Lessons from the Martial Arts

Previously, I mentioned a Bruce Lee quotation book that contained some excellent reflections on teaching. Anyone who knows me knows that I will now have to pull on that thread and see where it takes me (or what cloth I pull apart).

So, I went to my other favorite used book store and scoured the martial arts section, looking for any teaching wisdom that I could find. Two books caught my eye - "Martial Arts Teachers on Teaching" by Carol A. Wiley, and "Martial Arts Teaching Tales of Power and Paradox" by Pascal Fauliot.

When I opened "Martial Arts Teachers on Teaching", the first quote I saw said,

"If you follow the present-day world, you will turn your back on the Way; if you would not turn your back on the Way, do not follow the world" - Takuan.

The quote immediately resonated with me, as - according to the reactions I get - I'm the last man on earth without a cell phone. I'm not sure what 'the Way' is, but I'm pretty sure that cell phones are not...

Studies of 'flow' conclude that uninterrupted time is a prerequisite to reaching a flow state in any activity. Surely, it is possible to own a cell phone while maintaining uninterrupted time, but no one I know has succeeding, and it's an experiment I'm uninterested in pursuing.

So, I will 'not follow the world' (with regards to cell phones) anytime soon.

In what ways do you 'not follow the world', in order to find 'the way'?

Four Lessons for Teachers from Bruce Lee

Last week, at one of my favorite used book stores, I picked up a book of quotes by Bruce Lee, called "Striking Thoughts".

I knew Bruce was a bit of a philosopher and definitely a sharp guy, otherwise I wouldn't have looked at the book. But, I didn't expect to find so many great thoughts about teaching and training:

• "Remember, I am no teacher; I can merely be a signpost for a traveler who is lost"
• "The ideal teacher - not 'what' to think, but 'how' to think"
• "Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing it is a path to success and truth"
• "Where method is, freedom is not"

I have often said that facilitation is more like zen than any other activity I can think of - Bruce's words confirmed that for me.

Can there be four better lessons for teachers and students than:

1. Take my words and do with them what you will. Your milage may vary...
2. Observe and explore my process, not my content.
3. Failure is not only to be expected, but welcomed and even celebrated.
4. If you didn't hear me the first time, reread 1, 2, & 3!!

Le Grand Tour D'Asia: Day 24 of 58

Singaporean Chinese Beauty, thanks to plan B!

January 31st, 2010

Learning Moment: Singapore

Today, we strolled the streets of Singapore; though Little India, up Orchard Road, and down back alleys. Tonight, while I reviewed the photos I took, I (re)learned two lessons:

1. Always check your settings.
   Always. Check. Your settings.
   I was using my SLR camera in manual mode the other night and never changed it back to aperture priority. As a result, all 150 photos I took with that camera today were either under or over exposed.
2. Have a plan B.
   Redundant systems are our friend.
   Today, I was carrying my pocket camera. For no apparent reason, I took 250 photos with my pocket camera. I never do that when I'm carrying my SLR. Well, almost never. Because I did take those pictures, I captured the Singaporean beauty above, during a promotion for the upcoming Chingay parade.

It was an important - but relatively painless lesson.

And that, my friends, is the best kind of lesson.

Training is a place where we can experience important, but painless lessons.

My job as a facilitator is to make sure that:

A) The lessons are painless, and

B) You realize how important they are.

When I do that - you learn, I learn, and life is good for both of us.

Continuing the Mentoring Conversations Model

As I've mentioned previously, Randy Emelo, CEO/President of Triple Creek Associates, and I have been writing a series about Mentoring Conversations.

This new model suggests the conversations that are necessary to guide anyone from orientation to decision making on an issue. Randy and I wanted to provide a tool that could be both diagnostic and prescriptive.

The fifth issue of our six part series introduces the partial confidence.

Take a look at the series. When you finish our series, I recommend that you read Randy's back catalog of newsletters.

Mentoring Conversations Model

I've been fortunate to work with Randy Emelo, CEO/President of Triple Creek Associates, for the past few months on a writing project.

We're writing a series about Mentoring Conversations. This new model suggests the conversations that are necessary to guide anyone from orientation to decision making on an issue. Randy and I wanted to provide a tool that could be both diagnostic and prescriptive.

The first issue of our six part series introduces the model. Each of the following articles will explore the conversation zones in detail.

Randy is a smart, smart guy with a lot of expertise in mentoring. I highly recommend that you read his back catalog of newsletters!

