Organizations Books

I have the good fortune to be the son of Rob Hailey, Homer's brother and boon companion for the first 20 years of his life. This book captures my uncle's life-long commitment to thought, reflection, and prayer, to teaching, preaching, and scholarship. (When I visited him a month before he died, he showed me files of current projects: research and writing of vital interest to himself and to his fellow believers.) My uncle's personal journey aside, Professor Harrell has found a fascinating way to write a history. Is history about events and ideas or is it about individuals? Harrell gives us both. This book, regardless of its subject, models a method of inquiry that other writers of history should imitate.

David Edwin Harrell, Jr. is truly a first rate scholar. For an unbiased and objective history of churches of Christ, this book is a must. Unlike that of Richard T. Hughes, Harrell is not hostile to the movement and therefore much more accurate in his coverage. Harrell has not reduced the churches of Christ to a Denomination among many denominations without a distinction. This is an accurate story of the attitudes and consequences (A title of one of Homer Hailey's books)among the movement which shaped its history. The movement is vividly illustrated by Harrell's coverage of the life of one of the great preachers, Homer Hailey. The reader will find that the book is difficult to put down as Harrell has made events and people come alive. All members of the church of Christ and those interested in religious history should read this book.

"The churches of Christ were riddled by dissension: indeed, the American restoration movement had always been a case study in controversy" (41).

How does one write a summary of a history text whose breadth and depth score almost a century of important facts? Harrell, who lives during much of the history he writes about, describes the two general themes that the reader can hitch along with through the tome. These themes are indeed means to understanding the facts and the analysis of history. These themes are: (1) the course of controversies of churches of Christ in the 20th century and (2) the telling of the life story of preacher Homer Hailey.

Through these, it is possible to understand much of what has happened and to notice that time is indeed flowing like a river and history repeats itself. The weaving of controversy and individual lives is perhaps the clearest and most concise summary of the book. Nevertheless, Harrell does aid the reader by breaking down the narrative into three well-researched and documented sections. The first and third sections deal more specifically with the life of Homer Hailey. The second section deals with the mainstream churches of Christ and their controversies. By now, it is clear that it is impossible to distinguish the church's history from its troubles, and vice versa.

Section 1: Homer Hailey and the Churches of Christ: Origins

The life story of Homer Hailey begins in humility and ends in humility. Hailey's exodus through cities and congregational meetings is a light that is cast through the world, showing pin-points of Christianity dotted all over the western and southern United States. It is fitting that Hailey's influence went beyond one region of the country, yet it is somewhat regrettable that those outside of the brotherhood do not have much of an understanding of who brother Hailey was and what he stood for.

Section 2: The Mainstream Churches of Christ: 1920-1999

When Harrell gives an overview of the splits in the 1890s and 1950s, he maintains his constant argument that both splits were similar in many respects and that history could repeat if men [. . .] continue wearing the mantle of the heroic yet destructive Foy E. Wallace, Jr. to the dismemberment of Christ's body. The presence of brotherhood magazines throughout these periods is also worthy of note.

Section 3: Homer Hailey and the Noninstitutional Churches of Christ: 1925-1999

If the previous section detailed the stormy environment, this section placed Hailey right in the center of the whirlwinds and those who would reap their bitter crops.

In Closing

While there most likely are superior historians with regard to ability, Harrell tells a remarkable story of pioneering brethren who came out in full swing into a new age with the same calling.

In the story, however, Harrell seems hokey at times by referring to himself as a character in the narrative in the third person-a device long since abandoned by autobiographers in the 19th century, for obvious reasons. However, the insertion of the historian's role in the unfolded history does achieve several goals: (1) to show that Harrell was a minor player in the events he witnessed, (2) to show that Harrell wants the appearance of full disclosure of the role he played in history, and (3) to show that even the most seemingly objective voice has a slight bias that must be formally acknowledged in the interest of fairness.

Because this is a highly personal book, Harrell presents Hailey in such a way that a truly objective historian might not be able to show. Harrell reveals much of Hailey's character as a result of how he weathers the storms of brotherhood dissension: "Hailey insisted: he went to a church in order to communicate the vital truths of the Scriptures" (376). May that be the goal of every modern gospel preacher, to have such integrity, strength of character, devotion, and a pure desire to "stand in the pulpit."

I have the good fortune to be the son of Rob Hailey, Homer's brother and boon companion for the first 20 years of his life. This book captures my uncle's life-long commitment to thought, reflection, and prayer, to teaching, preaching, and scholarship. (When I visited him a month before he died, he showed me files of current projects: research and writing of vital interest to himself and to his fellow believers.) My uncle's personal journey aside, Professor Harrell has found a fascinating way to write a history. Is history about events and ideas, or is it about individuals? Harrell gives us both. This book, regardless of its subject, models a method of inquiry that other writers of history should think about imitating.

Ed Harrell does a masterful job of relating the amazing life of Homer Hailey, one of the most dedicated, humble, and influential preachers in the churches of Christ in the 20th century. If you were fortunate enough to know this man, you will be fascinated by the story of his life and career as preacher, teacher, and author.

