Performance Books

I will not be as lengthy as the other review (to date) because it is outlined and described well. What I will add is that I have read many, many books about change (throughout career and in Masters program at BYU for Organizational Behavior) and this one is hands down the most practical and applicable to real life I have found. You will NOT go wrong buying this book, even at full price!

One of the many benefits of visiting Amazon.com's "Books" section is having the opportunity to check out Customer Reviews, many of which include suggestions for other sources. The Amazonians themselves include a sub-section which I consult daily and greatly appreciate: "Customers who bought this also bought..." I mention all this at the outset because I think it is a serious mistake (or at least silly) to characterize any one book on a given subject as THE book to buy. This is especially true of the subject of change agency. Without any effort, I can immediately think of at least 10-12 which are brilliantly developed, eloquently written, and of enduring value. I include this book among them. Does it ask most of the right questions? Yes. Are all of its answers definitive? No. The subtitle is precise and accurate: This book offers a thoughtful and cohesive guide to "developing high-performance people and organizations."

After an introductory chapter ("Becoming a Change Agent"), the authors organize their excellent material within three Parts: Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors; then Philosophy, Practice, and Responsibilities of a Change Agent; and finally, Integrating Resources, Roles, and Competencies. By the time I reached the end of this book, I realized that one of the greatest benefits to be derived from it is especially relevant to owners/CEOs of smaller companies. A majority of those I have worked closely with are the only change agent in their respective organizations. This book will help them to develop change agency competence among many of those whom they supervise. Of course, the book will also be of great value to senior-level executives in large organizations, including non-profits.

For me, one of the most entertaining as well as informative chapters in the book is Chapter 4 ("Beware of Flying Monkeys and Poison Poppies") in which the authors suggest correlations between the adventures encountered by Dorothy and her companions en route to the Emerald City and what all managers encounter in today's business world. "Flying monkeys are those unexpected characters, events, and situations that jump up and attack you at the most untimely moments.....Flying monkeys come in all shapes, sorts, and sizes. They can be people, events, activities, and attitudes....Perhaps the most important potential monkey for you to be aware of is the cultural flying monkey. [As the authors have explained earlier in the book], culture is defined as the underlying beliefs, values, and assumptions held by members of an organization and the practices and behaviors that exemplify and reinforce them. In other words, 'the way we do things around here.'" In Figure 4.1, detailed information about "Miscellaneous Flying Monkeys" is provided within an ingenious grid. With regard to "poison poppies", the authors suggest that so many change initiatives fail because managers are "seduced by the promise of a quick fix", a short-cut, etc. Time and again when retained by a corporate client to help solve problems, I find that the client's managers are preoccupied with the symptoms of problems rather than focused on determining the causes of those problems. Stated another way, many managers seem to think that wet highways cause rain.

The authors begin Chapter 11 with a quote from John Kotter ("A good rule of thumb in a major change effort is: Never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help maintain the status quo") and then use Figure 11.01 to illustrate what they call a "Holistic Model for Change Agent Excellence" featuring the brain, the heart, courage, and vision. All are necessary to overcome the aforementioned "forces." More specifically:

1. Provide strong, highly visible, and personal leadership

2. Institute employee involvement early and often, at all levels

3. Build a clearly articulated, shared vision

4. Provide frequent, consistent, and open communication

5. Leverage talented, and trusted employees as co-change agents

6. Set measurable operational and behavioral goals

7. Celebrate successes and re-address shortcomings

The authors carefully explain each of these "Seven Keys to Successful Organizational Change" in detail and then shift their attention to what they characterize as a "list of absolutes in the quest to develop gained wisdom": Tap into the wisdom of the "elders" in the organization, build a wisdom war chest", patiently and progressively wield your wisdom-based influence on an organizational level, and finally, share wisdom with others on an organizational level. The authors no only explain how; they also explain why.

