Managing to Stay Out of Court: How to Avoid the 8 Deadly Sins of Mismanagement – Jathan Janove, Esq.

The book “Managing to Stay Out of Court: How to Avoid the 8 Deadly Sins of Mismanagment” by Jathan Janove, Esq. is an interesting look at management from the perspective of someone who has gleaned his information from lawsuits. In the end he basically recommends honesty, openness, communication and respect as being the best management style, especially if you don’t want to get sued for firing someone who isn’t performing well enough for the needs of the business. This book is worth reading just for the stories that Janove relates from his career, some of which are quite eye opening.

For example, his story about a suit regarding untruthfully good reviews was very revealing to me. A terminated employee sued his former employer (and won) because his reviews had always claimed he was doing a good job, and when he was terminated he argued that he now was no longer able to get a job at the level he had been previous employed because his employer had lied to him about what the expectations were for accomplishing that sort of job. It reminded me that “lying to be nice” is just a way to avoid potential confrontation, and is fact a terrible way to treat people who report to you in the workplace. I suspect it’s a bad habit in the rest of life as well.

Parenting Beyond Belief - edited by Dale McGowan

If God didn’t exist, I would probably be an atheist.

This thought occurred to me several times as I read this collection of essays. “Parenting Beyond Belief” edited by Dale McGowan is a book that I found mostly interesting, but I don’t really recommend it.

I was excited to read this book in the interest of understanding how a system of morality is obtained and taught to children without including belief in God or some other higher authority. This book does contain information about this, but is much more evangelical of atheism than I was hoping.

I did like a few things. For example, the contrasting essays on Santa Claus covered many interesting points in favor and against establishing a belief in your children that you believe to be false. Having come from a family where Santa Claus was not taught as anything other than fiction (and having subsequently felt that I had lost out on a rite of childhood), I appreciated the differing perspectives on the subject. I also liked the chapter on Darwin’s Origin of Species. Darwin’s opus has been vilified in so many ways that I’ve never had the chance to see it as the fruit of a man who was passionate to discover and explain the world as he was able to observe it. Subjects such as these were definitely interesting to read and explore.

However, in the end, I didn’t really enjoy reading “Parenting Beyond Belief.” While it was interesting to get a perspective on morality of those who do not believe in a personable and responsive deity, it often times felt more like reading the boastings of arrogant men and women, rather than reading the caring words of people who actually had compassion for the welfare of their fellow parents. I was hoping for the latter.

The Five Love Languanges by Gary Chapman

I enjoyed reading “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman and I highly recommend it as your next “self-help” style book. The ideas presented by the book are original and insightful, and have proven to be of great worth to me. This book is so good, in fact, that it deserves a place in everyone’s library.

First some history on why I chose to read this book. It was given to me probably 6 or 7 years ago by someone I am close to, but after discussing the book with this someone it seemed to me that they wanted me to read this so that I would see a justification for them cheating on their spouse. I wanted nothing to do with the book from that point on. It is likely that I still would not have read the book, but the someone passed away this past year, and I was able to finally “forgive” the book for being (to me) a symbol of their disloyalty to their spouse. Having read the book I can see that there is certainly no way anyone can justify using the principles of the book as reasons to cheat.

The ideas of this book are probably the only truly original ideas in improving relationships that I’ve read since reading “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” by John Gray, which is interesting in part because they share the same copyright date (1992). The ideas presented revolve around the five “love languages,” which are Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts and Words of Affirmation. All five are presented as having some importance, but the author claims that everyone has one of these “languages” that is their primary need in a relationship. These languages are prefaced by a description of the “falling in love” experience and why it seems to go away. The author argues that “falling in love” is a wonderful experience that serves to bring people together and cause the propagation of mankind but is mostly accomplished without conscious choices, whereas loving someone beyond the 2 years or so that the “in love” feeling lasts is a constant choice. This assessment is very well supported by the author as well as by my own experience in my eleven years of marriage. Also, the chapter on finding the love languages of your children provides a great framework for seeking to show affection to your kids in ways that they will be most open to accepting. My wife and I still discuss the ideas in this chapter on children’s love languages regularly.

