Organizations Books

Differentiated Coaching: A Framework for Helping Teachers Change

Awesome! I recommend this book to anyone who is responsible for helping teachers improve; administrators, educational consultants, instructional coordinators, instructional coaches, etc. I ordered this book because I wanted to figure out how to model differentiated instruction for the teachers that I work with. I not only have a game plan for differentiating my coaching, but also have a clear understanding of why what I was doing before was not working. This book helped me better understand myself, my teachers, and the students that we serve. Its the best book I've read on coaching yet.

I enjoyed the author's sharing of personal experiences. I believe it provides us, facilitators and coaches, a practical perspective on working with teachers.

The author knows instruction and knows people. This is book I can use in various situations .

This book is useful for beginners and advanced pray-ers alike. For beginners it will dispel so many of the doubts associated with prayer and help head off many problems and difficulties before they arise. For those already well immersed in a prayer life, Fr Boylan offers encouragement and insight garnered from his many years of deep prayer life. This book offers a solid, orthodox approach to prayer. The wackiness found in so many books on prayer is mercifully absent here. I would recommend reading this book every couple of years to ingest its deep content as one advances in prayer.

An old classic that I read many times before and , thanks to you, I am able to read and reread it again. The book is superb! The author is an Irish Trappist- a priest who knows the ways of prayer and union with God.

This is truly a classic in learning how to grow in friendship with the Lord Jesus. Fr. Boylan is an extremely lucid writer and will help any and all grow in prayer.

Lyle Schaller has done it once again. His knowledge and insight into contemporary American Christianity are excellent. I am not a pastor but rather a lay person involved in my church and Schaller gives me insights into the world that we all live in, not just clergy. Although many of his observations and predictions are disturbing to me - I'd rather some things were not that way - I think his astute insights accurately reflect the society we live in and the people we are. Schaller has helped me perhaps see things more as they really are instead of as I'd wish them to be; that can only help me and others who read this book work more effectively in God's church.

Although not an overly long or difficult read I recommend taking this book in a slow series of smaller bites to allow one's mind to fully digest the points made within. Schaller serves up a wealth of insight in this book and, even though some points may not be what we're accustomed to tasting, they're all nourishing.

Schaller evaluates societal, political, and generational trends in relation to Christianity and contemporary ministry. His insights are inestimable. The wealth of information in this book is immense. Even if the reader disagrees with one or two of Schaller's numerous evaluations, theories, or predictions, the reader is still indebted to the author for sparking boatloads of novel thought. This book is best read slowly so that one's contemplative juices can churn and bubble into a rich froth. Caution: Book is Powerful!

Another in a line of good books from Lyle Schaller. The book is full of his trademark questions that are designed to lead a church to transformation. Some of the findings in this book will challenge even the most reluctant to change and their world view. It is a must read for pastors of churches who are wondering what to do next. Schaller paints a picture that all of us need to see.

The author, a well-known New Testament scholar, published a study some twenty years ago entitled "Jesus and Community." That book was well-received, but it did not provide enough background to be helpful for contemporary parishes wanting to renew themselves. This book is a much more fulsome study of the entire biblical story from Genesis to the Book of Revelation, focusing on the role of community in shaping the people of God. He shows quite convincingly that the God of the Bible wants his people to give witness to their faith not simply as individuals but primarily as a unified community of believers. Accordingly, Christians who do not see the importance of belonging to a concrete parish or local church do not understand the biblical message.

I am reading this book after reading "Jesus and Community", also by Lohfink. I am an older student and fairly well educated (B.S., B.A.). I found the books somewhat slow going but packed full of insightful and thought provoking information. Although Lohfink's background is very different from mine, his use of scripture made it possible to stay on track with his points. I have had hours and hours of discussion and comtemplation from this study. I am in the process of redefining my concept of "church" in response to some of these ideas. I would recommend this to any lay person for serious study (if you aren't scared to pull out your dictionary and don't get alarmed if someone references ideas or texts that you don't necessarily agree with).

