Perspectives 5: What can we accomplish in 3 minutes?
What can we do with just three minutes? Whose lives might we change? What experiences could we improve?
“Caring is a powerful force because it implies that we care enough to try.”
Since 2015, my partner and I have been sharing a car. I had bought the car, a blue Toyota Corolla, in 2007. Our car had over 200,000 miles on it, it rode like a tank due to aging suspension and years of heavy use.
In 2022 we finally decided it was time to get a new car, and after months of research, we settled on a Tesla Model 3. I was super excited about our new car, and as we found ourselves waiting months for the car to be delivered, my excitement only grew. Then, finally in June we got the call that our car was ready. We hurried over to pick up our new white Tesla, and dropped it off to get some paint protection film installed, and have the windows tinted.
Within a few days of getting the car home, I noticed a rattle that was coming from the rear passenger seat area. The rattle, while not severe, was just annoying enough to draw my focus while driving. As a result, instead of experiencing a pleasant drive in the new car, I was always preoccupied with the imperfection of our new vehicle; there was a constant reminder that something wasn’t quite right.
I decided to take the car in to the Tesla service center to see if they could fix the rattle. I met with a super nice fellow who checked me in, and explained to him the problem.
“Rattles aren’t covered under warranty,” Stephen explained to me.
With that one statement, I instantly knew where this experience was going.
“The car has less than 100 miles on it,” I explained politely.
“Yeah, well, rattles are kind of normal,” Stephen said.
“Well, maybe you can just take a look? It’s probably something super easy,” I asked.
“We can look at it, but I need to hear the rattle happen.”
The rattle was intermittent, happening at various speeds and usually on roads that were not perfectly smooth. Needless to say, I could not replicate the rattle for Stephen.
I did convince Stephen to take have a technician look at the car, and left the car at the Tesla Center, returning to work.
At 5:00pm, Stephen messaged me, saying the car was ready for pickup. Of course, the rattle was never found.
For the next six months I drove around with the rattle, which bothered me each and every time I drove the car. And whenever someone asked me how I liked my new Tesla, my answer was “the quality control isn’t very good, and I found the service center pretty unhelpful.”
Then, a strange smell began emanating from the air conditioning system. To me it smelled like Elmers Glue, to David it smelled like vinegar, or something musty. Complaints of smells from the air conditioning system are common with Teslas, and I knew we needed the air filters changed. I hopped into the mobile app, and set up a service appointment. A technician would be out at 8:00am the next morning.
Richard, our Tesla technician, was a jovial fellow, super friendly. I knew I liked him right away. He asked how long I had lived at my current house. Come to find out, he lived just five houses away from me. He proceeded to change out the cabin air filters.
I decided to ask him about the rattle.
“Hey, while you’re here, do you mind if I ask you about this rattle I’ve been having? It’s driving me nuts. I took it to the Tesla service center and they couldn’t do anything about it.”
He politely agreed, and began inspecting the car by tapping various areas. Within a minute he was tapping the area the rattle was coming from.
“That doesn’t sound right…”
He popped off the panel above the rear passenger side door, grabbed some duct tape from his truck, taped something down, and popped the panel back on.
“Well, I can’t promise that’ll fix it, but I’m pretty sure it will. You’ve got my cell number, give me a call if the rattle still happens.”
I thanked Richard, and he continued on his way.
We didn’t drive the car for a few days, but when I did I immediately noticed the rattle was gone! It was like I was finally driving in the brand-new, perfect car!
Within just 3 minutes, Richard had transformed my driving experience. The difference between Richard and the Tesla service center was simple; Richard cared enough to try.
And now, with my rattle fixed, when people ask how I like my car, the answer is “I love it!”
What strikes me as sad is how the Tesla service center treated me, immediately setting the expectation that they weren’t going to help. All it would have taken was someone who cared to spend one minute tapping around, and they could have fixed my problem and made me so happy.
Reflection
Have you ever had an experience where you needed something, and the person you needed help from didn’t want to help? How did it make you feel?
Have you ever been the person who was approached for help, and turned the person away? Why did you do it? How do you think it made them feel?
Going forward, how can you make time to help someone?
