Wise Uncle Ben

Nearly all books I review will have been the audiobook version. Listening is much more efficient for me given that I drive quite a bit.

My Background

In order for you to appreciate how effective David Allen’s book is, I must tell you a little bit about me. I used to keep all of my appointments in my head or if they were really important, I would tell the secretary to remind me. I used my desk calendar to draw pictures while I was on the phone as well as to perform calculations. I have been known to have stacks of paper on my desk. On a final note when I was implementing my GTD filing systems on January 15, 2008, I opened some mail from 2003.

After I Read the Book

It’s been two months now since I first read the book. I can tell you with absolute certainty that I am more productive than I was 60 days ago. I have and use a filing system at work and at home. Although I still have to find time to process my in-basket, I do not find the task as daunting. I use my Google calendar faithfully to keep my appointments and my list of incompletes. Now that everything has a place, I am more relaxed and in control of my workflow.

The Book Review

Getting Things Done By David Allen

Getting Things Done was written by a life coach guru who trains people how to work more efficiently and effectively. Today more than ever, we are bombarded by incoming mail, email, text messages, requests, appointments, tasks, etc. Unless you have a system in place to process these tasks, they will be forever stuck in your mind as an “open loop“. This book gives you the tools to close these loops thereby emptying your mind of tasks.

Here is a list of a few key tools that will help you achieve “mind like water”:

• You must have infallible collection buckets.
• You must have a way to remind yourself of what needs to be done.
• In order to accomplish anything you have to know what is the exact next step.
• Anything that takes less than two minutes to accomplish should be done immediately.
• A calendar must be an integral part of you work flow management.

I do not wish to go into detail on these points given the brevity of the book. This is not your typical business book that you passively read. Getting Things Done is more of a guide that you must work with as you read in order to reap the benefits of the advice. You will find yourself wanting to read it again and again to refresh your enthusiasm for organization. The information contained could be life changing for anyone. In my humble opinion, colleges should add David Allen’s principles to the curriculum for all incoming freshman.

The Phenomenon

David Allen’s teachings have spun off almost into a culture of their own. Here are some links to GTD groups and sites. The last one is David Allen’s site.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Getting_Things_Done

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GtD_Palm

http://googlegroups.com/group/43Folders

www.43folders.com

www.davidco.com

Here is a sample of Mr. Allen’s seminars.

Getting Things Done and Entrepreneurship

No matter what life you live, organization is an integral part of success. Wether you are a stay-at-home mom or the CEO of a fortune 500 company, GTD can help you. These skills are especially important for anyone who aspires to be self-employed. When you are organized, you can relax; once you relax, creativity flows freely. Going with Tim’s rating scale, I would call this book a buy. Buy a copy for yourself and share it with a friend when you are finished. You won’t be disappointed.

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The Owner’s Manual for Personality at Work

Have you ever wondered if you have the right personality to be an entrepreneur? Is there even an ideal personality for an entrepreneur? If you watch business-themed reality television, you might conclude that an over-sized ego is the only requirement, but research shows that certain personality traits increase the likelihood of success as an entrepreneur.

“Know thyself”
Ancient Greek aphorism

Last month I wrote about The Millionaire Code and how it applies the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) as a framework to determine your easiest path to wealth. While searching for other opinions on the topic, I kept coming across another model: the Big Five also known as the Five-Factor Model (FFM). I started to review Instinct: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial DNA to Achieve Your Business Goals, but after reading it, I wanted more background in the model itself to understand its usefulness. That is how I came to read The Owner’s Manual for Personality at Work.

Although the Big Five and the MBTI are similar, there is a key difference in how they were conceived. Whereas the MBTI started with a framework that Carl Jung theorized and Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers refined, the Big Five started from the ground up with a very long list of personality traits. Gordon Allport and Harold Odberg challenged the research community “to find the smallest possible number of synonym clusters in the approximately 4,500 personality-descriptive words from the unabridged English dictionary.” It took nearly 50 years and the availability of PC-based statistical software, but in 1985 Paul Costa and Robert McCrae completed what was to become the Big Five. They identified five factors that comprise each person’s personality. In turn each of the five factors breaks down into six primary traits thereby rendering 35 traits in all. The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R or often just NEO) is one of the most widely used versions of the Big Five.

Caveat: Different treatments of the Big Five use slightly different naming conventions for the factors and primary traits. Personality at Work uses its own work-specific names for each factor and primary trait, but includes the NEO PI-R’s names too. CentACS‘ WorkPlace Big Five ProFile (WorkPlace or WB5P) is a specific flavor of the Big Five focusing on its applicability to business.

Part One: An Overview of the Big Five

The first seven chapters of the book explain the WorkPlace Big Five ProFile personality model. There are five factors in the model with descriptions that include anchor words. Each chapter includes a detailed description of the factor, its primary traits and several case studies.

