Customer Reviews

Simple Solutions: Harness the Power of Passion and Simplicity to Get Results

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Are you a first-time manager, new to leading others? If so, you could do worse than to read "Simple Solutions: Harness the Power of Passion and Simplicity to Get Results." The book will do a good job of giving you an overview of the skills and passions the authors believe are key to leadership success.

Have you been leading for some years? If so, you don't need this book.

Schmitt and Perl believe leadership success depends on five tools and five passions. Their visual model is an old-fashioned balancing scale, with the five tools on one side and the five passions on the other, and Simplicity as the base.

The tools they believe are key are:

"Management savvy: Work smarter, not harder."
"People Skills: Making people the top priority."
"Collaboration: Think 'one big team.'"
"Time Management: Align your time with the right goals."
"Execution: Do it! Don't sacrifice good for better."

And the passions they focus on are:

"Ambition: Be ambitious for your people and the cause."
"Leadership: Leave a place better than you found it."
"Vision: Imagine the possibilities."
"Focus: Use a laser, not a floodlight."
"Determination: Stick to it."

The strength of the book is that it pulls all these concepts together into a short, readable volume. That's great if you are a brand new manager. For anyone else, though, it suffers from three weaknesses.

The first weakness will be evident from the lists above. None of these concepts are new or novel, and any manager with a bit of success will already know that these are pretty important.

The second weakness, at least in my eyes, is the lack of evidence to prove that these are actually the keys to leadership success. The book amounts to a collection of anecdotes and opinions, and none of us should be satisfied with that.

Finally, the book is fairly light on how to apply these ideas in the day to day work of leading people. I wish the authors had provided a directed reading list to expand on each of their ideas.

As a retired member of management for a large manufacturer, all I can say after reading this book is "Where were you when I needed you?"

The authors of this very easy-to-read guide to clear thinking really do make it look easy. But their principles aren't limited to those in the corporate world or legal profession. Keeping it simple is a philosphy to apply to any project, large or small.

Thank you Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Perl for sharing your wonderful book and for helping us back up and take another look at things. Balancing the right and left brains is a concept too long forgotten. Considering only the left brain as "smart" and the right brain as "arty" is all too common, with the value of intuition and vision of the right brain often ignored.

Simple works. It's that simple. The authors of this newly published management guide don't do simple work. Schmitt is a senior executive in FedEx supplying solutions to complex logistical problems and Perl is an attorney who has practiced before the Supreme Court. Yet they've found that they can break down complex problems into simple components and solve them. Applying that principle of simplicity to business and government they demonstrate in this accessible guidebook how any manager can work more effectively and efficiently. They incorporate "tools" and "passions" that draw on both sides of the brain to not only analyze problems, but to find ceative solutions to them. You don't need an MBA to figure out that they're on to something.

Simple Solutions is a book that will help you to solve a riddle. What do you get when you cross a successful C.E.O. with a highly influential attorney? You may be expecting a humorous punch line but the real answer is you get an insightful book that brings you back to the basic principles of real leadership.

Thomas Schmitt is a senior executive at FedEx including C.E.O. of FedEx Global Supply Chain Services. Arnold Perl has been a practicing attorney for over 30 years and is a partner of the employment firm of Ford & Harrison LLP. Arnold's accomplishments would read like a "Who's Who" listing due to his personal and community achievements. As Chairman of the New Memphis Arena Public Building Authority he helps to oversee the construction of the FedExForum, home to the Memphis Grizzlies, a franchise team in the NBA. Independently, in their leadership roles they had developed concepts of simplicity, tools and passion to motivate their teams to accomplish important tasks. Time and chance would bring them together in forums and civic meetings in Memphis. This relationship led to the writing of this book

Simple Solutions is based on a powerful yet simple concept. You can apply simple solutions to complex challenges. As it states in the introduction, "We believe that simplicity is the fundamental foundation for management. It is such an important concept in leadership that we devote the first chapter to that subject alone. Amid all the complexity of modern business, it is sometimes tough not to get bogged down in details and complexity." Furthermore, this book emphasizes that leadership can be learned, is a powerful way to build relationships, and that it gets results.

Each chapter of Simple Solutions discusses a key attribute of the author's effective leadership philosophy. Using the analogy of a balanced scale defined as "simplicity", five practical tools of left-brain approaches to leadership are matched with creative right brain approaches. For example, the left-brain tool of time management is balanced with the need for focus, a passion that is considered a right-brain approach. Each chapter is informative, easy to read and flavored with the author's personal experiences and examples.

Simple Solutions is a unique book that ties together many acknowledged qualities and principles of leadership together to create a picture for success. The interrelationship of the tools and passions discussed in this book is fascinating and will give you a more connected perspective of what it takes to lead others to accomplish great things. So... what do you get when you cross a successful C.E.O. with a highly influential attorney? You get a book worth reading, and one that attempts to make leadership a little simpler to understand and practice.