Higher Ed Reflections: Removing barriers
In this post, we will explore the friction health screenings have for college students, and how such requirements could be a deterrent for would-be students.
As I begin my doctoral program, higher education is facing what we, in the education industry, call an “enrollment crisis.” There are many reasons, known as higher ed’s grand challenges, for such enrollment declines. To learn about all of higher ed’s grand challenges, you can check out this EDUCAUSE presentation. To summarize just two reasons:
There is a general perception that a college degree is not worth the cost and will not help get a better paying job.
The population of “traditional students,” defined as students who have completed high school, are under the age of 25, and attend college full-time (from IGI-Global), is on the decline.
Given these two reasons, and further given that colleges and universities have been slow to try to attract a different demographic of students, it’s more important than ever that institutions lower the level of friction to retain students.
Friction point: vaccinations
In today’s post I’m going to share with you a barrier I’m facing, one that began before I even registered for class. In this particular case, the barrier is the result of an executive order, a rule signed by California’s governor.
In the state of California, a series of vaccinations are required for students to attend the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) schools. A full list can be found here. For some younger folks, it’s likely they may have access to their vaccination records. For those that weren’t born in the United States, or for 45 year olds like myself, finding their childhood vaccination records may prove challenging, or in my case impossible.
Despite being vaccinated against Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) as a child, my vaccinations records simply don’t exist anymore. As a result, I was instructed to go have blood drawn so an antibody test could be performed to determine my immunity status.
A few years ago I had a really traumatic experience having blood drawn at Kaiser. It was so traumatizing that I now have an almost paralyzing fear of having blood drawn. Needless to say, I was not excited about having to get an antibody test. In addition, the antibody tests cost me $60. Fortunately for me, I’m in a good place financially, and $60 is affordable, however, this is not the case for many students that might be attending the CSU system.
In the CSU, 225,000 students receive federal Pell grants as of 2023. These grants are provided to undergraduate students who display exceptional financial need. For such students, $60 might be a very big deal.
The antibody tests revealed that I was immune to Mumps and Rubella, but not to Measles. As a result, I had to get an MMR shot. As I uploaded my umpteenth screenshot from my health provider, I was hopeful that this MMR vaccination would be my last, and that I would finally be finished with the prerequisite health screening.
However, that proved not to be the case. The health portal itself is a high-friction service, requiring logging in all over again and entering your birthday, despite already having authenticated TWICE with multi factor authentication. Each time I logged in, I was met with another message saying I hadn’t met the vaccination requirements. In the last message I received, I was instructed to get a second round of MMR vaccinations.
What if I was on the fence about college
So, I’m clearly very excited about the doctoral program, and I’m a huge believer in the value of higher education. I’m also fortunate enough to be able to afford all of these additional medical costs, and am generally supportive of vaccinations.
However, imagine if I was a “traditional student” right out of high school who was kind of on the fence about going to college. I could go get a job in the fast food industry for $20 an hour, or I could hopefully finish college four or five years later with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt, and then struggle to find a job.
Further, imagine I now have to go through this elaborate health screening. Let’s look at all the friction points this creates:
An antibody test costs $60, which is enough to fill my tank of gas, or pay an important bill.
Using the portal, scheduling all the doctors appointments, and communicating with health services takes hours of time.
Repeated trips to the doctor’s office for a series of shots that I don’t want.
How to move forward
As leaders in the higher education field, it’s important for us to realize the need to remove friction points for students. Unfortunately, these vaccination requirements are issued at the state level, so colleges and universities can’t eliminate the requirements all together. That being said, there are other things that could be done to ensure we aren’t deterring would-be students. Perhaps the campus could make access to the health portal easier by not requiring multiple logins. And, maybe the campus could offer the antibody testing free of charge, and provide the needed vaccinations, preventing a myriad of trips back and forth the a healthcare provider.
Reflection point
What would you do to ease the burden of student health screenings?
Think back to your time in college, or, if you haven’t been to college think of someone you know who has gone. What barriers did you experience or have you heard of?
Perspectives 4: Can chickens collaborate?
Much like chickens, people have behaviors that inhibit creativity and production. Jim Tamm reflects on his fascinating experiment where all of the highest-producing chickens were put together for a year and talks about what humans can learn from the outcome of his investigation.