Appropriately, the authors conclude their brilliant book as follows: "As in [italics] The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's vision was to somehow return to her beloved Kansas. By casting her eyes on that goal, she was able to energize and solicit support for friends and foes alike along her journey. In the end, she achieved her goal, as you will in your effort to [italics] becoming a change agent." Through their book, the authors can accompany you on your own journey. The Yellow Brick Road to high-performance people and organizations awaits. Let the journey begin!

This is a great management book. I recommend it along with "Strategic Organizational Change" by Beitler, "Good to Great" by Collins, and "Execution" by Bossidy & Charan.

By far the best book on management ever written. I bought the original in about 1975 and after 20 years of use it fell apart so I purchased this new version. If only others would read and comprehend this masterpiece - it would save them millions. All work managers do is either in maintaining performance or improving it and Juran provides provides two universal models that can be used by all. The basic principles of control and improvement without all the jargon. They are as true today as they were in 1966. Read it and you will want to keep it by you always.

Michael Clargo had done a wonderful job by combining the theoretical background of management by objectives, and policy deployment issues with a good fictional story and provides a very practical source for managers who are trying to reach their strategic objectives. The story and the theoretical aspects of management are going quite parallel. While the story continues on the right side pages the necessary related theoretical information is given on the left side, by this way the writer succeeds to give a satisfying perspective and provide a quite enjoyable reading experience.

Please note that this book can be purchased on line - usually on a delivery of a week or less - from Amazon.co.uk.

This book is a must read for students pursuing careers in Management, Leadership, or any related field. While the book is written with Middle Managers in mind, the writers have paved the way for self-development as well. Bradford and Cohen articulate the differences between three management styles all the while keeping the contemporary organization in mind. Readers will find themselves engrossed as the authors clearly deliniate between these three styles through description and the provision of a plethora of examples. If you plan on pursuing a career in management do yourself a favor and pick this book up but most importantly read it.

This is a great book for people who've recently been promoted to a middle management position and/or who are struggling to get the most from their team. Unlike most management books, which always seem to be aimed at the CEO, this one targets the 2nd or 3rd level manager, who's trying to motivate a team of 25-60. Although it's based on a pretty simple concept (articulate a clear vision, let employees to share in the mgmt responsibility, and then focus your energies on developing their abilities to do so), it helped me a lot in realizing that by trying to coordinate and stay in control of everything going on in my group, I was actually stifling the creativity and motivation of my employees. By turning over more of the day-to-day responsibility to them, and focusing my energies on the broader vision, we'll all be a lot more successful. This book is loaded with a lot of great examples that helped me see that.

This has to be one of the best business books ever written. I found that I was able to take the practices and put them to work right away. My manager can't believe the difference it's made in my ability to get project results. I highly recommend this book to any manager or project manager.

For years, we in HRD have been poor at delivering results to the organization on time and under budget. I never could understand the books on project management. They always used way more project management effort than I needed. The examples never made sense either. This book has to be the best resource ever given to the HRD community. The tools are simple and easy to use. I found that I could scale the project managment efforts to match the need. The examples are great and really bring home the point. The ongoing case story of Bill and Karen are fun. I found myself reading ahead just to find out what they did, and how their stories turned out.

Ever since Marie Dressler knocked my socks off when I first saw DINNER AT EIGHT I have been frustrated that most biographical sketches of her life recycled the same tantalizing ten pages or so of information, and although Betty Lee's competing biography was welcome, it left as many questions as answers. This book finally does this fabulous star justice with comprehensive research on her now-obscured early life; loving, intelligent coverage of all her extant films; savvy, well-written documentation of her stage career; and endlessly perceptive reconstruction of what Dressler was like as human being. Catching Dressler in a rare showing of her films EMMA and TUGBOAT ANNIE in San Francisco some years back and espying a notice that this biography was being written, I spent years anticipating it, and was never disappointed in the slightest. Truly a bravura performance -- Dressler lives again. But WHEN will more of her work be released on video?