The Big Five Personality Dimensions with Anchors

	Factor	Low	Midrange	High
N	Need for Stability Negative Emotionality Neuroticism	Resilient	Responsive	Reactive
E	Extraversion Positive Emotionality Sociability	Introvert	Ambivert	Extravert
O	Originality Openness to Experience Imagination	Preserver	Moderate	Explorer
A	Accommodation Agreeableness Adaptability	Challenger	Negotiator	Adapter
C	Consolidation Conscientiousness Will to Achieve	Flexible	Balanced	Focused

• N, E & O tend to decrease between age 20 and 30.
• A & C tend to increase during the same period.
• From 30 years old onward, all five factors tend to be very stable.

Primary traits are identified by the first letter of the factor (e.g. E: Extraversion), plus a number between one and six. (e.g. E3: Energy mode or Assertiveness) Note: there are a few NEO PI-R traits that do not have a corresponding WorkPlace trait due to the inapplicability to work.

Example: Primary Traits of Extraversion (E)

	WorkPlace	NEO PI-R
E1	Enthusiasm How much we express positive feelings to others	Warmth Our capacity for affection; friendliness; cordiality
E2	Sociability The degree to which we enjoy being with others	Gregariousness Our preference for being around other people
E3	Energy mode Our need for keeping on the move	Assertiveness Our tendency to express ourselves forcefully and without reluctance
E4	Taking charge The extent to which we want to lead others	Activity Level of energy; our tendency toward a fast-paced lifestyle
E5	Trust of others How easily we believe other people	Excitement seeking Our appetite for the thrills of bright colors and noisy settings
E6	Tact The degree of care we take in speaking	Positive emotions Our capacity for laughter, joy, love, optimism, and happiness

Each factor and primary trait is measured on a scale of 0 to 100. Traits are normally distributed, so very high or very low scores are the least common.

Big Five Scale

Score (0 - 100)	Description	Sign
0 - 35	Very Low	–
35 - 45	Low	-
45 - 55	Medium	=
55 - 65	High	+
65 - 100	Very High	++

• Midrange scores can represent
  • an average of some highs and some lows indicating split preferences within a factor that balance each other out, or
  • a true ambivert who prefers moderation and may exhibit traits situationally.
• Low or high scores indicate the strongest tendencies.

For a more in-depth overview of the Big Five, please visits the authors’ website.

Part Two: Real-World Applications

This section of the book applies the Big Five model to common business scenarios.

Leadership

Table 8.1 alone makes the chapter on leadership worth reading. It correlates data on all five factors plus each of the 30 primary traits with ten commonly identified leadership abilities.

• The ideal profile for leadership is N-E+O+A-C+ based on research.
• Individual traits are not mandatory, but their presence increases the probability of success.
• A leader can compensate for an excess or deficiency of a trait by having a related trait.

Selling and Influencing

This chapter tackles building rapport using the Big Five. Table 9.1 provides a framework for estimating someone else’s personality type. Then the authors outline “The Trait-Based Influence Process” and “Natural Influence Strategies” to create a customized influence strategy.

Career Planning

Building on the work of John Holland’s six career paths and Edgar Schein’s Career Anchors, the authors correlate Big Five data to specific jobs. The case studies are particularly interesting, because they delve into individual profiles and how specific traits affect performance. Note: DiscoverMe, a website that matched openings to Big Five profiles, is now defunct.

Examples of Big Five Profiles for Selected Jobs

	N	E	O	A	C
Consultant	=	=	+	=	=
Entrepreneur		+	+	-	+
Manager	-	+	-	-	+
Project Manager	=	+	=	-	+
Visionary	-	+	+	-	+

The profile for an entrepreneur is particularly interesting in that it varies slightly from the one described by Thomas Harrison in Instinct. Preview: He focuses much more on the importance of a low N score for the entrepreneur.

One-on-One

Perhaps more than any other chapter, this one has important implications for anyone considering a new business with a partner. The premise is that opposites may attract, but similarities are the basis for a strong partnership. It also covers strategies for troubleshooting relationships using compensation for trait deficits and acceptance of differences.

Team Development

This chapter seemed the least insightful if you already see the value in personality types. For those who don’t, the author lays out practical ways to use the tool to help teams by clustering their Big Five scores and identifying patterns.

Selection

In the final chapter of the section, Personality at Work outlines a selection process using the Big Five model. Table 13.1 lists the predictive validity of several tests and procedures many of which have surprisingly little predictive value for a successful hire.

Part Three: Developing People

Part Three is partly background information and partly tactical. It discusses nature versus nurture in trait theory and then highlights the differences between traits and competencies.

• Every trait is the combination of an inherited and learned elements.
• Traits and competencies are different, but can be closely correlated.

In the final chapters of this section, the advice becomes much more practical. The authors cover “Human Resource Optimization” which includes deciding whether to develop a missing trait, compensate for it or determine the gap is too large to address. The authors advocate a strengths management approach that aligns people with their natural gifts and personality type. (See Marcus Buckingham’s work or the book:  StrengthsFinder 2.0.)