The Six Disciplines of slide:ology

Wow... it's a busy time.

I've got three major programs going on at work.

I'm just finishing the 10th class in my Masters program (out of 13).

I'm proofreading a buddy's book.

I'm co-writing a series on Mentoring with another buddy.

And I'm finishing my first book proposal.

I'd consider saying no to one or two of these projects, except that every thing I'm working on informs every other thing I'm working on. Does that make sense?

An example:

I've been working on a project to introduce slide:ology into our company. I want (no... need...) to change our corporate culture around presentation skills.

So, we've worked with the amazing team at Duarte Design to build a slide:ology program that completely kicks butt.

I've also been working with my colleagues on strengthening the learning process in our company. We want to see learners practice and reinforce the skills they acquire in our classrooms. A few months ago, we brought in Cal Wick from Fort Hill to lead us through the Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning. It was a great day, and coincidentally occurred one week before the first slide:ology workshop.

I put the 6D's into action. We had slide:ology attendees send us 5 slides as pre-work for the workshop. I then graded the slides on the slide:ology criteria.

We used those slides as the content for the workshop and guided the attendees through exercises to improve their slide design.

Then, we opened up a 6-week window to support and reinforce the learning. Each attendee could send me 5 new slides. We coached them through this entire process.

The result? How about an 1800% improvement against the criteria? How about raves from executive review? Pretty cool, huh?

Slide:ology is awesome. The 6D's are amazing.

Mixed? Two great tastes that taste great together!

Like Long Island Iced Tea and and Filet Mignon...

Learning Every Day...

Today I received my latest shipment from Amazon.

• Job Aids & Performance Support by Allison Rossett & Lisa Schafer - I'm on a serious Job Aid kick right now. A really good job aid eliminates the need for training, so I'm striving to become a world-class job aid designer
• The North American Indian: The Complete Portfolios by Edward S. Curtis - As I've made clear here, I'm a big fan of the photography (and dedication) of Edward S. Curtis. I got this out of print book used from Amazon.
  I love photographing people. If you do too, you need to have this book.
• Reaching the Animal Mind by Karen Pryor - no, this isn't a comment on my audience, who are fabulous. Instead it's a tribute to the fact that I always learn something from Karen's work with animals. I didn't realize that there is now a skill known as TAGteaching (TAG = teaching with acoustical guidance). I'll be taking the online training for this soon and will let you know how it goes!

10 Tips for Tele-Training

Over the past few weeks, I've successfully conducted a number of Tele-training courses with clients in Asia.
I was skeptical regarding phone delivery, but the clients love it, and I have to admit that they're learning the material just as well as my classroom students do.

I want to share some of the process I've used and capture best practices for your use.

What is Tele-training?

Tele-training is training that occurs over the telephone.
There are no other technologies in usage during Tele-training (no live video, no web browsers, no computers, no transmitted slides).
Slides or documents are used/driven at the receiving end of the training, if needed.

Why Tele-training? Because it:

• Eliminates travel costs
• Accelerates delivery cycle-time (no waiting for an instructor to fly)
• Makes training available to all (working at home, from an airport, or a remote office, for example)
• Enables economies of scale across offices or regions
• Attracts more diverse training audiences across offices or regions
• Reduces or eliminates technical barriers (such as slow video connections, software incompatibilities, passwords, etc)
• Can reduce classroom time, as homework is assigned for offline completion
• Is less expensive for the client
• Simulates the actual work environment, since much of global work today is done by telephone

What Tele-training has been conducted?

I've used Tele-training for a number of audiences and courses, such as:

• Coaching skills for Service Managers across the US.
• DiSC Behavior Profiling for Korean Sales and Service Managers.
• Global Culture Training for a engineering group in Singapore
• Employee Development Training for HR Business Partners in Asia.

Is Tele-training just Instructor-led training over the phone?

No.
For Tele-training to be successful, the course must undergo some level of redesign.
This redesign may be minor, or it may be extreme.
One of the above courses, for example, was redesigned from an 8-hour instructor-led course, to a 4-hour Tele-training.
The tele-training is now conducted as two 2-hour sessions, with pre-work and home-work between the two sessions.
This allows the content to be delivered in half the classroom time.
Additionally, the materials were redesigned as an interactive, visual workbook.

This new workbook is easier to read and far more engaging.
It also eliminates the need for a PowerPoint slide deck, as the visuals are integrated into the workbook.

