Organizations Books

Instead of offering self-help nostrums, this book starts a process of helping managers develop useful answers by learning to ask incisive questions.

When I first embarked in the late 80's on a quest to start my own small strategy consulting business, after spending twenty-four years in the corporate world, I actually acquired this wonderful book, after a deliberate search, to help me to think through all the potential problems & opportunities.

What attracted me to this book was the anatomy of asking questions in the prologue of the book. According to the two authors, both business consultants, every successful ideas passes through three phases. Each phase involves a different perspective. To implement an idea, all three need to be integrated. They label them as follows:

- Visualising What to Do: Seeing & painting a clear picture of my company: identity, resources;
- Charting the Position: Aiming & drawing up a blueprint for action: strategic objectives, trends;
- Activating the Plan: Doing & implementing my objectives: tactics, role expectations;

As you can see from the above, the first one refers to the process of conceptualisation.
The second one refers to the process of strategising i.e. formulating the strategic blueprint.
The final one refers to operationalising i.e. putting the strategic blueprint to work.

The full value of seeing, aiming, & doing comes when they are integrated. Questions like (adapted for my own personal application):

- what business am I really in?
- what are my strategic objectives?
- what are my tactics?

are part of a larger mosaic. The answer to any question affects the others.

The next part of the book comprises the integration model. It starts off with the development of a Questioning Mindset. The authors emphasise that the same question can be asked in many different ways, depending on the intended results. Answers alone may not be the only objective. Just right questions can affect attitudes & perceptions. They can be asked to get the process started. Here the authors outlined the three basic question-asking techniques:

1. Startling: The Surprise Question:

The intent is to be creatively upsetting. The authors illustrate with a classic business question: What business am I in? To make it startling or confrontational, the question could be re-stated: What makes me think I am still in the business I say I am?

Questions asked this way are confrontational. The intent is to open my eyes & undermine outdated assumptions.

2. Supporting: The Helping Question:

I call this the Discovery Question. The authors draw an analogy of a trial lawyer. An experienced trial lawyer avoids asking questions whose answers he/she is not certain of. In a trial, lawyers use questions to promote their own understanding of the case to the judge & jury. Any discovery of information should happen before the trial starts. In my case, the purpose of such questions e.g. 'what business am I in?' is to discover what I already know.

3. Searching The Inquisitive Question:

Example: what business am I really in? The purpose is to find out what I don't know but need to know. The emphasis is the spirit of inquiry.

The authors stress that the best answers are open-ended, thereby resulting in useful answers that keep evolving.

The rest of the book comprises a series of well-thought question units covering every aspect of business management. , There are a total of forty four units, & each is supported by a brief rationale. They are logically allocated to the three foregoing distinct phases. Each unit is designed to develop a broad "just right question" such as:

- what business am I really in?

& expands its implications through a series of "follow-up questions" such as:

- what business will I be in a few years from now?
- what business could I be in?

As you can see from the foregoing examples, the whole exercise of the questioning processes is intended to facilitate understanding of the implications of the question & pondering of the answers. In other words, to facilitate a question-asking approach for an answer-producing payoff.

By the time I have gone through all the question units under each distinct phase, I have finally painted a constructive & enlightening picture of my dreams-come-true.

This book really stands up to its title. Until today, I have yet to come across another business book under this particular genre.

Even today, despite the torn yellowing pages & stained dog-ears, I still dip into the question list of the book to refresh my strategic thinking on emerging issues.

To sum up my review, I am proud to say that I am still running my own small strategy consulting business today. Today is my 17th year in business.

I am very happy to share this wonderful gem with readers. This book will definitely help you to develop useful answers by learning to ask incisive questions.

[READERS! PLEASE NOTE: Content-wise, this book is exactly the same book as 'Question of Business' by Curtis Page & C J Selden.]

I've been a line positions most of my life and thought about risk in my area, but generally thought it was someone else's problem. Lynch's book smashed through my denial. With an easy to read style with great examples, Lynch demonstrates that "Risk Awareness" needs to be part of a company's culture. I am handing this book out and asking associates to begin asking a lot more "What if..." questions.

Lynch gets it right in this book. He takes a broad set of perspectives, experiences and best practices and pieces them together to create a one-of-a-kind mosaic that finally illuminates the real issues we are facing in the business world. He seems to have done his homework, but this is far from an academic-only exercise...it is reality based, practical and useful. Translates an enormous and challenging issue into digestible and actionable guidance. While no one can completely tackle this issue in 300 pages, this book will certainly help you understand where to start.

Thank you very much on great delivery and on the time. Loved the condition of the book, better than expected.Highly recomended!

For those outside the loop of racing, NASCAR garners a great deal of attention. Lost in all the attention paid to that series is a great style of racing collectively known as "open wheel" or "Champ Car." The series has evolved over the years but one thing has always remained. The races are fast, exciting and very competitive. How exciting? Put 800+ horsepower in a 1,600lb car that stands at knee level and enjoy the fun! If you are a fan - new or old - this series from Autocourse is a must-have. Autocourse started doing yearbooks 40+ years ago for the Formula One Grand Prix series and they have grown to include Champ Cars. They offer a tremendous amount of detail about the teams, drivers, cars, technical advances, etc. They also showcase the support series and the up-and-coming drivers in them. Each race is covered in detail with all qualifying times and finishing spots as well as highlights of the event itself. Photography is 100% incredible. That's another point. I enjoy doing my own photography and sometimes it's easy to lose track of things, especially if you don't get the film developed for a while. This book offers tremendous resource materials for someone maintaining photo albums of the events themselves. Basically, if you have a question about this style of racing, you'll find it in this book.