“Defensive thinkers best defend themselves from knowing who they are.”
So… can chickens collaborate? Let’s start by defining collaboration as working jointly on an activity, especially to produce or create something. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the answer is no, chickens can’t collaborate. However, chickens, like people, can have behaviors that negatively impact production or creation.
In Cultivating Collaboration: Don’t Be So Defensive, Jim Tamm discusses his fascinating experiment with chickens before outlining the number one behavior that prohibits successful production or creation.
In his TEDx talk, Jim explains that he identified two different types of chickens: moderate producers of eggs and high producers. What he found was that those that were high producers produced more eggs because they bullied the moderate egg layers, causing stress and less egg production. Therefore, the more aggressive chickens laid more eggs in comparison to the moderate egg layers.
Jim describes these aggressive birds as red-line chickens and the moderate producers that were milder in temperament as green-line chickens.
In an experiment, all red-line chickens were put together in one living area for a year, and all green-line chickens were placed in a different living area at the same time. So surely when you put all the best performers together, you would have the best egg production, right?
Wrong!
What Jim found was that most of the red-line chickens didn’t even survive the year, egg production was terrible, and the chickens that did survive had no feathers and lots of injuries.
For the green-line chickens, however, production went up %260 that year. Look at the impact of removing the bullies (or negative influences) from the community!
Can you relate to how a red-line chicken feels? Undoubtedly you’ve been involved in an effort that was supposed to be collaborative and left feeling like you’ve been attacked and had all your feathers pulled out. I know I have.
Jim suggests that many collaborative efforts become hostile because people get defensive.
“When we get defensive, we are not defending ourselves from another person, we are defending ourselves from fears inside of us that we don’t want to feel.”
According to Jim, three common fears that lead to defensiveness include:
Worries about our own significance
Our competence
Our likability
Jim proposes we identify the first feeling that indicates we are getting defensive and create a way to defuse reactions early on.
For me, I’ve got one primary trigger and one predictable reaction. The trigger is when someone treats me disrespectfully, and the reaction is a student surge of adrenaline, making my heart rate spike.
Unfortunately, as soon as this happens, I stop being able to think clearly. Jim says this is normal and that we tend to lose measurable IQ points when we become defensive, turning us stupid.
He proposes we create a mechanism to recognize and defuse our defensive reaction. He admits this is easier said than done.
Reflection
So what’s your trigger? And what is that initial reaction when you realize you’re becoming defensive?
Leading to Change - Lessons I learned about self-publishing
In a few short days, I’ll be self-publishing my first book, Leading to Change. In this edition of my newsletter, I’ll share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned about writing a book and self-publishing.
Three years after I began writing my first book, I’m finally ready to publish. I’ve learned SO many lessons about writing and self-publishing a book and about myself through this process. Today, I’ll share some of the lessons I’ve learned along my journey.
Editing your own book
The first lesson I learned was that writing the book was not the hard part of the journey; in fact, writing was the easiest part for me. I had most of the writing done within about six months. Editing, as it turned out, was the most challenging part for me. As I wrote in my newsletter about the challenges of editing your own book, I wanted to do my own editing. However, each time I sat down to edit my book, I ended up doing substantial rewrites, which required more editing, which led to more rewrites.
While I feel the process of rewriting made the book better, I also know I would never have “finished” the book if I had continued along that path. So I sent the manuscript to an editor, which helped a lot but was expensive. And, despite being professionally edited, I still needed to go through and do some very light proofreading.
Lessons I learned:
It’s OK to pay for services to help get your book ready to publish.
I learned to rely on the Read Aloud feature in Word. This helped me catch many issues that would have slipped by me otherwise.
Formatting your paperback (and hardcover)
Getting your book set up to be read on a kindle is a breeze. Just keep your formatting super basic and upload your Word file. Done.
However, getting your formatting set up for your printed books is not as easy. There are all kinds of things that I didn’t expect to run into. Perhaps the most annoying one was the spacing in the center of the book. My first few proofs had the text going so close to the center of the spine you had to really bend the book open to read it easily. And then, I finally added a bit of space, which threw off the page count, which impacted the cover.
