REALIZING YOU by Ron Doades with Susan Sloate (VBT, guest post, GIVEAWAY, GFT)

Realizing You by Ron Doades with Susan Sloate, is a self-improvement novel available now.
Here is a guest post by the author:

Why did you not write a non-fiction business book on best practices?

I mentioned in an earlier blog that my business experience had provided me with abundant material to write a non-fiction book on best management practices. And I could do it; but, I am not motivated to do it.

On the subject of this blog, I’d like to give you three examples of how best business management practices can be readily translated into self-improvement  principles that might appear—in a closely related form—in Realizing You, or other books that may follow. Take the idea that a company must form a committee to study things before making a decision about a business opportunity. The committee can rigorously research available information, analyze it thoroughly, draw well-founded conclusions, and make recommendations for addressing the issue at hand. Great. The recommendations may be solid, but the study process often takes much too long, and the original opportunity has long sense passed, or the original champions of the issue have lost their interest and passion in acting.

Another example: A company striving to improve its performance tries to copy the proven management practices of a highly successful company—what I call “the plug-and-play” approach to management. The problem is the striving-to-improve company has a different corporate culture/ personality than the company it’s trying to emulate. The former company cannot be something it is not. It can only be successful by staying within its unique identity, building on its strengths, while overcoming its weaknesses.

A third business example is the resistance to change—“We’ve always done it that way.” This resistance to change keeps businesses and their employees locked into the past, greatly hampering the ability to think of new and creative opportunities to be successful in the future.

Now you may ask, “How can the three real-world business examples be translated into a fictional self-help book?” The answer will easily be found when you turn the pages of Realizing You.

                                       


EXCERPT:  

Liz had ordered forty cartons of shiny new hardcover copies of the book delivered for the signing, and guests had been told they were welcome to bring their own copies as well. Robby would sit in the ballroom where they’d had dinner and sign them. It was their opportunity to meet him personally, which for some people was the real reason they’d come, and the moment they’d been waiting for.

Liz, Robby, Marie, and Sophie waited until the ballroom cleared. Then the hotel staff assigned to the breakdown shut the doors and went to work. The staff had twenty minutes to clear the tables, roll them out of the way, and set up a signing table for Robby, who had done successful book signings all over the country. This would be a snap, even if all twelve hundred guests wanted their books autographed.

Liz watched the hotel staff efficiently clearing the tables and felt the tightly-wound spring inside her begin to loosen. “Just this one event left,” she said.

Robby beamed at her while avoiding Marie’s eyes. “It went well, didn’t it?”

“Perfect,” Liz told him, glancing from him to Marie. Marie wasn’t looking at him, either.

Liz sighed and looked discouraged.

Sophie noticed it, too. Her blue-eyed gaze traveled from her mother to her father and back again. Her smile dimmed and faded. She stared down at the ground, all her sparkle fizzled out.

“Excuse me,” said a shy voice coming from the slightly opened door behind them, and Liz turned to face what’s-her-name, the mousy woman who’d helped Robby—Maura? Jane?

“Hello, Ellen!” Marie’s greeting was extra-cordial and extra loud, as though to be sure Robby heard her. “Did you have fun at dinner?”

Ellen came toward them in a drab blue dress, but where yesterday her eyes had been wary, tonight they were bright, and she gave Marie a genuine smile.

“Oh, it was wonderful. I’ve never sat on a dais before.”

“I thought it was appropriate,” Marie said to Robby, not troubling to lower her voice, so the nearby hotel staff heard. “And Liz managed it all, even though we didn’t know Ellen was coming til yesterday. Liz took care of her hotel and tickets and everything. Thank you so much,” she said sweetly to Liz, who turned beet-red. Robby glared at Marie. “I only wish,” Marie went on, “that Ellen could sit next to you at the book signing.”

Everyone looked at Robby.

“Excuse me,” he said abruptly. “I forgot my—uh—gold pen—in my room. Better go get it before the signing.”

And he left, hardly glancing at Ellen, never acknowledging her presence, and pointedly ignoring Marie.

Sophie looked pleadingly at her mother. “Mom?”

“He’s impossible,” Marie said through her teeth. “I don’t know how we lasted this long.”

Realizing You (Amazon link)


AUTHOR INFORMATION:

RON DOADES is president of Ronald Doades & Company, a consulting firm that, since 1977, has helped the people of large and mid-size energy companies improve their individual and corporate performance results by learning from the best-practice experiences of others. A popular speaker on the topic of managing change for optimal results, he holds an MBA from Columbia University and an MS in Psychology from The New School in New York City. Visit him at www.realizingyoubook.com

SUSAN SLOATE is the author of twenty published books, including STEALING FIRE, a #2 Amazon bestseller and Quarter-Finalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest, and FORWARD TO CAMELOT (authored with Kevin Finn), which in its first edition was a #6 Amazon bestseller, took honors in 3 literary competitions and was optioned for film by a Hollywood production company. She lives in Mount Pleasant, SC. Visit her online at http://susansloate.com.


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