This book communicates the author's vision of the Church and its role in the world with power and progressive clarity. Lohfink demonstrates that an understanding of the Church cannot be separated from an understanding of Israel as the people of God, the vehicle through which God brings salvation to the entire world. Using historical critical methods and his experience as a biblical exegete, he reconstructs the story of Israel, particularly its Exodus traditions, showing how the experience of Israel with God resulted in a social project, rooted in the Torah. It was a radically new form of community and worldview that stood in contrast to other nations and peoples. He proceeds to weave the story of Jesus in the context of Israel's history, connecting his gathering of the Twelve with the eschatological gathering of Israel, and portraying his death as the renewal and sealing of the covenant for the people of God. Finally, he details how the Church is a continuation of a history that began with Abraham, but now centered in Jesus.

Of particular interests is how Lohfink handles Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. He shows how the historic Church has tended to make the same mistakes as Jesus' disciples did in their response to the hungry multitudes. Lohfink uses Jesus' response to their questions to deduce how the Church must be formed in order to be more than another charitable organization or religious services provider. The mission of the Church is rather to be the new society, a locus of salvation capable of transforming the world.

Finally, Father Lohfink shares his own story, describing his experiences in the German Church from the time of Hitler to the present, including his decision to relinquish his chair as a Professor of New Testament at the University of Tubingen to join the Catholic Integrated Community and its Association of Priests in Munich Germany.

Does God Need the Church? Yes indeed!

The following comments were submitted by a student the first time I used Dr. Hatch's excellent text--Jim Horn

This book provided a rich description of qualitative research and an easy to understand roadmap for students embarking on the process of conducting a qualitative research study. Hatch took a difficult subject and made it accessible to novice researchers by providing an in-depth, well-thought out presentation of how to go about conducting research step by step in a logical manner. It was thorough from beginning to end. It also spoke to the individual, unique personal qualities and characteristics of the researcher that is inherent to the research. Therefore, it offered us an opportunity to do some real soul-searching and see ourselves in a different light.

It was easy to read and understand and organized well. I thought the section about writing and Hatch's personal experiences were very valuable not only for researchers but for those who wish to write or improve their writing skills in general. The data analysis chapter was extremely helpful during the data analysis process because it provided clear, easy-to-follow steps. I used it as a guide and a reference for my project.

One suggestion is that the section on research paradigms might be a little difficult for some students who are not familiar with the meaning of ontology and epistemology. In our class, a number of students noted they had a hard time understanding these concepts so it might be helpful if there was a paragraph that explains these concepts leading into the connection to the various paradigms.

Overall, this is an excellent introduction for students to the various steps in the process. It was enjoyable to read, enlightening and it gave me a solid foundation for conducting my own study. I loved the book and I enjoyed doing qualitative research. It was also helpful . . . to enable us to delve deeply into the challenging and exciting experience of conducing qualitative research. The book and Dr. Horn also provided a good contextual framework for different methodologies as well.

The importance of qualitative research in education settings can not be underestimated in world in which children are often reduced to nothing but a number on a standardized test score. Thank you, Dr. Hatch, for giving us this wonderful gift and thank you Dr. Horn for sharing it with us.

Judy Rabinowitz
Monmouth University

As a new qualitative researcher, finding Dr. Hatch's book "cleared the clouds" and provided an easy to read support for all the processes necessary to be successful with a qualitative research project, especially for dissertation students. After reading all the classics (Yin, Creswell, Denzin, Lincoln, Stake, Miles and Hubermann, etc) Hatch brings it all together and provides solid questions for you to evaluate your own work before sending it into your committee. Must have for new qualitiative researchers!

Dr. Hatch's book should be required reading for all doctoral students planning to do qualitative research. His clearly written step-by-step methods have proved invaluable in my own dissertation data analysis and reporting. Do yourself a favor and read this book BEFORE starting your qualitative research!

This is a book you will probably want to buy in quantity. It's an affordable little 96-page compendium of the most relevant "Do's and Don'ts" of leading a group of people. What I like about this book is its simplicity. Each "Do" and each "Don't" is accompanied by a short story from real-life situations to help clarify the significant points. These are the issues that tend to get leaders in a lot of trouble, and Steve Herbelin has captured them nicely in this book.

The dos and don'ts are direct, to the point and extremely practical for just about any kind of working environment. I especially like the abundance of true anecdotes that clarify and reinforce the points being made. I strongly recommend this book for team leaders as well as coaches!

