Organizations Books

Refreshing perpective about the non profit world. A truly global book. I enjoyed very much!

Imagine your fundraising abilities as a human toolkit: thoughts, beliefs, skills, experience, creativity, and intelligences. Now imagine that someone offered you a foolproof book to completely enhance your toolkit and revolutionize your thinking by combining the use of your tools in new and unexpected ways to expand your creativity and its results exponentially. Would you buy it for $28.00?

Bernard Ross and Clare Segal, co-directors of THE MANAGEMENT CENTRE (=MC) in the United Kingdom, offer just such an enhancement in Breakthrough Thinking for Nonprofit Organizations: Creative Strategies for Extraordinary Results (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 2002) with their commitment "to inspire managers and board member managers in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to believe they can achieve extraordinary results, and to give practical strategies and techniques for achieving such results."

Leonardo da Vinci wrote: "Small rooms discipline the mind. Large rooms distract it." Drawing upon their extensive experience in working with nonprofits in the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and South America, Ross and Segal animate their strategies with persuasive examples that not only articulate the process of "re-tooling" outmoded ways of thinking, they also provide working examples of how different organizations have applied these techniques in order to achieve astonishing results. The discipline they teach is the "small room" eurekas of breakthrough thinking by making learning more creative, more collaborative, and more fun.

Is breakthrough thinking magic? Is it only for gifted individuals? Ross and Segal don't think so: "The lesson from our experience is that many breakthroughs-even if they are apparently from out in left field-are often the result of simple hard work and simple rules applied consistently and methodically...you need to create a culture and business structure that strongly reinforces innovation as well as creativity."

This joy of this book is that it outlines in clear, applicable language how different people are creative in different ways, how to stimulate personal and organizational creativity by simply challenging habits, attitudes, environments and work roles, and why innovation plays a crucial role in turning creative thinking into long-term organizational results. Refreshingly, Ross and Segal's practical strategies are easy to understand, enjoyable to read, and actually do work once you give them a try:

· Second Wave Thinking anticipates organizational decay by restructuring resources in advance of predictable future change and the inevitable decline in results

· Kaizen and Horshin Planning helps you to differentiate between programs that will benefit from incremental growth and programs that will support sudden, exponential growth to create new heights of sustainable development

· Mind Tiles allow you to create a radically new concept simply by building on the combination of two existing concepts

· Gardner's Seven Intelligences conceptualizes individual strengths and weaknesses as being related to physical/kinetic, logical/mathematical, spatial/visual, linguistic, creative/musical, emotional/interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences

· The Learning Cycle relates how individuals and organizations go through a common process of reflection, theorizing, planning, and action before change is possible and how each of these different learning styles needs to change in order to accomplish its own breakthrough

· Creative Mindmapping organically links strategies or issues through creative planning that helps isolate new ideas and opportunities for growth

· The Matrix Analysis helps position your organization against key competitors to assess its direction and the potential fate of its programs

· The Ladder of Implication demonstrates how the same information can be interpreted by different mind-sets to reach different conclusions and strategies

· Reframing is a simple and useful technique for taking a negative mind-sets and restructuring their positive attributes and potential

· The Five C's teaches you how to deal with champions, chasers, converts, challengers, and changephobics in the workplace when your organization undergoes transformational change

Not all of these ideas are new and not all of them will apply to any one individual or organization. But if reading this book gives you one breakthrough technique that leads you to that one amazing idea that transforms your job, your organization, or even your life, then your investment will prove immeasurable.

Throughout their presentation, Ross and Segal talk candidly about both their successes and failures. In fact, they differentiate between failing because of poor ideas and failing because of poor performance. They give a number of constructive tips on how to communicate openly within organizations in ways that allows individuals the freedom to disagree without causing personal recrimination.