Also, I went through every single page numerous times to make sure the top of the pages all lined up. What a pain. And, since I didn’t use page breaks very often at all, adjusting the spacing to ensure the top of the pages lined up meant I had to check every subsequent page.
Eventually, I got the paperback version finalized… but then I got a brilliant and stupid idea. “I want to create a hardcover edition too!” What a mistake. Hardcover manuscripts need some very specific settings, which are also applicable to paperbacks too! Had I started by formatting for a hardcover, I would have saved myself a ton of work.
One last item to mention; Word has a 2-page view I tried to use to ensure the top of my pages lined up. This is kind of tricky to explain. The 2-page view shows pages 1 and 2 side by side. However, this is not how a book will actually print! In a book, page 1 will be the first page, with nothing to the left of it. When you turn the first page, the second and third pages will be side by side. Therefore, Word’s 2-page layout was ineffective for viewing how the printed book would appear.
The last step in uploading your hard copy manuscript is to convert your Word file to a PDF. If you don’t upload a PDF to Amazon’s KDP service, KDP will reflow your text, skewing page numbers and generally mess things up.
Lessons I learned:
To check the formatting on your Kindle version, use the View -> Web Layout feature in Word.
Use page breaks at the start of new chapters to eliminate having to review the entire book for spacing issues when changes are made.
Surprisingly, Apple’s PDF Previewer was smart enough to show page 1 by itself and grouped pages 2 and 3, then 4 and 5. So with Apple Preview, you can peruse the PDF exactly like a printed copy of your book.
Had I known what I was doing, I would have started off formatting for the hardcover version, as specific gutters have to be set up. Then, presumably, I could have used the same file for the paperback and hardcover. Now I have three different files to manage (Kindle, paperback, and hardcover).
Selecting the size of your book
I’ve gotten used to reading on my Kindle, where I can adjust the text size on the fly. When I have to read a physical book, I sometimes get annoyed by the small fonts.
So, I wanted to produce my book with a large font size, like size 14. And, while I knew a 6X9 inch book was considered standard for my genre (non-fiction), I decided I wanted to create a larger book to ensure my font size was easily visible to people.
As a result, I converted my paperback manuscript from 6X9 to an 8x10 layout, which was a reasonable amount of work. Unfortunately, it also meant I had to revamp the cover, designed initially as a 6X9.
When I received my 8X10 proof, I immediately knew I had made the wrong decision. It felt like I had a college textbook in my hands, and the experience of reading, handling, and transporting my book didn’t feel right.
I then had to switch back to a 6X9 layout, which meant reformatting the manuscript and going back to the cover designer and letting them know I had changed my mind.
Lessons I learned:
You can still use size 14 fonts in a 6X9 book. Yes, it makes the page count longer (which increases the book's production cost), but a longer page count gives a book a heftier, more substantial feeling in your hands.
Make sure you know what size book you want to produce and do not change your mind mid-process.
Marketing
Creating the marketing plan for Leading to Change has been a slow roll. A bit of advice I read in numerous places was that to sell a book, you need to have an audience ahead of time. And I don’t have that. So I did start this newsletter, but truthfully, I’ve always been pretty intermittent about publishing content regularly.
And I’ve even been reluctant about doing basic things like posting on LinkedIn. In part, my reluctance to self-promote is because I’m nervous about how my book will be received. And aside from LinkedIn, I don’t use a lot of other social media platforms.
I might run some Amazon ads, which leads to the next unexpected lesson I learned about self-publishing.
Lessons I learned:
If you can, set up your digital presence well ahead of your publication date.
By all accounts, having a mailing list is the most important way to keep in direct contact with your audience.
The cost of self-publishing
So far, I have spent about $2,000 to get my book ready to be published. I’ll do a detailed breakdown in another newsletter soon. That being said, I expect to make about $1.50 per copy of my book sold, which means I would need to sell about 1,300 copies to break even.
All of my research leads me to believe that most self-published authors are lucky to sell 500+ copies.
Fortunately, I’m not interested in turning a profit on this book. For me, it was a journey and a bit of an experiment. I have considered this my hobby for the last few years, and if you think about it, $2,000 for a hobby that occupies you for a few years and helps you grow is a pretty reasonable price to pay.
