Rich Kao

"How to be a purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins."  by Seth Godin

Another fun book by Seth (who btw has the most read business blog on the web) on how to become a "purple cow" i.e one that is remarkable and stands out above the rest.

Using great stories, case studies and insights, Seth drives the point home.  He has a unique way of looking at things; the ability to see the flipside of things in a way that's intuitively unintuitive.

The book forces me to think about how to bring out the "purple" in the church and to make her shine for Jesus.

While there are many great examples of "purple cows" listed in the book (one of my favorites:  Dutch Boy's new square, easy & dripless pour paint can - a no brainer, purple cow innovation.  Why didn't someone think of this before!), in the end "coming up" with a purple cow is more art than science. 

As it applies to the church, I like the idea that the "purple cow" has to come from the Holy Spirit.  Not that we don't actively and progressively use our brains and talent (we must), but it's the Holy Spirit that knows the hearts and seasons of men, and how to fuse it into something tangible and remarkable.  I'm in anticipation of the next "purple cow and cows" for our church and the Church.   That's the fun in church planting...hitting on the eureka moments and seeing lives changed.

"A little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick." by Seth Godin

During a recent 10 day business trip, went on a reading binge and polished off several books.

This book by Seth Godin is a nice little treatise on being a strategic quitter and strategic persever-er, i.e. when to gut it out through the "dip" when you feel like giving up.

In Seth's inimitable, fast-paced, quick-hitting pithy style, he brings this message home with great flair.  No huge revelations, but reemphasizing an old truth in fresh ways. 

Score 8/10.

While we're on the subject of addictions, here's my latest read on another of my heroes - Steve Jobs, Apple CEO.   This book takes us  into the mind of Steve and into the secret chambers of Apple and gives us a peek at how Steve works and how Apple works.  It's a fascinating read with tons of great leadership tips. 

Here's a sampling of them:

> Focus means saying "no."  One of things Jobs is most proud of is the not just the products they released (Macs, iPods, iPhones), but products they didn't release.  Takes extreme discipline to say no to the "good" product and only launch the "great" ones.  Ministry application:  Stay in your strength zone.  Practice "intentional neglect' to keep quality high, even if it means missing out on meeting "every need."

> Design pixel by pixel.  There's no detail too small for Jobs to tend to. He made his UI (user interface) team work on the scroll bar for six months before he approved it.  He helped design the packaging of Apple products to insure the user experience begins the moment they open the box.  He even forced his engineers to try and make the mother board look aesthetically better, even though no one would see it.    Ministry application:  Have a passion for excellence; not everyone will see the details you sweated over but the sense of excellence will be there.

> Burn the boats.  Jobs killed the most popular iPod to make room for a new thinner model.  Translation: Stay ahead of the curve, get out while you're still hot.  Ministry application:  Know when to kill your own baby.

>  Steal.  Be shameless about stealing other people's great ideas.  Ministry application:  Since we can't be genius' all the time, steal from others' genius.  Then return the favor.  Have a standing policy that any one can steal your ideas.  Remember, we're on the same team. 

> Don't worry where the ideas come from.  Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing head, came up with the scroll wheel idea for  the ipod - not the engineers or development team.  Ministry application:  Promote an open organization where  great ideas can come from anywhere and be appropriately acknowledged.

> Small teams of high skill do great work.  Me: I was sitting next to the General Manager of Nike-Japan on a trip back from the Orient a while back.  Nike & Apple had just released their dual iPod-exercise gizmo.  It was fascinating to hear him talk about Nike and Apple.   One amazing nugget I found out -- all of Apple's product design is controlled by a group of approx. 10 people.  I thought they'd have hundreds of designers.    But then it made sense - the unity of product design and quality control was kept high by keeping the group small.   Ministry application:  Great things can happen through small dedicated teams.  Think the twelve apostles.