Louis B. Mayer once said that the three greatest actors who ever worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were Greta
Garbo, Spencer Tracy and Marie Dressler. Beloved actress Marie Dressler (1868-1934) was my writing
obsession for four years. How did this delightfully idiosyncratic woman overcome so many demons in
herlifetime? How did she shape her epoch and how did it shape her? Known simply as "Marie" to millions of
fans, she is a fascinating creature of American popular culture. She is most known today for her amazing
popularity in early talkies such as MIN AND BILL (Academy Award, Best Actress, 1930/31), TUGBOAT
ANNIE and DINNER AT EIGHT. In fact, the large, unlovely sixtysomething year old was the number one
box-office attraction of the early Depression. Her earlier years were equally compelling. In the 1880s, she fled
an abusive father by joining a horse drawn carriage pulling a third-rate theater company. Later she charmed
Broadway and was the comic foil to legendary stage stars Lillian Russell, Eddie Foy and Weber & Fields. She
co-starred with Charlie Chaplin in Mack Sennett's 1914 hit TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE, the first
feature length comedy every filmed. She was a passionate advocate of women's suffrage and the American
participation in World War I. In 1919, she co-founded Actors Equity. Her career took a nosedive in the 1920s
and she was broke and pitiable at the time of her rediscovery by the brilliant screenwriter Frances Marion. Her
final makeover as warmly embraced mega-star remains one of Hollywood's great comeback stories.
Researching the life of Marie Dressler took me to screening rooms, dusty archives and quiet libraries all over
the United States and Canada. In addition to interviews with her surviving colleagues at MGM, I had moving
conversations with Joseph Newman, assistant director on MIN AND BILL and DINNER AT EIGHT, and
Grace Ruthrruff, the generous nurse who was at Marie's deathbed in 1934. It is my hope that this biography will
help restore Marie Dressler's legacy as one of the twentieth century's great entertainers.

Discussions range from surveys of masks as communicators and expressions in societies to masks as communal and spiritual symbols. Black and white mask representations peppered throughout add to a scholarly survey of the role and changing meaning of masks in world beliefs. The result is a set of invaluable observations of masks and their underlying roles in societies, and will provide artists with an invaluable set of cultural and social insights with which to better understand the overall meaning and importance of masks around the world.

Professor of museum science Gary Edson presents Masks And Masking: Faces Of Tradition And Belief Worldwide, an examination of the role of masks throughout human history. Exploring cultural uses of masks from creating a substitute face to as a symbol of magic to as communal symbols and couriers of myth, Masks And Masking argues persuasively that masks should not be assessed as performing a single function across the complex turn of ages and cultures. More than 100 detailed black-and-white drawings illustrate this scholarly and thoughtful discourse.

This book gives me insight into knowing how to keep my computer running efficiently. It shows me ways of doing what is needed to maintain my computer so that I use it. The color graphics are a helpful part of this book. They help show me what the wording of the text is saying to me. This book is a refernce guide that everyone should have. To know how to care for your computer is highly important these days. This book shows me how to do just that. This book shows me how to get more out of my computer than if I didn't have this book. I love this book.

Another good book in the Master Visually series. Even as a computer tech I found this book very informative. The average non-geek computer user out there will find plenty of ways to tune and tweak their machine without doing any harm to the computer or themselves. Just follow basic instructions. Most high end techies will find this book pretty basic but it is a book I can recommend to my clients. I'm not a book reviewer but once again it can be said that "a picture is worth a thousand words"!

If we were giving a graduate-level class in leadership and people management skills (we are UCLA Business & Management Program instructors) we would choose this book as the text.

If a client asked for a great book to enhance his/her leadership skills, (we consult in organization, compensation & performance management) this would be one of first books we would suggest.

This book is that good!

The book offers a comprehensive guide for developing leadership and people management skills. It's a powerful, broad-spectrum leadership toolkit with a wealth of information about skills and practices, and hundreds of suggestions and opinions from business and political leaders, consultants, and academics.

