Performance Books

I actually bought this back in 1995 after I had played in a garage band for about a year. I had "played by ear" and never learned to read music. I picked this up with intentions of expanding our band and then put it aside as life got in the way and the drums went in storage. So, fast forward to 2008 and the kit is out of storage and set up with some new hardware. THIS BOOK IS AWESOME! It lays down the basics in an easy-to-follow format and then converts that to sheet music... I CAN READ MUSIC NOW! I was able to get through the entire book in less than 2 weeks and am proficient at fills and grooves, I never did that after 3 years of playing by ear. The CD tracks are great and easy to follow. The lead-out counting gets the beat in your head before the sticks even move. The ONLY suggestion I'd make with this book is to get a good quality metronome to play along with. I'd couple this with another book, "picture yourself drumming" which is a bit more extensive in the descriptions and methodology. Another great choice would be "All about drums", again, great teaching method and some real sheet music and examples of popular songs in that. No complaints here, just order the book and get practicing!

I started drumming about 2 months ago with a basic set, Tommy Igoe's 'Getting Started on the drums' dvd and this book. The book is endless pages of exercises that gradually builds in difficulty. It's great. Each new pattern gets you using all four limbs, and are easy to modify for more practice (open/closed hi hats, crash vs hi hats, etc). It's got sycophated patterns, drum fills, and stuff on establishing a 'groove' with a band/bass player. Not the end-all of drum books, but perfect for beginners.

I had absolutely no musical background, but I learned basic rock drumming by using this book together with the video guide Drum Basics Step One and Two by Sandy Gennaro. The authors' instructions are easy to understand and follow, and you don't have to know how to read music to start playing. I would strongly recommend using these materials with a Yamaha DTXpress, and practice, practice, practice.

This is an excellent beginners and improvers book for budding drummers and percussionists, providing a comprehensive introduction to rock and blues drums. Written by Sandy Gennaro, an experienced session musician, and accompanied by a most useful practice CD, it will provide knowledge and confidence for all tomorrows drummers.

Our medical practice wanted to implement a comprehensive employee survey, and previous surveys done by practice management consultants seemed to create more bad than good. The survey book and guidebook by Connolly and Connolly provided good advice and a ton of sample questions. I was able to prepare a 100 question survey from scratch in about six hours. The Connollys' advice about pre-screening the survey with employees was also helpful; it helped me weed out some poor questions, add some better ones, and created a starting point for employee support of the survey. We will launch the survey in a few weeks to our 110 employees. If you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a survey firm and want to make a first try in-house, this seems like the resource you need to have.

The guidebook is written in user friendly language and is very comprehensive. It gives you all the tools you need to conduct an employee opinion survey.

PPI's employee survey package is excellent! Period. First and foremost, it provided what was most important to us.. a reliable and valid instrument. The rest is pure gravy. It's easy to use, easy to follow, and has useful real-life examples. Our team confidently put together a 24 question survey,in a relatively short period of time, and used the feedback method recommended to deliver results. We'll use it again for our follow-up survey. I highly recommend it.

The guidebook is written in user friendly language and is very comprehensive. It gives you all the tools you need to conduct an employee opinion survey.

This book is essential reading for anyone who cares about the practical and historical matters of the singing assignments in Bach's vocal music. Parrott presents a cogent argument, very well backed up with evidence.

The appendices are worth the price of the book, too. Among other things, they include a new and annotated translation of Bach's "Entwurff", other relevant contemporary documents, a reference table of the surviving vocal parts in Bach's music, plus a reprint of Joshua Rifkin's 1981 paper that sparked this revolution in Bach performance practice.

Advanced readers in this topic should continue by finding a copy of Dr Rifkin's 2002 book "Bach's Choral Ideal", already out of print but available through libraries. That book presents another 66 pages of argument and citations, further developing and updating his thesis over the 21 intervening years of discussion.

Andrew Parrott's wonderful volume is the culmination of many years study and practical application of J. S. Bach performance practice. Many of the conclusions are not new, but follow from the work of Josua Rifkin, made more compelling with easily grasped, definitive scholarship. It is past time for the modern choirmaster and music director to seriously reconsider those grand scale performances, and hear Bach anew, intimate, expressive, and no less powerful.