But this book is far more than a biography of Homer Hailey. In the book, Harrell also makes a monumental contribution to the study of the history of the churches of Christ in the 20th century. After recounting Hailey's early life, Harrell sets aside Hailey's personal story and recounts in fascinating detail the issues and people that influenced the doctrinal positions and divisions of the heirs of the "restoration movement." Much of this 180-page middle section of the book is dedicated to the controversy over "institutionalism," the issue of building para-church organizations and "sponsoring church" arrangements with money pooled from various independent congregations. Harrell's analysis of this issue shows how social attitudes in the 1950s contributed to the impetus for the massive missionary and evangelistic schemes, television programs, etc., that became the focus of the controversy. There also are shorter sections on earlier controversies regarding pacifism and premillennialism, as well as more recent controversies regarding "discipling," the Holy Spirit, the quest for a "New Hermeneutic," and other issues.

After this very meaty middle section, Harrell returns to Hailey's early years as a preacher, his long tenures as a teacher at what are now Abilene Christian University and Florida College, and Hailey's Arizona retirement, when he wrote many of his books.

The middle section of this book is not for the faint of heart. Harrell's meticulously documented story of the controversies of the last 100 years within the churches of Christ reveals how all too frequently disputes and divisions within the fellowship were exacerbated by inflated egos, harsh words, and precipitous actions that, at least in retrospect, appear unbecoming of Christians. Still, as a member of this fellowship, I found the book encouraging. Through the life story of Homer Hailey, Harrell has preserved a wonderful example of a man who, through the grace of God, rose above his own difficult childhood and the combativeness of many of his peers to exemplify the true "servant" mentality fully demonstrated in Jesus Christ.

Helped me in my undergrad (older version). Helped me when I gave subject GRE recently. Covered Pipelining superscalar, out-of-order execution processors, caching and secondary storage, combinational and sequential ckt review etc real well. No computer architecture book covered them all so clearly, and in one book.

A clearly written book, which employs a simple language. Another beauty of the book is that all loose ends are tied up. As sentences unfold one will realize why a particular phrase was used earlier and so on. That makes a big difference for an engineering text book.

It is the best book that I know for fundamentals. Hence, it will be useful for years to come.

Must have for all embedded systems people.

This was the assigned text for my junior year computer engineering course on computer organization. I loved it. The explanations are clear, progress logically, and are clearly presented. I find myself picking it up from time to time, both to read the more advanced chapters out of personal interest and to look up details needed in more advanced coursework.

After reading this book do not believe you'll know everyting about computing , but you'll know more than others do.

I had a chance to recommend this to a colleague just last week. It is easily twice the price of the "competing" books on the market, but you get what you pay for. With this book plus (perhaps) a hands-on course in the microprocessor laboratory--interfacing various logic families to output devices, e.g., or whipping up a robot of limited capabilities--the student gains the ultimate understanding of what makes computer systems "tick," from the loftiest levels of software, through the details of instruction set implementation (microprogrammed control, prefetching, cycle-stealing DMA transfers) and even the detailed digital logic circuits that underlie the CPU.

I dare say the student who aces this course is all but prepared to build a simplistic CPU on his own--"simplistic" because, though the concepts can be understood quite completely, it's an intricate challenge. Notably, the book has kept pace with the times: while the PDP-11 instruction set is didactically wonderful--clear and easy and even sporting reasonable opcode mnemonics--you don't see lots of PDP or LSI (or, for that matter, VAX) minis floating around nowadays. So, HV&Z moved on to the 68000, the Power PC, perhaps even the Pentium in the latest (of five or six) editions. (Good move, gentlemen: you've actually done your homework rather than just changing "happy" to "glad" and reprinting with a new version number!)

I used this book as a junior, but (a) I went to Cooper Union, which operates at an extremely high intellectual level [let's put it this way: I took a number of graduate-level computer science electives--compilers, OS, etc.--taught by Bell Labs MTSs as a junior and senior; and some "doctoral" courses that I took at Case were--honest Injun--watered-down versions of similar courses I had taken at Cooper], and (b) I graduated more than twenty years ago, and requirements always creep downward: a few credits fewer, a few tangential courses eliminated, perhaps one fewer humanities elective necessary to matriculate, etc. By 2006 standards, I would reluctantly have to reclassify HV&Z as a postgraduate text.

(A little puzzle for the reader: we had to build--from NAND gates--a microcomputer featuring two three-bit registers, and my squad was the only one that implemented an "exchange registers" function that required only one cycle and used no auxiliary storage registers. How did we do it? Tick ... tick ... tick ... time's up! The circuitry compared corresponding bits from both registers. If they matched, it did nothing; if they differed, it flipped both! So, there was no literal "exchange" operation: rather, each was simultaneously reset to the value of the other.)

Good book with good data and good case scenarios. The stuff in this book is really something every company should be looking to doing in the very near future. The title is a bit deceptive. It's more about what just doesn't make sense for a company to spend their money on because of the technology that exists. Telecommuting just has so many benefits for all. It certainly helps being competitive if you aren't "wasting" your money on office space, but it's not the strategy to focus on if you want to be competitive.

