Last week, Linda and I had five fun and productive days in London, escaping back to the U.S. just in time to miss the big public union strike scheduled for today, set to paralyze the city.
We met with Kevin Harrington, Jairek Robbins, Mark Nathwani and his lovely wife Sonny, and Sohail Khan among other marketing/consulting leaders.
The above video was ad-hoc, taken and edited by business consultant extraordinaire Andrew Priestly of London. This was Saturday evening, in the “speaker’s room” at The Shift Event, in Piccadilly. Thanks Andrew! (That’s my business partner Mike Giles, hovering in the background.)
The “soft” launch of the Work the System Academy product is underway.
-sc
Posted on November 30, 2011
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Sam,
It was really great to catch up in London. Next time stay longer so we can do the Rock’n'Roll legends tour and hang out at Sticky Fingers and have a beer.
I love Work the System and my old gold cover copy of the book. It is well used and written all over and dog eared. It was a great book as is … so I was stunned at how you’ve tightened up the third edition. I’m at chapter six and I can see how you’ve really gone for clarity. Love the video too. Love the F1 analogy.
Andrew
Thanks Andrew, for the very kind words. You’ve heard of a positive addiction, right? I will coin a similar term here, to describe my approach to systems: “positive obsession.” Its latest iteration was on our flight back to the U.S. Monday. Since we’re going through the Third Edition/first printing so quickly, we’re preparing for the second printing, to be submitted to the printer by month’s end. So, on the flight back, I began to go through the book line-by-line, cover-to-cover (it’s something I do with every new edition/printing). It was a ten hour flight and by the time we reached Seattle, I had revised the book up through Chapter Nine and had made HUNDREDS of further micro-improvements in grammar, and a number of content upgrades. Linda finds this behavior humerous. -s
Sam
On that video you mentioned the bottom up mentality. Did I miss that in the book or has that been there all along?
Pat
Sam,
Read your book quite a while ago now and was really taken with the genuineness and honesty you showed. “Great people can make great companies . . . great companies can make great people.”
Thanks for the inspiration,
David
It’s a good point you make, Pat. I recently came up with that term and am introducing it into the text in the upcoming second printing of the Third Edition. In several places through the book I have referenced the idea of passing information up from bottom line staff to supervisors (for example, see page 162 in the Second Edition, under the heading “Getting Your Staff to Buy Into the Method), but I have never emphasized it enough. It’s a critical structural element and I should have better emphasized the concept.
Pat, do you have a hard copy of the third edition? If not, I’ll send it to you. Pls give me your mailing address. I appreciate your on-going comments and recommendations! email me at info@workthesystem.com
Thanks David! Give your mailing adddres and I’ll send you the latest hard cover edition, gratis. (email me at info@workthesystem.com)
Sam
I’m glad you made that point as that is something that bugged me. Creating the culture is huge and the proof of the pudding is where you made the comment paraphrased “I like hanging out in my business as it is a fun place to be” that is a beautiful thing.
I consider your book to be valuable so I will buy your book in Kindle version, but thanks anyway.
Pat