Customer Reviews

Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

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OK. I admit I'm going out on a limb, but I've already found a contender for my Top-10 book list for 2011. The chapter titles are powerful enough. The actual chapters are pure dynamite. Example:
--The Wise, the Foolish, and the Evil: Identifying Which Kinds of People Deserve Your Trust (Chapter 7)
--Pruning: Growth Depends on Getting Rid of the Unwanted or Superfluous (Chapter 2)
--When Stuck Is the New Normal: The Difference Between Pain with a Purpose and Pain for No Good Reason (Chapter 4)
--Sustainability: Taking Inventory of What Is Depleting Your Resources (Chapter 13)

Dr. Henry Cloud, a leadership coach to CEOs and business executives, and a clinical psychologist, has introduced a new term into the leadership lexicon: the pruning moment.

He defines the pruning moment as "that clarity of enlightenment when we become responsible for making the decision to own the vision or not. If we own it, we have to prune. If we don't, we have decided to own the other vision, the one we called average. It is a moment of truth that we encounter almost every day in many, many decisions."

Cloud melds the personal and the professional in this pruning manual of memorable stories and principles and shows why they must go hand-in-hand--and why lack of character on the personal side is often the unseen obstacle to "necessary endings" on the business side.

"Getting to the next level," Cloud writes, "always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on." He takes Peter Drucker's "planned abandonment" and "sloughing off yesterday" themes (see my Results Bucket chapter) and delivers a detailed road map for arriving at your preferred destination.

Necessary endings, he adds, "are the reason you are not married to your prom date nor still working in your first job." Leaders get that, so what's new and fresh? How about his list of the 11 reasons why leaders and managers avoid necessary endings? Here are just four of the preferred avoidance strategies:
--"We are afraid of the unknown."
--"We do not possess the skills to execute the ending."
--"We have had too many and too painful endings in our own personal history, so we avoid another one."
--"We do not learn from them, so we repeat the same mistakes over and over."

If your gut says it's time to end a relationship, help an employee exit, dismount a dead horse, say farewell to a sacred cow, or drop a loser program, product or service, this just-in-time pruning book will show you how.

Cloud uses a simple rose bush illustration to explain the pruning process. Pruning is "removing whatever it is in our business or life whose reach is unwanted or superfluous." It's also a process of "proactive endings." He coaches leaders to prune in three categories (think rose bushes):
1) Prune healthy buds or branches that are not the best ones.
2) Prune sick branches that are not going to get well.
3) Prune dead branches that are taking up space needed for the healthy ones to survive.
He likes Jack Welch's view that a leader must discern whether a business or a division needs to be fixed, closed or sold.

"All of your precious resources--time, energy, talent, passion, money--should only go to the buds of your life or your business that are the best, are fixable and are indispensable."

"Leaders by nature," Cloud adds, "are often optimistic and hopeful, but if you do not have some criteria by which you distinguish optimism from false hope, you will not get the benefits of pruning. Sometimes the best thing a leader can do is to give up hope in what they are currently trying."

Then, this zinger: "Wise people know when to quit."

And effective leaders know when to ask people to exit. Commenting on Welch's "Neutron Jack" style of pruning the bottom 10 percent of employees each year," Cloud nudges the timid leader with this wisdom: "And I can understand why many people were upset with a fixed strategy like that for firing employees. But I do believe that there is some number of people in every organization and every life who will be routinely `let go' if leadership is doing its stewardship job."

Cloud also delivers fresh ideas in other management buckets, including three practical questions to ask in the Meetings Bucket. If a routine meeting is "sick and not getting well," he offers this example: "We have tried repeatedly to use these times for forecasting, and it just never works. We can't get the information we need as the discussion progresses, and even though we have tried, it is confusing and a waste. Let's stop using this meeting to do that."

I underlined a lot of pages in this book. It's filled with gems...I mean, it's a bouquet of roses that will brighten your day and lengthen your career.

