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Management Mentoring and Coaching

Management Mentoring and Coaching Program

A coach’s job is to bring out the best in the individual and the team.

We always work here to develop programs that fill needs within our industry.  We have now developed a mentoring and coaching program addressing client needs in the area of individual employee development. We were approached with the need to assist with individual managers in accelerating their development on the job. This also covered those instances where an employee was having difficulty in adjusting to a new role.

These programs have been divided into three pieces: Learning On Demand, Films and Work Assignments.  Over the course of this next week, we are going to tackle each of these pieces in an individual post.

Learning On Demand

The Learning On Demand programs consist of a pre-test, a video program and a final assessment. The course program itself lasts approximately two hours.  There will be discussions with the manager to review the program and to consider specific action items for the week ahead after the course has been completed.

We will recommend Specific Learning Programs – LOD – that apply to the work of the manager. For instance:
1. Basic Management
2. Leadership
3. Make It Matter
4. Time Management
5. Change
6. The Art of the Possible
7. Standards of Performance
8. Best Practices
9. The Balanced Scorecard
10. Activity Based Management

These programs will be enhanced, and the individual learning and knowledge deepened, with individualized coaching to follow up on the classes.  In addition, Ron tailors live online coursework for each manager who is taking a Mentoring and Coaching program.

Next, we will cover the learning films that Ron uses to build upon the knowledge in the online courses.

The time is now.

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How Do You Measure Learning?

How Do You Measure Learning?

Over the past two months or so you have heard me talk about the end of college as we know it today. Kevin Carey goes into a lot of detail about this in his terrific book “The End of College.” He exposes the fact that Colleges and Universities have a monopoly on “the degree.” Without this monopoly there would be a significant change in the view of the value of this piece of paper: the parchment, the degree. You need that degree on your resume. It tells your prospective employer something about you. But it really doesn’t tell them much about what you know. It doesn’t really measure your learning.

The Internet is disrupting the universe of education,  just as it has most other aspects of our lives. As an example, the Khan Academy can take your children all the way from Kindergarten through graduating from High School.  It provides wonderful learning opportunities for children and young adults. There are learning avenues for professionals and university level courses. Businesses such as EdX and CorpU are disrupting this aspect of learning as well. We are involved with Learning Without Scars in this area: adult education.

The problem for on-line learning is a fundamental question: how do you measure the learning of the students? I started down this path with the book “The Six Value Medals, The essential tool for success in the 21st century,”by Edward de Bono. This is the gentleman that coined the phrase “Thinking outside of the box.” He assigns medals to knowledge and this got me thinking.

At Learning Without Scars, we are now using badges. We have four categories of badges based on the category of learning in each of our classes. We have split them into: Sales, Finance, Operations, Leadership. And we have four recognition levels for each of these learning categories: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Then we have the badges and categories split into their respective departments: Parts, Service, Product Support Selling and Parts and Service Marketing. We struggled a bit in determining how to assign a specific value to each class. We came to the conclusion that each class would earn a badge and the accumulation of badges would be the differentiator. What we do is set a point value for each knowledge level within each category of learning for each department.

We are currently seeking input from our clients on how we should present these badges. Should they be a patch that can be put onto an employees’ uniform? Should they be put into a holder, like your name plate, with differing badges represented in a manner like a pin? Or even a pin that could be put on your collar. How should be present this? We are designing the badge to include Socrates and thinking we should use the wings to represent the discipline and department. Time will tell.

What I think will be the end game is that this could lead to a skill set requirement for each job category in the Parts and Service businesses. That could be compared to a Skill Set Inventory for each employee. Then we could be on the path to being able to provide a “meaningful” job certification with learning prerequisites. I believe that would be very helpful to the Industry.

I would have appreciated knowing what the prospective employee knew in an interview. Not just information obtained in the interview and discussion but an objective measure of the skills of the employee related to the job I was trying to fill. That is where we are trying to take the measurement of learning. That should allow us to more objectively measure the probability of success of each prospective employee. This will work particularly well when we start adapting and having remote employees, and more part time employees, this would work particularly well for people who have retired and want to keep working. After all they have a lot of knowledge.

Keep tuned in as we will continue to share information on this important area as we come to our conclusions. Please let us know how you would approach this important subject. If you would take a moment and send us an email it would be sincerely appreciated.