Author Keith Ferrazzi, hyperkinetic "connector" and corporate success story, shares his secrets to networking in this fresh but not-so ground breaking book, Never Eat Alone. Great title, but the book doesn't actually revolve around this phrase; instead it revolves around the concept of the title - building circles of friends and connections. Expecting to cash in on some new insights, I was disappointed to read basically the same kinds of helpful and motivations stuff that is already out there. I guess there is no new thing under the sun. And despite every pages' intent to make networking a win-win proposition, in the end, it still feels self-centered and self-serving; about "me" with a benevolent twist, as in "Don't Keep Score," don't be a "Networking Jerk" and more (these are chapter headings). There are some great stories, illustrations, case-studies, and practical tips that support Mr. Ferrazzi's various points, all which make the book relatively substantive. To be sure, the most warming part of the book is Ferrazzi's own "rags to riches" story, from which he honed the principles he writes about. At the core of this networking book is an insight he gained as a kid caddying for the wealthy at his hometown country club: "You can't get there alone." (as in the successful helped each get there and stay there). Thus began Mr. Ferrazzi's quest to understand the power of relationships.

Here are the Top 10 nuggets / reminders from the book (direct quotes or summarized points).

1. Don't keep score - relationships are not a quid pro quo prospect.

2. It's better to give than receive - sound like a quote from someone we know?

3. Create a personal board of advisors.

4. Networking is not schmoozing.

5. Remember names. Quoting Dale Carnegie: "A person's name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language."

6. The bosses "secretaries" or "assistants" are minority partners. Make them an ally.

7. Be a conference commando: conference's are not for content; they're for connecting with like minded people.

8. Ping your friends.

9. Want to get close to someone - write about them.

10. Meet people on the golf course. (Hey, how come I haven't met Tiger yet?)

Bottom line: this book gets at a truth the bible teaches: "Everything rises and falls on relationships (check out Jn 3:16)."

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I'm a big fan of GK Chesterton, and wrote a post (How the Cross Helps us to Think Theologically Correct) which was in part based on Chesterton's thought from Orthodoxy.  Recently, well known Pastor John Piper posted an entry about Orthodoxy to commenmorate Chesterton's birthday, and in effect gave us a mini book review (albeit with from the  reformed view; Dr. Piper is actually funny tweaking Chesterton).  I found it humorous how Chesterton's book had opposite effects on us.  Dr. Piper became a "happy Calvinist" and I became a "happy Cal-menian."   I love being in the Kingdom where men of opposite views can be so in love with God!

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May 29 is G. K. Chesterton’s 134th birthday. He was a British journalist and brilliant writer. Nobody exploits the power of paradox like Chesterton.

I celebrate his birthday by recommending his book Orthodoxy.

The title gives no clue as to what you will find inside. It had a huge influence on me forty years ago in ways that would have exasperated Chesterton. He did all he could to keep me from becoming a Calvinist, and instead made me a romantic one—a happy one.

If I thought his broadsides against predestination really hit home and undid true biblical doctrine, I would keep my mouth shut or change my worldview. But his celebration of poetry and paradox undermines his own abomination of the greatest truth-and-mystery-lovers around today, the happy Calvinists.

Nothing in this Calvinism-abominating book came close to keeping me from embracing the glorious sovereignty of God. On the contrary, the poetic brightness of the book, along with the works of C. S. Lewis, awakened in me an exuberance about the strangeness of all things—which in the end made me able to embrace the imponderable paradoxes of God’s decisive control of all things and the total justice of his holding us accountable.

One of the reasons that Calvinism is stirring today is that it takes both truth and mystery seriously. It’s a singing, poetry-writing, run-through-the-fields Calvinism.

It’s the Arminians that are the rationalists. Arminianism trumps biblical sentences with metaphysics: God can’t control all things and hold us responsible. God can’t choose some and love all.” Why? Metaphysics. Out with mystery! It just can’t be!

So Chesterton’s anti-Calvinist shotgun sprays all around today’s poet-Calvinist and misses the mark.

Read Orthodoxy.

A few of you may be swept away into the folly of Roman Catholic sacramentalism. A few others may be confirmed in your tiff with joyless Calvinists. But for many readers, especially the Bible-saturated ones, this book will awaken such a sense of wonder in you that you will not feel at home again until you enter the new world of the wide-eyed children called the happy-Reformed.

Here is a flavor of what to expect in Orthodoxy¹:

• “[This book] recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.” (12)

• “It is one thing to describe an interview with a... creature that does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn’t.” (11)

• “Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.” (17)

• “Only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease but the medicine.... He was damned by John Calvin.” (17)

• “The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens in to his head. And it is his head that splits.” (17)

• “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything but his reason.” (19)

• “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health. When you destroy mystery you create morbidity.” (28)

• “The ordinary man... has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradictions along with them.” (28)

• “When we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened the door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door.” (54)

• “Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.” (159)

• “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” (48)

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