This book could not have come at a better time. I am an extremely positive person. I always try and make the best of it, turn it around, fix it, change it, morph it...essentially, I do everything but end it! I have never been good at letting things go because it's painful to me, to the other person, I have invested so much time/energy, and of course I hope that they or it, will change. Dr. Cloud illustrates in such a straightforward way, how there is such a thing as "good hopelessness". In this book, Dr. Cloud gives you the tools to decide wether you are dealing with a wise, foolish, or evil person. These tools helped me see reality clearly, and realize that until I let go of what is not good, I am not going to find what is good...and sometimes this means letting go of what is good to find great. Bottom line...this book made me realize that always being too positive, can actually have negative consequences if you don't know when or how to get to a "good hopelessness". Negative can be positive! Wether it's business or personal, the illustrations in this book will help you diagnose and make the proper endings.

I used to think "Boundaries: When to Say YES, When to Say NO, To Take Control of Your Life," was Cloud's best book. I just changed my mind. This is possibly the most powerful book I've read in the last three years. If you are co-dependent, a recovering co-dependent or anyone who grew up or is in dysfunctional relationships, you will truly appreciate this book. If you are a boss, manager, CEO, supervisor or anyone who works with people you will LOVE this book. Even the healthiest person runs into dysfunctional people wherever they go. Cloud gives you great tips on how to spot a "fool," a "wise man" and the evil people among us; as well as tips on how to deal with them.

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Looking back at the time I left an alcoholic partner "for MY OWN GOOD," I can see some seed of sanity and an understanding that some endings were necessary. This book simply validates what I've suspected all along - better to cut your losses as soon as you see they're losses - and run. It's more than that of course, but the theme is the same. Endings are beginnings in disguise.

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I literally wept with relief when I read his VERY SIMPLE and extremely practical and FOOLPROOF method for dealing with "fools." It so works. It so works!! Just so you know, Cloud considers a fool someone who refuses to accept or look at feedback. Being a fool has NOTHING to do with intelligence, skills or capabilities and everything to do with not being able to accept reality. Some of the smartest men and women on the planet are "fools" and some of the least intelligent are wise. It all has to do with whether you can listen and accept feedback (not critical shaming criticism - but real FEEDBACK). If you buy this book for no other reason than to learn how to shut down a fool, it's well worth the price!!

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Quotes I LOVED:

"Successful leaders ALL have one thing in common: They get in touch with reality. If you comb the leadership literature, one theme runs throughout everyone's descriptions of the best leaders. The great ones have either a natural ability, or an acquired one, to 'confront the brutal facts... especially when it comes to seeing a necessary ending.'"


"The mature person meets the demands of life, while the immature person demands that life meet her demands."


"You cannot deal with everyone the same way. There are evil people, fools and wise people. When truth presents itself, the wise person sees the light, takes it in and makes adjustments. The fool tries to adjust the truth so he doesn't have to adjust to it. Evil people are not reasonable and truth means nothing to them. They simply want to hurt you and do destructive things. Don't have anything to do with them. NOTHING. Protect yourself in the manner of the Warren Zevon song, with "Lawyers, Guns and Money." (Attorneys, Police and Resources to keep them away from you.)

Cloud talks about the "hoarder mentality." If you thought hoarders only stockpiled crap in their homes - just wait. Cloud exposes the "business hoarder" and explains, "The hoarder mentality thrives not only in garages, but in business and people's lives as well." Hoarders, in one way or another Cloud says, "Always say I might need that." CEOs and business owners cling to people, resources, businesses in the same way - saying "If things turn around we might need that division next year."


My other favorite sections were:

Internal Maps that Keep You From Succeeding.
Cloud sets out the five most common "maps" or thought patterns that keep us from necessary endings:
(1) Having an abnormally high pain threshold. Common apparently for those of us with lousy childhoods who learned to endure horrific emotional, physical or mental pain. We're so used to numbing ourselves we don't recognize when something really is abnormal pain. He shows us how/why we do this and how to change it. Pain ended!!
(2) Covering for Others. Growing up in an alcoholic home I learned to assume responsibility for everything. If someone got sick, fell down the stairs, got into a fight, spent all their money it was up to me to "make it work" or "fix it." That's a WRONG map/thought pattern that kept me co-dependent all my life. I'm now 55 and know I'm only responsible for myself and not for the adults, addicts, fools and losers around me.
(3 Believing that Quitting means you Failed. I think anyone who has been abused, bullied or belittled has this map. Whoever said, "Winners never quit and quitters never win," wasn't thinking about when quitting is sometimes a good thing, a necessary thing.
(4) Misplaced Loyalty - how being "loyal" to someone to the extent we hurt ourselves is misplaced loyalty and not good for us or the person we think we're being loyal to.
(5) Codependency Mapping - Need I really say more? Cloud nails this too - pointing out how our co-dependency keeps us feeling responsible for the other person's pain when we stop enabling them. He says:

"There is a difference between helping someone who is disabled, incapable, or otherwise infirm versus helping someone who is resisting growing up and taking care of what every adult (or child for that matter) has to be responsible for: herself or himself. When you find yourself in any way paying for someone else's responsibilities, not only are you stuck with a delayed ending, but you are probably harming that person.

