Cubs Fans' Leadership Secrets: Learning to Win From a "Cursed" Team's Errors - Softcover

John Charles Kunich; Richard I. Lester

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935166026 ISBN 13: 9781935166023

Publisher: Parkhurst Brothers Publishers Inc, 2009

Synopsis

The Manager's Guide for Staying in First Place ... and the worker's guide for becoming a manager!

Cubs fans have often focused on one or two star performers, to the detriment of the team's overall performance.
Stars have often been selfish and devoted to their own success.  Leaders have toleratged them, often at a price
to the whole team.  Effective leadership recognizes the dangers in this situation.  Here's their antidote--in a
highly-readable book that's hot off the press!  Foreword by bestselling-author Ken Blanchard.

About this title

From the Publisher

Our mothers always told us, "Don't wind up like that kid!" and they were right. Every leader can benefit from this study of the Cubs' superabundance of bad examples. After all, shouldn't some consolation prize be bundled with all that heartbreak?

You don't run into a George Washington or Abraham Lincoln too often, but all of us can see something of ourselves in the Cubs' struggles to get the most out of ordinary gifts. There is no richer treasure trove of mistakes than the Cubs, who in 2008 "celebrated" 100 consecutive years without a World Series championship. It took a lot of errors to amass that unparalleled record of futility, a bumper crop of bad choices and failed experiments for leaders to learn from.

Cubs teams have "choked" in the clutch because they had not done the groundwork to become immune to pressure. If leaders fail to think about and prepare for emergencies, their organizations become very vulnerable to panic and disaster when crises do materialize. The book introduces a new concept, the Coefficient of Panic Vulnerability, and explains how leaders can influence it positively.

The Cubs traded away young future Hall of Famer Lou Brock in a misguided and shortsighted episode of leadership ineptitude that haunted them for many years. Often, teams do not recognize diamonds in the rough when they are right among them. This book demonstrates how to develop effective programs to identify and nurture future top performers in any line of work.

Organizations can become comfortable with failure, with losing ingrained in their culture. This systemic sickness is simultaneously one of the results of prolonged failure, and also fosters repetition of those unsatisfactory outcomes. Cubs Fans' Leadership Secrets explains that the proper response to failure includes an attitude that losing is not a permanent condition and that we have the power to reverse any curse.

Winning teams don't tolerate blaming other people, or "curses," or any outside factors for their own mistakes, whether individually or collectively. They own their negative experiences and learn from them. This book explores and provides a solution to the Cubs' long history of blaming their losses on billy-goat curses, black-cat bad luck, bad umpires, poor weather, their teammates, and everyone but themselves.

Leaders ensure failure when they refuse to take a hard look at themselves. There are many common Achilles' heels that cause leaders and their organizations to stumble, but they can only be corrected if they are first noticed and acknowledged as areas needing work. This self-assessment is not always a pleasant process, but it is essential, and Cubs Fans' Leadership Secrets explains how to do it.

From the Author

If leaders are supposed to learn from making mistakes, you can get a Ph.D. in leadership by studying the Chicago Cubs. For a full century the Cubs have been breaking their fans' hearts and breaking records for futility, but now leaders can learn the secrets that will let them break the good kind of records.

The Cubs have given us 100 years of advanced leadership lessons from their own special brand of Ivy League--within the leafy outfield walls of beautiful Wrigley Field. They have conducted a century-long experiment in finding every possible way to fail, and now leaders can use the results to eliminate panic from their collection of strategic tools. During the current economic crisis, that could come in handy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Parkhurst Brothers Publishers Inc
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1935166026
• ISBN 13: 9781935166023
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176