The first time (or perhaps ALMOST the first time) that Rifkin gave an exposition of his 1-on-a-part idea was at the November 1981 annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Boston. The paper was read towards the end of an afternoon session, and then formally rebutted by Bob Marshall (at the time a prof at the U. of Chicago, my alma mater for musicology). There was a lively give and take afterwards, but then the cocktail/dinner hour intervened and the audience dispersed. Rifkin and Marshall then repaired to a local McDonald's to continue their debate. My current-day colleagues in the world of commercial r.e. appraisal scoff at the possible interest such topics could raise, until I mention the fascination some of us find in published debates over business enterprise value at shopping malls...ho hum.

At that 1981 convention I talked to Rifkin about Edw. Lowinsky's ideas concerning the authenticity and dating of certain motets by Josquin (a debate thereon had arisen due to an article by Thos. Noblitt), and J.R. replied to the effect that such questions were secondary to the quality of the music itself. The same attitude, I believe, is applicable to the Bach choir issue.

The music is incredibly lovely when performed by expert singers, one on a part. Does it add anything to our experience to believe that this is the "authentic" means of performance? What about the fact that most people today experience this performance as sound waves emanating from a speaker, or that today's singers are probably healthier than their 18th c. counterparts, etc.?

I believe that the intellectual appreciation of "what is authentic" is a valid and interesting exercise in its own right...but that it should be quite separate from the sensuous appreciation of the music, however it is performed. It doesn't do the music any good to be heard with a sense of moral righteousness OR indignation.

Joshua Rifkin's revolutionary thesis about one voice per part performances of Baroque choral works actually began from his studies of 17th century German music, notably Henrich (sic) Schütz. But it was only when he began to argue that the principle may also apply to the immortal JSB, that he provoked the ire of musicians and musicologists. Essays on the subject by Rifkin and his opponents, including Robert Marshall and Christoph Wolff, have been tossed backwards and forwards in various scholarly journals for over twenty years now. Thus Andrew Parrott does Bach lovers a great service by mustering all the relevant evidence into one handsome and well-written book.

That Bach's normal practice was to employ solo voices in his cantatas, passions and oratorios should now be considered beyond serious scholarly dispute. Of course, it is perfectly legitimate for conductors to say, as does Philippe Herreweghe, that they simply like the sound of a full choir in Bach, without pretending that this conforms to Bach's own practice. What is less attractive is the efforts of others, such as Ton Koopman, to defend what is merely a personal preference by belittling the Rifkin/Parrott discoveries.

Among Bach conductors, Rifkin and Parrott themselves were the first to put the theory into practice in concerts and recordings. Lately they have been joined by Jeffrey Thomas (Koch), Sigiswald Kuijken (DHM), Konrad Junghänel (Harmonia Mundi), Daniel Taylor (Atma) and, most recently, Paul McCreesh, whose single voice recording of the St Matthew Passsion (DGG Archiv) is a revelation. Parrott's book is intellectually convincing; these recordings are aesthetically and emotionally compelling.

Steve Mandich dwells deep into the life of evel knievel he did
well research on the book and now there is a made for tv movi
e about Evel staring George Eads Well written book

Simply stunning work by the obviously Knievel obsessed Steve Mandich. Really well researched and put together - this makes interesting reading for all those with an interest in the 'real' story of Buttes bad boy, but it will appeal to anyone who enjoys a good book. Buy it today and I'm sure you'll love it. Just don't go jumping any canyons.

Let's just say that the BBC documentary `Touch of Evel' would have
benefitted greatly if this book had been available at the time of
production! Mandich's masterly yet affectionate execution fills in all the
gaps - it is the quiet authoritative voice behind the hollering and bluster
of the legend. It shows meticulous research without descending into geekdom,
and hits the spot more accurately than Evel did in a thousand jumps.
Splendid.

