Performance Books

Lori Silverman is perhaps ahead of her time a few years with her organizational design and development insights. The book contains much information you can use right now, successfully, to develop organizations with quality and integrity.

Critical SHIFT is about as user friendly as a book can get. I can FIND things in here...and they are useful things that help me identify trends, understand my environment and take effective action.

I recommend Critical SHIFT to those who want to hit the ground running. No one subject takes forever to read. I can grab what I need and move on. I have already used pieces of Lori's value management approach in our strategic planning process. I plan to use more.

"Oh, no not another program!" "Don't use the "q" word around here!" There always seems to be something different, but quality has philosophically remained solid. Critical Shift describes the shifts that quality has made over the years and emphasizes the critical trends that face organizational and lifestyle issues in the future. Are you doing quality if you are using benchmarking strategies, mass customization, reengineering, environmental audits? The Starburst Model offers an integrative and multidimensional view of how organizations evolve and work toward high performance. For the practioner, this book is highly useful. Tools and strategies needed at various levels are described along with worksheets and questions for inner exploration. Critical Shift is a very fine combination of thought-provoking reading as well as hands-on application. Great job, Lori and Beth!

I LOVE this book!! Eric has written great books and this one is among them. Every piece of information opens the dancers' mind and body into a realm of excellence and joy that is LONG OVERDUE!!! It is a must have in every personal library of everyone in dance. A neccessary textbook in pedagogy, technique, and conditioning classes everywhere.

As a dancer and a beginner I was struggling with jazz technique for a long time. The imagery approach has helped me greatly to improve my plies and turns, posture and interaction with space. The essence of the imagery approach is to identify yourself with an image. As an example the one that inspired me was "a growing root". I keep coming to this book again and again, when I need to recupirate and find inspiration. It also developed my imagery and gave me another prospective on relationships, energy and dancing. The book has helpful illustrations and photos. A must!

To make our bodies do all of the incredible things that we ask of them we use images, and since our bodies are always changing and feeling different sensations, we often need to find new images to keep pushing our performance further and further. This book is a collection of hundreds of interesting suggestions for images that all dancers should find useful. Some you may already be familiar with and some will be new to you. In dance class, images are constantly being taught to dancers, so this is also an excellent resource for teachers as well as students and seasoned professionals. Maybe you will find just the right image for that tricky pirouette or jump here! This book is recommended for dancers of all levels, from beginner to professional.

Dr. Bob Frost is unique in his ability to clarify metrics and the associated factors and environment necessary to generate effective cultural change in organizations. This book hits the mark with his "Multiple Perspectives" approach.
Use this book carefully... it could change your organization!

In Designing Metrics, Dr. Bob Frost has captured the essence of performance measurement. His book is concise and does not get mired down in descriptions and stories as so many business books do. It is short and to the point with specific models and uses resulting in an efficient and helpful tool. If you believe in the old adage that " what gets measured gets done", this is the perfect book to develop clear concise performance measures. Designing Metrics not only explains various performance measurements, but is also a guide for when to use which model.

Without a doubt Bob Frost has again crafted an excellent lay practitioner level book for the masses. His easy to read and understand writing style takes the fear out of performance measurement that is so often found in the in the "big" measurment books by Kaplan, Norton, and others. He cuts rights to the chase and gives the reader the essential information in a one hour sized chunk that won't put you to sleep.

I have used Bob's two other books (Crafting Strategy and Measuring Performance) as preread material in the corporate and university settings where I have taught to great success. I will be adding this jewel to my syllabus in the future.

I just finished reading "Drive Business Performance - Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution" by Bruno Aziza and Joey Fitts. Wow, what a fantastic book! It is one of the best I have read on the subject of Performance Management. It finds the right balance of not being too theoretical or too techie. I love the fact that it offers a broad education on the concepts and terminology associated with Performance Management but, at the same time, is highly actionable. It serves a diverse audience. I would recommend it not just to a CEO but for an organization's entire executive team. It offers the potential for some great post-reading dialog.