The Time is NOW.

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Breaking Down Territory Management

Breaking Down Territory Management

In our training programs, we work hard to de-mystify the details of selling.  Today, I am sharing a small piece from our Territory Management Learning On Demand program.

The time is now.

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Personal Responsibility – Part 3

Personal Responsibility – Part 3

In the last two posts, I have discussed the work of Jordan Peterson, and how it ties into education and learning.  I’ve also covered what it is to commit to learning as an adult, and the unique challenges those of use who have real-life and on-the-job experience can face when returning to a “training” program.

R. C. Sproul once said “everyone wants to leave their mark on the world.” So, what will your mark be? There is nothing more powerful than knowledge and learning. Learning is not about getting a better job, although that could happen. It is not about getting more money, and that too could be possible. It is not about power, or some other aspect of your goals and dream. It is about your ability to be able to communicate and to think and to influence. That is your power. And each individual has control of that. They can invest their time in their own development. They can pursue what is meaningful. They can take personal control of that responsibility.

 I believe deeply that everyone wants to be able to do a good job.
 Further than we can all do more than we think we can.
 Finally, though, we are all fundamentally lazy.

 

I believe that success is for everyone. Every person, every individual can be successful. It depends what the definition is of success. Your individual success starts with your honest understanding about who you are as a person.

Each of us has differing likes and dislikes. That allows each of us to have differing dreams and hopes. That means we can create our own paths through life. But the path is not clear and it is not easy. In fact, it is tough. The problem with many of us is that we have a clearer picture of all of this when it becomes too late. We learn wisdom with age and effort. I have not found a substitute for the aging aspect of it. Perhaps there will be people much smarter than I who can find that answer. It might already be too late for me at this point in my career.
As a younger person I was a swimmer. And I learned a lot about life from swimming. You never are competing against the other people in the pool with you. You are competing with yourself. That is a really important truth to learn about life. It is all in your control, it is all up to you.

So, stop hoping for things. My daughter likes to say, “hope is NOT a plan.” Stop wishing for things. It’s time to take an active role, instead of a passive one. Don’t stop dreaming or working through goals. Start acting on your hopes, your wishes and your dreams. Make them happen. Because I believe you can. Don’t put it off. Start.

The Time is NOW.

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Personal Responsibility – Part 2

Personal Responsibility – Part 2

If you remember my last post, I left off with the challenges that face us when we move into the realm of teaching and learning as adults.  Open-mindedness is a critical component of the entire process, and we become more “set” in our ways with each passing year.

That brings me back to Peterson. His most recent book is “12 Rules for Life – an Antidote to Chaos.” (I strongly urge everyone to read this book) One of his rules is “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” If you start out in a learning situation wouldn’t it be nice if each learning had the attitude that you should pay attention because the person doing the teaching might knew things that the students did not know.

So, for adult education, which is what we are doing at learning Without Scars, we have an audience of students who already know a fair amount about subject matter we are covering. It is our job to provoke their thinking to take them to places of learning that they didn’t think they needed to go. And we measure our success with assessments through the classes and at the conclusion of each class.

We require each student to achieve an 80% mastery level before they can go on to the next class. Of course, in my opinion, they should all achieve 100% as we do not limit the number of times they can go through the class.

Which then takes me to personal responsibility.

Each of us is responsible for ourselves. We are all responsible for our position in life; our education, our personal status, our parenting, our life skills, our work skills, out interests. We are responsible for a lot of “stuff.” So, when you look in the mirror, which is a dangerous thing to do, I want you to ask a question of yourself – “am I doing the best I can?”

Now please remember, the person in the mirror is the easiest person in the world to lie to – juts don’t do it.

As Peterson puts it in one of his other rules – “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. And one last rule – Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) Did I say it was a terrific read?

 

I will wrap up the topic of Personal Responsibility this week.

The time is NOW.

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Personal Responsibility – Part One

Personal Responsibility

I recently discovered a fascinating individual by the name of Jordan B. Peterson. I have to admit to a little personal disappointment that I had not discovered him earlier as he has been out there roiling the pot for some years. Dr. Peterson has a PhD in Psychology which he obtained from McGill University in 1991. I have been watching and reading on him and his thinking for the past week or two.