The beauty of Mandich's incredibly well-researched book lies in it's deft handling of the myth and reality of the life of Evel Knievel. It's what makes it a compelling read for anyone, whether they be a die-hard Evel fan, rev-head or anyone with even a passing interest in one of the 20th centuries more interesting celebrity sporstman. The engaging writing style makes this not just a great biography but also a fascinating story.

Of the 1000's of books written on leadership in the past 100 years, this one presents a very real picture of world we live in. Too many of the books I've read lately give us the magic formulas to follow, some leading us through a veritable mathematical maze to tell us what kind of leader we are. "Principle-Centered Leadership" by Covey and "The Platinum Rule" fall into this category. What Blanchard and Shula have done, and done quite successfully is to integrate theory with actual examples. While I don't agree with everything that Shula has done, I do applaud his efforts. I do absolutely believe in his philosophy of "Lead by example," and the necessity of developing trust. Both Shula and Blanchard emphasize this aspect of leadership as critical. There are too many so-called leaders in the corporate world who do not lead by example. They are quite willing to demand of you what they are unwilling to do themselves. On top of the quality of the reading, the book is very easy to read. I hi

What makes this book so effective is that the advice offered is not only solid, but it can be applied immeditely. It's a "hands on" doer's guide. The strength Ken Blanchard brings is his strong Christian influence. Shula's credentials consist of his long term track record as an NFL coach. In this book Shula describes how he leads by example and thorough preparation.

One place this book separtes itself from books of this genre is that it emphasizes "follow through" as contrasted with goal-setting. That's an action focus. It puts the spotlight on doing something.

This is a must buy for every coaches library. Coach Shula explores all of the areas a coach is confronted with. He gives the reader his philosophy on coaching and relates it to life's teachings.

Don Shula, the National Football League's all-time winningest coach, teamed up with Ken Blanchard, the internationally known and multiple award-winning author, educator, and management and leadership consultant, and together they co-wrote an outstanding book about leaders getting the best performance from the individuals and organizations they are privileged to lead. Whether you are responsible for the performance of multiple organizations, or for just one other individual, the leadership wisdom and insights in this book can help you maximize your coaching and leadership effectiveness.

The winning combination of the two separately distinguished leaders in their respective fields, and the complementary structure of the book were brilliant. Organized around the acronym C.O.A.C.H., the five coaching "secrets" that Shula had practiced and Blanchard has been teaching for over 30 years, the book alternated synergistic passages from Shula then Blanchard to explore and explain the acronym in theory and practice from the football gridiron to modern business situations, and ultimately to the game of life.

Here's how Shula and Blanchard define and think about the acronym C.O.A.C.H.:

Conviction-Driven: Effective leaders stand for something.

Overlearning: Effective leaders help their teams achieve practice perfection.

Audible-Ready: Effective leaders, and the people and teams they coach, are ready to change their game plan when the situation demands it.

Consistency: Effective leaders are predictable in their response to performance.

Honesty-Based: Effective leaders have high integrity and are clear and straightforward in their interactions with others.

Conviction-Driven: "Someone has said that a river without banks is a puddle. When I apply that saying to human interactions, it reminds me of the job of a coach. Like those river-banks, a good coach provides the direction and concentration for performers' energies, helping channel all their efforts toward a single desired outcome. Without that critical influence, the best achievements of the most talented performers can lack the momentum and drive that make a group of individuals into champions."

Overlearning: "To me a game doesn't end when the clock finally runs out. It ends on Monday, after we've analyzed every play and learned all we cana from it...Failure is successfully finding out what you don't want to repeat...Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven't learned a thing until you can take action and use it."

Audible-Ready: "Preparation means everything to me. I'm passionate about my players being ready for anything. Now, part of being ready is being able to shift your game plan at will. I see myself as a battlefield commander who has the guts to make the right moves to win. I want to be prepared with a plan - and then to expect the unexpected and be ready to change this plan. I must preserve the right to change - even to change at the last moment - as circumstances demand...Audibles aren't surprises - just new ways of doing what you already know how to do. Business people need to learn to call audibles, because in today's world, nothing stays the same."

