According to the author, you’re consulting if you don’t have direct ownership of the outcome. In other words, all the staff members of an organization are consulting for their manager, who directly owns the outcome of the results. I think this definition is a bit narrow as most of my staff members in my group owns the results of their respective projects. I may end up to be the only neck to choke if things don’t turn out well. To turn this around, I am a consultant to my manager/director. In some ways, I am but in others I am not.

Being “authentic” is critical is the essence of the “Flawless Consulting.” Being a consultant can be a pair of hands, advising on what do do without ownership (owned by direct manager). It’s important to clarify the role in writing preferably.

The five consulting phases:
1) entry/contracting: get agreement – negotiating wants, dealing with resistance, closing the meeting.
2) data collection/diagnosis: get clear picture
3) feedback/decision-making: decision to act
4) implementation: build commitment
5) evaluation/termination: end or recycle to contracting

Discovery Interview:
State purpose
Discuss how data will be used
Ask questions and collect data
A) If not stuck
Summarize the data
Ask what the client nees to do to create desire future
Give support
State next step
else If stuck
Re-phrase questions
if still stuck
Discuss how the interview is going
Proceed to (A)
If still stuck
Move to other issues or terminate the interview.

On organizing the data:
– Review the data
– Identify themes
– Choose messages
– Develop statements
– Develop recommendations

On Feedback meeting: (Percentage of time spent)
– Restate the original contract and agenda for this meeting – 5%
– Present diagnosis (and recommendation) – 15%
– Ask client for reaction to data (and recommendation) – 30%
– Halfway through: ask client if the meeting is useful – 10%
– Get a decision to proceed – 30%
– Test for client concerns about control and commitment. Ask yourself if you got what you wanted. Give support – 10%

Wealth is about “time.” Having time is having wealth. Being wealthy means you get to use the time as you please. Time should be most expensive commodity you’ve got and you should be spending the time with your loved ones. This makes sense. Our time on this earth is limited. It really strikes a chord with me. I am spending precious time at work reading emails and respond to email around the clock for work. Is this how I want to spend the rest of my career/life doing?

It’s all about “take” and “give”. Be willing to take from people; seek and you shall be given. If you don’t ask for wealth, you won’t get it. Also, be willing to give back to the “universe” or charity. Being wealthy means you’ll be able to give more.

Need to set too many goals. Just set the goal to become a “rich idiot.” Outline three things you would do at the beginning of the day to reach that goal.

Fake it until you make it. Act like a “rich idiot” would do.

Shop like a “rich idiot.” Register to be a travel agent is a novel idea. Buy used vehicle instead of brand-new. Buy wholesale instead of retail. House swapping vs. using hotels.

Acquiring assets with “good” debts. Think “how I can afford it” vs. “I can’t afford it” – similar to Rich Dad’s ideas.

Protect yourself against 4 D’s: Divorce, Death, Disability, and De Government.

More of the same buying income property ideas. The 3-property (1x home and 2x income properties) strategy to become a rich idiot does not appear to work in California and in today’s real estate market. The simple rules to determining if an income property is a good buy or not may be helpful.

Virtual Real Estate: Being an Avatar in 2nd Life,

Simple business plan.

Taking actions.

I didn’t think I needed to read this book. But I enjoy Larry Winget’s straight talk so I listened to it.

Winget got to the purpose of money. Ultimately, one should consider being rich is about having money to donate to charity work, in addition to helping yourself. This may be a good motivator for people who loath money due to the often-mentioned “greed” associated with rich people. Getting rid of this “loathing” money concept is probably very important. Knowing “why” you want to get ahead is more important than knowing “how” which is what this book is all about.

This book offers a few tips:
Know where you are now. List out all of your expenses against your income. If the income is less than the expenses, then you have some painful tasks to do – reduce your expenses or increase your income. Winget emphasizes the importance of feeling the “pain” and emotion why you’re where you are – let in Jack Baur to inflict the pain. No pain, no action.

List all you can cut and do without and do it and go cold turkey. Doing it gradually simple doesn’t work for most people.

Some tips like putting all the changes into a piggy back and cash out from time to time to pay down debts is an interesting concept. It seems painless.

This book offers very simple message, nothing less and nothing more from Winget. He encourages people to read up and learn as much as possible. Can’t get ahead if you don’t improve yourself constantly.

This book may have been an eye opener at the on-set of the Internet revolution but lots of things being predicted here have happened – like leveraging the Internet to serve the customers better. For Charles Schwab, they have learned to leverage the Internet to continue their low-cost model of serving their customers. This may have been a difficult transition from telephone service at that time but has become lucid recently. It’s hard to imagine they could have done anything different.

The rest of the book about establishing Schwab’s mission statement may have been unusual at that time, it’s now being practiced readily. In order for a company to scale to a big company, these infrastructures need to be put in place in order to synchronize all areas of the company.

Overall, I didn’t get all that much from this book except for the importance of serving customers well and be persistent even if you have to cannibalize your own business.

What does it take to create a tipping point?
The three rules of epidemic:
1) The law of the few:
a)Connectors – Paul Revere is a connector – that’s how he was effective in bringing awareness to the Boston people the imminent British invasion. The other less famous guy William Dawes wasn’t effective. Paul Revere possess “social gifts.” We’re all connected by “six degrees of separation.” But all degrees are the same. The connectors know a lot people, and the critical kinds of people they know, masterful of the “weak ties” (acquaintances).
b) Mavens, who accumulates knowledge, “who solves his own problems – his own emotional needs – by solving other people’s problem. They are not persuaders; they are teachers. Mavens start the Hush Puppies phenomenon. The 800 number on a product is often used as the maven trap.
c) Salesmen, e.g. Tom Gau in Torrance. It could be very subtle cues like head nodding (Peter Jenninings’s smile when Ronald Reagan is mentioned), and other “micro-movements” like dancing, and “seducing” – building a level of trust and rapport.