What are the Best-Known Methods for Tele-training

I'm continuing to learn, as I conduct more sessions, but here are the lessons thus far.

1. The course must be reviewed and redesigned for Tele-training. Do not attempt to deliver an instructor-led course by phone without customization.
2. The learning and performance objectives must be very, very clear.
3. The course should be exercise-based. Tele-training is not a format for lectures.
4. Pre-work and homework must be completed. If not, the objectives will not be met.
5. Sessions should be limited to 2 hours, unless there is significant co-facilitation on the receiving end.
6. For a two-session course, there should be 48 hours between sessions (example: Tues & Thursday). Shorter periods will not allow time for homework. Longer periods limit retention.
7. In most cases, classroom sizes should be limited to 8, to provide adequate participation.
8. A champion/facilitator should be on the receiving end of the course. In each successful session to date, there has been a champion on the receiving end of the training who has helped facilitate materials and discussion.In all cases, the facilitator has been familiar with the me and my methodologies. This makes the process seamless for the participants.
9. Materials should be engaging and clear. The instructor is not be in a position to entertain learners nor to explain ambiguous materials. Tele-training will test the clarity of your materials.
10. I keep a list of all attendees and specifically call on individuals for Q&A. This ensures involvement, engagement, and evaluation.

My goal for next year is to conduct at least 3 workshops a month by tele-training.
I'm currently reviewing all of my courses to see how I can adapt them for this mode of delivery. Planning the participants pre-work and homework assignements is key making the program work.

What are you experiences (as a facilitator or student) with tele-training?

VizThink 09 Highlights II - Jessica Hagy

Jessica Hagy debunks 15 Professional 'Rules'

If you haven't seen Jessica Hagy's brilliant Indexed site or book, you should go look at it now. Don't even bother with my site until you've spent an hour in hers... really.. hers is a treasure. I grant you permission to go there (if only Jennifer had just said that.. "Go Brad. Hell, it's Angelina. Clearly, I've been bested").

Jessica gave a very funny, informal presentation where she summarized 15 professional rules, and then debunked all of them. In between, she had us use her favorite tools - Venn diagrams and the X-Y axis - to make some sense of our worlds.

This was my favorite exercise.

1. Draw a 2-circle Venn Diagram.
2. Label the first circle with something you're really good at.
3. Label the second circle "Prostitution"
4. Find the relationship between the two (if you're a lawyer, the overlap will obviously be much greater than the one in my diagram).

Here's mine.

Teaching is what I do, but it was hard to find a common area, at first.

Then I found it - Students named John.

Try the exercise.

And if you get a chance to see Jessica present, I recommend you do it.

Answering Questions: A Key to Presentation Success

The ability to effectively answer questions is critical to presenting, teaching, and learning. 
One could argue that even the worst instructional or presentation design gets 'one more chance' to be effective when the audience starts asking questions in their search for clarity. 
The ability to effectively answer questions has a number of components:

1. The presenter must invite and recognize questions. This involves building rapport, establishing a safe environment, allowing time and space for questions, actively asking for questions, recognizing non-verbal indications of a question that may or may not be asked out loud, and understanding cultural barriers to asking questions (then creating strategies to overcome the hesitation).
2. The presenter must understand the question. This requires active listening, including paraphrasing and seeking confirmation of understanding.
3. The presenter must answer the question clearly. It helps to learn and practice a model or framework for responding to questions - such as the PREP model. Answering clearly may seem straight-forward, but the presidential debates showed that even accomplished speakers struggle to provide clear responses. How many times did you listen to a candidates response and think, "Did he/she answer the question?".
4. The presenter must employ multiple tools in answering questions. Each learner has different triggers for understanding. Merely quoting a textbook answer to a question will often not suffice - otherwise the learner would probably have understood from reading or hearing it the first time. The ability to draw models, flows, and diagrams can make all the difference for some learners. Other learners are looking for stories that put the 'textbook' answer into context and examples.
5. The presenter must be willing to say "I don't know - but I'll get back to you". Enough said on that one!

I can often determine the quality of an presenter by the way they answer their first question.

Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the above items. 

If you score less than 17, you have some opportunities for growth.

The Facilitation Diamond

If you're at all interested in teamwork, thinking, creativity, decision-making, or facilitation - you should read "Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making" and keep it on your shelf for reference.

The book is full of good stuff, but my favorite tool in the book is the Facilitation Diamond.