Consistency: "Your team will soon learn what your standards are and perform accordingly. I not only insist on practice perfection, I'm there to see that it takes place. I don't miss practices. I need to be out there smelling out whatever isn't working. Even the slightest deviation from perfection needs to be noticed and corrected on the spot. Correcting and redirecting performance is strategically important - it's where we outstrip the competition. Some coaches will let little things go. Right there is where the difference is made. To me, it's not a matter of how many times we've done it or how late it is or how tired the players are. We'll do it until we get it right. Then we won't deviate from it in the game. I'd rather throw out a play or formation during practice than find out it can't be done correctly in the ball game. We seldom try anything on game day that we haven't been able to perfect in practice. If I'm asking our players to do something they can't do, I want to know about it now."

Honesty-Based: "I have a straight-up approach. I don't know how to go around corners or how to finesse. My players know this and they expect candor from me. Congruence is important to me. What you see with Don Shula is what you get. I don't play games. Effective coaches confront their people, praise them sincerely, redirect or reprimand them without apology, and above all are honest with them. Integrity pays, and integrity means being honest with yourself and others. This is a key ingredient in my coaching philosophy."

In his introduction to the book, Blanchard stated that he is on a search for simple truths to help leaders and managers be their best. With Shula's proven long-term coaching effectiveness as the foundation for this book, Blanchard has found and shared many simple leadership truths and complexities. This book would be a welcome addition to anyone's coaching or leadership collection.

FAKING IT comes from two music critics who here examine a range of genres, from blues to rock, in the quest to answer issues of authenticity and cultural reality in music. Popular music's impact is wide-ranging and its ability to effect cultural and social changes has been documented - but is music's authenticity another pop image, born of marketing - or does it reflect real change and underground sentiment? FAKING IT offers a blend of history and cultural criticism and is a pick for any collection strong in popular music history and culture.

The book is very insightful, some chapters more so than others. As a participant in the folk revolution in the first half of the 1960s, the chapter on "Mississippi" John Hurt particularly resonated with me. However, I can readily see how other chapters would affect readers who came of age in other musical periods.

My only problem is definitional; the authors were too Manichean about authenticity versus the lack thereof. As I see it, while a second edition of Moby Dick may lack the authenticity of the first, it is nevertheless a desirable artifact. In other words, such other factors as age and popularity (i.e., staying power) may compensate for missing authenticity. Accordingly, while the authors would classify as "inauthentic folk music" such songs as Early Morning Rain and City of New Orleans, I would be a less restrictive; they are destined to join such equally inauthentic folk songs as Camptown Races and This Land Is Your Land in the great American folk canon.

Similarly, the authors define as "authentic" a song by Kurt Cobain and an album by Neil Young that were each recorded in one take and display all kind of [authentic] imperfections and angst. However, I question whether that makes them more authentic than a perfect opus by Pink Floyd or Miles Davis, or for that matter, Sinatra's perfect cover of I've Got You Under My Skin, which reportedly took over 30 takes to complete. And, if it is angst that confers authenticity, then that goofy pop tune, It Never Rains In California, takes the cake ("Out of work, out of bread, out of self-respect, I'm out of my head, I'm under-loved and underfed, I want to go hoooome").

Buy the book; just pretend that its title is Random Thoughts On Post-60s Music; you'll enjoy it and it will make you think.

Most books about music are narrative and follow the thread of a band or music movements arc. Either that or you follow a critics taste. That is fine, however those method doesn't end up telling you much but opinions and facts. They can be entertaining but they don't enlighten. This is a rare book about music that does. It helps you see your own taste differently. It helps show you how your opinions that you have about acts or subjects weren't created in a vacuum. It changes the way you feel about the way you feel about music, which is an amazing accomplishment.
My only hope is that they make good on the idea of an exploration of authenticity in hip hop.

This is a very interesting book for anyone who has grown up paying even a little attention to the disputes about "authenticity" in popular music over generations. I am a classical musician and while the issues are hardly the same in that world, I can understand the notions of what these folks are struggling over and arguing about.