Wrapping things up
With the publication date coming up next week, I’m excited to finish this phase of my writing journey. I’m going to put together a couple more blog posts about my book-writing and self-publishing adventure in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
Perspectives 3: Finding joy at intersections
What's important to you? And what brings you joy? Is there an opportunity to combine your passions and your values?
This article contains associate links to three books I purchased and read on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
Starting in 2010, I began working for an order of the Catholic Church. My tenure began during the aftermath of the sex abuse scandal, and many parts of the organization were still struggling with the weight of what had happened.
In 2015 my office in Boston closed due to a series of consolidations and mergers. Fortunately, I had been working closely with the organization’s headquarters office in Washington, DC. As a result, I was offered a job as the first-ever IT Director. With the new role came a new boss, Shawn. He was brilliant, funny, and had unique and insightful perspectives.
“Our work is so dark sometimes; we must prioritize joy, so we don’t burn out,” Shawn told me. One of Shawn’s leadership values (and one that I have adopted) is to promote joy in our work.
It’s not always easy to find joy, sometimes our work is taxing, or something is going on at home that makes it hard for us to feel happy. And we’re always so busy trying to achieve...
I find joy in reading, and spend a lot of my time reading non-fiction books with themes of leadership and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). DEI can be a heavy topic; so these books don’t always inspire joy.
An unexpected gift
When I was a kid, my neighbor brought me an unexpected gift. She saw a comic book at our local general store, Daredevil issue 243. The theme was so dark, probably too dark for a 12-year-old to read, but read it I did… the book started to fall apart in my hands because I had read it so many times. Each panel was inspected, and every block of text was reviewed numerous times.
Daredevil 243 was probably the first time I felt significantly moved by anything in my life. And, despite the dark theme, the book ignited my imagination and instilled in me a great sense of joy.
And, as an adult, I still love the mixed media of comic books, the way drawings, and the written word combine to form a story. And I’m still moved by stories of exploration and self-discovery.
Finding joy in your work
A large part of my work over the past several years has revolved around increasing diversity, fostering equity, and creating inclusion in the workplace. These are themes that align with my personal and leadership values.
As I look back at what I read in 2022, I found three publications that created a sense of joy by blending themes of diversity, equity, inclusion, exploration, and self-discovery into the mixed-media method of storytelling.
Imagine a 13-year-old boy who is a first-generation American citizen becoming a member of the galactic police. Well, that’s precisely what happens when Tai Pham’s grandmother, a refugee of the Vietnam war, dies and passes her legacy as a Green Lantern on to her grandson.
Living in a city that is increasingly unwelcoming to minorities and with a multi-billionaire property developer bent on gentrification, Tai struggles to find his place in his family, community, and the universe.
Kind of like Pixar movies, Green Lantern: Legacy is something that can appeal to both kids and adults.
Gender Queer: A Memoir Deluxe Edition
Gender Queer had been on my radar for quite some time. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most banned books for the last couple of years. The graphic novel is an autobiography about the author’s upbringing. Born female, Maia never really associates with being a girl.
If you’ve ever struggled to understand what being transgender is all about, Gender Queer provides some interesting perspectives.
A story that needed to be told, Gender Queer is a book that must be read.
I grew up with Tim Drake as Batman’s trusty sidekick, Robin. While I was in high school, Tim was also in high school, and I got to watch him struggle with making friends, hiding his secret identity, and dating girls. I feel like Tim and I had a lot in common, except for that my secret identity wasn’t being a superhero, it was being gay.
A surprising twist has taken place. After his last breakup, Tim finds himself in love with one of his friends, Bernard.
The art and story in this comic are simply wonderful, and it’s good to see characters we’ve always loved evolve.
How do comic books relate to leadership?
Right now, a major theme in higher education leadership is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). DEI is a massive topic and one that’s infinitely complex. So, keeping on top of current media and understanding DEI trends can help you keep your perspectives broad.
Also, as leaders, we are often too busy trying to lead, be efficient, and get things done. We don’t take time to pursue things that bring us personal joy. So it’s essential to permit ourselves to relax a little bit.
For you, comic books might not be the intersection of joy, work, life, and your values like they are for me. But such intersections exist if you spend some time looking for them.