My favorite part is their defined "Six Stages of Performance Management Value". For those who know me, it aligns nicely with my "crawl, walk, run" approach to business application development. The "money picture" is how they show the six stages, listed below, in concentric circles; illustrating the evolution and associated benefits of a commitment to Performance Management.

This is actually a book that you can read cover to cover and feel like you get value from every chapter. Read it then buy a copy for your boss... then find a way to get to the sixth stage!

I manage a consulting firm and the #1 issue I see my business customers deal with is the perceived complexity of Performance Management. My customers struggle to determine the people, processes and technologies to turn their high-level strategy into a successful execution plan and results.

In this book, I have found a pragmatic guide that helps business managers and IT get together, assess where they are and start the discussions required to succeed in Performance Management. Sure - the book doesn't solve everything on its own, but it at least gives an easy and effective model to follow.

Finally, I enjoyed how the book reads. The authors give plenty of company success stories and have extracted some great best practice examples that help me remember them. Very sticky. I've also had success using the methodology, which appears well adopted given all the companies in the book saying they're "moving to a Culture of Performance". The Six Stages & 3 Capabilities (MAP) framework help me to assess what stage my clients are at today & explain the steps they need to take to garner greater competitive advantage.

All in all, a good & very useful read!

Aziza & Fitts provide an intelligent perspective on what it takes (and means) to create a "Culture of Performance". The book relies on real world examples rather than conceptual theories peppered with today's favorite jargon. Their approach is refreshing in that the content is backed by existing business environments with a proven track record for success. Empowering individuals and holding them accountable is an absolute necessity. Success is derived from surrounding yourself with the best possible people... and then staying out of their way. This book should be mandatory reading for all employees of any organization. True paradigm shifts occur when EVERYONE has a clear understanding of the goals and objectives - not just a few key players.

I've just finished reading Drive Business Performance and I'd recommend it highly to anyone trying to work out how to actually enable an organisation to realise the benefits of performance management. Many organisations have tried and relatively few have actually succeeded in putting performance management at the very core of it's DNA. This book provides a great blend of (new) theoretical concepts, blueprints for success from organisations such as Hilton Hotels and Fortis, and most importantly a well-structured guide for execution.

This writer has been there and loves managing...The BS about babysitting is not what he preaches, True leadership is great coaching and Lehmann brings that across big time. Very practical...buy it!

The book gave me a tremendous "aha!" Struggling with the contradictions inherent between the linear application of quality process improvements and non-linear "whole systems" design, this book brought the two together for me in ways that I can articulate to others. Thanks!

If you're looking for more tools for your management toolbox, ideas as to how to embrace change, how to empower your staff - it's in here!

"Our work on this topic has been inspired primarily by personal consulting experiences over many years...Ten years ago, these experiences confirmed the teachings of W.Edwards Deming and others involved with continuous quality improvement. Deming asserted in his fourteen obligations of managment that quality was impossible where people are afraid to tell the truth...Besides Dming, other voices strongly reinforce the need to understand the dynamics and effects of fear. Chris Argyris's extensive body of work clarifies how invisible and self-reinforcing miscommunication due to fear can be. Peter Senge's explorations of systems thinking illuminate its far-reaching effects. Both of these thinkers underscore the need to understand the negative assumptions about people that keep fear in place. Peter Block's works on empowerment and stewardship demand a wholesale rethinking of the concepts of management and leadership as a way to escape thses destructive beliefs. Most recently, Thomas Stewart's examination of the rapidly emerging value of intellectual capital demands that even more attention be paid to reducing fear and building trust" (from the Preface).

In this context, Kathleen D.Ryan and Daniel K.Oestreich, with the following core questions, illustrate some important elements of the trust-fear continuum. They say that if your answers to these questions are all 'yes,' your workplace is clearly fear-based:

* Do a high proportion of people in your organization frequently hesitate to speak up about certain issues?

* Does a fear of speaking up exist at many levels in your organization?

* Are people in your workplace associating managers and supervisors with th presence of fear?

