Femme VIP - JUNE 2009

FemmeVIP Interview of Jim Bandrowski

 

Jim Bandrowski is a highly sought after keynote speaker, trainer and consultant, and travels the world working with such Global 500 companies such as GE, Hewlett-Packard, Chevron, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and numerous medium to small-sized organizations. He is the author of the new book, Discover Your Inner Strength, which he coauthors with Stephen Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), Ken Blanchard (One Minute Manager), and Brian Tracy (Million Dollar Habits).  Jim took a few moments out of his hectic schedule to sit down with FemmeVip Feature Writer, CJ Domino to talk about his new release and the challenges he has faced as a new author.

 

1.  Tell us who Jim Bandrowski really is? I, like many FemmeVIP readers I would imagine, would like to change the world and make it a better place if we could only just figure out how to do it. Life is more about meaning than money. Although it seems like the greed of many has put most of the world in short supply of the latter.

 

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and love my wife, twin fourteen year old boys, horticulture, sports, and the innovative atmosphere of Northern California. I am deeply passionate about empowering people who haven’t begun to tap their inner potential in terms of creativity, leadership, and high performance. Furthermore, people and entire organizations usually think in the box when they should be out of it, and think out of the box when they should be in it. I have taken on the challenge to change that in the world, and help it on its journey to its ultimate destiny. 

 

2.  Tell FemmeVip readers a little about Discover Your Inner Strength and what inspired you to write it? When I was asked to write a book with Stephen Covey and others, I jumped at the chance. For the last fifteen years I have been searching for the one thing that distinguishes great leaders and organizations from good ones. Ten years ago I found it: Amplitude. It is the measure of the height of a wave, and is often a term used by X-Game judges to describe the height of jumps of skiers, snowboarders, BMX bikers, etc. I have since presented my discovery to over 10,000 people around the globe in my keynote speeches, workshops, and consulting projects, and have received 99.9% validation from them that it is the real deal. Remarkable leaders and organizations unleash their Constructive Intellectual and Emotional Amplitudes (two terms I have coined) and moderate their unconstructive ones. 

Extraordinary leaders push two extremes with huge Amplitude. At the positive extreme they unleash the creativity, optimism, and passion within their organizations. At the negative extreme they drill deep for the root causes of issues and challenges, uncover latent customer needs, and identify and remove risks. This liberates employees at all levels to innovate, execute, and to achieve remarkable results. They do this way out of the box. By the way, the box is real ”it is a low amplitude. Remember where you heard it first.

3.  How can your approach be applied by FemmeVIP readers? Almost half of the top executives of my client companies and organizations, and even a greater percentage of the managers and professionals I work with in them, are women. Women are usually more fun to work with than men due to one of your biggest strengths: compassion. My advice to women is to amplify it, constructively. If “necessity was the mother of invention, frustration was its father. To be entrepreneurial, find your customer's pain, design a product or service that delivers a solution, assemble the organization to deliver it, and then count the money. Oh, and don't forget the meaning.    

 

4.  What obstacles have you faced as an author? The biggest obstacle is finding time to write. With what seems like continuous business travel, having deliverables for ten or more clients simultaneously takes the priority. When I do get to sit down and write, it is wonderful to let my imagination fly, play with, and put down my thoughts. The other way I deal with this challenge is I write in one-liners, meaning when I get a thought or hear someone make an insightful or humorous point (I always ask them if they want to be quoted in my next book or article), I write it down beginning with a topic and subtopic. These are indexed into a database for future use. I have thousands of them on hundreds of subtopics about which I write. To prime my writing pump, all I need to do is go to my database and there are years of preserved points from which to draw.

 

5.  What other advice would you give to aspiring authors? I can only speak to the subject of non-fiction, although a bit of this may apply to writing a novel or screenplay, one of my personal fantasies. Find a topic you are passionate about, and about which you have expertise or are willing to gain it. Read everything you can get your hands on about the topic. Use databases at university libraries such as the Knowledge Index, and build computer or paper files of articles on your subject’s subtopics. Interview experts, practitioners, and laypeople to find out what they know, what they would like to know, as well as their frustrations. Do this with Amplitude. Dig deep to uncover insights into what works and doesn't work, and creatively leap and brainstorm possible new solutions and concepts. Then complete your discovery process to select the best new approach to taking your topic to the next level. Go Deep, Leap, and Complete (DLC) is the way to give your passion TLC. 

 

6.  What can we expect in the future from you, Jim? I am putting the finishing touches on my next book, Rock Your Industry: Employ the Core Competency of Remarkable Leaders High Amplitude Leadership.  Packed with hundreds of examples, it will provide actionable, practical advice on ways leaders can reinvent their industries, take their businesses to the next level, and achieve extraordinary financial results with meaning. Chapters will cover leading with Amplitude, fostering disruptive innovation, inventing breakaway strategy, reinventing processes, executing change, facilitating breakthroughs, advancing oneself, and most important, developing everyone around you.

 

7.  In 50 words or less give yourself a shameless plug. If your organization is looking for a keynote speaker who lights up the stage with passion and humor, and gives the audience a way to unleash their inner leader and high performer, contact me at http://www.StrategicAction.com. Oh, and please don't hesitate to tell one hundred of your closest friends to go to my website to buy my book, Discover Your Inner Strength. CJ, you did ask me to be shameless.