My favorite tips are their suggestions to hold "sacred cow barbecues," during which participants are encouraged to articulate the "unthinkable thoughts" about an organization's most cherished beliefs which can then be either "saved or cooked," and invoking "champagne rules" for private group discussions on difficult topics so that anyone can feel free to say what they think, personal attacks are discouraged, and nothing is repeated or recorded outside the group's discussion except by agreement.

Nonprofit organizations face the constant challenge of accelerating rates of change, demand for new services, and competition for scarce donor resources. The key for any organization in meeting these challenges it to answer the following questions:

· Do we know what our organization's mission is and where it needs to go in the future?
· Do our programs and our practices measure up to the needs we serve and the resources we expend?
· Are we, both individually and organizationally, as creative and cooperative as we need to be in order to ensure that our planning can achieve breakthrough results?

Only a poor workman blames his tools. In an age of accelerating change and increasing competition for scare resources, true breakthrough results can only be achieved if we look inwardly at our skills and outwardly at our organizations in new and creative ways. You don't have to be an expert to achieve transformational results: you only have to aim higher, think better, and work smarter.

If you are comfortable with your human toolkit, you can write your own book. If not, buy this one.

Imagine your fundraising abilities as a human toolkit: thoughts, beliefs, skills, experience, creativity, and intelligences. Now imagine that someone offered you a foolproof book to completely enhance your toolkit and revolutionize your thinking by combining the use of your tools in new and unexpected ways to expand your creativity and its results exponentially. Would you buy it for $...?

Bernard Ross and Clare Segal, co-directors of THE MANAGEMENT CENTRE (=MC) in the United Kingdom, offer just such an enhancement in Breakthrough Thinking for Nonprofit Organizations: Creative Strategies for Extraordinary Results (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 2002) with their commitment ýto inspire managers and board member managers in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to believe they can achieve extraordinary results, and to give practical strategies and techniques for achieving such results.ý

Leonardo da Vinci wrote: ýSmall rooms discipline the mind. Large rooms distract it.ý Drawing upon their extensive experience in working with nonprofits in the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and South America, Ross and Segal animate their strategies with persuasive examples that not only articulate the process of ýre-toolingý outmoded ways of thinking, they also provide working examples of how different organizations have applied these techniques in order to achieve astonishing results. The discipline they teach is the ýsmall roomý eurekas of breakthrough thinking by making learning more creative, more collaborative, and more fun.

Is breakthrough thinking magic? Is it only for gifted individuals? Ross and Segal donýt think so: ýThe lesson from our experience is that many breakthroughsýeven if they are apparently from out in left fieldýare often the result of simple hard work and simple rules applied consistently and methodicallyýyou need to create a culture and business structure that strongly reinforces innovation as well as creativity.ý

This joy of this book is that it outlines in clear, applicable language how different people are creative in different ways, how to stimulate personal and organizational creativity by simply challenging habits, attitudes, environments and work roles, and why innovation plays a crucial role in turning creative thinking into long-term organizational results. Refreshingly, Ross and Segalýs practical strategies are easy to understand, enjoyable to read, and actually do work once you give them a try:

· Second Wave Thinking anticipates organizational decay by restructuring resources in advance of predictable future change and the inevitable decline in results

· Kaizen and Horshin Planning helps you to differentiate between programs that will benefit from incremental growth and programs that will support sudden, exponential growth to create new heights of sustainable development

· Mind Tiles allow you to create a radically new concept simply by building on the combination of two existing concepts

· Gardnerýs Seven Intelligences conceptualizes individual strengths and weaknesses as being related to physical/kinetic, logical/mathematical, spatial/visual, linguistic, creative/musical, emotional/interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences

· The Learning Cycle relates how individuals and organizations go through a common process of reflection, theorizing, planning, and action before change is possible and how each of these different learning styles needs to change in order to accomplish its own breakthrough

· Creative Mindmapping organically links strategies or issues through creative planning that helps isolate new ideas and opportunities for growth

· The Matrix Analysis helps position your organization against key competitors to assess its direction and the potential fate of its programs

· The Ladder of Implication demonstrates how the same information can be interpreted by different mind-sets to reach different conclusions and strategies

· Reframing is a simple and useful technique for taking a negative mind-sets and restructuring their positive attributes and potential

· The Five Cýs teaches you how to deal with champions, chasers, converts, challengers, and changephobics in the workplace when your organization undergoes transformational change

Not all of these ideas are new and not all of them will apply to any one individual or organization. But if reading this book gives you one breakthrough technique that leads you to that one amazing idea that transforms your job, your organization, or even your life, then your investment will prove immeasurable.

