We’ve been home just a couple of weeks and it’s off again, this time to Seattle for family, and then to Pennsylvania for marketing. The book goes to the printer next week. A galley will be produced, which will be proof read and then indexed. Then the book will be printed.The cover is almost done, a beautiful thing by our printer’s graphic artist, Kathy. Following is another excerpt, one that I finished this weekend.
Oct 20
The book is still in editing — but almost out. I’ve met with the printer, have an indexer set up, and have a cover designed. It is time to begin publicity so Linda and I leave Monday for a week in NYC to meet with media. Here’s another excerpt:
Aug 19
The book WILL be done soon. Here are three more excerpts.
Life is serious business and whether you know it or not, and whether you like it or not, your personal systems are the threads of the fabric of your life. The sum total of all your personal systems adds up to you. And if you are like most people, you negotiate your days without seeing the systems of your life as the singular entities they are, some working well and some not working so well.
In the complexity that is your life, what if you could see each of these systems distinctly? Then, what if you could reach in and pluck a not-so-perfect system out of that complexity, make it perfect and then reinsert it? What if you could perform that system improvement process with every system that comprises your life?
What if, piece by piece, you could engineer your life to make it exactly what you want it to be without having to rely on luck, providence, blind faith or someone else
Jul 13
The book is coming along slower than I had anticipated. The process includes rewrite after rewrite and it just doesn’t seem to end. But, each rewrite has fewer and fewer corrections and each time I like the results more. The 77,000 word text has gone through a full professional preliminary edit but I am going to go through the editing process again. I am now in the process of selecting that editor. Also, a book designer and printer. I have updated the website and there is a new chapter one. That, and an updated Preface are now posted there. The site itself has been reworked, too.
Linda and I spent two weeks in Italy in the first part of June and then I spent a week in Alaska, returning just a couple of days ago (yes, I brought back lots of fish). Funny thing, though: While away I got an enormous amount of writing accomplished.
I am guessing Work The System will be in print by summer’s end. Here’s another excerpt:
Is the Focus on the Product or the System?
It seems logical that the new entrepreneur
Apr 15
I describe my five person management staff as
Apr 14
Here’s one of the "tool boxes" I will include in Work the System. I wrote this just this morning so it’s a very first draft. I am not satisfied with an end product until I have done 8 to 10 rewrites so don’t pay too much attention to gramatical clumsiness or error. But this was fun so I thought I’d include it now. -sc
Toilet Paper
As an example of systems thinking, and at the risk of an awful pun, reaching for a piece of toilet paper is the bottom line. The act of loading toilet paper on a toilet paper roll is a system
Apr 04
There is a great cover article in the April issue of Wired Magazine. It talks about the "see through CEO" and the new trend toward opening up a company — and an industry’s underbelly, via the web — to the general population. I was glad to see idea is becoming popular since we have been doing it for nearly five years now. I am not an industry social creature and don’t attend trade group meetings or have much to do with my peers in the industry. I used to do all that but finally realized that there is too much that I can’t swallow with the group-think mentality of trade organizations — and, as I get older, yes, I get more socially cantankerous. Nonetheless, I like to think that the independent nature of my mindset has kept me free-thinking. And regarding those trade meetings, I don’t drink. What fun is that? So, in the spirit of the topic, here is a link to a page in our website that candidly discusses the answering service industry.
Check out my book Work the System. It’s about system thinking
-sc
Mar 16
I have been wrapped up with the new book and working with my staff to install a $100,000 equipment upgrade at Centratel. For those reasons, I have neglected this Blog. So, here’s an update and I will be better about staying up with it. Here is an excerpt from Work the System. It has to do with when I first got a clue about what was wrong with my business and my life. It was six years ago:
The Enlightenment
It is Often Darkest Just Before Dawn -Sojourner Truth, 1850
So, for eighteen years I hammered my small answering service into some kind of subservient yet mocking submission. Everything depended on me, it seemed, and if I let up for one moment my world would come crashing down.
Over all those years I never let up for an instant.
And then, finally, I hit a brick wall. In my arsenal of last-minute bailout strategies, I had no measured solution to the deathblow crisis looming ahead
Nov 15
I am 80% through with writing this book. The process started last April and I have been routinely getting up early and knocking off a few hours of work before the morning news on TV, Linda’s emergence from the bedroom and the dawn. It’s these hours that I love the most; the luxury and the reward of this life I lead.
I took October off from writing while Linda and I traveled to Azad Kashmir for relief work. The details are on the Kashmir Family Aid website.
Last night, we snarffed a couple of hotdogs at Costco (our occasional and silly/fun routine) and then saw the movie Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllengenhal. I think it could become a cult hit, with some profound undertones about the reality of things. Joe and the Vocano (Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan) was like that. Light but important.
Here is more from the book, from the first chapter. I will keep pounding away and look forward to being finished while at the same time relishing the process. -sc
Nov 01
When Centratel was just a hair-breadth away from collapse, finding the resources to summon up quiet and not-so-quiet courage was not a problem. Figuratively, I had a gun to my head. The loss of everything was just in front of my face and I exhibited the same visceral protective reaction that I would have had if someone was physically pushing me toward a cliff edge (and for the record, and unrelated to this argument for quiet courage, note that personal desperation can be a highly effective motivator. Comer Cotrell said
