Titles…

I know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its title, but…  titles do catch our attention, yes?  I wonder: If we added clever titles to our Progress Reports, would it make for better reading by our managers?  Could a title improve our content?

One of my favorite book titles is Hope is Not a Strategy© by Rick Page.  Applicable to so many of life’s challenges, true?  I liked the book, too.  Rick suggested to be successful in the sales profession we need to go out and “hunt” for business vs. hoping business will somehow find us.

I bought a book once titled,  How to Work for an Idiot © by Dr. John Hoover.  Question: If I’m a Manager, do I buy that book for my people?  What if they but it for themselves and I see it on their desk, then what do I do?  What if they have dog-eared several pages!!  It brings to mind words from our favorite, Unknown Sage:

Owen’s Theory of Organizational Deviance: 

Every organization has an allotted number of positions to be filled by misfits.

So, should we put titles on our Progress Reports?  In my career I noticed when I wrote a report it always stimulated a call from my manager to discuss what was in the report.  It made me wonder; if we’re going to talk about it anyway, why did I have to write the report in the first place?  Back to our Unknown Sage:

Sweeny’s Law: 

The length of a Progress Report is inversely proportional to the amount of progress.

I don’t write Progress Reports anymore.  If you do and you’d like a little help you with your report title might I recommend, Only the Paranoid Survive © by Andy Grove?

GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.