My mom told me once that she shouldn’t be surprised that I ended up living in and loving Montana; just look at the types of books I enjoyed as a child.  Interesting that she would justify my lifestyle on my book choices.  Speaking of books.  Holy Cow I’m loving “All the Light We Cannot See”.  I can’t wait for everyone to read it.  So enjoyable.  I want to get into this author’s head. How do they come up with this stuff and then intertwine it all together so beautifully.  I want to be able to do that.

I have to admit that you are not my only book club.  Go ahead call me a book whore; it ‘s probably true and I take it as a complement anyway.  My other book club is unaware that it is part of a book club.  I just snuck it into an administration meeting  and BOOM!  They’re all reading…..no that’s wrong, they are not all reading…..but they are all taking in the idea of the book.  “Drive the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us ” by Daniel Pink is an excellent book for leaders, parents, teachers, etc.  I read it several months ago and wanted to share it with the leaders at work and bought them all a copy to read.  Our administrative meetings were lacking any substance and were not inspiring.  I thought that by having a group reading we would have one common theme that we could discuss and that that theme would be relevant to making our work place a better place for everyone involved.  I’m going to bounce back and forth here from the lessons of the book to the benefits of our group reading; keep up.   The book proves that our old way of motivating people through extrinsic motivators is actually hurting our progress and that what people really need are intrinsic rewards.  We are more driven when we have autonomy and purpose than when we are offered bonuses or rewards.  If you walk into a classroom and offer the students an itunes card if they write an article for the school newsletter, you have made a mistake.  Next time you ask this group for something they are going to want to know “what will we get”.  Also, their focus is now on the reward not the task and their creativity will be lacking.  But, if you go into a classroom and ask the students to write an article for the school newsletter that will be  published and mailed out to every household in the school district, you will end up with a more creative article that is written  with the sole purpose to be a well written article worthy of publication and not because you’ve been bribed.  As soon as you bribe with a reward, you have deemed the task to be unenjoyable.  Read the book.  Back to the unknown book club.  This is really a beautiful way to create some dialog among a diverse group of people.  It doesn’t matter what book you chose and it really doesn’t matter if they read it, it helps, but it doesn’t matter. We read one chapter a week.  You do need a leader who guides the group and presents the book in a way that discussions are interesting and everyone is involved.  You will learn a lot about your group and get to know them on a different level.  Now, when tough situations arise you are able to work together as a cohesive group to come up with a solution.  I should take this concept to congress.  I just want everyone to get along.

I know you’re all looking forward to the Wild Women Book Club November book selection which will be released next Saturday.  Keep reading.

Good Times.