FINANCIAL TIMES

Buiness Life
BUSINESS BOOKS

Impresario of many scenarios
By Stefan Stern
Published: November 19 2008

Don't Be Needy, Be Succeedy
The A to Zee of Motivitality
L. Vaughan Spencer
Profile Books £8.99

The business books section of Borders on Oxford Street, central London, has never seen anything like it. Its well-stacked shelves reflect the long tradition of earnest management writing. This is where you come, high up on the third floor, to read about leadership, strategy and project management.

But into this hallowed space a few nights ago burst a vision in tangerine: the pony-tailed, curiously micro-bearded inspirational guru L. Vaughan Spencer. We had come in our, ooh, dozens, to hear the great man speak, and get a first look at his long-awaited new book.

L. Vaughan SpencerMr Spencer - L-Vo to his friends and admirers - has established quite a following in the business and self-help worlds. If Tony Robbins is too understated for you, or Funky Business authors Nordstrom and Ridderstrale too predictable, then L-Vo is your man.

It was a tough crowd. But L-Vo won them round. By the end of his presentation, the audience were singing to his Abba-inspired soundtrack and getting ready to queue up to buy a signed copy of the book.

What will the lucky new owners of this book find when they open its pages? L-Vo has not held back. He has poured his heart, soul and several other vital organs into it. Here, from "A to Zee", is a guide to succeeding in business and life, from someone who knows how, who has been there, done that, and got the tangerine jacket with the broad check lapels.

"This book uncovers a conspiracy," L-Vo declares at the outset. "The conspiracy is that for far too long you have been allowed to fail. Who's been keeping you down? YOURSELF!"

L-Vo will help us end our addiction to under-achievement, a subject he has studied in great detail. "I look deeper than the bottom line," he writes. "I see beyond the numbers. All of my work is based on a rigorous analysis - apart from where it's easier not to."

L-Vo is a succeeder. He succeeds. He takes failure and repurposes it for success. He is an expert on just about everything - anger management, for example: "Read my article in the Journal of Anger Management called 'Why anger is good'," he writes. "Though they did cut part of it, which pissed me off big time."

What really matters, L-Vo says, is what we actually do. He cites research undertaken by Prof William Trankin of the Jimmy Connors Institute of Business in San Diego. Apparently, "76 per cent of what we do can be put down to our behaviours".

And when we let our standards slip, L-Vo says, it is because we have wallowed for too long in the comfort zone. This is "somewhere to get out of", he says. "Book your train ticket outta there right now - and don't buy a return, even if it's cheaper than a single, which sometimes happens."

Insights such as those offered by L-Vo are rare in business. "When I enter an organisation, I can almost smell the culture. Sometimes it smells of fear. Or fish. Sometimes fearful fish. Those who really know about corporate culture are outsiders like me. We don't work in the organisation, which means we can be objective and use words like 'paradigm' easily and tell them what to do and let them sort it all out when we've gone."

L-Vo is in touch with modern issues such as diversity - "How does a company treat people who aren't normal (white, middle class and male, like me)?" He has mastered presentational techniques such as the "elevator pitch" - his ends with the often neglected question: "Can you press the button for the fourth floor, please?" He has mastered feng shui - "If you want good luck, avoid pointy things." And he has mastered Six Sigma. But: "I have gone beyond the traditional approach," he says. "I use Five Sigma - it saves time. It's nearly 17 per cent more efficient."

L-Vo and this newspaper have a certain history, to which he alludes. "Yes, I know the Financial Times called me an Überguru (26.9.06), perhaps because of my exalted position and because I am blazing a trail, but I am just a guy doing his job," he writes. "Call me an Überguru if you really, really must, but I just found myself in the right place at the right time saying the right things for a competitive fee."

We knew, from his earlier works such as What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Infants School, that L-Vo was a man to be reckoned with. But with this new book L-Vo inspires us to declare, loud and proud, "Yes, we can. We can succeed."

This is, quite possibly, the only business book you should ever bother reading.

Original review at www.ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

TheBookBag.co.uk

November 2008

Don't Be Needy Be Succeedy
by L Vaughan Spencer

Are you underperforming in your business and personal lives? Do you underestimate the importance of good hair and moisturised skin in achieving your life goals? Are you stumbling through life in a Fast-Moving Business Environment (FMBE) without a motivational mantra to guide you? Then you need this book. As The A to Zee of Motivitality, this is a dictionary of achievement from a man who can teach you how to succeed like a toothless budgie.

L Vaughan Spencer was the 2004 Business Speaker of the Year (Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire) and has been named one of the top ten thousand most influential people on management issues in the Home Counties. In other words, this is the sort of person you need to listen to, and thus the sort of book you need to read. Packed with useful statistics (number of deaths that occur per thousand meetings held, for example), real life case studies and quotes from those who have been through the Succeederology® training programs, this is a no-nonsense guide to being the best or, at least, a little better than you currently are.