Some things from him become incredibly clear and they pertain to learning. For instance: “Learning is Remembering.” In many ways I view teaching as a discipline in which we search for devices to assist people in remembering. We use various forms of communications – voice, gestures, body language and we use props such as books and black boards(whiteboards) for example. What we, as teachers are trying to do, is find THE device that triggers in each individual the ability to remember. And this is made incredibly more difficult by each of us being individuals with differing triggers. The teacher has to find the triggers. It is what I like to call watching for the lights to go on in people’s eyes. It’s that moment when you see they just GET IT. And I get incredibly excited when I see that look. It really turns my crank.

You get this phenomenon, in a classroom. You do not have it happen in a webinar. We are trying to inject it into our internet-based learning programs. With various devices. Primarily with questions that allow us to asses the progress in the learning and the effectiveness of our teaching. To some degree when people learn something there are “aha” moments. I know that I just couldn’t put it into words. Then you know there will be remembering from the learning.

Learning is hard work. You have to come to learning with an open mind. When dealing with adult education that is already a flawed starting point. Adults come to a class with preconceived ideas and thoughts. We cannot avoid it. In many ways, as adults we don’t feel the need to learn about something we already know or have been doing for years. We naturally question the expertise of any teachers. “Who are you that you can teach me something about a subject I have been doing for these past years?”

I invite you to reflect on these questions this week, and be sure to look up Jordan B. Peterson.  Next week, we will continue our topic of personal responsibility in our learning.

The time is now.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching and Learning

As many of you know I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The family rented in the city of Montreal and we owned a small, old house in the Laurentians, about an hour north of Montreal. Our house was on the end of a lake and the lake was home to a Country Club where, as kids, we learned to swim, play tennis, to canoe, play golf and other summer activities. The lessons were $5.00/per month and for that price we received 12 lessons, three a week, that lasted between 30 minutes and forty-five minutes. It was a wonderful way to grow up.

However, from an early age my life was split into two pieces: the city for work and the country for play.

Fast forward to my teenage years and I became involved with teaching swimming, first to children at the lake, and then to students at University. I was very lucky to have been given these opportunities at such an early age. The teaching soon moved from teaching specific skills to allow people to learn “how to” swim to teaching people how to “teach others” to teach specific skills, such as coaching and directing athletic learning. We created a program that allowed prospective athletes to learn the necessary to teach skills of coaching and teaching. I ended up teaching aspiring teachers how to teach at the University level.

I have been involved with teaching for a long time, more than 50 years. Teaching is a very interesting discipline and I have to admit that I love to teach. I love seeing the lights go on when a student “gets it.”

I approach teaching from a number of, in my mind, critical evolutionary steps.

First is “Pictures.”

I believe in “showing” people what the goal is we are working toward. This is what we call, in our classroom work “What It Looks Like When It Is Right.” This is now part of the Building Blocks Level of parts and service management training.

Next comes Story Telling.

I move to telling stories about what it is that they just saw in the picture. A story to describe what the picture was all about. Story telling is an important aspect of nearly everything that we do. Leading people is enhanced with good stories. Selling is all about story telling. Story telling allows the listener to more easily understand what is being taught.

Pictures Again.

A repetitive process to “imprint” the end result on the mind of the student. This is what we are doing, this is how we are doing it, do you see the picture? This allows us to follow my three critical precepts in leadership and also in driving change.

  • Understanding: everyone has to understand what we are doing. What are our goals and objectives?
  • Acceptance: everyone has to accept that what we are doing is the right thing to do. This means that we have to be open to a vigorous debate about our goals and objectives. This is a critical element of leadership and one that is not that common. Allow everyone’s thoughts to be heard and respected.
  • Commitment: Once we have these three steps completed and with strong agreement then we will have everyone committed to making it happen.

Teaching and Learning and…

That takes me to Socrates. Society has a polarity to it. There are competing views on nearly everything that we do and have done. Socrates did not want to get into the debate of what is right and wrong he simply pursued “Wisdom.” In the process he created “philosophy.”