Everytime I schedule a group facilitation, I have a pre-meeting with the session sponsor.

In the pre-meeting, I draw the Facilitation Diamond on the white board to show how the session will progress.

At this point, I open my toolbox and we decide which tools will work best.

I use seven (or so) sections to the session:

1. Opening: Go over the agenda. Share the diamond flow. Perhaps a quick exercise.
2. Diverging Activity 1: Present traditional or evolutionary ideas.
3. Diverging Activity 2: Stimulate non-tradition, revolutionary ideas.
4. Transition: A break or a brain-cleansing exercise.
5. Converging Activity 1: To narrow the multitude of ideas to some actionable ones.
6. Converging Activity 2: To chose the best one (or 3 - 5 ideas).
7. Closing: Decide on next actions

I have large posters of the image above that I label with the tools that we'll be using. I hang these as the session agenda. 

It allows everyone to see a map of the energy flow for the day.

Here's a pdf that outlines the method in more detail.

Facilitator's Toolbox Updates

I've updated the The Facilitator's Toolbox.

Changes include:

• The addition of the Conscious Competence Model
• More links to my writings about these tools
• And external links for many of the tools that I haven't written about yet.

Play... Reflect... Learn!

image from http://www.theopenworld.net/news/

Book Review: "Don't Shoot The Dog" and the Ten Laws of Shaping

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been interested in behavioral training since my visit to Sea World's "Trainer for a Day".

While relaxing in Cabo San Lucas, I finished reading pioneering dolphin trainer Karen Pryor's "Don't Shoot The Dog": a must-read for anyone who teaches, trains, or learns (and yeah, that pretty much covers everyone).

Title: "Don't Shoot The Dog"
Author: Karen Pryor, 
Genre: Behavior, Psychology, Training, Animals

Summary: to quote the book's subtitle, "The New Art of Teaching and Training"

Favorite Quote:  Instead of a quote, here are her ten laws of shaping behavior:

1. Raise criteria in increments small enough that the subject always has a realistic chance for reinforcement.
2. Train one aspect of any particular behavior at a time. Don't try to shape for two criteria simultaneously.
3. During shaping, put the current level of response onto a variable schedule of reinforcement before adding or raising the criteria.
4. When introducing a new criterion, or aspect of the behavioral skill, temporarily relax the old ones.
5. Stay ahead of your subject: Plan your shaping program completely so that if the the subject makes sudden progress, you are aware of what to reinforce next.
6. Don't change trainers in midstream: you can have several trainers per trainee, but stick to one shaper per behavior.
7. If one shaping procedure is not eliciting progress, find another; there are as many ways to get behavior as there are trainers to think them up.
8. Don't interrupt a training session gratuitously. That constitutes a punishment.
9. If behavior deteriorates, "go back to kindergarten": quickly review the whole shaping process with a series of easily earned reinforcers.
10. End each session on a high note, if possible, but in any case quit while you're ahead.

Strengths: Entertaining and clear with excellent examples.

Weaknesses: No photos?

Conclusion: As I said earlier - a must read for teachers, trainers, and learners.
Follow all these steps and you might get this result (a dolphin even I can ride!).

Post-it Flags: 37 flags

* Each time I find an interesting quote, model, image, or idea in a book, I mark it with a Post-it flag. The more flags, the more value I found in the book.

What's Your Motive?

I received my latest edition of "Core Motive" magazine yesterday.

It's the magazine of the International Color Code Association.

The Color Code is an assessment tool that deals with your core motive.

There are four types:

• Red = Power
• Yellow = Fun
• Blue = Intimacy
• White = Peace

You can take a free assessment at http://www.colorcode.com/

It isn't a tool I use a lot, but I find it useful.

My engineer brain demands statistical validation of a tool before I rely on it (that's why DiSC is my most common tool).

At the same time, Dr. Rick Williams of CMOE shared a great metaphor when he picked up a book and held it in front of me, "Let's say that from the front is your Disc Profile. From the side is your Meyers Briggs Profile. From the bottom is your Color Code. From the side is your Wilson Social Styles. All together, you get a three dimensional portrait of a human being. Without one, the portrait is incomplete."

No one who knows me would be surprised to find out that my core motive is "Fun".

One of the reasons that I love Thailand is that a favorite word of theirs is "Sanuk", which means fun. When asked to do something, a Thai will often ask, "Is it sanuk?". That's always been my #1 question.

If it isn't fun, I won't do it.