I started reading this book with a bit of skepticism. After all, it's written by the workers. Right from the start, though, this book makes sense. Lots of sense. It presents a philosophical outlook on team leadership that gets to the core --- interpersonal relationships --- without using superficial analogies or inventing contrived structures. Just common sense about how to deal with people and situations in a real, straightforward manner. Over and over again I found myself thinking things like, "Yes, I know that. That's true. Right on!" It's mostly things that we already know, but maybe need a little book like this to give us the confidence to more often do the right thing and act the right way. If everyone applied the principles outlined in "The Dos and Don'ts of Work Team Coaching," the world would certainly be a better place in which to work. I'm going to keep it handy and read it again someday, and again.

"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.

The American writer Willaim Saroyan once said, "In the time of your life, live---so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."

In this time of global terrorism, rising oil prices, climatic disruption and political decay, hope is an increasingly scarce resource. Leadership too is becoming a perception to be managed and not a trait to be displayed. West African writer and teacher Malidoma Some declares that we have "an instinct of community," and so as societies grow and evolve, they build up resevoirs of social capital, taking generations to fill.

This instinct for community -- toward cooperation and competition, or so called 'co-opetition' by Brandenberger & Nalebuff -- is so strong in humans that we come into this world stocked with such emotions as anger, pride, shame, and guilt -- all of which, according to Fukuyama, "come into play in response to people who either are honest and cooperate, or who cheat and break the rules.

Yet the promise of this communal synthesis is being degraded as we "are using the instinct of community to separate and protect us from one another, rather than creating a global culture of diverse yet interwoven communities." Based on the interdependent models available to us in eco-systems theory, there is the possibility to "to connect to others through their diversity, [to re-establish] communities that succeed in creating sustainable [long-term] relationships."

It is the collaboration and cooperation of individuals in elaborate interdependent networks of relationships that allows new capabilities and talents to emerge. Individual fitness leads to greater societal and communal fitness and the connections and relationships strengthen and reinforce the fabric of society.

Yet as individuals weave this social fabric, a paradox is created -- the individual must surrender autonomy to achieve community. This paradoxical tension can lead to even greater awareness and understanding of the role of the individual in society, or it may contain the seed of our eventual self-destruction.

As Wheatley proclaims, "This paradox can be a great teacher to us humans. When we don't answer these questions as a community, when we have no agreements about why we belong together, the institutions we create to serve us become battle grounds that serve no one. Our institutions dissipate into incoherence and impotence. In the absence of these agreements, our instinct of community leads us to a community of 'me' not a community of 'we'." Such is the paradox and the promise of community.

basically satisfied with everything. the book came in good condition and was pretty much on time.

Before WW I, fewer that 5% of the population lived in a city. Today in developed countries, less that 5% live in a rural area. All of this has occured in less than 100 years.

The key to survival and health of this new urban society is the development of communities in the city, by non-profit social sector insititutions, according to Peter Drucker.

Human beings need community. If no communities are available for constructive ends, there will be destructive communities, i.e. gangs to fill the void.

This thoughtfully written, well organized book is about the future -- the future quality of our lives. In "The Community of the Future", the editors have gathered the wisdom and insights from 31 distinguished authors, from around the world, to discuss their unique perspective on the nature of community.

The book is divided into six sections: * Trends Shaping the Evolution of the Community * The Values of Community * The Impact of New Communication Technology * Creating Community in Organization * Strengthening the Social Fabric * Global Dimensions of Community.

If you are interested in creating the future, strengthening our communities and improving our understanding of our world, I highly recommend "The Community of the Future".

Building the global community of the future is not the work of tomorrow. We are each called to build it today -- to build it now.

This was and is one the best books ever written. While I was lost on the last couple chapters - the rest was so formulative. One has to remeber when this book was written - Fast product development and feature releases were 2-5 years. These guys revolutionized the working world during the Peters era. Where Tom Peter's reported and motivated - these guys showed you how to do it. I used this as my roadmap at the old Western Electric from 1989-1999. This is the genesis to the 5th discipline and almost all books today on concurrent engineering and Rapid Prototype Development (whether they admit it or not). A timeless classic that should be in every great library.

Dynamic Manufacturing is one of the earlier Clark/Wheelwright books on manufacturing and product development (the title is not suggesting it also covers product development, but it does). In my opinion, the book was way ahead of it's time and still, 20 years after it's publication, up-to-date and relevant and could have been written today!