In his approach, in much the same manner as we have created out learning offerings, he constantly was asking questions. What is a good market capture rate? How should we measure market capture? What is a good parts availability? Does that include your overnight delivery or is it right off the shelf? Lots and lots of questions. That is the foundation of how I teach and also how the Learning Without Scars.

Many people, who I respect, and have worked with over the years, say that the name of the Company is incorrect, they say it is the wrong name. The Company should be “Learning WITH Scars.” That could be one interpretation. I want people to engage in a fundamental understand on what they do. That requires thought. Remember Simon Sinek? His book “Start with Why” is truly thought provoking and enlightening.

He asks three basic questions:

  1. What do you do?
  2. How do you do it?
  3. Why do you do it?

The first question should be very easy to state. The second question perhaps a bit more difficult but after all that is what you do every day at work. It is the last question that is the poser. And, NO, the answer is not that you do this to make money. It is never the reason why. That is the result of doing what you do. The better you do it the more money you will receive.

The Time is NOW.

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The Parts Business Going Forward

The Parts Business Going Forward.

Let me ask a few questions, of you, if I might:

  • What does your future in the parts business look like?
  • Is it a continuation of what you are doing now?
  • Are the results you are experiencing satisfying for you personally?
  • Is that the best you can do?
  • If you can do more what is holding you back?

By now you’re probably thinking, “WOW. That isn’t fair. You ask tough questions.”

Here is something to consider. If you continue to do what you have been doing you are facing extinction. That is a fact. I am 100% in agreement with that statement. Are you?

Let’s have a look at what goes on today. The phone rings or someone walks into your store, what many of you call your branch. An employee, in your parts department, if they aren’t already busy, will greet the customer. They will then proceed to determine what the customer needs. What is the customer doing? Rarely is that question asked. Would that question be helpful? Of course, it would be helpful. Then the parts employee will open up his computer system, if the parts employee knows who the customer is they can proceed to open a parts sales order. If they don’t know the customer they have to ask. And then they find the customer on their business system and then proceed to open a parts sales order.

How about processing parts orders for the service group? Does your technician walk to a back counter? Then a parts employee and the technician determine what parts are required for the work? Or perhaps the technician calls into the parts department and the process is similar to a customer parts sales order. Does the technician order their own parts using an electronic catalogue of the parts and service manuals and enter their parts orders to your business system themselves?

How about an instore display area? Do you have one? How do you operate the instore area? What is the number of customers coming in to your store on a daily/weekly basis to place parts orders? How many parts are sold from the instore displays on a daily/weekly basis?

Finally, we come to the internet. Do you have a facility that will allow your customers to place their orders online? How often are customers looking at your web site? How many customers check on your parts inventory availability? How many customers check your prices online? Do you allow your customers to have access to an electronic catalogue? Do you allow your customers to have access to service manual information online? How many customers place orders online through your website on a daily/weekly basis? Does your business system provide statistics on the number of customers visiting daily/weekly? How about price checks on the same frequency? How about availability checks for the same frequency? If a customer checks prices and availability but does not place an order does your business system notify the parts department daily on which customers were involved? Does a parts employee call the customer when that happens and determine what the customer was looking for and if they in fact found what they needed?

I guess the real question is “Are you working in the business or on the business?”

Perhaps even more directly are you in the order processing business or the selling business?

Or finally, are you in the parts business or the part number business?

The answer to these many questions should provoke some serious thinking.

As Jack Welsh used to say “when the world around you are changing at a rate faster than you are …. The end is near.”

The decisions you make will be with you for a long, long time.

The Time is NOW.

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Simple Steps to Big Results

In our Industry, what is it that we DO?  What is the action that is involved in creating employee and customer satisfaction?  There are simple steps we can take to gain big results.

Employee satisfaction requires knowing what to do – if an employee can measure their own job performance, there is a sense of a job well done.  It may seem obvious, but it is worth mentioning: we all have to know what our job entails.  We need to know what it is that we DO!

This spills over into creating customer satisfaction, because the simple steps each of our heroes will take every day will be what sets us apart to our customers.  We become their partners in business, instead of a vendor or supplier.

There are simple steps to take, to gain those big results.

The time is now.

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Talents and Skills

Learning Without Scars was created to fill a void in the Capital Goods Industries, specifically the light and heavy equipment space.