The authors begin with Kurt Cobain singing a Leadbelly song on MTV unplugged. His manner of singing the song, his complaints about being "real" and even his suicide act as a springboard for the whole book. We learn more about Leadbelly and his promoter, John Lomax, and where they actually fit into the music world of their time versus what white people believed about their heritage. John Hurt, who was a legend as an old man among the sixties folk singers. Yet, in his youth he was not nearly as popular nor as "authentic" as the sixties idolizers would have had the public believe.

It turns out that the Black public preferred Jazz and its sophistications to the blues and rural music that Leadbelly, Hurt and others performed. Nor was it as rooted in the slave past as the traditions believed. There was a lot of cross between rural White music and the rural Black music. We also see this in Jazz. It was only later that the schism between what is authentically "Black" or "White" became a fundamental issue, and its conclusions are largely wrong.

We get to compare the truly personal music of Jimmie Rodgers and his "T.B. Blues" against other music of its time and the tradition of autobiographical music. It is not as deep, rich, or lengthy tradition as one might expect. There is a lot of "character" biography, but not deeply personal stuff such as Rodgers singing about the tuberculosis that was killing him.

The authors later show us Elvis and how he created his persona and what traditions that flowed out of along with what Elvis actually invented. The problem is that what he created has become so much a part of what followed that it seems part of the genre now, but it was radical when Elvis created it. Or so the authors state.

We then get a wonderful chapter comparing The Beatles and The Monkees. It isn't quite as cut and dry issue of what is "authentic" versus "fake" as you might first think before you read the book. There is no question that The Beatles changed everything, but there is a lot of artifice that went into their music, too.

There is also woven into this the pop music of the Don Kirshner types and his role in The Monkees and what he did afterwards in creating The Archies and the lasting pop hit "Sugar Sugar".

Then comes a look at Neil Young and his travels through various stages of the search for Authenticity (the capital "A" is needed to describe what he was after). The Disco world and Donna Summer is next, the Punk Rock world, the faux reality of Ry Cooder's "Buena Vista Social Club" and world music. The book ties up with a look at Moby and then Nick Cave's "Mercy Seat" and the even more "real" cover by Johnny Cash.

One of the things that I find odd about the idea of "authenticity" in the making of a song is that these artists go around the world performing these pieces for decades. It is not possible that every performance of the work is equally "authentic" or even retains anything "real" about it after the thousandth time they perform it. The authors do mention Keith Jarrett who actually does make up new music on the spot for that night's performance. Now THAT is authentic. Of course, I find that a lot of his ruminations are just as boring as most of real life. Sure, there are moments of great brilliance, but art is working that up into a work and sharing that rather than all the scutwork that goes into the hard work of composing or writing or painting or sculpture.

I liked this book a lot and agree with the authors that listeners need to play more with the realities and the ideas of authenticity. We need to keep our ears and minds open to actually perceive what is going on rather than quickly accepting or dismissing musical works and musicians because of who we think they are (there is a lot of artifice in the creation of these persona's, too).

Of course, in the classical world, there is some of this, too. What is "real" classical, and what is out of bounds. And that discussion is not appropriate to this review. However, the idea that the piece is a role for the artist to perform rather than something "autobiographical" is rather well established.

One of the things beginning listeners to classical music get trapped in is hearing autobiography in the works of the masters. It is not that it is never there, but that it is rarely there as much as they suppose it is. The key is, does it move us? Is it great music? Does it speak to us about our lives and the human condition? It can also be for simple delectation. Not everything has to be dripping in angst and death. Real life has enough of that. Art should have something more, don't you think?

This book is great for anyone interested in fireworks. It gives you a special appreciation for fireworks.

George Plimpton is either the black cat or the leopard of the literary world. Or both. Like a black cat he has 9 lives -- or more. Unlike the leopard, he can change spots.

In his earlier books, Plimpton has written of his participation in a variety of sports from football "The Paper Lion" to baseball in "Out of my League" to professional golf in "The Bogey Man." He changes literary spots by publishing such diverse works as "Writers at Work" and "American Journey; the Times of Robert Kennedy."

In FIREWORKS he breaks new ground. He is the "unofficial official" Fireworks Commissioner of New York City and he takes his job VERY seriously.

He begins with a bang. His personal memories of childhood and adulthood firecracker expeditions, covering both successes and traumas. In the second section he relates the history of explosives and follows this with accounts of "fireworks families" in the United States.