Lastly, Chapter 17 provides detailed suggestions for adapting training for each factor. These suggestions would be most useful when training a large group with very clustered traits.

Part Four: Personal Applications

The final part of the books is least applicable to entrepreneurship directly, but is interesting from a personal development perspective. Chapter 18 provides a listing of attributes and habits correlated to the Big Five covering everything from homesickness to TV watching. Then the book wraps up with the advice to “accept who you are, but don’t bow to fate.”

Buy, Borrow or Bypass?

Buy it; you will want to take notes in the margins. After Part One, I already felt like I had gotten my money’s worth. If you are even slightly interested in personality types or personal development as they relate to your career, you will enjoy this book. Unlike most books on personality typing, this book in incredibly practical for anyone in business. The authors support their WorkPlace model with extensive data by citing studies and surveys from across the business world. At only 266 pages and filled with useful tables and charts, this book is a nearly perfect balance of an introduction to the Big Five and a desk reference. Rarely would I describe a book as having such an economy of words that there was little room for cutting it down. This book would be that rare exception.

Next Review: Instinct: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial DNA to Achieve Your Business Goals.

Related Resources

Center for Applied Cognitive Studies

Long Version of IPIP-NEO

Short Version of IPIP-NEO

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Amazon.com: The Millionaire Code

I was immediately attracted to Paul Farrell’s book, because it marries two topics that interest me greatly: personality type and wealth building. Although the book focuses on wealth building in general, the points are especially relevant to the entrepreneur.

Farrell’s primary reason for writing the book is to replace the one-size-fits-all approach to wealth with type-specific approaches. He uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to describe a path to wealth for each of the sixteen personality types.

Part 1: Introduction: Unleash the Millionaire within You

This section provides an overview of the how the MBTI evolved from Carl Jung’s original work, to Myers’ and Brigg’s addition of a fourth function (S-J) and then to David Keirsey’s four temperaments model.

Part 2: Test Yourself and Discover Your Unique Millionaire’s Code

In this section, Farrell helps you assess your own MBTI by providing brief descriptions of each letter within a function pair.

• Extraversion vs. Introversion
• Sensing vs. iNtuition (abbreviated as N to distinguish from Introversion)
• Thinking vs. Feeling
• Judging vs. Perceiving

Although the book itself does not provide a test, it mentions several other resources which include a test for those unable to determine their MBTI by the descriptions alone.

Part 3: The Four Temperaments in Millionaire Profiling

These chapters provide succinct overviews of each of the four temperaments, a cluster of four closely related personality types, by breaking them down into sections on each of the two functions within the temperament.

Temperaments	Function Pairs
Freelance Creators	Sensor-Perceivers
Systems Masterminds	Intuitive-Thinkers
The Pathfinders	Intuitive-Feelers
Guardians of the Establishment	Sensor-Judgers

The chapters only touch on wealth building, but cover some career-related aspects of the temperaments. The last chapter of this part is especially interesting, because Farrell discusses hybrids and dual personalities using his own life to illustrate his points.

Part 4: The 16 Millionaire Personality Codes

In the final part of the book, Farrell describes each of the sixteen types by discussing famous examples. He proceeds element by element often using the same person to illustrate several aspects of the type. This is perhaps the most interesting material in the book. Throughout the narratives, he also includes many excerpts from other people’s works to support his points. I came away from these chapters with the impression that Paul Farrell is extremely well read and must be fascinating to talk to.

The final section of each chapter in this section is the part of the book about which I am most ambivalent, but it is also the main point of the book. It opens with a section on careers. Although interesting, other presentations of these lists provide significantly more examples. From there, he offers advice on how each type should approach wealth building. This section struck me as overly deterministic and somewhat simplistic, partially by the nature of its brevity. Given that this section was the whole purpose of the book, I wanted more, a lot more.

Buy, Borrow or Bypass?

I really wanted to love this book, but it would be more accurate to say that I liked it. If I hadn’t already been familiar with the MBTI, I might have found this book to be fascinating. As it was, I found the descriptions to be too deterministic. Personality typing is an outstanding tool for self-assessment, but I think the author treats it as if it were a requirement for success to align your career with your personality. Certainly that approach is easier, but it also assumes that we are incapable of developing beyond our innate preferences. That being said, the book was thought provoking in that your MBTI may help you to find the path of least resistance.

This book is a borrow. Visit your library to read at least the sections on your own temperament and type. There are better explanations of the MBTI and temperaments out there. If you already know your MBTI, you can easily skip the first two parts of the book and focus especially on the chapters relevant to your temperament and type. If you take this approach though, you will miss out on the most enjoyable aspect of the book which is the biographies and examples from many other business and self-help books. The whole is most definitely more than the sum of the parts.

Related Resources

Human Metrics, one of the free online personality tests

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