* Are leaders in your organization exhibiting behavior that causes employees to be afraid?

* Are people reacting with strong emotions to a perceived environment of fear?

* Is fear having an impact on work and how it is getting done?

Thus, by describing the following 'core behaviors,' they define the vision of a high-trust workplace: *mutual helpfulness and understanding, *serving as a reality check for one another, *providing feedback for one another, on strengths as well as areas that need improvement, *influencing each other's ideas and decisions; willingness to be influenced, *humor; enjoyment of each other's company, *creative, synergistic problem solving where the results are greater than the sum of the parts, *respect for different backgrounds and talents; reliance on one another's expertise to ensure the best results, *willingness and ability to work through conflicts and disagreements, *common commitment to the same goal; commitment to one another's success, *a high level of rapport and honesty with one another, *straightforward communication.

They argue that the vision of a high-trust workplace can draw people naturally away from the cycle of fear and mistrust toward a new set of possibilities for better workplace relationships, and hence high-performance organization.

Highly recommended.

This is one of my all-time favorite management/OD books. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in learning how to improve manager-employee relationships, trust, and communication in organizations. I think it should be on the bookshelf of every Organization Development specialist, Human Resource manager, executive coach, and leadership trainer. It contains useful, thoughtful, and often unique advice for managers, team members, trainers, and anyone else interested in reducing the climate of fear in their workplace. Some of the ideas translate well to personal and family relationships too.

Fear is extremely damaging to organizations. It can harm trust, communication, quality, knowledge sharing, cooperation, innovation, retention, and overall organization effectiveness. Whether you are interested in improving morale, communication, and performance company-wide, or you just need to improve your relationship with one person, you'll find something useful here. This is not just the same old recycled advice you'll see in leadership books. Some of the ideas will be familiar to experienced people in the field, but the authors expand them and put them into a new perspective based on their work. They contribute many new ideas and examples that you won't find elsewhere.

Portions of the book are particularly helpful for well-intentioned managers who just don't understand why people don't fully trust them. If you're not getting the level of communication, ideas, and candor needed to bring your organization to the next level, fear may be the problem. If you hear a manager say, "I don't know why they didn't tell me sooner," give him or her this book. Most of us don't realize all the little things we do to discourage good communication.

My favorite concepts in this book include the cycle of mistrust and undiscussables. The cycle of mistrust provides a great understanding of how our perceptions and assumptions influence the behavior of other people. It's a great model for leadership, teambuilding and communication workshops. You'll be sure to recognize a few "undiscussables" in your own workplace. An undiscussable might be a sensitive issue that employees whisper about to one another, but not with those who might have the power to do something about it. It's just too risky to speak up. Management might not learn about it until they experience the shock of scathing comments in an anonymous employee survey, or they hear about it from someone in another company! You can prevent this from happening by driving fear out of the workplace and by creating an environment that makes it easier for people to speak up in the first place.

A culture of fear permeates many organizations, draining them of their potential and vitality. Based on their interview findings, the authors examine how fear is a major obstacle to open communication and organizational effectiveness. The book also addresses fear during times of rapid change. In this work you will find strategies for building a high-trust work environment. The book is loaded with good, practical guidance for managers. From fear to trust is a quantum leap; this book can help you take that enlightening jump.

This book is a really nice book to help us all get most of the "misterious" ergogenics. How many times did we enter in a SNC/GNC store and got confused with so many options? What does creatin or anything else exactly does? Stop having false and biased advises. This book is a reliable database with good bibliographic references. First starting point before heading to any supplement store is to get your hands on this book. Guaranteed to help you spend your $$$ better there!

Only "drawback" (may I use this word?) is that many of the supplements are so "new" in terms of scientific research that even this book being recent there may be drastic changes in the knowledge of the product. Make sure you do your own researches (the internet is a good point to start) on the "newer" stuff where this book may become incomplete or vague.

Mel Williams is regarded as one of the leading sports physiologists in the US, and this book shows why. I've read many guides to using sports supplements and this is the only one I've come across that's balanced and well-researched. By far the best book of its kind on the market.