With technical schools closing at an alarming rate the markets we serve were becoming unable to find the talents and skills they required in the operational areas of the business, parts and service specifically. I have written extensively on the German trade school structures and the benefits it provides German employers. We no longer have a viable trade school preparation for the parts business.

To that end, here at LWS we have developed training programs for the parts counter job functions. We have the same for the parts office and the service office. We also have programs for the parts warehouse, for service writers and service foreman and lead hands. All of these programs were created after dealer customers had expressed a need and a desire to help employee development.

The report from Edward Gordon, a colleague, is a clear affirmation of why we are doing what we do in training.

I would like to pose a question to everyone. What are you doing to attract new employees, to retain the ones you have and to develop all of your employees to meet the needs of future job?

There is a critical need on our Industry. Without the proper number of talented and skilled employees your business is at risk.   

The Time is NOW.

 

Please read this Edward Gordon article.

Knowledge Shock Part V: Job Evolution Causes Skill Shortages and A Search for Solutions

Job Evolution 1970-2010

In 1970 John, whose father was a plumber, graduated from high school. He began working in a Midwestern automotive-parts factory. It had an entry-level job training program and paid him a good wage. At that time, about 66 percent of entry-level jobs in manufacturing and other employment sectors required only a high school diploma. Business management and professional positions required a college education. Also, apprenticeship completion or specific skill-training certificates were needed to qualify for some mid-skilled occupations.

 Fast forward to 1990 when John’s daughter Linda became an office file clerk after graduating from high school. She found out technologies had changed occupational skill requirements in both offices and factories. High school graduation was no longer a passport to the middle class. By 1990, 55 percent of jobs required education or training beyond high school. However, many employers offered workers on-the-job training.

John’s grandson, George, was always interested in cars. After high school graduation in 2010, George decided to seek employment in an auto-production plant. But he was surprised to discover that a largely unrecognized Fourth Industrial Revolution had radically changed entry-level jobs requirements. Robots now performed many repetitive tasks on car assembly lines. George also learned that this local auto factory only sought workers who could operated computer-controlled equipment. Working on teams, they also need needed to have the technical skills required to assemble many different auto models in smaller runs as sales orders came in from the manufacturer’s dealer network. The plant had no entry-level job training. Applicants were expected to be job ready from day one!

By 2010, low-skill jobs had declined to only 33 percent of the U.S. labor market. They were also low paying jobs. The majority of even mid-level occupations now required special career training beyond high school.

Talent Shortages by the Numbers

In 2010 there were about 97 million mid-level and higher skilled jobs across the United States. Yet only 43 million American workers met the general education and career training requisites to fill them.  U.S. businesses made up a national gap of 54 million skilled workers through increasing automation, importing skilled foreign workers, poaching workers from competitors, or exporting higher skilled jobs to overseas locations with the requisite talent pool. Only about 20 percent of U.S. businesses offered job training programs. This talent shortfall resulted in 4 million vacant jobs across the U.S. economy.

Over the next decade the skills-jobs disconnect continued to expand. By 2017 two-thirds of jobs in the U.S. labor market required workers with post-secondary specialized career training. International talent shortages had also increased, making it much more difficult for U.S. businesses to either import talent or find an off-shore location with the needed skilled workers. A global talent showdown had begun in earnest. In 2017 nine million jobs remained unfilled across the United States. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates a loss of $26,000 per vacant job in profit or productivity for a business. This represents an over $230 billion loss to the U.S. economy.

The U.S. talent shortfall is a significant part of a much broader global talent train wreck. The worldwide estimate of 2022 job vacancies range from 45 to 95 million skilled positions. Many recent surveys of American executives place this talent crisis at the top or near the top of management concerns. For example, a 2018 survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America indicated that this industry will be short two million skilled craft professionals by 2020. A recent National Association of Manufacturers survey for the first time reported  “attracting and retaining a quality workforce” as the respondents’ top business challenge.This was also the case in the February survey of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Ninety percent of businesses seeking workers reported “few or no qualified applicants” for open positions.

