Many thanks to the MIT Club of Malaysia for inviting me to present at one of their dinner meetings at the Sheraton Imperial in Kuala Lumpur.  We had a lively evening comparing notes about undergradtuate and graduate days at MIT, plus I learned a lot about the commercial activities of MIT alumni in high tech, architecture, investment and other fields.

The response to my remarks about the lessons of Goal Play!–especially how to create learning organizations and teams through front-line driven process improvement–seemed to resonate with many of those in attendance. It is always a pleasure to take time to be with fellow alumni as I travel the world, but it was especially so in this case, where the warmth and engagement of those in attendance was so evident.

I certainly hope to be back some day to follow up on the friendships made!

Goal Play!, which has been available for some time only on Amazon (in print and Kindle versions), is now available at Smashwords in almost in any e-book format you might desire:  Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions.  Here’s your chance to add it to your digital library.

Thanks to @taradara75 aka Loredana Padurean, Assistant Professor of Management at Lasell College for posting this picture from today’s session, “The Dynamics of Small Business in a Changing Environment.”  This was a great conference sponsored by the school’s Small Business Institute and the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce.  The students made presentations, too, and did an excellent job.

It’s been a busy week, with appearances on both coasts.

Monday started off with a webinar offered by the MIT Systems Design and Management folks.  About 200 people joined in from around the world to hear a talk based on Goal Play!, entitled “Leadership for learning organizations.”  You can watch and listen here.

Then, it was off to the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center to address the leadership group (above).  This is a public “safety-net” hospital serving Contra Costa County in California.  CEO Anna Roth has done a spectacular job leading the organization through a transformational change to improve quality and safety, transparency, and patient involvement.  You can see one of the examples here.

Finally, last night, I had a chance to meet with the MIT SPURS Fellows and the Harvard Loeb fellows, wonderful people from around the world, to discuss the leadership lessons from Goal Play!

By popular request, I have now issued an audiobook version of my book Goal Play! Leadership Lessons from the Soccer Field.  The book  has sold thousands of copies in paperback and on Kindle, but many of you have asked for a version to which you can listen.

I hope you enjoy it.  I did most of the narration myself (see above for an actual outtake!), but other people have taken on some of the roles in the book–including the foreword written by Edgar Schein (below)–and I think you will like the production quality and sound effects.

Goal Play – Edgar Schein Foreword

I had to make a choice about distribution of the audiobook.  Some suggested using Audible.com, but their terms and conditions are a bit unfriendly for a self-produced audiobook.  Instead, I decided to disintermediate them and use a service called PayLoadz.  This is a simple front-end that connects to fulfillment through Paypal.  You click on the purchase link on this home page and immediately are given a PayPal screen, where you can use your PayPal account or a credit card.  Then, you are provided with a link that contains the audiobook, and you download it.

I’ve set it up so that the entire book is in one compressed file that you can unzip (on PCs) or unstuff (on Macs).  After you download, you can save it to your hard drive or copy it to a CD or a thumb drive or whatever you like.

In coming weeks, I may also offer a CD version of the book.  I have deferred this for now because it involves a different kind of fulfillment.  Please let me know if that would be more helpful to you.

In the meantime, please click here and enjoy the show!

Eric Lu and his colleagues the JubileeProject have produced a series of short videos with wonderful lessons about life, all designed to support a charitable cause.  The latest is The Last Pick, seen below, which supports the Jeremy Lin Foundation.   I include it here because the lessons about the worth of each individual are remarkably similar to those contained in Goal Play!

Thanks to the Boston University Health Services Management Association (HSMA), Leadership and Organizational Transformation Club (LOT), Sport and Social Club, and the GSC for their invitation to talk about the lessons of Goal Play!

This was an engaged and engaging group of students and faculty  from the School of Management.  Among others, it was especially nice to meet Corey Best, shown here, who is soon to join the Navy and try out his leadership skills there.

And Yi (Shirley) Guan, from Shanghai, who will graduate this year and will likely find a rewarding job in the medical field.

People tell me that one of their favorite stories in Goal Play! is about the path taken by Bill Geary, a former commissioner in the Massachusetts state government, to eliminate a public safety hazard on the roadways subject to his jurisdiction.  Pushing aside bureaucratic inertia, Bill displayed excellent leadership skills and creativity.  The problem:

When Bill Geary took over as Commissioner of the Metro­politan District Commission (the regional parks and roadway agency for the Boston area) in 1983, he noticed an odd traffic phenomenon. About once a week, a truck that was too tall would enter one of the two main roads along the Charles River and attempt to go through the underpasses below the main bridge crossing at Massachusetts Avenue. Those underpasses had only ten feet of headroom. The truck would hit the bottom of the bridge assembly, its roof would roll up like the top of a sardine can, and it would get stuck, blocking one or both of the two lanes of traffic. Traffic would back up two miles or more. The MDC police and road crews would go to work, rescue the truck driver, deflate the tires, and tow the truck away. Meanwhile, thousands of drivers would be delayed.

His solution:  Hang rubber signs at the entrance to each roadway at the level of the underpasses, accompanied by cow bells to signal to drivers that they had hit the signs.  Here’s a picture:

This past weekend, a too-tall bus full of schoolchildren hit one of the underpasses, injuring many people.  I happened to be along the route of the bus the next day and drove by and noticed that the rubber sign was missing.  I wrote a blog post explaining “why the bus crashed.”  This and subsequent posts made the point that systemic errors within the state agency were likely the cause of this accident, much more so than the actions of the bus driver.

Our local public radio station, WBUR, picked up the story and asked me to come by and explain.  Here I am with host Meghna Chakrakarti presenting the story on air today.  You can listen to the interview here.

A theme of Goal Play! is to be hard on the problem when mistakes occur, and not hard on the people.  It is all too easy to apply blame to individuals.  But here, as in the hospital world, the phrase, “what happened to him could happen to anybody,” is usually evidence of a systemic problem, not a personal problem.

I was at the studio today recording last bits of the audio book publication of Goal Play!  Seen here are my producer Bruce Gellerman, one of the most accomplished radio journalists in Boston, and Ken Carberry, of Chart Productions in Braintree, who has beautifully handled the technical aspects.

It sounds quite good, and I hope those of you who prefer that medium will be moved to purchase it.  Stay tuned!