Starting a book club

About two years ago, some team members and I started to work with a management consultant. The first assignment the consultant gave was to read a book. I posted this assignment on Facebook and got many suggestions from my friends on what I could tell the consultant to do with his book. Fast forward a few years, and I am absorbed with reading – both for business and pleasure – and the line between the two is really becoming blurred. Previously, I averaged reading about one book a year. Now, I am averaging reading one every month. I am almost keeping up with my kids in how much they read.

I had really forgotten how much I loved reading and learning. It’s been a joy of mine for so long and getting caught up in day-to-day grind was really taking its toll. I thought to myself “How can I spread the joy?” Our management team started to trickle off reading and very few of my co-workers had taken the lead from their managers and done any reading. How could I help them? It came to mind to start a club. We could read a book at our own pace, then every couple of months discuss the book. We didn’t have to limit it there. Someone could suggest a YouTube video; do Pecha Kucha (http://www.pechakucha.org/) presentations, or anything else. So, I called it a “Salon,” picked a book (The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford) and asked that everyone in my group let their co-workers know about the Salon, which would be held in 6 weeks.

Every couple of weeks I sent out an e-mail with “hints” my progress in reading the book, reminders, questions, and in general trying to market the book to about 30 people. I hadn’t read the book before and I was really fascinated by how the stories were relevant to our business. I hoped that others were too, though I didn’t get much response. A few days before our Salon I got more information and some people saying that they were buying the book.

Then the day of the Salon came. I had chosen a time after work so that people could relax and have a conversation. Then a few odd things happened. First, only about half the people who showed up had actually read the book. Luckily one of our readers had provided a wonderful synopsis of the book and what he had learned from it. As we went through that, the non-readers were very vocal in their discussion about the book. The readers were correcting them along the way. I’m not sure whether this was good or not, but at least we were all talking about it. Then there was a suggestion that we meet again and give other people time to read the book.

I setup another meeting. This time calling the meeting a “Book Review”.  I did not follow up with people as much, but saw that the co-workers of the non-readers were sending more information to me than the co-workers of the readers. The day of the Book Review came and this time about ¾ of the attendees were non-readers. “Hello people, it’s a Book Review,” I thought to myself. Also, only one of the previous readers attended. The conversation took the same turn and I asked the non-readers, “Why did you attend?” The response was that they wanted to learn about it because they had heard so many good things. Luckily for me one of the readers chuckled, “Me to, so I read the book.”
I have the third meeting scheduled that is still a “Book Review”.  I hope that by the end of the year we’ll have some traction.

P.S.  In parallel, my nine year old daughter has been trying to start a book club with her friends. After a similar experience in her first meeting, her group decided that they would get together and take turns reading chapters aloud.  Fortunately, for them, their teacher took charge. She assigns every one chapter to read and has an oral quiz each week with the club. That might be my next step.