I could go on for pages. All I can say is that this book is life changing. BUY IT!! And buy a copy to give a friend because you're going to want to after you read it.

Too many people dislike confrontation, so they let wrong behavior continue for far too long. This book points out how there can be no growth in certain situations until the problem is confronted. There are examples of how to do it with kindness.

Dr Henry Cloud does it again! Giving us words of wisdom to throw off the chains of denial that keep us pretending. This book helped me with a struggle in accepting a necessary ending that was not my choice and to look at some of the things i was procrastinating about in light of REALITY. I am looking forward to reading and benefitting from his previous book, "Integrity," which I purchased at Amazon.com.

Sometimes life hits me hard and sudden. Sometimes problems develop slowly and leave me anxious to get things resolved for the better. This book has helped me get my head up, and creating a plan, so that I focus on where I COULD go, if only I'll take that necessary step towards ending a situation, pattern or relationship that serves no one well - not the team, not my friend, and certainly not me.

Knowing the difference between wishful thinking and hopeful thinking was the key definition for me while reading this book. I initially read the book fast, and am now reading back through it slowly and taking some time to metabolize the information and an action plan.

Whether you are faced with a sudden and unexpected ending (job loss, medical diagnosis, financial crisis) or you are working through something that may need to be an ending so that you can move on to a better career/relationship/pattern of life, I believe that you will find true hope and encouragement through the information in this book. The mental work of understanding this book is easy. There is a lot of practical advice.

The emotional and relational work of putting this information to practice is harder, but it's worth it for us to live out our best life, our truest dreams.

Length:: 1:58 Mins

We've all hung onto a car, friend, relationship, business, or employee far longer than we knew we should have. And we've all known the back-and-forth process that drains our energy, even in the face of a hopeless situation we know is headed for a fall. Emotions, lack of resolve and energy, the draw of the status quo, and so much more keeps us in relationships we should shed for our own good and that of others. Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud gives us a rationale and a pathway to move forward on such endings. He warns us that the good can't come until the bad ends: Pruning away dead wood--even if there's still some life there--must happen if the whole tree is to survive; getting out of the new normal of being stuck; learning the difference between hope and wishing; knowing how to spot a wise person, a fool and an evil one and what to do with each; gathering energy to end and finally having the conversation; and, then grieving over the loss and moving into the future. Cloud has written a readable, understandable book with implications for each of us. It's written more from his experience as a coach and psychologist rather than straight research; nonetheless, given his credentials and how his suggestions ring true, it's a worthy read that I'll recommend to clients, family and friends.

I think that this is an excellent premise for a book. The topic is very needed and the way the content is addressed is important. I think that there needs to be a sequel book written titled "Unnecessary Endings." There needs to be a thorough, concise book to address the fact that often Christians, especially in our present culture, end relationships and commitments far too quickly and easily. It's a huge problem that, so often, Christians don't know when to hang in with a relationship and dedicate themselves to working out a problem relationship. There are often wounds and emotions buried deeply (usually from childhood) within many people that hinder them, unknowingly, from being able to stay in and work on painful, troubled relationships. If these wounds were addressed, it could mean the beginning of a new era of healing and healthy relationships for people. This is a lesson that goes so easily unlearned because so many people don't even realize that there is a need to relate differently or that there is another way to live. There is much more hope and promise for relationships than most people realize or understand.

I have read a lot of books in my life, but there are some books that change the game. Enter, Necessary Endings. I am thankful for the timing of this book. I feel the book is giving me permission to end things, some of which is good. I genuinely believe over the next 120 days for me will be liberating. I will be able to create margin, focus on what is really important in my work, and be able to spend more intentional time with my family.

I found this book to be very insightful. It has given me a new look at ending relationships well and how important that is.