CORPORATE AGILITY: A REVOLUTIONARY NEW MODEL FOR COMPETING IN A FLAT WORLD tells of a new business model, one that enables businesses to embrace workworld changes on a global scale. Currently most companies are unable to adapt to new methods of doing business, and become crippled by high fixed costs and new competition. CORPORATE AGILITY tells how to break this destructive cycle, offering tried methods by leaders of the Work Design Collaborative and providing a survey of value to any business library.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Finally there is a book for the Facility Manager, I.T. Guy or H.R. professional looking to prove their point. How often have we heard the words; "That may be a great idea, but what is everyone else doing?" When it comes to leading edge ideas for changing the work place and the way we work, this book provides hard data based on what some of America's top companies are doing now.

Corporate Agility gives us a look into companies such as Hewlett Packard, Sun, IBM and others. It provides detailed analysis of how they are addressing the changing work place environment. How are companies staying connected with an increasingly mobile work force? How are they integrating Gen X, Gen Y & the Millennial workers? How are they reducing costs for work space, real estate and I.T. while increasing productivity and worker satisfaction? In depth case studies provide hard data regarding how different programs impact costs savings, worker productivity and employee satisfaction.

The analysis and case studies also let you key into a network of resources to help with your projects. Furniture systems, architects, designers, real estate brokers and I.T. solutions are all discussed. The Future of Work community is a door to a nearly endless supply of thinkers and practitioners dedicated to solving today's work place issues. Regardless of the size organization you are trying to change, Corporate Agility will provide the ammunition you need to get the project designed, approved and completed.

In the Introduction, Charles Grantham, James Ware, and Cory Williamson explain that they assembled a small group of thought leaders from major corporations and collaborated with them when conducting a survey among decision-makers in both labor and management "to discover how new technologies, the changing workforce, and economic globalization were changing how and where people worked, and what those changes meant to the future of work in the so-called Information Economy." The survey responses confirmed what they had only suspected previously: "most businesses had been unable, or unwilling, to adapt their traditional management styles to the new conditions." Various factors resulted in a crippling loss of corporate agility. "These Industrial-Age behemoths are often referred to as corporate dinosaurs, in an effort to describe just how slow and unwieldy they really are - to say nothing of being nearly extinct - and there may be even more truth and insight contained in that image than anyone ever intended."

Grantham, Ware, and Williamson pose an especially interesting question: How can a business evolve from being a dinosaur to a jaguar, and do so in the space of months, not millennia? In this book, they provide their response to it, what they characterize as "a collaborative, strategic approach to management that acknowledges and leverages the growing interdependence of human resources (HR), corporate real estate (CRE), and information technology (IT), a process we call collaborative strategic management." In this volume, they explain to define, develop, and then implement the CSM process, and thus achieve corporate agility. The co-authors organize and present their material within ten chapters and draw upon a collection of wide-ranging, cutting-edge ideas drawn from pilot programs, case studies, and evolving best practices established by members of the Future of Work community. (The co-authors invite you to visit www.thefutureofwork.net/index.html.)

FYI, the quoted phrase in this review's title was formulated by James O'Toole while identifying major barriers to leading change in a book that bears that name. Grantham, Ware, and Williamson have no illusions whatsoever as to the difficulty of defining, developing, and then implementing the CSM process to achieve corporate agility. They realize that many organizations cannot overcome "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom" and will not survive. These are the "dinosaurs" to which they refer. However, other organizations can become agile and thus adapt to rapid, model-shattering changes in the global economy. These are the "jaguars" to which they refer.

To me, it is especially appropriate that the process of defining, developing, and then implementing collaborative strategic management requires organizations to be actively involved in all manner of alliances and mutually beneficial partnerships between and among members of global communities such as Future of Work. This is precisely what Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney also have in mind in Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World. They wholeheartedly agree with Grantham, Ware, and Williamson that agility is more, much more than a highly desirable attribute; it is, in fact, a key to organizational survival. Hence the importance of this brilliant book that will be of incalculable value to those planning for or have already embarked upon the perilous and complicated but necessary process of strategically integrating the effective management of real estate, human resources, and technology assets.

And as Charles Grantham, James Ware, and Cory Williamson point out, "It does that in a collaborative fashion that requires a change in decision-making processes and styles from what most organizations rely on today. [Moreover, an agile enterprise organizes itself into three (and only three) levels that center on completion, survival, and renewal." In this context, I assume that "completion" refers to achieving the given objectives, whatever they may be. However, collaborative strategic management is a journey rather than a destination, an on-going process that must be constantly renewed with appropriate modifications. Only then can an organization sustain its agility.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat and Competing in a Flat World co-authored by Victor Fung, William Fung, and Yoram (Jerry) Wind as well as The New American Workplace co-authored by James O'Toole and Edward Lawler, O'Toole's aforementioned Leading Change, Henry Chesbrough's Open Business Models, Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis' Judgment, Richard Ogle's Smart World, Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect, James Kilts's Doing What Matters, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, and Enterprise Architecture As Strategy co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

All Real Estate organziations struggle with driving dramatic change in their organizations, whether stemming from the challenges of supporting 4 generations under a single (physical or virtual) roof, dramatically reshaping a portfolio and costs or creating a stragety that aligns with the overall business strategy -- this is THE book for you. It's written with a relevant, direct approach and loaded with practical case studies that can easily be applied to your operations.