Attention to detail is L-Vo's forte (after all, Don't be needed, be succeeded has an entirely different ring to it, and is not what our business friends are aiming for in today's Fast-Moving Business Environment (FMBE)). All areas of the business arena are targeted, from meetings to presentations to how to feng shui your office, and why Human Chess and British Bulldog have their role to play at work. If you need to improve your style, there are tips on how to dress, while the innovative Alphabet diet advice is the reason I'm currently eating only Zabaglione and Zinc tablets (and coveting the names of two other Bookbag reviewers, Chloe and Claire - mmm, imagine the chocolate and cheese possibilities).

From the business park in Luton where it was written to the sundrenched balcony in Mexico where it was read, this book has universal appeal. I have already tested it out on real live business people, in the form of my EFL students, and they laughed and laughed. Quite how much they understood, given their low level of English is another question, but still, they did laugh.

L-Vo questions the things so many of us take for granted for example Your Business Card: Why should it be made of card? Why should it be rectangular? while providing insightful answers to those tricky questions such as the difference between a Trainer and a Coach in today's Fast-Moving Business Environment (FMBE)? (On a train) you can walk around. ..with a coach there may not be a toilet. Think about it.

Any quibbles with the book? Well, when I read that he thinks pastries at meetings are optional, I was immediately certain that L-Vo has never worked in the NHS. Apart from that, I would agree with a lot of what he says. This worries me a little.

This book comes with the promise that buying two copies will make you even more successful than buying just one, but you might like to make it three just to be on the safe side.

Thanks go to the publishers for supplying this book (though only one copy? Don't they want me to be super successful?) If you're looking for another read, you could try understanding why What Got You Here Won't Get You There, but I'm sure you'll find that to get you There, Succeederology® will be key.

Original article at BookBag.co.uk

FINANCIAL TIMES

November 2008 by Mike Southon
MONEY

Don't Be Needy Be Succeedy
by L Vaughan Spencer

Laughing allowed

We all need inspiration and good advice in these hard times, so I have been combing bookstores for leading-edge thought leadership from business experts.

Many of the most popular books originate from the US, so I was pleased to find a new book by a British motivational guru, L. Vaughan Spencer: Don't Be Needy, Be Succeedy, The A to Zee of Motivitality.

Spencer claims to have made his fortune in refrigerated transport and is now visiting professor of succeedership at the University of the Isle of Wight. His list of books is impressive and includes Chicken Nuggets for the Soul, The Seven Hobbies of Highly Effective People and Who Moved My Cheeseburger?

I could not find any of these on Amazon, so called the "succeeder hotline" number on his website. I had a conversation with a member of his staff, who explained that the lack of availability was the result of a conspiracy by a number of people, including a rival motivational speaker.

This seemed slightly suspicious, but I thought little of it until I discovered a month later that the hotline was a premium rate number and the call had cost me several hundred pounds.

I sent an email to complain and received an answer from Spencer himself, saying that legally I had agreed to a "virtual Vaughan session".

The conversation became heated, so he offered to convert my payment into a free place on his business boot camp. He also said that anger is "vital in today's FMBE (Fast Moving Business Environment)", and explained that the boot camp would be a perfect place for me to express my pent-up anger and channel it into business success.

The day started with Moisturiser, which Spencer explains is "vital in today's FMBE", quoting ancient French Canadian wisdom, which translated as: "Man with dry face no win big deal." The next session was Movement and Dance, in which we moved around to 1970s disco music, with Spencer encouraging the female members of the workshop to loosen constricting clothing.

The rest of the agenda included "Urban Tribal Drumming", a case study on how Spencer changed the face of refrigerated transport, and "Deep Tissue Ego Massage" by someone called Cranston and his team of former paramilitaries.

It is easy to be cynical about the neoreligious fervour stirred up by motivational speakers; a friend once referred to their events as "hope for the hopeless". It is true that some people spend money they cannot afford on get-rich programmes, which increase the wealth of the speaker, rather than the audience.

But on balance, I am in favour of anything that lifts the spirit. For every sceptic, there are many more people who get value from the programmes.

My recommendation is not to follow their models slavishly, but to use them to add perspective to your own experience. All motivational speakers have the same basic themes: you need to take personal responsibility for your own situation and take action rather than prevaricate.

It is also important to retain your sense of humour. As Spencer says: "Successful business is not about talk-talk. My book is all do-do."

Don't Be Needy, Be Succeedy, the A to Zee of Motivitality by L. Vaughan Spencer is published by Profile Books

Original article at the Financial Times

mike@beermat.biz