Two Major Skills Initiatives

Two significant approaches for confronting the escalating shortages of skilled workers are gaining momentum. The “2017 Training Industry Report” (Training, November 2017) showed that U.S. businesses made an unprecedented $23 billion increase in worker training in the past year. Total expenditures rose from $70.6 billion to $93.6 billion or 32.5 percent. The majority of these funds were invested in specific job raining programs for workers rather than in management education programs as in years past. Over the past few months there has been some increase in the labor participation rate. It is an indication that more companies are again beginning to offer job training to new hires. This is opening the possibility of employment to so called “discouraged workers” who until recently have been sitting on the U.S. labor-market sidelines because their skills were not up-to-date.

A second more comprehensive approach to tacking the current skills crisis are regional public-private partnerships focused on economic development and reforming the education-to-employment system. These Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs) offer a process for reinventing their local talent-delivery systems. In the short term, these cross-sector initiatives composed of businesses, educational institutions, unions, government agencies, and non-profit community groups focus on retraining workers and the unemployed with the skills currently needed to fill the vacant jobs of regional employers. RETAINs are of particular value to small businesses as they offer a viable way of pooling their resources to inform, attract, and prepare skilled workers to fill jobs.

In the long term, RETAINs seek to rebuild the workforce pipeline through raising K-12 educational standards and implementing career-skills preparation programs. Beginning in elementary school students need to be well grounded in reading, writing, mathematics, and verbal communication skills. To accommodate the wide diversity of students’ aptitudes and interests, a wider diversity of high school programs are needed such as STEM academies, career education programs, and pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship options. This means more students will leave high school with solid educational foundations that prepare them to successfully complete the post-secondary career education and training needed to fill today’s and tomorrow’s ever-rising job requirements. It is notable that the High School Inc. Foundation (previously profiled in  Gordon Report) has received the 2018 Citation for Career Education and Excellence from the American Association for Career Education for its leadership role in the development of six career academies at the Valley High School in Santa Ana, California. The High School Inc. Foundation is a good example of the over 1,000 RETAINs now operating across America.

More information on many local RETAIN “brands” across the United states is now available in an updated paperback edition of Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis published by Praeger in March 2018. It offers many case studies of the the accomplishments of these cross-sector partnerships in updating regional training and education programs and thus reviving local economies.

The Urgent Need for Action Addressing the Skills Crisis

Unless business investments in job training are drastically increased and the RETAIN movement grows exponentially, by 2022 the skills-jobs disconnect will have a dire impact on the U.S. economy. America is facing a demographic tsunami of 30 million baby boomers retiring from the workforce. In the cohort of millennials entering the workforce, only about thirty percent have the education and skills needed for advanced technology workplaces, but at least sixty percent need to be at this level for the high tech, knowledge-based economy of 2022.

The Gordon Report “Knowledge Shook Series” has spotlighted some of the most crucial forces behind the jobs-skills crisis. We have examined how American culture across the business community, schools, unions, and parents has failed to keep pace with the significant knowledge expansion required by technology change. We have also seen how popular culture can promote addiction to social media and other internet venues that reduce cognitive development and interpersonal skill growth. Over the past decade Knowledge Shock has morphed into Job Shock as many American workers now fear that escalating technology changes have placed their jobs at great risk. Inventing technology has proved to be the easy part; changing society’s cultural willingness to place education and workforce training on steroids remains very difficult. 

As technology has continued to expand job requirements, simplistic populist solutions for protecting jobs and industries are being advanced by the extreme right and left of the U.S. political spectrum. Populists offer a new form of tribalism. By dividing society into many warring factions, they seek to attack and eliminate the “enemy” opposition rather than pursue consensus through negotiation. This tribalism is in direct opposition to the democratic beliefs and traditions upon which our great American Republic was founded and has developed over the past 242 years. We remain fundamentally opposed to this attempt to undermine U.S. society.

As we contend with this social divisiveness, the American general public needs to be made aware of the urgent need to answer the two great questions of Job Shock.     

  1. Why has technology growth clearly outpaced the knowledge development of the U.S. workforce?
  2. How can we develop a new consensus that will lead to the overall growth of a well-educated American workforce?

The answers to these social issues will define how well we make the historic employment transition that America now faces. Failure is not an option.

Edward E. Gordon is president and founder of Imperial Consulting Corporation (www.imperialcorp.com). His book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis, a winner of an Independent Publishers award, is now available in an updated 2018 paperback edition.