Reflection
What brings you joy at work and in your personal life? How do these things align with your values? Can you find an opportunity to blend these things?
Perspectives 2: Is collaboration good?
Is collaboration always good? Can collaboration be bad? We’ll explore these questions and more in this issue of Perspectives.
This article contains an associate link to a book I purchased and read on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
Currently, I’m enrolled in the EDUCAUSE Executive Leadership Academy. The academy is designed to help leaders who aspire to be executives develop the skills required for such roles.
For the last couple of weeks, our cohort has been exploring aspects of collaboration. Our primary assignment was to read a book called Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results by Morten Hansen.
Collaboration blew my mind! The most eye-opening lesson I found in the book is that collaboration is not always a good thing from a business standpoint. The author goes further to propose that not only can collaboration not be good, but it can be harmful.
“BAD COLLABORATION is worse than no collaboration”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been told that we should collaborate more and that collaboration is good. So this statement caught me by surprise.
Hansen suggests that collaboration for the sake of collaboration has an opportunity cost. The “collaboration premium” must be weighed against the potential outcomes of collaborative endeavors.
I’ve seen bad collaboration in my workplace before. Leaders encourage “collaboration,” so they create cross-functional committees composed of people who wouldn’t normally interact. They encourage these committees to meet without providing any goals, the assumption being that the members will discern what needs to be done. Dozens or hundreds of hours are spent with group members attempting to determine their purpose; or why they are meeting in the first place. In the end, the committee fizzles.
What a colossal waste of time. Imagine what could have been done with the time consumed by that bad collaboration. One of the thoughts that formed while I was writing this post is that such “bad collaborations” give collaboration a bad name. “Remember when we formed XYZ committee and wasted all that time?” How likely will people be to try to collaborate outside of their silo if all they remember are the lousy collaboration experiences?
In Collaboration, Hansen proposes the use of disciplined collaboration. That is an intentional discernment of when collaboration yields results.
The book goes on to discuss several important topics, including:
The opportunities and barriers of collaboration
Understanding when and when not to collaborate
Identifying the four barriers to successful collaboration
Three levers to creating successful collaboration structures
Growing into a successful collaborative leader
I particularly appreciated the straightforward writing style and insightful examples Hansen provided. It took about 5 hours for me to read this whole book, and I believe the time was well spent.
Reflection
Have you been involved in a collaborative effort that turned out to be a waste of time? What do you think were the primary reasons the collaboration didn’t work, and what could have been done to make it work better?
Perspectives 1: Assessing your leadership values
The first assignment for the Executive Leadership Academy I'm enrolled in was to identify my leadership values. The exercise proved to be harder than I expected!
“True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work the pledged to do and doing it well.”
In 2022 I enrolled in the EDUCAUSE Executive Leadership Academy. This six-month, cohort-based program helps people on their way to becoming executives develop their leadership skills.
Here is a picture of Executive Leadership Academy cohort for 2022.
The course’s first module is about building your “leadership brand,” which I never gave much thought to. So our first exercise was to identify our leadership values. The activity turned out to be more challenging than I expected.
We started by taking the Barrett Values Center Personal Values Assessment. This is a free assessment, and I found the resulting insights interesting. The assignment required us to select some of the values provided by the evaluation and claim them as our own. Choosing values off a predefined list didn’t work for me. The list of single-word leadership values limited the reflection and exploration process.
After giving up on the predefined list, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my leadership values and came up with a preliminary list, which looked a bit like this:
Give people what they need to be successful
Wish for and support the success of others because their success makes you successful
Trust that people want to do good work and that it's our job to enable them to do so
We must have joy in our work
Everyone has value
Community amplifies belonging
Transparency, collaboration, relationships
I ran my newly found list past my work partner, Felix. Having worked with me for four years, Felix has a pretty good understanding of my values. He pointed out the value I hold most important: making sure people are treated respectfully and fairly.
My mentor also says we should group everything into sets of three. He firmly believes that people can keep three things straight in their minds. So if I were to try to combine my eight items above into three, the list might look like this:
Trust
Treat people right
Create a sense of belonging
Reflection
What are your top leadership values? Make a list then ask a trusted friend or coworker if you missed anything.