Throughout their presentation, Ross and Segal talk candidly about both their successes and failures. In fact, they differentiate between failing because of poor ideas and failing because of poor performance. They give a number of constructive tips on how to communicate openly within organizations in ways that allows individuals the freedom to disagree without causing personal recrimination.

My favorite tips are their suggestions to hold ýsacred cow barbecues,ý during which participants are encouraged to articulate the ýunthinkable thoughtsý about an organizationýs most cherished beliefs which can then be either ýsaved or cooked,ý and invoking ýchampagne rulesý for private group discussions on difficult topics so that anyone can feel free to say what they think, personal attacks are discouraged, and nothing is repeated or recorded outside the groupýs discussion except by agreement.

Nonprofit organizations face the constant challenge of accelerating rates of change, demand for new services, and competition for scarce donor resources. The key for any organization in meeting these challenges it to answer the following questions:

· Do we know what our organizationýs mission is and where it needs to go in the future?
· Do our programs and our practices measure up to the needs we serve and the resources we expend?
· Are we, both individually and organizationally, as creative and cooperative as we need to be in order to ensure that our planning can achieve breakthrough results?

Only a poor workman blames his tools. In an age of accelerating change and increasing competition for scare resources, true breakthrough results can only be achieved if we look inwardly at our skills and outwardly at our organizations in new and creative ways. You donýt have to be an expert to achieve transformational results: you only have to aim higher, think better, and work smarter.

If you are comfortable with your human toolkit, you can write your own book. If not, buy this one.

Good performance is no longer enough for nonprofits; nonprofits must set and achieve breakthrough goals. Managers and board members need to think in new and creative ways about how they define and meet the challenges they face and the strategies and techniques required to achieve extraordinary performance in fundraising, service delivery and overall results. Almost all nonprofits are affected to some extent by nine change drivers. There are five internal change drivers: organizations need a new mission or vision or they will run out of steam; the speed of business requires more decisions made faster; rising costs require new ways to deliver service from a distance; high profile service failure may require drastic measures such as clearing out top management to win back public confidence; new technology may make a nonprofit redundant or may offer opportunities to improve ways of doing business. There are also four external drivers of change: changes in public perception may result in being dropped from people's consciousness or require 24/7 availability; rapid public awareness of disasters quickly changes priorities; competition for funds has increased as distinctions between nonprofits, the public sector and the private sector has blurred; technology change can make old solutions redundant. Nonprofits that fail to answer two fundamental questions: where do we want to go? and how do we get there? may find themselves wandering in a fog, not knowing how they got into their current situation and wondering what is the right way to go. The decision to go for breakthrough is a strategic one involving risk and asking questions such as 'what is the worst thing that can happen if breakthrough goes wrong?' and 'how likely is it that the worst thing will happen?' and 'what can we do to minimize the risk of the worst thing happening?' and 'should we have a Plan B to cope with problems?' After appraising the risks and challenges and adopting a strategy you still need to decide on the approach required to encourage the people and innovation needed and the leadership required. Even then you need to ask 'to what extent do the improvements and changes made match up to what is needed?'

