eConsultant Personal MBA Book Reviews

Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment by George Leonard

Summary

George Leonard has written a powerful book about the need to avoid bottom-line thinking and instead focus on mastery.

Notes

Take any activity and you'll find people performing at four different levels of participation.
1. The Dabbler
The Dabbler's learning curve rises very quickly, meets an obstacle and then drops to zero, since the dabbler gives up the activity and goes on to another; repeating the same curve on different activities.
2. The Obsessive
The Obsessive's learning curve rises quickly, meets obstacles, which The Obsessive tackles by redoubling his effort, getting more books and tools and trying to figure out ways to get better results faster and cheaper, and then burns out in a short while when he finds that the curve is not a straight line upwards.
3. The Hacker
The Hacker's learning curve rises quickly, meets an obstacle or two and then plateaus out on a straight line. The Hacker doesn't consider the need for more instruction or rising above that level. He is content with level reached and plans to stay at that level.
4. The Master
The Master's learning curve rises quickly, plateaus for a while, and with consistent practice, rises again with some regression and plateaus again for a while and so on. The Master knows that Mastery is a lifetime path. The Master enjoys living on the plateau. The Master knows that while he is on the plateau, learning is happening and practice will inevitably raise him to a higher level.

The Five Keys to Mastery
Key 1: INSTRUCTION - get an instructor.
Key 2: PRACTICE - learn to love the plateau and practice for the sake of practice.
Key 3: SURRENDER - surrender to the learning process and the learning curve.
Key 4: INTENTIONALITY - bring all of your willpower and the mental game to the learning.
Key 5: THE EDGE - focus on the fundamentals and the leading-edge.

Check out this blog for more info from the book : Blog : The Five Keys to Mastery

Personal MBA Project

01. Mastery by George Leonard
02. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton
03. Getting Things Done by David Allen
04. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
05. What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
06. Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business by Ram Charan
07. On Competition by Michael Porter
08. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne
09. Seeing What's Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
10. The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
11. First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
12. The One Thing You Need to Know by Marcus Buckingham
13. The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett & Lawrence Cunningham
14. Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger
15. The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Finance for Nonfinancial Managers by Robert A. Cooke
16. Essentials of Accounting by Robert Newton Anthony and Leslie K. Pearlman
17. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt & Jeff Cox
18. Lean Thinking by James Womack & Daniel Jones
19. The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel
20. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
21. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
22. The Marketing Playbook by John Zagula & Richard Tong
23. Purple Cow by Seth Godin
24. Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin
25. The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
26. The Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin
27. Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
28. On Writing Well by William Zinsser
29. How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
30. Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
31. The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
32. Flawless Consulting by Peter Block
33. Real Estate Principles for the New Economy by Norman Miller & David Geltner
34. Getting To Yes by Fisher, Ury, and Patton
35. Principles of Statistics by M.G. Bulmer
36. A Primer on Business Ethics by Tibor Machan & James Chesher
37. Brand New by Nancy F. Koehn
38. American Business, 1920-2000 by Thomas K. McCraw, John H. Franklin, and A. S. Eisenstadt
39. The Little Book of Business Wisdom by Peter Krass (Editor)
40. Re-imagine by Tom Peters
41. The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun
42. The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

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Book Reviews Index :

100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven | 100 Simple Secrets of Successful People by David Niven | 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler | Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy | Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | Focal Point by Brian Tracy | Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen | Gig by John Bowe | It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden | It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by Michael Abrashoff | Keep Your Brain Alive by by Lawrence C Katz & Manning Rubin | Learned Optimism by Dr Martin E P Seligman | Life Strategies by Phil McGraw | Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment by George Leonard | Never Wrestle with a Pig by Mark H McCormack | Please Don't Just Do What I Tell You by Bob Nelson | Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki | The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management by Hyrum Smith | The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success by Brian Tracy | The Brand You 50 by Tom Peters | The Power of Optimism by Alan Loy McGinnis | The Professional Service Firm 50 by Tom Peters | The Project 50 by Tom Peters | The War of Art by Steven Pressfield | The Wisdom of Teams by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith | Thriving in 24/7 by Sally Helgesen | Time Tactics of Very Successful People by B. Eugene Griessman | Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation by Robert I. Sutton