Leading to Change - The challenges of editing your own book
Stuck in an unproductive self-editing cycle, I realized that if I were going to self-publish Leading to Change I would need to get some help. But finding an editor turned out to be harder than I thought…
This article contains an associate link to a book I purchased and read on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
“I can edit my manuscript myself, sure, no problem!” I thought. And then I got stuck in an awful cycle. Sitting down to edit, I would end up doing extensive rewrites. Then I would edit the rewrites, only to start rewriting some more, which required more editing.
Five months into attempting to self-edit my manuscript, I was getting nowhere, and my book was no closer to being “done.”
When I was self-editing, I started reading Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should (Fourth Edition) (Let's Get Publishing Book 1) by David Gaughran. The book convinced me I needed to hire a professional editor to escape the rut I was stuck in. Even though hiring an editor was going to be expensive, I knew it was a cost that would, in the end, pay off.
David Gaughran suggested a site called Reedsy. Reedsy allows self-publishers like me to find many resources, like cover designers, editors, marketing folks, etc.
I researched a few editors, submitted samples of my manuscript, and waited to hear back.
For those of you who have been following my self-publishing journey, you’ll know I have struggled a lot with deciding to publish. I fear that the book won’t be well-liked or will be perceived as “bad.” Having poured so much of my heart and soul into something that others will provide feedback on makes me feel very vulnerable.
And… what happened next certainly didn’t alleviate my fears about how to book will be received.
Two of the three editors I sent the manuscript to didn’t want to work with me. One said it was too unclear what the book was, and without more clarity, there would be no audience. Now, why someone would turn down editing my book because they didn’t think it would sell struck me as a bit strange. Why would an editor care how my book sells? They’re getting paid to edit. Anyways, the first editor I sent my manuscript to bowed out.
The second person I sent my manuscript to was nicer and gave me some helpful feedback. He suggested I make the chapter titles a little better, which was great advice since chapter titles had been a bit of an afterthought. He gave me a price way out of my budget, stating that much work was needed to get my book ready to publish.
I couldn’t believe what these two editors seemed to think of my book.
On the rollercoaster-like emotional ride writing my book has taken me on, this was a low point.
And then, the third editor I had reached out to got back to me.
“Your book concept and synopsis are intriguing, and your sample was also immediately engaging. You can certainly write!”
And with a few kind words, an excellent, collaborative relationship began.
The copy editing is now officially complete, and as I peruse the new version of my book, I am stunned at how well it reads. The result was worth every penny of the $1,100 it cost to have an editor help me out.
A huge thank you to Influunt Publishing. I look forward to working with them when I write my next book!
So with the book edited and the cover design in progress, I’m getting ready to pick a publishing date—more about that next time.
Please reach out if you have any thoughts or feedback to share. You can contact me by clicking here.
Leading to Change - Getting a cover designed
We’ve all heard the adage, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” right? However, a book’s cover is the first thing we see, the one thing that makes us decide to read the book’s description. So we do judge books by their cover.
That’s why it was so important to me to get a fantastic cover designed for Leading to Change. In this article, I share several covers I’ve had designed and ask for your feedback on which I should pick!
This article contains an associate link to a book I purchased and read on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Here in Los Angeles, I volunteer quite a bit. Volunteering is such a great way to meet people and contribute to a vibrant community.
One of the volunteer groups I am a member of is the Los Angeles Yacht Amateur Radio Club. And it was at a monthly Radio Club meeting that I made a new friend, David Calloway. I liked David right away. He was outgoing, articulate, friendly, and welcoming. David was also working on writing a book, just like I was!
In the following months, I looked forward to exchanging stories with him at our monthly meeting. “How’s the writing going?” I would ask. “How do you plan to publish your book?” I prodded. Always patient, David answered every question I ever asked him about his self-publishing journey.
And then one day at our meeting, David shared with me the cover of his new book.
I WAS BLOWN AWAY!
The book cover was one of the best I had ever seen; you can see it below.
I asked David who designed his cover. He was kind enough to provide me with contact information for his cover designer, Susan, who turned out to be a neighbor!
Susan and I talked via phone.
“Tell me a bit about what you’re hoping for?” Susan asked.