This book is an outstanding resource for leaders and aspiring leaders. It is filled with anabundance of insights: the distinction it makes between a leader and a manager is one of the best, if not the best, we've read.

Just few of the subjects covered are: the leadership-as-servant philosophy; leaders as coaches and mentors; communication; motivation; leading and managing teams; women as leaders; managing power, politics and conflict; leading organizational and cultural change; creating an innovative organization; leadership and people management in high-tech, networked; and
virtual organizations.

Throughout the book are bullet-point lists, exercises, and to-the-point conclusions. It is clearly written and superbly organized. An excellent bibliography and subject index top off this outstanding work. We highly recommend this book.

Yvette Borcia & Gerry Stern, Editors
Stern's Management Review

After reading the book, the reader tends to be provoked into thinking about the core values, standards and principles that will underpin her leadership and people management practices in the future.

While illustrating his formulations, Forster has very thoughtfully selected the anecdotes and stories about leaders and managers they worked under, as also their personal experiences of leading and managing others. In the chapter on female managers, he has presented evidence to show that successful leaders and managers in western industrialized countries have personal qualities and competencies that encompass male and female characteristics, and hints towards emergence of "a superior hybrid style that will transcend the traditional male-female stereotype" (p. 542). He has demonstrated a rare degree of professionalism in selecting and putting together the contents of the book, including the material, exercises, questionnaires and self-evaluation exercises. He claims to have "tried and tested them in dozens of leadership and management development courses over the last decade" (p. xiii), and he has included only those materials and exercises that worked for busy managers and professionals.

The book comprehensively covers leadership and people management issues that are topical in the present context of competitiveness in the contemporary business environment. In nutshell, the book has argued that organizations and managers that get most out of their people over a long period of time are the ones which focus not just on setting up systems and processes but focus on people management style, people skills and organizational culture to support the systems and processes.


The author has fully succeeded in delivering what he promises to the reader in the preface. He has used little jargon in building his formulations. The editorial and production quality is outstanding. Most other how-to books on people management are simplistic and tend to be prescriptive of universal magical truths, often through bullet points; they are often unrelated to research underpinnings and the contexts in which the prescriptions can be made use of. For, business dynamics is far more complex than it is presumed to be. Forster has related his formulations mostly with the help of anecdotes and stories, which is the hallmark of this book. But he never loses sight of the wider theoretical underpinnings in his narrations. This is reflected in his quoting the American comedian Groucho Marx when he said, "That's all very well in practice--but how does it work in theory" (p. 538).

This book should be an essential reading for all line and human resource managers, and management consultants. It will also be liked by academics belonging to areas such as leading change, performance management and strategic HRM. More than that, it would be found useful by all leaders, who could pick up a good number of insights from it and also develop perspectives from the analyses made. While I read through this book, I had a feeling, I wish I could author it myself.


Debi S. Saini
Professor of Human Resource Management
Management Development Institute
Mehrauli Road, Gurgaon-122 001.

Michael Ross' book is a comprehensive and well thought out book with practical applications to real issues encountered in training. This book is a must-have for any competetive or committed cyclist, runner or skater. The subjects are also applicable for other athletes, providing useful information regarding common medical problems and situations encountered with physical activity.

Dr. Ross' witty prose makes this book easy to read as well as helpful...He is well versed and knowledgeable about this very important subject.

I look forward to Dr. Ross' next installment!

Maximum performance by Michael Ross is one of the best books on the topic of sports medicine for endurance athletes, especially cyclists. What makes the book an invaluable resource for athletes is its foundation in evidence-based medical research. (Dr. Ross lists complete references with every chapter.) Dr. Ross has a way of synthesizing the research into a practical format which non-medical readers can easily digest, comprehend, and apply to their exercise routines. The cycling world should welcome this book to their libraries as a standard essential text and await further work from Dr. Ross.