The books bursts with glorious illustrations. I can't pick a favorite picture! This isn't a cheap book, but it's worth every penny.

I read this book because I enjoy Plimpton's vicarious lives. Fireworks didn't interest me a bit. They do know.

I think this book provides a great deal of historical background on fireworks. It also talks about the most prominent families in fireworks

George Plimpton is either the black cat or the leopard of the literary world. Or both. Like a black cat he has 9 lives -- or more. Unlike the leopard, he can change spots.

In his earlier books, Plimpton has written of his participation in a variety of sports from football "The Paper Lion" to baseball in "Out of my League" to professional golf in "The Bogey Man." He changes literary spots by publishing such diverse works as "Writers at Work" and "American Journey; the Times of Robert Kennedy."

In FIREWORKS he breaks new ground. He is the "unofficial official" Fireworks Commissioner of New York City and he takes his job VERY seriously.

He begins with a bang. His personal memories of childhood and adulthood firecracker expeditions, covering both successes and traumas. In the second section he relates the history of explosives and follows this with accounts of "fireworks families" in the United States.

The book bursts with glorious illustrations. I can't pick a favorite picture! It's an expensive book, but it's worth every penny.

I read this book because I enjoy Plimpton's vicarious lives. Fireworks didn't interest me a bit. They do now.

In "Fixing Performance Problems," Bud Bilanich targets, among other things, a sensitive area for attention: Giving Feedback. His six steps of preparing, opening, information sharing, closing and post conversation analysis give you a roadmap for making these difficult conversatins more likely to occur.
My experience supports the need for practical tools to give the manger the confidence to initiate these conversations.
This and the other extremely usable ideas in the book make it fast and impactful reading.

What else would you expect from "The Common Sense Guy" then a practical approach to solving performance problems. Bud's writing style is straight forward and to the point. The ideas he shares are full of wisdom and insight. More importantly they are easily applied. I always have an "aha" moment when reading Bud's material. Bud Bilanich is truly a gifted writer, trainer, mentor and communicator.

Bud Bilanich has done it again! He's taken a die hard cynic - when it comes to "self help business books" - and made a believer in him. What makes Dr. Bilanich unique is his adept storytelling ability. This book is not some dry and pedantic journey through the labyrinthine and often bureaucratic laden realm of business buzz words. Fixing Performance Problems is an intelligent and fluid play-by-play of how to motivate your employees to the best they possibly can be. With the author possessing a doctorate degree from Harvard and many years of worthwhile hands on experience, it's a bleeping wonder that one of the larger presses has not picked this book up. Bilanich elegantly synthesizes the important steps toward increasing productivity and happiness in employees. He dispenses with micromanaging techniques and goes in for a much more humanistic, and effective, technique of treating employees like human beings and not numbers.

This high impact and user friendly tome proves substantial; but also economical, in terms of being able to take it on the plane or read between meetings for maximum benefit without wasting a lot of time.

Definitely keep an eye out for all the books by Bud Bilanich, the Common Sense Guy with the great insights!

Fixing Performance Problems, by Bud Bilanich (AKA "The Common Sense Guy"), is one of those books that every leader should have, whether they think they have performance problems to fix or not.

Subtitled "Common Sense Ideas that Work," that's just what the book offers. And we all know how uncommon "common sense" really is. As others have noted, it's refreshing that someone with multiple degrees, including a doctorate from Harvard, can sidestep the usual consultant-speak and get right to the heart of the matter.

In addition to being packed with relevant quotes (there are some real gems there, including General Pershing's "A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops" or the Chinese Proverb, "If you are patient on one moment of anger, you can avoid a hundred days of sorrow"), the book offers plain answers to eleven key problems, with a handy summary chapter at the end.

The eleven problems are:
1) People don't know what they are supposed to do.
2) People don't know why they should do what they are supposed to do.
3) People don't know how to do what they are supposed to do.
4) People think the prescribed methods will not, or do not work or believe that their way is better.
5) People think that other things are more important.
6) People think they are performing in an acceptable manner.
7) Non-performance is rewarded.
8) Good performance feels like punishment.
9) There are obstacles to performing that the individual cannot control.
10) There are no positive consequences for good performance.
11) There are no negative consequences for poor performance.