2) The stickiness factor
Stickiness of message: Sesame Street vs. Blue’s Clues (repetition, long narrative, getting pre-schooler’s attention). Here, Gladwell went into the beginning of the Sesame Street and the contrast with Blue’s Clues. Interesting and anecdotal but not very informative.

3) The power of context.
Author started with Bernhard Goetz’s story and how he became a symbol of the a particular, dark moment in New York. By practicing the “Broken Window Theory” and cleaning up the graffiti on trains and train stations – the context, New York City Transit, headed by David Gunn, started a transformation that reduces the crime rate drastically in the 80’s. “Behavior is a function of social context.” The mock prison experiment was revealing that “specific situations are so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions.” We tend to make the mistake of “overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context.” The “Good Samaritan experiment” on the students of a seminary is an interesting example of the power of context. Ya-ya sisterhood started with many small groups (book clubs) then evolve into a social phenomenon. The magic number of 150 – a maximum number (“social channel capacity”) an organization or group can reach without losing its effectiveness. This can be attributed to the evolution, the larger the group size and larger the neocortex is.

The case studies: Airwalk shoes, crossing the chasm (technology) – diffusion model, the suicide epidemic on the Micronesia islands, teenager smoking, and etc.

I’ve listened to this audio book twice and briefly browsed the book. I’ve learned quote a few things about how to create an epidemic. This is great for marketing people who want to create a social phenomenon; they need to pay attention to the connectors, mavens, and salesmen and make their message sticky and create a context for their products and services. Very intriguing.

Wikipedia’s summary

This is my first time using Netflix’s instant play. It seems to work well except that the player must run on Internet Explorer. I like the feature that the player resumes from where you watched last.

This is a 3-hr long documentary about Thomas Jefferson. I have read John Adam’s story, so some of the facts have been duplicated and confirmed.

PBS portrayed Jefferson as a blessing as well as a curse to this nation. He’s a blessing because he laid the foundation of freedom of speech, religion and thin government for this country. He’s a curse because, contradictory to his own belief about freeing the slaves, he himself did not free his own slaves and turned one of his slave girl (Hemming) into his mistress. As a result, he is known for his genius writing on the declaration of independence and the founding of the Virgina University, bu as well as a hypocrite for not practicing what he preaches.

Jefferson died on the 50th year (1826) to the declaration of independence. And his late relationship and letter exchanges with John Adams served to express their deep thoughts – true treasures to this country. Jefferson is also an optimist. He believes that “the future is going to be better than the past.” His words were shaped and re-shaped to transcend a new reality for this country. Jefferson also holds that strong beliefs about the two conditions of America: Everyone has a right to equal treatment by the law and equal opportunity to modest prosperity. This is what American dreams are made of.

Jefferson has lived up to his best during his life time. Is he more important to United States than George Washington? Perhaps.

T. Boone Pickens has been famous for his hostile take over in the 80’s and 90’s. This book has a catchy title that caught my attention. I thought this was going to teach people how to be a billionaire. But in fact, this is a mini biography of himself and how he became rich. I was impressed by how he projected the long term trend, especially around the oil and natural gas price, and was willing to stick with it and profit and lose from it. Some of his strategy is coming back to haunt him now that the oil price has dropped significantly. According to yesterday’s newspaper, his BP Capital has lost $2B for his client.

Pickens appears to be a disciplined health nut and constantly works out. It explains why at his age of 80, he’s still as sharp as before. Near the end the book, he even joked about trading all his wealth for another shot at re-starting at 18 years old. I supposed it’s easier for him to re-start now he knows what it takes to be rich.

I did sense his whole perspective in life at this age tend to be philosophical and perhaps wordy/preachy. His charity work with animals and Oklahoma State University seems to be more self absorbing than doing good. It would be good if the book goes into much details about his early life struggling to rise from the Geologist to founding Mesa Petroleum. This would be more interesting to me. Some of the Boonisms in the book sounds pretty good to me.

As a result his advocacy for moving natural gas into fueling transportation, I did a little study about CNG (compressed natural gas). I discovered the following: Honda offer a version of Civic that runs on CNG. The problems I saw were that the tank can accommodate up to only 8 gasoline-equivalent gallons, the refilling at home could take 16 hours, the safety issue, and the extra $7K cost of the car and refilling station. Some other experts stated that it would take only 10+ years to use up all of our CNG in US, then we’re back where we are now. It doesn’t appear to be sustainable.

Pickens touched on the future water shortage and how he bought up the water rights near the Canadian river. I tend to agree with him about the water shortage issue. But buying up the water right without securing the end buyers first takes lots of guts to me.

Wind energy was touted to be the ideal renewable energy that can power the grid. Along the middle of America from Canada to Texas, the wind energy can be readily harvested. Sounds good.

Some of the noteworthy teachings: 1) action breeds more action. Take action now. 2) Success takes hard work and strong vision. 3) Stick with what you know best and leverage others for the rest. 4) Deliver value for the share holders. 5) Take care of your body. It’s your biggest asset. 6) Giving to others is as fun as receiving. Give and you shall receive. 7) Integrity is important.

The Energy plan takes leadership; nothing will happen without a strong leadership – Pickens emphasized. Who will be the leader to lead US out of dependency on oil and toward the renewable energy front? Hopeful, Obama will be the one.