As an ex-communist leader in England's Communist Party, the author compares the leadership styles of the Communist Party during the 60's and Christian movements at a similar time. He is a Communist turned Catholic who suggests that Christians have alot to learn from the recruiting methods of the rapidly growing communist parties of the time. The methods are similar in the use of "cell groups", but different in that the communist party was able to create dedicated leaders who could operate independently of their larger group structure. This book explains the differences in the modern day methods employed between these two groups, and how the Church can be changed to follow its early origins of being an underground movement.

This is an interesting book that shows the potential in the recruiting and training tactics of the communist party. It shows how leaders, particularly Christian leaders, expect too little from their members and get what they expect. The principles in this book match those taught in college courses on education: to set the bar high and people will live up to what you expect; if you expect little, you will get little.

The best book on leadership I've read. Douglas Hyde, a british ex-communist leader, exposes the methodological success of Communism. He doesn't delve into Communism's ideological fallacies (although alluded to). He rather lays out communistic functions that led to it's incredible growth in such a short period of time. Throughout the book he comments on both Communist and Chritian potentials that culminates in the choice between total Communism or total Christianity. One of the most intriguing chapters is "The Story of Jim." Hyde told those in a Communist leader seminar that the Communist party could take anyone willing to be trained in leadership and make a leader. Hyde describes Jim as, 'very short, grotesquely fat, with a flabby white face, a cast in one eye and, to make matters worse, a most destressing stutter.' You'll need to read the book to see what became of Jim.

In the first three quarters of the twentieth century, communism moved from a minority political movement in a few European countries to become a major political force with over a third of the world's population under its sway and signficant intellectual influence even in the countries that remained most opposed to it. Douglas Hyde was one of those who diligently to further its influence. In 1948, he surprised his friends and enemies alike by resigning his position as editor of the London based communist paper the Daily Worker and converting to Roman Catholicism with his family.

This book grew out of a series of lectures he conducted that tried to explain the successes of Communism to a Christian audience and to answer the question "Is there anything in Communist methods that can be adapted to serve nobler causes?". The answer to that question is an emphatic yes. Hyde strips away the preconceptions of how Communists recruited and motivated party workers and how they developed them into leaders capable of developing other communist workers.

The main theme of the book is contained in the title. According to Hyde, dedication is a prerequisite for true leadership. The communists had a well defined purpose that every communist could understand and believe in: the hope of a Communist world. In pursuit of that goal, members were asked to make great sacrifices. Rather than driving people away, this demand draws out the idealistic element in them and inspires the sort of dedication needed.

Hyde develops this theme in a number of ways. He discusses how short term campaigns worked, how party education worked, how members were encouraged to excellence in other areas of their life in order to give the communist message credibility with non-Communists.

Looking at the state of communism today, one might question whether there is any value in this book after all. Indeed, Hyde faced the same question himself in the late 80s and refused a reprint of the book because he thought that communist commitment was no longer what was described in the book. In my opinion, the failure of communism was due to its successes proving its invalidity, not to the methods by which it had enjoyed those earlier successes. Militant Islam seems to be the ascendant ideology of our times, and to the limited degree that I am aware, it seems like the Islamists are employing similar techniques. If we are wise, we will choose to learn from them rather than dismissing them outright.

This is one of those rare books that demands the purchasing of multiple copies. You will want to keep one for yourself with all your underlinings and notes, and keep at least one to lend out. Any sort of organisation could benefit from the lessons to be learned here, but Hyde's message is chiefly to Christians. Any believer distressed about the weak impact his church is having should immediately read this book.

This is truly a fascinating book. In it, Mr. Hyde takes us into the inner working of the Communist Party in which he was a member for more than twenty years. With utter clarity, he shows us that the dedication of the average communist worker was not the result of brain washing, but was the result of exceptional leadership. Throughout this excellent book Hyde contrasts the weak and anemic leadership styles of the church with its corresponding weak following, to the strong leadership of the Communist Party and their dedicated following.

I was especially impressed by the first part of the book where Hyde takes the reader step by step though the process by which a young communist recruit is trained to be a leader of men. High expectations (you are joining an elite organization) and high purpose (you are going to make a difference in the lives of men) combine to get to form the foundation of dedication. The only apparent weakness of the book is it's "Britishness." The Brits do write in a style that is difficult for their American cousins to follow.

This book is transformational. Everything I have learned about leadership dove tails right into what Hyde is saying: The need for public witness, ministry before training, life application teaching, strict accountability, high expectations, beginning with felt needs, a commitment o excellence, are all themes common to great leadership.

As a United Church minister both interested in biblical scholarship and church history and also very concerned with nurturing genuine Christian community today, I have found Brian Griffith's book, Different Visions of Love, to be very interesting and helpful.


Griffith pulls together information from biblical and historical research to show that the very early church understood that Jesus' teaching about love leads to partnership relationships rather than relationships of domination and subjection.
Griffith book shows not only how this understanding was undermined early on as the church became institutionalized, but also how Jesus' understanding of love remained extant among many Christians and resurfaced from time to time.


Griffith, in his book, is particularly interesting and helpful in the way he uses historical examples to make his point. I have been delighted to find examples and other materials in his books that I can use in my sermons.