Most of all, I like the fact that the book focuses on the things leaders need to do differently, and doesn't jump to conclusions that performance problems are the fault of the employee. In fact, in many cases it's not, and issuing negative consequences for poor performance is only suggested as a last resort (#11 in the list). Even in that case, Mr. Bilanich suggests that a gentle nudge will often do the trick.

Rather than a book on "correcting bad employees," it's the ultimate handbook on motivation, positive reinforcement, goal setting, communication, and all the things we need to do to proactively avoid poor performance. I highly recommend it to leaders at all levels.

A substantive and crystal clear guide, especially for CEOs. Light takes years of data provided by the Rand Corporation and distills them into the 4 essential pillars to establish high performing organizations and the operating principles of "robust organizations." Most useful of all is Light's guidance in facilitating organizational change -- thereby enabling readers who are leaders (or consultants to leaders) to advance organizations to new heights of performance for today's and tomorrow's challenging environments. Light shines light on the path for success !!

Obviously, when building anything, there are several essential requirements: an appropriate design, materials of the highest possible quality, skilled workers, and establishment of a solid foundation. In this volume, Light suggests how certain organizations have met these requirements and how others can also do so. He concedes that a moribund or demoralized organization can "create a burst of high performance by terrifying [its] workforce or rallying [its] troops" but invariably the results are only temporary. He asserts (and I agree) that the greater challenge is to "build organizations that produce results by hedging against the inevitable surprises and vulnerabilities that lurk in today's environment, while exploiting opportunities to shape the future to their advantage." Hence the importance of having a stereoscopic perspective which includes an awareness of possible and at least a sense of probable perils as well as opportunities. Hence the importance of having a design which can accommodate modification in response to "inevitable surprises." Hence the importance, also, of having a foundation which can withstand the impact of adversity while sustaining competitive initiatives.

In 1999, Light was engaged by the RAND Corporation to examine what its researchers had learned about managing public organizations during several previous decades . He eventually decided to focus on what had been learned about how any organization can achieve and then sustain high performance. It is important to note, as does Light, that RAND research is guided by three basic principles embedded in its own organizational culture: "First, RAND has a well-deserved reputation for questioning the questions.....Second, RAND has a long history of questioning its own answers through peer review and quality control....Third, RAND allows the evidence to speak, even when it unsettles the client." I was also interested to learn that RAND had some serious problems of its own during the mid-1990s which are noted within Light's narrative. RAND solved those problems by focusing on the basics of the Four Pillars.

That said, let's examine how he organizes his material. In Chapter 1, he shares several lessons about the future revealed by RAND's research after a rigorous analysis of "four critical sources of organizational vulnerability: ignorance, inflexibility, indifference, and inconsistency." In Chapter 2, Light shifts his attention to what RAND research has learned about addressing the vulnerabilities of uncertainty. Of special interest to me are the "seven powerful predictors of high performance" and the "four underlying pillars that help organizations achieve extraordinary results," all of which had been identified by the research. Then in Chapter 3, Light explains what RAND has learned about each of the "four pillars." In Chapter 4, he focuses on what RAND has learned about operating a "robust" organization. "Simply asked, how do robust organizations create the alertness, agility, adaptability, and alignment [which are] essential to high performance?" This chapter provides four answers. Then in the fifth and final chapter, he shares what RAND has learned about managing change. In this chapter, the reader is provided with "six suggested steps for improving the odds of success."

