Over the past several weeks I have been giving you excerpts from the Chess Not Checkers Field Guide that Mark Miller and I wrote together. The Field Guide is a study of twelve of the best practices of high performance organizations.

Below is a guest post from Mark explaining why we decided to do the project together.

People often ask me why I write books. My answer has been simple and consistent – I write books to encourage and equip leaders. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So, with that as my motivation, you can imagine my disappointment when someone told me one of my previous books was “useless.”

After several probing questions, I discovered the person wanted far more tactical help than I could ever provide in a 125-page business fable. None of my books are intended to provide the level of detail this person wanted and needed. I feel fortunate if I can successfully convey an idea and the principles to support it within the confines of a short story. However, in my heart, I know my friend was right; there was more to be said, and it needed to be presented in an application-oriented format.

My response was to create my first field guide. In essence, the guide would provide the instruction manual for turning the principles represented in the book into practice in a leader’s world.

The response has been so positive to this approach, I’ve now gone back and written field guides for The Secret of Teams, and The Heart of Leadership, and the guide for The Secret is underway.

For Chess Not Checkers, I decided to be proactive. I partnered with Randy Gravitt to write the field guide BEFORE we released the book. I’ve been sharing excerpts on this site for several weeks.

Today, I want to officially introduce the Chess Not Checkers Field Guide. Like the ones before it, the guide is intended to create a step-by-step blueprint to help you turn the principles, or in this case, the four “moves,” into practice in your organization.

To make the guide as user-friendly as possible, it is available in two formats: Digital and Spiral Bound.

Others features include:

• In-depth look at 12 Best Practices of High Performance Organizations.
• Group activities and exercises
• Fill-in-the-blank format in case you want to lead a group session (with answers in the back of the guide)
• Ideas for Action – beyond the training session

A couple of other thoughts… In order to help leaders get a fast start with this content, we also produced a video series and organizational health assessment to accompany the field guide. I’ll write a separate post to introduce these resources in the days ahead. However, they are available now if you are interested.

By the way, all profits from all books and resources are donated to charity. That’s been true for the last 14 years. I think it’s a cool concept: if I can help you grow your leadership and serve the world at the same time, it sounds like a win-win to me.

To encourage and equip leaders – it’s a simple goal; more than that, I believe it’s why I’m on the planet. I hope these resources will do just that.

Enjoy the journey!

Mark Miller