The book consists of a couple of different parts, although they are not marked like that in the book itself (wonder why...):

- History (chapter 1)
- Metrics and organizational (chapter 2-5)
- Manufacturing improvements (chapter 6-9)
- Product Development (chapter 10-11)
- Next steps (chapter 12)

The history part alone is worth the book. It goes over the history of manufacturing in the US and in the world and shows that in 1988 the US manufacturing was in serious trouble, but that these troubles are similar to what the UK manufacturing went through in the beginning of the century. It has some pretty convincing data that something needed to be done. It would be nice to get an update related to this chapter alone.

The second part talks about investment planning and GAAP accounting practices and how they traditionally lead to the wrong investments and that being one of the key reasons for the lagging of the manufacturing industry. The next chapter talks about organizing manufacturing, problems and different models of solving that. The last chapter talks about measuring the manufacturing productivity and provides one productivity metric for doing so.

The thirds part describes the more concrete improvement to be done in the manufacturing. This part describes what is now known as lean manufacturing. In that sense, the book was ahead of its time since at the time the book was written, lean was still fairly unknown and new. It does great on summarizing some of the lean techniques and most importantly, ends with a chapter on people and continuous improvements.

The product development part is what later turned in their product development book "Revolutionizing product development". It introduces concepts like the "product funnel" and talks a lot about concurrent engineering. At the time the book was written, these concepts were very new and modern and this was one of the earlier books related to them, as far as I know.

As any book promoting new ideas, the last part talks about how to make the change happen. How to make the switch in mindset and where to start.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dynamic Manufacturing. Even though 20 years old, it still is relevant today. It was well written. Recommended to read, even in 2008.

The book is extremely refreshing and useful in terms of its different perspective from the conventional manufacturing management assumptions and theories, which still influence the America's management practices today. The book explores key manufacturing infrastructure issues such as capital budgeting, organization structure and performance measurement and demonstrates how these can affect, positively or negatively, the performance of the manufacturing companies in pursuing it sustainable competitive advantage over its competitors.

The book is well structured and the arguments are very consistent with one another. In analyzing different elements leading to a superior manufacturing organization,the importance of learning and adaptation to change are emphasized, while the difficulties of creating the new infrastructure that a company may encounter and the key role that management can play are also emphasized.

The points the authors propose are impressive using reliable case studies. For example, the case histories of the three presentative investment decisions that illustrate the problems with the modern capital budgeting paradigm are instrumental for better understanding. The calculations of total factor poductivity (TFP) for two contrasting products illustrate the TFP performance easurement technique convincingly. The tables and figures in each chapter, provided as further illustrations, also aid in generating neat and explicit explanations.

The author's treatment is complete since the book provides a great deal of information and shows today's managers why it is necessary and how to implement the fundamental changes if they want to create a world-class organization that builds a competitive advantage through manufacturing excellence. It is very comprehensive in addressing issues associated with creating and managing a dynamic, learning manufacturing organization at the corporation level and at the factory level. However, not all the technical details are provided in the sense that the book is more a "know-why" than "know-how" guidance.

The book is directed at managers throughout a manufacturing company, not just the management of the manufacturing function. In my opinion, capital investors, top management, manufacturing managers, project managers, industrial engineers, design engineers, and any other ambitious engineers in manufacturing companies should read this book carefully and keep in mind some insights and principles that the authors address in the book. As advocated by the authors, "learning is the bottom line".

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Extensive coverage of the history and practice of Dominican Spirituality. Recommended for anyone considering further investigation of the Order of Preachers and the Dominican Life.

It was not until I read Fr. Tugwell's book that I fell in love with the Order of Preachers. This massive collection, beginning with a short history of the Order's beginnings, includes the Primitive Constitutions of the Order, letters of Blessed Jordan of Saxony, and Humbert of Roman's tips on how to preach; any one who reads this volume is sure to have a firm grasp of the Order founded by Saint Dominic. Paints a startling picture of the early years of the Dominican Order. A goldmine!

The editor of this volume has put together some amazing works from the early period of the Dominicans. Perhaps what is best about this volume is that it gives the reader the work "On the Formation of Preachers" by Humbert of Romans; to my knowledge, this is the only English translation of what has been called the most important work on homiletics in the Western Church. An absolutely wonderful book, well worth the price.