At this point in my brief commentary, I feel obliged to explain that Light has accomplished far more than examine an immense body of research data and then merely summarize key points. He had more ambitious objectives for this book and he achieved all of them. They include focusing much less attention on broad general principles (albeit sound ones) and far more attention on HOW almost any organization (regardless of size or nature) can apply those principles where perils are greatest, where opportunities are most promising, and where significant change is most likely. Granted, senior-level executives will find few head-snapping revelations in this book. Light creates for them, however, broad and deep access to a wealth of valuable (previously inaccessible) information from which he helps them to learn how to establish or nourish their own "robust" organization. After a careful reading and then re-reading of his book, they should then review key points in the Conclusion at the end of each chapter. I strongly recommend that his readers regularly review, also, the dozens of (boxed) idea clusters which Light thoughtfully provides throughout the narrative. For example, The Six Revolutions (Page 27), The First, Second, and Third Rounds of Winnowing: Strong Associations with Performance (Pages 56-57, 60, 62, respectively), and Organizing for Lightning (Page 150).

One final point. As James Q. Wilson notes in the Foreword, Light's work at RAND "did not involve any pre-conditions or post-research clearances. What you will read here is Light's best independent advice." In my opinion, The Four Pillars of High Performance is a brilliant achievement.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Evan I. Schwartz's Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors, Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien's The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability, Peter Schwartz's The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World and Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence, and Jason Jennings' Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive as well as Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change co-authored by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, and Scott D. Anthony.

It is evident from the text and from the author's course notes that his working title was Robust Organization. His publisher must have thought that people would not buy a book with that title, that they will only buy a book that promises, like all the others, 'high performance' as a direct and immediate result of reading the book. Light's actual message is that, in a turbulent environment, you have to build in a capability to achieve performance in different ways. This is not efficient, nor is it a direct path to high performance. But if you do it the right way, it is extremely efficient insurance, and an insurance that many organizations don't have or throw away needlessly. It is an extremely important line of argument, especially for organizations of last resort, such as any Federal agency. The literature in this area is thin and this is a good addition. (Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents, is a classic.) While Light gets to the right answer, his concepts, arguments, and evidence are often unclear or disappointing. I get the impression that Light has the gift of gab, lays it down quickly, and moves on. (His frequent talks on NPR flow nicely.) He asserts, for example, that his robust organization qualifies as a resilient organization in Hamel's terms, but that a resilient organization isn't necessarily robust. Correct, but I tried to restate his argument and found that I had to make up a lot that wasn't there. But I suppose that makes the book useful for readers who want to make it their own and use it. I have reorganized my own organizational diagnostic instrument around Light's categories and am pleased with how it helps me relate detailed alignment issues with broader strategy.

The RAND Corporation's organizational strategy advice is based on more than 50 years of research. Author Paul C. Light draws from RAND studies primarily related to the U.S. military to explain the need for organizations to confront unavoidable change with alertness, agility, adaptability and alignment. He notes that these four attributes are equally valuable to small and large businesses, and to organizations of all kinds. You can apply each solid lesson Light takes from RAND's studies to your organization's structure and planning. In fact, some of his points are already common wisdom. Political instability, labor force fluctuations, or the potential for terrorism or economic unrest affect some industries more than others, but every organization is susceptible to unanticipated developments. If you want to find out what to do when your organization gets surprised, we recommend this in-depth research-based report.

Wonderful array of best practices of the top global companies

Wonderful array of best practices of the top global companies

Excellent overview as well as best practices in globalizatio

This is truly a fascinating study about globalization. As told by Marquardt "two years ago, a large consulting firm that helps companies go global gave me a list of the ten most common questions its clients had about globalization :

1. How do you create a global culture?

2. What are the key components of globalization?

3. How do you create a global mind-set?

4. What kinds of skills should we look for in global managers?

5. Why do some people fail when going overseas?

6. How do we establish a global training program?

7. What experiences should we give our future leaders?

8. Should everyone in the organization become globalized?

9. Is there an order or process in which a company should go global?

10. Where can we go for help as we work toward globalization?

This list inspired me to write this book, for I realized that these questions had no easy answers and that only a handful of companies had resolved even of these issues."

In this context, after defining six components of his "GlobalSuccess" model, Marquardt explores and illustrates these six components, namely corporate culture, human resources, strategies, operations, structure and learning with best practices of more than forty successful global companies, such as : GE, Whirlpool, Colgate-Palmolive, Shell, Coca-Cola, Xerox, FedEx and HP.

I highly recommend this study. As proclaimed by Jack Welch " companies either globalize or they die."