Dr Wicks lives up to his reputation as an excellent writer of books that nourish the soul. This is a must for those in ministry to others.

If you want to truly know how to make your availability to others real, then this is the book for you. Robert Wicks writes in a easy to read style. As you read this book, you say, "I can do this. There are many very good ideas presented in this book and you can't help but see yourself as a better person for it.

This book is great if you're serious about meditation - it provides both context and techniques for improving your meditation in terms of both results and motivation. It's extremely interesting that again and again in the Cayce readings concerning meditation, it is stated that one of the main purposes of meditation is to able to help, to heal others. Again and again, those who questioned Cayce about their meditation experiences were told that what was happening to them was so that they could help and heal others - meditation is not just for the experience one has, but for its transformative capacity for both self and others.

An excellent book to own, but be aware that it's available new from the A.R.E. site for about ten dollars (sellers linked to Amazon are charging over a hundred dollars for this item!).

This book does not talk about crystal healing, or pendulum healing, or any of the sort. This book goes back to the Source of all things, which is God. Using God's Power to heal others as well as yourself. This is a well written book with plenty of Mr. Cayce's readings about Jesus Christ, and how He healed many people through His attunement with God. This book is very short (106 pages) and straight to the point (no dragging). It discusses the effects of group prayer, how healing could help others who truely believe (not just the healer), how to meditate using The Lord's Prayer, precautions in healing, and the list goes on. Yes, this is a must have!

For those who wonder if the church can still be relevant today, this book is a gripping and honest account of how young leaders working with spiritual fathers who are young at heart can impact a new generation with good news and a radical lifestyle. Be warned, change is necessary and costly.

Just get it. This is the real deal on reaching youth culture, and changing wineskins for a new generation revival.

In these elegantly-written essays, the author's insights, based on his pastoral, personal, and educational ministries, are deeply felt and beautifully expressed. He explores the necessity of a Christ-centered community in these times of ease and anxiety. All who seek to live as part of a vibrant church will find his thoughts evocative and provocative.

As Warford writes: 'In our society, we tend to discredit the possibility of one truth being more important or more significant than another. We lean toward flattening all things, making everything equal, and in the end, we sometimes do not commit to anything that has real importance for us.'

The author offers guidance and encouragement to nurture individual churches as places of worship, service, and faith, and his inspiration should find its way into sermons, Sunday School lessons, and private meditations.

Malcolm Warford is a wonderful writer, who uses his many skills to delve deeply into the heart of the modern mainline churches, and to make constructive suggestions that are designed to help support changes in religious thought and practice in the 21st century. Warford's book of essays will be essential reading for anyone interested in the state of the contemporary church.

This book gives new principals (and probably others too) a reference for dealing with the challenges of the job.

This book was written with humor and insight. It makes you realize that being a principal with heart and humor is possible. It's not a high-handed theory book; it's a book that you can read and put into immediate practice for success. The situations used in the book strike home with "everyprincipal" realism. I enjoyed it tremendously and found it very useful.

In the 25 years since I graduated I never learned as much about the university as I did in reading this book. Burns tells the story of the university in the way of a grandfather. I was enthralled through the entire story. That is unusual for me but I found his story compelling and the scolarship was outstanding. There were sources that were special. His handling of the Erskine affair was delicate at best. I recommend this book to anyone that is interested in the Notre Dame that extends past the football field.

This is the story of Notre Dame. It is the best rendition of the university's history ever published, and is a must for any member of the Notre Dame family.

This book is short yet captures all the essential components of a succesfull benchmarking program in the non-profit sector, including government agencies. Although the examples are specifically geared for non-profit organizations, the concepts and principles taught apply just as well for any governmental entity. Saul writes exceedingly well, treating a subject with surprising zest that has been handled dryly by others. The structure of the book is perfect, as it leads the benchmarking neophyte through each step of the process, from organizational preparation to benchmark process implementation. Saul gives clear definitions and terms, and provides ample examples of each so that the reader is not left adrift. The forms provided to assist in the benchmarking process are also very helpful. Particularly original is a "quadrant" form, reminiscent of Steven Covey's four quadrants form that captures the combinations of urgent/important/not urgent/unimportant. In Saul's treatment, the four quadrants cover the combinations of controllable/important/not controllable/unimportant - a wise reality check before undertaking major change. Saul also gives a siginificant example of an organization that appeared to be doing well based on the measures it was tracking, but was actually failing in its core mission because those measure were not appropriate. I would recomment this book as a primer for anyone interested in beginning a benchmarking program in a non-profit or government.

This book is an essential for every nonprofit manager's bookshelf. The straighforward writing style of Jason Saul, coupled with practical tools, will help create an effective benchmarking and outcomes management system.