16

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    Arnold Clickstein
    Executive & Transition Coach
    32 Pickering Street
    Winchester, Massachusetts 01890
    617.834.2612
    aclickstein@strategicwise.com
    www.strategicwise.com

    CoachvilleInternational Coach Federation