“Well, it’s a book about change, uncertainty, ambiguity, volatility, complexity… so I’m looking for something that encapsulates all that. Also, since I’ll be publishing on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Platform (KDP), I want to make sure the cover has a lot of contrast because I want it to look good on a black and white e-ink screen.”
I provided Susan with examples of other books that shared a similar theme and relayed some things I knew about how the human mind perceives uncertainty. Things like slants, triangles, etc.
A few days later, she sent me some sample covers.
Honestly, none of the designs struck me right away. A common problem I have is wanting something to be “the same.” I was looking for a design like David’s. But, of course, my book is nothing like David’s. Leading to Change has a very different message and needs a cover that resonates with a different crowd. So, I decided not to reply to Susan immediately, instead testing the various covers on my Kindle to see how they looked. Then, I slept on it.
Overnight, the designs began to resonate with me… I have a favorite, but before I share which one, I like best, I wanted to ask for your feedback. Do any stand out to you?
Getting back to David Calloway’s book, If Someday Comes: A Slave’s Story of Freedom, it’s excellent. I liked it so much that I bought the Kindle version and two paperback copies. At a recent neighborhood community meeting here in LA, David performed a book reading and autographed copies for folks. I mailed a copy to my mom and kept one for myself.
That’s how the cover design process began, by networking at a volunteer event, by meeting people who are on a similar journey, or who share a common interest.
But the story of my book’s cover isn’t done yet. You can chime in and let me know which design you liked best and provide suggestions. Please reach out by visiting my Contact page. I look forward to hearing from you.
Oh, and one last thing! I plan to start a newsletter about change and leadership called Perspectives. Please sign up for my mailing list, by visiting my newsletter page.
Announcing Leading to Change
I’m getting ready to launch my first book: Leading to Change: Lessons for helping people navigate times of complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, and change. In this article, I share my long journey to publication.
This article contains an associate link to a book I purchased and read on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
We were on a road trip from our home in Los Angeles to pick up our new kitten in Sacramento. Along the way, we stopped at the Tamarack Lodge in Mammoth Lakes for a couple of nights. The lodge was very isolated, and I remembered all of those books I used to read about a plague that ended the world. In such stories, one person always had been in the snowy mountains only to discover civilization had disappeared upon returning to the nearest city. That was the foreboding sense of the future developing in my mind as we watched events unfold on the news from our wintery cabin in the middle of nowhere. COVID-19 was about to change everything.
Upon returning to Los Angeles with our new kitten, Adi, we received a work-from-home order. The order meant I no longer had to wake up at 5:00 am and catch a bus to my office. So, every morning, during the time I would have spent commuting, I wrote instead.
What started as a reflection of my career grew longer, and eventually, I recognized a theme flowing throughout my writings that reflected my current situation: change.
“Maybe the lessons I’ve learned about change can help people,” I thought. “I’m going to self-publish this as a book.”
So, that’s how Leading to Change started. It’s been a long journey… most of the writing was done by early 2021. I sat on the manuscript, unsure if I should publish or not. I had poured my heart and soul into writing this book. “What if no one buys it?” I thought. “What if it gets bad reviews….” I ruminated. “What if it’s too personal?”
Through talking with my partner, David, I decided I did want to proceed with publication. So I bought a book on self-publishing, Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should (Fourth Edition) (Let's Get Publishing Book 1) by David Gaughran.
Let’s Get Digital told me everything I needed to do to publish and sell copies of Leading to Change. Some of these things were easy; they just required paying someone; an editor, a cover designer, etc.
Gaughran also says you will need a social media following, including a Facebook page, a mailing list, a website, and a Twitter account. He proposes you need to build an audience before publication to see any long-term success.
I’m aiming for a publication date of early April 2023, though I have heard some advice from various self-publishing podcasts that non-fiction books don’t do very well leading up to and throughout the summer. So I may wait until September. We’ll see.
So that’s where I am right now; building my brand. I’ve got some content written for my newsletter. The newsletter is called Perspectives. If you sign up for my mailing list, you can be the first to get valuable information about leadership and change and updates on Leading to Change.
Please sign up for Perspectives
I’m preparing to launch Prespectives, my weekly newsletter about all things change and leadership! You can sign up by clicking here.