I am very grateful that I was able to read “The Five Love Languages” right after it was read by my wife. Being able to discuss this book together has lead to several positive revelations in our marriage. For example, I enjoy some extravocational activities that take a lot of time away from home to accomplish. In times that I’ve participated in these activities my wife has been frustrated and felt that I was choosing these activities because I didn’t like her and didn’t want to be around her. From this, we assumed that if I just spent more time at home she would feel better, but even as my time with her increased, she did not feel more loved. I abandoned the extravocational activities altogether, and even limited my work hours for a time, and it seemed that things were getting worse. This was extremely frustrating for both of us. It seemed that when I was away that all she wanted was for me to be home, but when I was home it seemed that all she wanted was for me to leave her alone. After reading the different descriptions of the love languages, we both have come to the conclusion that what she wants is NOT quality time, but rather acts of service. She was frustrated when I was trying to spend quality time with her, because what she really wanted was for me to help with the sweeping, the dishes, the laundry, cleaning toilets, vacuuming, yard work, changing diapers, kids’ baths – all things I was neglecting so that I could spend more time with her. I’ve been focusing on doing service to show my affection since this discovery, and it has made a big difference in both her feelings about my desire to participate in activities outside the home, as well as my own frustrations because now I understand how I can prioritize my time when I’m home to help her feel that I do love her. I’ve also finally been able to accept that when she does acts of service for me, it is not because she thinks I am incompetent or unwilling to do the tasks, but rather she is just showing her affection in a way that is natural to her. These changes in my attitude and perception may seem simple and obvious, but to me they were life changing.

This is a book that should be available to you on a bookshelf in your home. It is not a thorough psychological explanation of the concepts that are presented, but the book is very well organized for understanding the concepts, and the examples given lend a great deal of support from the author’s experiences that are easy to read and digest. This book can be valuable to everyone regardless of experience, religion or state of relationship if you are willing to contemplate and apply the principles that are given.

“The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman, is a book you should read and own. The concepts in the book give some of the best advice on showing love that I’ve ever come across, and it is full of truly original and well supported ideas on how to improve your relationship with your loved ones, be it spouse, children or anyone else. In my own experience I’ve found the book to be an extremely valuable resource that I continue to reference for ideas for showing affection to my wife in ways she will most appreciate it, and I’ve even been adapting the ideas at work to help make the “attaboys” more personal and enjoyable for my team members. You should take the opportunity to read this book; it will help you by revealing more choices for how you can show your love more effectively in your relationships.

The 360 Degree Leader by John C. Maxwell

I have to admit that I haven’t read a lot of leadership books, and so my take on “The 360 Degree Leader” by John C. Maxwell may be a little naïve, but I liked this book and think it is worth reading. I would highly recommend it to anyone who desires to be a leader in any organization.




One of my favorite books on leadership is “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” by Steven R. Covey. This book, published in 1989, has many ideas that are so engrained into business now that they have become cliché (e.g. being proactive & synergy) , but one idea that especially struck me was that of the abundance mentality. This idea is that you, a person in a business, a family or other cooperative organization, do not have to take from others in your organization in order to advance, but rather everyone in your organization can advance if they are willing to continue to add value to themselves and to each other.

“The 360 Degree Leader” expands on the abundance mentality by presenting ideas on how a “middle management” leader can support those who lead him, learn and grow alongside his peers and teach & help develop those whom he leads. The principles that John C. Maxwell teaches and evangelizes persuade that by doing everything you can to help others in your organization, while doing your own job well, you will not only improve your organization, but also improve your own influence, leadership skills and eventually your own financial compensation.

The book is written in a very easy to read style that helped it avoid the dry-textbook style I was fearing when I first decided to read it. Maxwell has filled his book with personal, historical and biblical stories that help to support his principles as he presents them, and which make it easy to continue reading.

One of my favorite stories he presents is the account of Nehemiah as a “middle management” leader who is allowed by the ruler to rebuild Jerusalem. This story lead me to think of many biblical accounts, such as Joseph (of Egypt), Daniel, David, Esther and others who had great influence as “middle management” and helped me understand just how important those who lead in the middle can be.

The principle that made the highest impact on me in this book was the idea that a leader should see everyone whom he leads as a “10”. I have a tendency to try and determine the limitations of those I lead and then try to do the best with what is left, instead of embracing the idea that they not only CAN do better, but also WANT to be better than they are. If I’m not willing to believe they can be one of the best producers and leaders in my organization, why on earth would they trust me enough to let me influence their growth? Changing this part of my leadership mentality will probably be the biggest initial growth that this book inspires in sme.

My only real issue with the book is that it feels like John C. Maxwell is not fully focused on what he is trying to teach, and therefore the book doesn’t seem to be as important to him as other things might be. The simple fact that this is one of over 40 books that he has written on many topics, and that his focus seems to be torn between his organizations, his public speaking and the production of his books, makes it seem as though there could be a much more concise and focused version of what he is teaching if he would spend more time and energy distilling and researching the ideas. This isn’t a major problem for the book, just a nagging personal feeling. I’m much more likely to trust insights if they represent a heavy investment of the author, rather than just one of a few dozen concepts that have been fleshed out into a 300+ page book.
However, as I have mentioned above, the principles taught in this book are sound and worth adopting. I think anyone who invests their time in reading this book will easily reap sufficient benefits to make the time worthwhile if they are willing to continue to change themselves and put into practice at least a subset of the principles taught.