Take the Color Code assessment and see what your motive is.

Cool Facilitation Toys

It's a dirty secret in the world of facilitation that we're all just kids who want to play.

Anytime facilitators get together, the conversation ends up at questions like, "what games do you use?" or "found any good exercises?".

Here's one for you. Sherryl found this one for me a couple months ago, and we've been using it quite a bit.

It's called a thumball. We got it from Trainers Warehouse.

It's simple and fun. You throw the ball from one person to another. As someone catches it, they look at what segment rests under their right thumb and answer the question like, "where you grew up" or "best fast food". It's a great icebreaker - fast, physical, and low-risk.

Try it!!

Trying to Keep Up with Tom Peters

Today, we started a new 'lunch and learn' program in our cafeteria.

We kicked it off with one of  my heroes, Tom Peters, by playing  "Tom Peters Live: Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age".

Tom Peters, 65 years young, has more energy than three 20 year-olds. And more anarchy, too! At $29.99, there is absolutely no reason for you to not experience Tom Peters. 

The ultimate management provocateur, Tom cannot go ten minutes without challenging the status quo. Whether he's refuting Jim Collins, ripping on MBA programs, or mocking Old White Male Syndrome - Tom certainly doesn't mince words.

We had 25 or so attendees, a lot of laughter, and even more nodding heads.

Here are three great take-aways from the presentation (Tom likes to quote others).

• “Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” - Phil Daniels, Sydney Exec
  
• “The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.” - Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale, Funky Business
• Michelangelo: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Masters Update - Is it worth it?

Since July, I've been working on my Masters Degree in Adult Education and Training from the University of Phoenix. It's an online degree, which was important to me, given my travel and work schedules.

Three months and three classes have passed, so here's a status report.

I'm going to use Edward de Bono's PMI tool (Plus, Minus, and Interesting) for this report.

Pluses

• Convenience - I don't have to drive to school. All participation is online. The schedule is extremely flexible. I can attend anywhere, anytime.
• Learning becomes a habit. You know the '21 days theory'? Do anything for 21 straight days and it will become a habit. I find online learning to be like that. Participation is required four days a week, but it's easier to log in for about 30 minutes everyday. It then becomes a habit.
• Course Content - The content has been extremely interesting. I'm reading books I would never read (Action Learning), learning concepts I would never learn (ontological humility) and having discussions (text messaging in the classroom) thatI would never have.
• Diversity - I'm getting to interface with a diverse audience of school teachers from all over the US. It's been very interesting to hear their challenges and passions.
• Virtual Teams - I'm learning how to work on a virtual team - a critical skill.
• Forums - I love answering questions in a forum. You have time to think, everyone participates, and you can go back to reread interesting questions and answers.
• Access - to the University online library.

Minuses

• Not Business Focused - While I enjoy the presence of so many school teachers, there are not enough corporate students for my taste. The discussions often end up focusing on school issues.
• Virtual Teams - It can be hard to work on the teams remotely. There have been a couple of frustrating moments when classmates dropped out or didn't do their work. But hey... that's just like 'real life'.

Interesting

• The Teaching Portfolio - We haven't used it yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it is applied.
• Adaptation -Seeing how I've adapted to an online environment.
• Presentations? Doing Power Points in an online environment. I'm very close to listing this as a negative, but I'll wait. It seems to be reinforcing the idea that Power Point is a suitable vehicle for emailing communication (hint: It's not!!).
  That idea isn't just wrong... it's dangerous... to business, anyway.

So, do I believe that spending time on this degree is worth it? So far... you bet!!

The Management to Leadership Continuum

One question comes up in every workshop I've done around management or leadership.
Is there a difference between management and leadership?
And if so, what is the difference?

I created a quick exercise I do at the start of each management/leadership  workshop I lead, or any time the question comes up in a group setting. Here are the steps:

1. Draw a continuum from Management to Leadership across the top of a big whiteboard.
2. Label the left side with the words ' job', 'tasks', 'characteristics', 'attributes', 'objectives'.
3. Give all the participants Post-it Notes - about 5-7 per person is good.
4. Ask them to list the tasks, attributes, and objectives of managers and leaders on the Post-it Notes. One idea per note. Give them 5 minutes or so. When the energy in the room dissipates, move to the next step.
5. Ask the participants to place their Post-its on the continuum. If a task or attribute is purely management (in their view) put it to the left. Purely leadership goes to the right. If it's in-between, place it in-between. No right or wrong here.
6. Bring the whole group to the board and look at the words. Allow 5-10 minutes for discussion. Why did some tasks get put at different spots across the continuum? Share perspectives. Any Post-its we don't understand? Clarify. What trends do we see? Is anything missing?
7. This discussion is usually rich. Allow it time to develop.
8. I now ask the participants to think about where they need to be, in their current role, on this continuum. I start at the left side and put my marker on the board (the red marker in the picture above). I ask the participants to raise their hands when i reach the point that they need to be. As I walk across the board, I draw the profile of the team.
9. Then I ask them where there are today and walk across the board. Sometimes I draw the profile in another color. In this case, the participants agreed on the point where the red vertical line appears.
10. Discuss the gap.

The picture above was taken at a 2-day management workshop I led in Yokohama, Japan in May.

Words like 'planning', 'scheduling', and 'time-management' show up to the left.
'Attracting talent' and 'mentoring' show up at the half-way point.
'Innovation', 'vision', and 'modeling' are to the right.

You can see from the red profile curve that this group of front-line and middle managers believes they need to be demonstrating the skills and characteristics that are between 25% and 75% on the continuum.
The red vertical line shows that they are currently at the 25% point.

A few observations:

• As a facilitator, this exercise shows me how to calibrate the material for each audience. I know where they need me to focus and I can tie the subsequent topics back to this visual.
• This curve changes by country, department, culture - even by time of year or business cycle.
• A few years ago, most Japanese managers - even higher level ones - would have said that they needed to demonstrate manager skills and attributes. The history of Japanese business has been to follow process. That's changing. Managers are now expected to act more as 'leaders'. They have to (and want to) close the gap.

For broader audiences, you can extend this continuum to include Individual Contributor, Lead, and Supervisor and look at how skills and attributes change over a career.

Book Review: "Hard Optimism" by Price Pritchett

I’m a passionate advocate for the optimistic view of life.
In fact, I was 22 when I made the conscious decision to cut negative people out of my life.

So, if you haven’t heard from me since then, you now know why...

This book about optimism caught my eye at Stanford Bookstore, so I read it on a cross-country trip.

Title: "Hard Optimism"

Author: Price Pritchett

Genre(s): Business, Self-help

Summary: “How to Succeed in a World Where Positive Wins”

Favorite Quote:

• “No sense being pessimistic. Wouldn’t work anyway." – Seen on a bumper sticker

Strengths: It’s a good looking book. Nice graphics. Feels good. The tone is conversational. I don't disagree with any of the content. 
Weaknesses: Rare is the book that I don’t learn something from. So this is, technically, a rare book.
Seriously, there isn't much here that isn't better read elsewhere.
Instead of the chapter titled "Go for Flow", read "Finding Flow".
Instead of the chapter titled "Play to Your Signature Strengths", read any of the Gallup or Marcus Buckingham books. The only heft to this book comes from the high quality paper.

Conclusion: Pass on it.

Post-it Flags: 1 flag
* Each time I find an interesting quote, model, image, or idea in a book, I mark it with a Post-it flag. The more flags, the more value I found in the book.

Book Review: "Oxymoronica" by Dr. Mardy Grothe

Another outstanding collection of phrases compiled by Dr. Mardy Grothe, “Oxymoronica" focuses on, of course, oxymoronic statements.

Title: "Oxymoronica"

Author: Dr. Mardy Grothe

Genre(s): Reference, Communication, Creativity

Summary: to quote the book's subtitle: "paradoxical wit and wisdom from history’s greatest wordsmiths"

Favorite Quote: I'll give you five:

1. "The best things in life aren’t things." – Ann Landers
2. "First I dream my painting, then I paint my dream” – Vincent Van Gogh
3. “It’s an impossible situation, but it has possibilities” – Samuel Goldwyn
4. “Their bodies were so close together that there was no room for real affection” – Stanislaw Lec
5. “You can’t make anything idiot-proof because idiots are so ingenious” – Ron Burns

Strengths: Like all of Dr. Grothe’s collections, it's funny, inspiring, and educational.
Weaknesses: It gives me an inferiority complex?

Conclusion: I’ll summarize with my own oxymoron - This book is so smart it makes me feel dumb.

Post-it Flags: 35 flags
* Each time I find an interesting quote, model, image, or idea in a book, I mark it with a Post-it flag. The more flags, the more value I found in the book.