The increasing number of performance enhancing supplements on the shelves in the drug stores is increasing rapidly. Many people are buying those products without knowing their effectiveness or safety. This book can serve as excellent source to help athletes and coaches of all levels to get the necessary information that will help them make informed decisions regarding the use of sports ergogenics as a means to enhance performance in sport. This book discusses the effectiveness, safety concerns, legal status, and ethical issues of a specific sport ergogenic that should be considered by all the athletes prior to its use. Athletes can find excelent recommendations about what spplements to take or not to take depending of the sport they are participating. The Ergogenic Edge is organized in a way that it makes it very user friendly which makes for easy reading.

This book is AWESOME!!
I love it, it is very educational!
I used it to write a presentation on Techno Textiles, and I got so much info out of it!

Innovative textiles offer some of the most intriguing design options today, but few design or textile coverages discuss extreme textiles in such depth and detail. Matilda McQuaid's Extreme Textiles: Designing For High Performance surveys engineered fabrics and their radical uses, from cardiac constraint socks to airbags and transportation textiles. Even buildings use these extreme textiles in construction, and Extreme Textiles surveys all these uses in a blend of startling full-page illustrations and discussions of fiber properties, performance standards, and unique uses. Whether it's architecture or art, students at the college level will find Extreme Textiles both accessible and detailed.

There has been tremendous progress made in materials science in the last twenty years or so. And a surprising amount of that work has been in materials used in fabrics. Fabrics, including rigid items like fiberglass or carbon fiber items, have been designed to handle a wide variety of tasks that previously either couldn't be done (the bouncing satellite on Mars), or were much more expensive, or were performed less adequately (sporting equipment).

This book is a review of these advances. Ms. McQuaid is at the National Design Museum where she oversees a collection of more than thirty thousand textiles produced over 23 centuries. She has written much of the book, but has gotten contributions from a series of other textile experts from London, Canada, and of course the United States. The book is profusely illustrated to serve as an idea book of the types of items that can be manufactured with the new fabrics.

In the last few years I have been searching books offering a general overview of the past, and I have realized that many books entitled "History of ...whatever" only provide information about the West, the rest of the world being almost ignored.

Otto's on fools or jesters is different, it is truly global. As far as I know, there are not many books (i) dealing with jesters (ii) including not only Europe but also other parts of the world and (iii) readable enough for the non-scholarly public. In that sense, Otto's work seems to me a fascinating examination of the jester tradition throughout the world and history, so I recommend it, my rating being between 5 (content) and 4 (pleasure, sometimes falling to 3, sometimes raising to 5).

Other books that I would recommend would be "Kings or people: Power and the Mandate to Rule" by Reinhard Bendix and "Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe's Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780" by Jeroen Duindam.

Additionally, as a complement to " Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World", I would also suggest reading (hoping that will be of use for those looking for a broad framework to understand the past) the following works, whose scope is as amazingly global as Otto's: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Economy: "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes is to appear on December 2007); 3. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 4. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 5. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 6. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat

I can't think of a book that has a better choice of title than _Fools Are Everywhere_ (University of Chicago Press) by Beatrice K. Otto. Everyone would agree with those three little words, but Otto has the specialist meaning revealed in her subtitle: _The Court Jester Around the World_. Her title amply is demonstrated in a large and wide-ranging history of fools. Everyone knows of the fools in England, quite possibly because Shakespeare put many of them in his works. But Otto has gathered a huge amount of material from Everywhere; fools may be found also especially in China (which is, along with Europe, the arena of Otto's closest inspection), and in India, Arabia, and Tonga, within the Yaqui Indians, among the Aztecs, and, well, everywhere, even in corporate boardrooms.