I recommend his book as useful to Christian churches, particularly to women in leadership positions.

Describing how Christianity changed over time, Griffith always includes the experience and values of women. He shows the contributions of female leaders and how women have often challenged the church. This history of the religion shows how important women have been from the beginning. It shows periods of great suffering for women, but also great progress towards a real partnership of both sexes.

Many religious people think their way of understanding is the only way to get close to God. They never think people should have freedom in accepting the religion in their own way. But Griffith goes through history, and shows how some of these ideas come from traditions of various cultures rather than from prophets and saints, and these "dominator traditions" mixed with religion. In general I can say Griffith respects different approaches for understanding religion. He thinks different kinds of religious people are learning to respect each other and work together. He criticizes a lot of inhuman things in the past, but mostly the book is very hopeful.

A book of Christian history that's very helpful to Muslims as well

As a Muslim, I found this book very helpful. We have a similar struggle in our history between different versions of our faith. We have our own long record of dominator Muslims, and also Muslims who want real partnership or equality. This book shows how Christians have made choices between those different moral standards, and what resulted from those choices. These are the kinds of choices Muslims face as well, and I would like to see somebody write a book like this for Islam. ]

A must read for anyone even remotely interested in Christian history. Brian Griffith develops the ongoing struggle between the forces that try to dominate church life and those that try to unify or make peace with diverse groups within the church. And he does this over the entire time span of Christian history. But don't think of it as a stuffy history book. Rather, it a dramatic study of the people involved and the times in which they lived. Once you pick the book up, it is hard to put it down. I think that anyone who reads this book will get an expanded view of Christianity and it's interplay with the social forces in the larger world. It is a masterful presentation and should have wide appeal within other great religous traditions.

Leadership is an elusive trait. It may be a learned skill or a genetic characteristic, but either way, teaching it to someone who is not a born leader is difficult. The way this book approaches that task is part inspirational, part self-assessment and part New-Age excess. Author Judith E. Glaser's DNA leadership concept is a clever, albeit gimmicky idea, using certain "genes" to describe leadership traits. Her system, however, has problems. She holds that it is verboten to criticize or state a negative viewpoint about another person, even if it is warranted. This makes this approach difficult to use in a business setting. Moreover, her politically correct approach blames leaders for bad workplace attitudes, even when the actual causes might be low pay or poor working conditions. The book is repetitive, which limits its applicability. However, Glaser offers useful surveys and self-assessments. getAbstract acknowledges the value of good leadership, and suggests this book to HR people who want to familiarize themselves with its New-Age leadership approach.

"Creating WE, Judith's first book, was incredibly valuable in helping leaders see the difference between the I-Centric and the We-Centric leader! The DNA of Leadership goes beneath the surface to analyze the DNA make-up of a true We-Centric leader. This book has the depth and wisdom to make a positive and lasting impact on any person who aspires to be a leader. While the first book shared a revolutionary and new framework for what it means to be a We-Centric leader, in this book Judith goes into great detail with real life examples of the leadership genes that drive personal and organizational success.

C-Gene = Community ~ Leaders practice open communication where people feel included, involved in the strategy, engaged in the business, and accountable for results.

H-Gene = Humanity ~ Leaders create an atmosphere that values uniqueness and diversity; and respect the talents of every individual.

A-Gene = Aspiration ~ Instead of using overt and covert threats to meets targets; these leaders support and encourage individual imagination.

N-Gene = Navigation ~ Instead of hiding the "map," these leaders ask others for guidance in making headway toward common goals.

G-Gene = Generativity ~ Instead of micro-managing and enforcing compliance, these leaders nurture innovation that leads to inspired breakthroughs.

E-Gene = Expressing ~ These leaders encourage everyone to speak up, take risks, and to develop themselves and the organization.

S-Gene = Spirit ~ Instead of cold calculations and expectations, these individuals create an atmosphere of ongoing homage, accomplishment, and evolution so that everyone pulls together to move the organization toward the future.

The DNA of Leadership is a virtual navigational guide to any leader trying to move their organization forward through difficult and challenging changes. While reading about the practices for great leadership, I found Judith's prescriptions applicable to not only worldwide organizations, but to personal relationships as well. Whether you strive to lead your organization or your family unit into greatness - living by these practices will ensure success.

I reference Judith and her extraordinary books in every leadership discussion in which I am involved. I can't imagine being able to achieve my goals without them! Congratulations Judith on another exceptional piece of work."

There are hundreds of books on leadership strategies, competencies, and tools, but even after reading and applying the learning, leaders still fail to be as effective as they might be. "The DNA of Leadership" is a user manual for creating a work environment where people can thrive and achieve greatness. It is a must read for leaders wanting to be highly successful in today's world of work.

Understanding your Leadership DNA, the seven genes defined by Judith E. Glaser, will enlighten each leader as to how they express their leadership in the organization. Is the leader able to create an environment where the human spirit can thrive in the face of internal and external challenges? If the leader is not able to create this environment, even the most competent and skilled leader will miss their opportunity for leadership greatness.

The book includes a series of questions to help you define and understand your DNA, but obtaining 360 degree feedback on leader DNA will provide the needed perspective. See her website for additional information about the book and other resources.