Once an organization has decided to transform its performance to have an impact on the need/performance gap or to achieve its potential, plotting the position on a life cycle chart can be very helpful. Organizations decide to change at various points in their life cycle and for different reasons. The challenge with the most common change point - just past the peak - is that the organization has to break out of its comfort zones and one way is to think about a dramatically improved level of performance. To drive that change a vision of the new performance level has to be agreed together with positive and negative drivers to provide pleasure and avoid pain. Two words have proved exceptionally useful in setting new goals - kaizen and horshin - because they describe not only the nature of the goals but the change process. Kaizen is slow, incremental change that leads, over time to significant improvement in performance. After the second world war Japan applied kaizen to a whole range of activities, including their car industry by setting a long-term world class performance goal and breaking it down into small, achievable chunks. Horshin is about sudden, exponential, discontinuous and radical change that leads to dramatically improved performance in a relatively short period of time. This process resulted in Sony's Walkman becoming one of the most widely used personal electronic devices on the planet. It was used by the National Trust in raising $7.5 in 200 days to save Mt. Snowdon in Wales for public use. In practice most organizations need a mixture of both kaizen and horshin as some areas of work need the stability and methodical progress of kaizen while others need the drive, transformation and vision implicit in horshin. An organization could have ten goals as part of a three-year strategic plan of which six might be kaizen and four horshin. Balance is important as you cannot transform everything overnight and you need to focus and emphasize a small number of key areas to transform quickly.

Engaging a horshin goal can be very stimulating such as Kennedy's "This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth" or Fords " My vision is to build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be at so low a price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one". Many nonprofits build on Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" to express mission as an overarching, simple, concrete horshin goal while others are more specific such as "To become a world-class center for research of childhood diseases and to radically reduce their incidence." To achieve breakthrough, language is important as it helps people to shift into a different mindset, distinguish breakthrough goals from ordinary goals and to think creatively about 'how to' as well as 'what'.

The remaining eight chapters of 'Breakthrough Thinking for Nonprofit Organizations' deal with unlocking potential, releasing creativity, creating a smart organization, mapping the possibilities, balancing creativity and innovation, challenging mind sets, driving change and working in a breakthrough organization. It is difficult to imagine than anyone connected with a nonprofit could not profit from this book.

Good book. I liked it! It was easy to read. Each chapter had a summary section so I could read the summaries before tackling the book as a whole. If you are managing a not-for-profit, or sitting as a board member to a nonprofit, and you believe your nonprofit could be doing things better, then consider getting a copy of this book and give it a read.

Back in July I read and reviewed "Managing Business Change for Dummies," by Beth Evard (ISBN: 0764553321), which focused on how managers successfully deal with employees who resist change in an organization. This book on the other hand focuses on how YOU, the manager, must deal with YOUR resistance to change so you can improve your organization's performance in the process.

The author lists nine "change drivers:"

1. New Mission or Vision
2. Speed of Business
3. Cost Reduction
4. Service Failure
5. New Technology
6. Change in Public Perception
7. Change in Priorities
8. Competition for Funds and Resources
9. Change in Technology

When your organization is hit by one or more of the above events you are going to have to implement change at your organization. This book provides examples of best practices as to how to do this. Also, the authors include exercises from their workshops on this subject. Both the best practices and exercises are very helpful to help us grasp what the authors are talking about.

If you are like me you can examine the Table of Contents for this book online and after doing so you will probably say: Wow, what is this book really about. The chapter titles are kind of weak is what I'm really trying to say. It's the chapter summaries, best practices examples, and exercises that make the book a worthwhile investment of your time.

I would have liked the book much better if the authors had organized it so it did not feel like just another book put together by a management consulting group. Yeah, it felt like one of "those" to me. And after you read 2 of them, they all start to sound the same. But since this book is informative, well written, and not too long I'm inclined to give it 5 stars.

This unique approach for children to learn could be used in American schools. Instead of the memorization of facts and only one way to do things, this approach has the child, parent, and teacher working together. The child has many experiences and the teacher helps them understand and learn from them. The teacher is keeping the parents informed about their child's daily experiences.

Excellent book for those among us who are working to integrate the Reggio approach into our U.S. early childhood classrooms.