A tradition this nearly universal must have strong reason to exist, and Otto demonstrates over and over, from one anecdote to another, that fools served both kings and subjects. Jesters were not only tolerated by the rulers, they were cherished. They may have made uncomfortable, biting attacks; Sultan Mahmud was lying in the lap of his jester and asked him, "What is your relation to cuckolds?" The jester replied: "I am their pillow." But even beneath the bite is understanding and even kindliness and acceptance. When King Tamerlane was roaring out 800, 1,200, and 1,500 lashes for a series of offenders, his fool Nasrudin interrupted him with what seemed to be an irrelevant question: "O King, do you know everything?" "Of course I do," retorted the King. "Then how could you inflict such punishment? Either you don't know the meaning of the number 1,500, or you don't know the sting of a whip." The jester is here shown to be the kindly servant of the king, as the one who might save the king from himself; but also, he is the servant of the subjects who would otherwise feel the king's lash. Thus the jester became in cultures everywhere a folk hero.

There are countless anecdotes here, and not all of them pay off. There are many that rely on the time, or the language, or "I guess you just had to be there." But plenty of this otherwise academic work is good, foolish fun. Otto has presented case after case, and her book has little theorizing. She does speculate upon where the fools of the court went, since they are now historic figures. They didn't really go anywhere, she says, they just specialized. Actors, cartoonists, and comedians took over the role, especially after the fools became presences on the stage. Otto hopes that the twenty-first century may have a rebirth of the fool (can you imagine someone paid to do pratfalls at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks?), and does give some fine twentieth century examples. Will Rogers famously used his fooling to puncture politics-as-usual in otherwise impossible ways, and addressed President Wilson with great informality as Pres. And Otto quotes the best jester of the twentieth century (in my view), Groucho Marx, who was told by the management of a beach club that Jews were not allowed to swim from the beach. "What about my son?" came the reply that could have issued from a sprite clothed in swatches of colors, a horned cap, and bells. "He's only half-Jewish. Would it be all right if he went into the water up to his knees?"

Otto's first book, Fools are Everywhere, is a brilliantly crafted one and will delight readers. Her writing is extraordinarly gentle on the mind - eloquent and powerful. The quotes she has sprinkled throughout and the fun "flip-pages" that bring the popular juggling jester to life are added pleasures for the reader to enjoy.

Otto states in her introduction that she hopes to show that the court jester is a universal character and if not omnipresent, certainly omnifamiliar. Her research is vast and extensive - with fascinating similarities found between European and Chinese cultures - the latter's contributions to this subject being relatively unknown in our time. She provides information on characters found in other cultures as well - India, Native America, Africa and more. She emphasizes the important role of jesters within society and the obvious need for satire - discovered independently by peoples across the globe.

There is a selection of illustrations throughout the book and some fabulous excerpts from literature and historical documentation.

Though Otto remarks that there have been many books on the topic of jesters in the past century, I have found nothing comparable to this one. The most useful research on the topic has long since become shrouded by various forms of inaccessibility for the majority of readers. For these reasons, and many more, this book is an extraordinary contribution to our times. I, for one, look forward to the future books written by this author.

I got my copy of this book at the ISPI Conference. I have seen Jim Fuller speak at several conferences and the guy knows performance consulting. His experience shows in this book. Other books talk about what performance consulting is. This book tells you how to get it done in an organization. Very practical book that every trainer who wants to be employed two years from now should read.

I have been struggling to do performance consulting in my organization for two years. I read other books that explained performance consulting, but were no help in dealing with the political realities of getting permission to do the work. This book had all the answers to my nagging questions. I wish it was available a couple of years ago. The section on transforming training requests into permission to improve performance was great. I am having completely different discussions with my clients and manager now. Following the advice and plan in the book, I'm working to become the manager of performance consulting for my company.

I was skeptical that a single book could really lay out a detailed plan for transitioning the training function to a strategic role in the organization. I was quickly proven wrong. I attended Jim's workshop at the ASTD conference and was amazed. The book simply lays out the roadmap for transfoming the cost controlled training function to a vaital and strategic part of the business. The whole plan and approach is in the book! I have begun to apply the plan with great success. I would recommend the book to any trainer or manager who is tired of having to justify their budget or their existance.