Creating WE, Judith's first book, was incredibly valuable in helping leaders see the difference between the I-Centric and the We-Centric leader! The DNA of Leadership goes beneath the surface to analyze the DNA make-up of a true We-Centric leader. This book has the depth and wisdom to make a positive and lasting impact on any person who aspires to be a leader. While the first book shared a revolutionary and new framework for what it means to be a We-Centric leader, in this book Judith goes into great detail with real life examples of the leadership genes that drive personal and organizational success.

C-Gene = Community ~ Leaders practice open communication where people feel included, involved in the strategy, engaged in the business, and accountable for results.

H-Gene = Humanity ~ Leaders create an atmosphere that values uniqueness and diversity; and respect the talents of every individual.

A-Gene = Aspiration ~ Instead of using overt and covert threats to meets targets; these leaders support and encourage individual imagination.

N-Gene = Navigation ~ Instead of hiding the "map," these leaders ask others for guidance in making headway toward common goals.

G-Gene = Generativity ~ Instead of micro-managing and enforcing compliance, these leaders nurture innovation that leads to inspired breakthroughs.

E-Gene = Expressing ~ These leaders encourage everyone to speak up, take risks, and to develop themselves and the organization.

S-Gene = Spirit ~ Instead of cold calculations and expectations, these individuals create an atmosphere of ongoing homage, accomplishment, and evolution so that everyone pulls together to move the organization toward the future.

The DNA of Leadership is a virtual navigational guide to any leader trying to move their organization forward through difficult and challenging changes. While reading about the practices for great leadership, I found Judith's prescriptions applicable to not only worldwide organizations, but to personal relationships as well. Whether you strive to lead your organization or your family unit into greatness - living by these practices will ensure success.

I reference Judith and her extraordinary books in every leadership discussion in which I am involved. I can't imagine being able to achieve my goals without them! Congratulations Judith on another exceptional piece of work.

If you are a leader or if you want to become a leader, Judith Glaser's newest book, "The DNA of Leadership" is a must read. My recommendation is to read her other books, "The Power of We", and "Creating We" at the same time.
Judith's E-centric way of looking at the world is a breath of fresh air for those in our family of coaches and leadership consultants. DNA is a book about empowering ones self and others to embrace change, to share a common vision and impact the world around us in a positive way. Through her stories, Judith provides a vision of common people who find the courage to look at themselves, and see how their behaviors have impacted others. Her stories tell us that we are just as capable of making the changes in our own behaviors, changes that allow us to become better leaders.
DNA has helped me to understand that what you say is not as important as how you make others feel.

If you are using the Rational Unified Process, or considering doing so, and worried about applying it to a whole IT department rather than separate projects then this book could well be useful. The book has four parts - From RUP to EUP, Beyond Development, Enterprise Management Disciplines and Putting it all Together. Each section has several chapters and the chapters all start with a nice reader ROI section (showing the payoff for reading that chapter). The writing is clear and there are plenty of diagrams, tables and helpful tips.

The book starts of with some background in the RUP. I particularly liked the description of RUP as serial in the large and iterative in the small. Within the RUP there are also nine disciplines (Business Modeling, Requirements, Analysis and Design, Implementation, Test, Deployment, Configuration and Change Management, Project Management, and Environment). The authors outline 10 best practices they see as core to the EUP (they extend the original 6 in RUP) - Develop iteratively, Manage requirements, Proven architecture, Modeling, Continuously verify quality, Manage change, Collaborative development, Look beyond deployment, Deliver working software regularly and Manage risk. Each is clearly described.

In addition to the change best practices, EUP adds a Production phase and a Retirement phase. They point out that the Production phase is not just maintenance or just operations and support but both and more. I think that any organization building systems should spend as much time and effort thinking about production and running their application in production (which includes maintaining it over time) as they do in building it and I was glad to see this so strongly proposed. They also added an operations and support discipline, mostly but not entirely in the production phase. This discipline includes running the system and making hot fixes. I think the Retirement phase is overkill for most organizations but some will find it useful.

They also added some "Enterprise Management" disciplines for use outside the context of a project and this too is a good idea. The disciplines are Enterprise business modeling, Enterprise Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture (I particularly liked the idea that "modifiability" should be considered as part of an enterprise architecture - far too few organizations do this well and fail to differentiate between stable services and much more changeable ones), Strategic Reuse (Again I liked the called-out focus on this - without a real plan no reuse is going to happen), People management , Enterprise Administration and Software Process Improvement (Another good one and a timely reminder to all that you should keep improving your software processes)

Overall I liked the book, though it was a somewhat dry subject (as methodologies often are). There was a lot of good advice, some nice tips and some clearly hard-won experience being shared!

Many IT organizations still pursue pet projects and develop duplicate applications in isolation, only to address later crises in corporate reporting, portfolio management, IT infrastructure, business objectives, and other areas.

EUP gives a coherent roadmap of how to architect smarter and for the long term. For organizations that don't have a strong enterprise aptitude, this book is a lifesaver. The EUP provides the business case for implementing EUP that will help cut through the politics by addressing the benefits to the bottom line for pursuing an Enterprise Unified Process.

I will be referencing the EUP regularly, and passing it around to others in my organization!

The Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) unites diverse disciplines, including development, enterprise architecture, operations, production and portfolio management, reuse and business process modeling, under an easy to follow framework. It was refreshing to find a book that recognizes the need to accommodate the installed base of existing software as part of the planning, development and deployment process. This is an excellent guide for any manager who wants to ensure that essential IT disciplines are addressed.

The focus of EUP is to enhance the commonly accepted Rational Unified Process (RUP). The authors have added new disciplines to RUP that include business modeling, portfolio management, enterprise administration, reuse, enterprise architecture and process improvement. The introduction of business modeling into the overall process is essential to weave IT processes and disciplines into the most essential driver of any systems initiative - the business. The enterprise architecture discussion was also refreshing given that many organizations have forgone this discipline and have created redundant, stovepipe applications and data structures that significantly stifle business agility.

The "Reuse" chapter raises the rarely deployed reuse strategy. It is critically important to not replicate business processes, models, systems, data structures, source code and interfaces. The costs and risks of trying to keep parallel assets synchronized have been written about extensively. This book promotes the idea that reuse is just another aspect of the enterprise unified process. It is also one of the few discussions about reuse that recognizes the value of harvesting existing assets.

Also of note is the portfolio management discussion that focuses attention on the need to incorporate project management with application management. It should be noted, however, that portfolio management has much less focus on applications than the traditional industry definition as promoted by Gartner, Inc.

Finally, this book makes great use of tips, tool references and citations to books or papers that readers can use to expand on their understanding of a given topic. The last chapter of the book takes a realistic and honest look at deploying the enterprise unified process, including its possible retirement.

This book is must readying for any organization using -- or attempting to use -- the RUP. The EUP's additional disciplines completes the RUP in a necessary and sufficient manner.
The book is written in a straight-forward manner, is easy to read and is well-organized. Each chapter reminds you to be practical (the antipatterns), explains how the additional discipline relates to the others and provides software tools and suggested reading.
Don't RUPture your software development efforts without having the more comprehensive approach of the EUP!

The book provides a very readable coverage of IBM's Rational Unified Process, as well as useful extensions that address important aspects of enterprise systems planning, development, and management. The systematic and disciplined treatment is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of much useful, pragmatic advice that draws from the practical experience of the authors in building real systems.
I quite liked this book. Although it doesn't give enough emphasis to conceptual data analysis (something RUP has always been weak on), it has loads of useful, practical content that make it a worthwhile addition to the literature.

Get this book not so much to use as everyday "how to" but rather to explore your ideas and concepts on your business.Great book for anyone at stage 1 in creating a business.This book will definitely lift any fog that clouds your vision.Be sure and heed author's warning...DO NOT GET THIS BOOK IN LOOKING FOR EXAMPLES ON FORMULATING A BUSINESS PLAN...get this book to be sure your plan covers all your needs and desires in growing the business.

It's really great book as for beginners, as for already established ones in Business. Book is covering all essential items, which you can be in touch during Business Planning. Just one comment. I found it strange that Information Technology was not shown clearly as one of the major items. Of course it may be included to operational expences for example. But issues regarding this are not lighted also. Anyway it couldn't decrease rating of this book. The book is really great and my personal thanks to author for such succesful work.

If you have a need to get your business strategy together, BUY THIS BOOK. After reading it myself, I bought one for everyone on my management team and have given copies to many fellow business owners. This book takes you through a very practical step-by-step approach to business planning. Many templates, help aids, and real-world suggestions provided. I believe any small or medium size business owner will benefit from applying the principles outlined within. Following the plan will help you get your business focused in no time. A MUST READ IN TROUBLED TIMES!

I have a degree in finance and have run many businesses. This book is one of my top recommendations to anyone wanting to improve and/or focus their business. I've purchased other books in the "Fast Forward" series, and maybe 6 others on business strategy, and this is the best. Buy a few copies, you will mark your copy up and not want to give it away. Highly recommended. Enjoy!

The author provides a useful step-by-step approach for not only writing a business plan, but also provides a method to ensure that the plan is followed and managed to success. This is a book that is easy to read - it's only 200 pages long, but is packed full of useful information.

A brilliant action-oriented plan in 3 steps that give your business the steady growth it needs to survive and succeed in today's fast business world. Step 1: Identify the Issue. Step 2: Develop a Plan. Step 3: Manage the Plan. Very well explained with examples for better understanding.

I am new as an Inquirer to the Secular Franciscan Order. This book is a must read and was recommended by a Franciscan Priest.

If you are interested in Franciscan Spirituality this book is an absolute must; but beware this is St. Francis and St. Clare full force from a fire hydrant. Watch out! If you are used to getting St. Francis via an eyedropper you are going to get soaked! The editors have added scriptural references to the text. This allows the reader who has a Bible handy to go from St. Francis' or St. Clare's words right to Holy Scripture. That is a powerful combination. Don't read this book in a week, take a long, long time. You will be glad you did.

Frequently, to suit the author and their own agenda, translations of Francis' and Clare's works are either watered down or misunderstood. Regis Armstrong is one of the rare authors who truly understands the Franciscan mentality. He is, therefore, able to do outstanding translations that allow the true spirit of Francis and Clare to emerge. As a former Poor Clare (Poor Lady of Assisi), this book was highly recommended by our Mother Abbess (who is a highly valued Franciscan theologian in her own right). If it were possible to rate this book with 6 stars, it would be well deserving of it!