Anyone who has kids, or works with them, should read this book! Reggio is just the smartest and most human approach in raising the children.

This has been the most helpful book as I introduce myself to the Reggio Emilia approach. The author shares her experience as an intern in Reggio in a very readable mix of first person observation, interview, and philosophy. But maybe more important, she then takes us the next step as she returns to the States and colloborates with a center to incorporate the Reggio philosophy. The challenges and suggestions are very realistic and helpful.

It's in narrative form, so it really makes you feel like you are there! It goes through her time spent in Reggio basically day by day, step by step through different projects and talks she has with educators in Reggio, and really gives you a feel of what the whole approach encompasses! Highly reccomended!

Bullies and Victims gives an encyclopedia of information, written in a captivating style. You get the inside view of all the types and perspectives of bullying in eye-opening stories of both the bullies and their victims from age three on up. The authors have really done their homework - the research is factual and thorough. They take you inside the minds and souls of the bullies and the victims and show how bullying impacts children in the moment, and also how the effects reverberate through the victims' lives well into adulthood. This book doesn't just lay out the problems, but delineates pathways to solutions and how parents, schools, communities and cultures can help. It's a must-read for parents, educators, counselors and anyone who cares what happens to children on the playground, at achool and in their social groups. Joanne Stern,Ph.D. author of Parenting Is a Contact Sport

This is a pretty good book. I also recommend Helen Smith's "The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill," which has a lot to say about the way bullying can lead to serious violence when schools don't take it seriously -- and some examples from schools that have dealt with bullying well, along with some that have dealt with it badly.

This is a must-read for today's parents and educators. Buy one for yourself, and one as a donation to your school's resource library--that's what I did. This book helps us empower our children, awaken ourselves to the ongoing crisis on the playground, and break the cycle of abuse. Many victims become bullies...and many more children are silent witnesses to a secret code of intimidation that can lead to horrific violence over time. This book is an excellent tool to break the cycle. We owe it to our children to give them skills with which to break out of the typical victim/bully/witness trap. They will be better for it, and safer. Buy two now.

Every parent, grandparent or just adults in general should read this wonderful book. After reading what todays children are going though please pass this on to a friend. I have purchased copies of these books and passed them on to our school district. They not only read them, but have had SuEllen Fried come and work with our children, teachers and parents. Please keep up the writing and your love for our children. Connie Cincinnati, Ohio

I am working on a seminary doctoral project on bully prevention. This book was an invaluable resource for the project. Parents need to understand the difficulties and hardships that today's children must endure.

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.

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.

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. ]

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.

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.

In The DNA of Leadership, Glaser takes the reader on a journey into some of the most hidden and least explored secrets behind great leadership - the power language and of our conversations to create environments that catalyze change.

Too often we focus on "leadership characteristics" to explain why leaders are great. It's their persistence, their passion or their power to create followers. Glaser shows us that this is "old style" thinking and comes from an I-centric view of leadership. In The DNA of Leadership, she brings us into a new way of we-centric thinking that helps us see our role as partners and leaders in a very new way.

She explains how great leaders are able to change the way an environment feels - from excluding to including, from judging to appreciating, from fearing to aspiring, from withholding to sharing, from group think to innovation, form dictating to developing and from compliance to commitment to mutual success. With her skillful guidance and many shared exercises, readers learn how to foster an atmosphere of change, create a collaborative environment, and promote a constructive company ethos in any size company or team.

The benefits of her lessons are many. Since employees are valued for their contributions and gain access to others that they can learn from, they are able to grow and gain upward mobility. This creates a chain-reaction of openness, learning, and a value that change is to be embraced, not feared. Additionally, these changes energize and motivate employees. This leads employees at all levels to adopt a sense of pride, ownership and empowerment... something that other leadership books claim to teach yet often fall short of accomplishing. The DNA of Leadership, and Glaser's first book Creating WE, take us into a new dimension of change and leadership that has applicability to every leaders challenges.

These are must read books!

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.