"Francis and Clare: The Complete Works" is a collection of the Rules, Letter, Prayers and any other writings believed to have been written by these two founders of the Franciscan movement, Sts. Francis and Clare of Assisi. I say "believed to have been written" because the authorship of some of the writings is based on the best scholarly research available, not on a reliable canon collected during the saints' lifetimes. The writings of Francis are presented first, followed by those of Clare.

Because the works consist of a collection of unassociated writings, they do not provide a guide to holiness, as do other works, such as St. Francis' DeSales "Introduction To The Devout Life" or St. Ignatius of Loyola's "Spiritual Exercises". This is more like a law school case book in which one reads the material in order to discern the important themes.

The important themes are not difficult to ascertain. One obvious one is the well known Franciscan emphasis on poverty. From these readings the reader gets the idea that the virtue of poverty is the detachment from things of earth so that one may concentrate on the things that truly matter. A second theme, which I had not associated with Francis, is that of reverence for and adoration of the Holy Eucharist. The prescriptions made by Francis in his day resonate well in our time with its struggle in maintaining a balance between Eucharist reverence and accessibility.

This book serves well as a tool in a study of the life of St. Francis. We look to biographies to learn from him through an organized rendering of his life. We look to "Francis and Clare: The Complete Works" to learn from the saint himself.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the writings of St Francis and St Clare. The Classics of Western Spirituality volumes are generally well-researched, relevant, and well-introduced selections, and this is no exception.

Most editorial and Amazon reviews praised this book of its value on organisational management. To me, this is more a personal management book which I learnt some new ideas and revisited some present ones, all in a highly comprehensible, interesting and easy reading manner. Some points for your reference are:-

1) The heart is not just an organ for pumping blood, but with the second largest amount of neuron (the same type of cell for the functioning in our brain). We do have a lot of it in our digestion system as well, a possible explanation to our heart and gut feelings.

2) Stress affects our production of hormones and drains our energy. Extended period of stress leads to maladaptation and thus premature aging and health problems. I like the author's refering to the fish in the highly contaminated Hudson River.

3) The analogy of the natural frequency in nature (ref the resonance for string instructment) to the need for dynamic balance inside a human and thus an organisation for optimal performance.

In short, though I dont believe the approach prescribed by this book can help much to improve the culture of many big corps, I do regard this as a very good book and I do recommend this to any business person who still has the heart for improvement.

Balance and Coherence in the corporate world? Ha! Then I read the book.... As an Executive Assistant with over 18 years of experience I wish that each and every Manager, Director, and VP that I have supported read this book - AND practiced the methods that Childre and Cryer describe. I will be buying copies of this book for all my "bosses".

Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer have identified a simple blueprint that I think will be the key to changing existing corporate cultures and organizational climates into what they will need to be to survive in the 21st century. Leaders like Jack Welch of GE and Steven Covey have already told us that what will be critical to success in the future is "soft stuff with hard results" and From Chaos to Coherence shows us how to do that with ease, grace, and success!

For any CEO, VP, Manager, Staff, Front Line worker- the simplicity of the concepts, the scientific foundation of the technology, and the ratio of success achieved by major organizations makes this book worth the read.

The simple premise of exercising, on a consistent basis, the innate positive qualities of basic human nature is consistent with the success we see Fast Companies having. With the increasing mental and emotional chaos written about in many articles, business magazines, newspapers, and management books, this book by Childre and Cryer is not only refreshing, but also provides practical solutions carefully laid out in what they call the four dynamics of inner quality management.

I have already started applying their simple processes to my life and my business problems and am experiencing immediate improvements in my mental clarity, productivity, and emotional state, particularly in high pressure situations. As the phrase inner quality implies, I believe we have to take care of ourselves internally first so that we can take care of business!

Balance and Coherence in the corporate world? Ha! Then I read the book.... As an Executive Assistant with over 18 years of experience I wish that each and every Manager, Director, and VP that I have supported read this book - AND practiced the methods that Childre and Cryer describe. I will be buying copies of this book for all my "bosses".

I am a business consultant. As I read this book the words "This is it" kept running through my brain. These principles of Internal self-management are the antidote to the illness I see in too many organizations. Very talented individuals with a desire to do their very best are losing their spirits and hemorrhaging under the perception that they "can't manage the pace" anymore. Stress and overwhelm feed cynicism which quickly leads to breakdown. Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer have show us the map to restore and sustain organizational vitality and wellness. How to thrive as individuals and then thrive as teams and organizations. I clearly see that these tools are practical, have scientific underpinning and have been field-tested and proven. Imagine the impact on quality, climate and profits if an organization was able to transform even 15% of its Chaos into Coherence. If each organization has a "collective brain", it should be processing its information coherently and creatively, and the lifeblood of that organization (the spirit of its employees) should be coursing thru this oganism with full hearts. Bravo to Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer for showing us how to enter the 21st century with the tools to make this a reality. I'm recommending that every business manager, CEO, VP, administrator and politician study this book, learn the techniques for themselves and bring this to their organizations.