Organizations Books

This is a great book for the professional leader that is looking to understand multiple faceted problems.

This book forms the text for a one week residential training course. The course was a life changing event for me, game me confidence in my abilities and changed my whole attitude to the workplace. Instead of trying to get around conflict in the workplace I now have the tools to tackle it head on. Learn about the skill to critique everything you do in a way that is non-threatening and based on fact and not emotion. Everyone in the workplace should read this book.

Most management texts try to deal with how you as an individual can influence how other people behave so that you come out on top. This book goes under the skin of different personality types to show what it is that motivates them in the way they behave. Instead of showing how to "use" people to get what you want, it shows how to get the best out of everyone, yourself included, to get what is best for the Company / family / business whatever you need to improve. Instead of results driven management being the be-all and end-all it is clear that results are only one side of the equation. To be a good manager you need to bring people along with you, not drive them in front of you. This book forms the text for a management training course that can only be said to be revolutionary. I have three university degrees and I would gladly trade the lot for what I learned in the one week course! Everyone who works for a living should read this book.

Ray Salemi provides concise, step-by-step techniques to assist managers and supervisors deal with the aftermath of running a business or department after a layoff has occured. This book is specific in it's approach to what's helpful and what's not in dealing with issues such as communication, morale, next steps, etc. for the leader responsible for picking up the pieces. A good read, not just for managers and supervisors, but anyone who may be concerned about the effects of layoffs.

Leading After A Layoff is a well-crafted book that will prove particularly useful to company leaders looking to keep their company and staff focused and energized after they have gone through a resizing, rightsizing or even downsizing.

The information is delivered with clarity and from experience. Ray Salemi's background and experiences come through in the book and I suggest this book for anyone anticipating a layoff in their company's future.

Author Ray Salemi's neat little book offers excellent advice on how to get through "the worst of times." Management treads thin ice after layoffs. Everyone is sensitive and even the smallest error in dealing with colleagues can be magnified. When productivity drops, frustration naturally sets in. Salemi points out the most serious land mines managers should avoid. He focuses on the needs of mid-level managers and project team leaders, rather than those higher up the executive food chain. The book's advice, while sometimes basic, will substantially bolster the emotional intelligence quotient of the average manager coping with the awkward post-layoff period. We strongly recommend this book to managers who have avoided the layoff purge and now need to rally the stunned survivors.

Why even go to college when you can get an entire education on leadership by just reading one book? Bill Robinson is a visionary leader focused on carrying-out constructive dialogue about the important issues faced by the leaders of our modern, complex organizations. He brings years of experience to light in this easy-to-read and often entertaining (can a leadership book be entertaining?) book. A great choice for those who are seeking to answer the tough questions that riddle our minds when faced with challenges in our lives as leaders.

Bill Robinsons book on leading from the middle puts into perspective the real spiritual, moral, and ethical attributes of what a good leader is all about. It is refreshing to read a book that blends the Christian faith with everyday life. Really following in the foosteps of Jesus at work and at home is what we all should aspire to do and Bill's book gives a great guideline to follow. This is truly the book of all books that leaders in any walk of life should read to gain the basis for their leadership roles.

As an organizational communication scholar and college president for the past 16 years, Dr. Bill Robinson writes with authority about the serious leadership demands of 21st-century organizations. But he never takes himself too seriously.

This highly readable book is filled with colorful, and often humorous, stories of the author's own rich experience practicing the paradoxical leadership that is necessary to effectively lead today's more federated, adaptive and highly connected organizations.

After an interesting survey of leadership theories and how they relate, or don't relate, to the changes in organizations over the past century, Dr. Robinson zeroes in on the essential traits of 21st-century leaders: paradoxical, secure, inspiring, communicative, virtuous and driven. He ends the book with two helpful chapters on how leaders can successfully change their leadership styles to adopt some of these traits.

The title hints at what sets the book, and Dr. Robinson's vision of leadership, apart: Leaders succeed when they connect with the mission and the people at the heart of their organizations and when they join with those they lead in moving the organization forward rather than insisting on being out front or above.

This is a hot book! I coached a team of manufacturing managers who worked in a large traditional factory. Our job was to study manufacturing operations in companies that had adopted Toyota's productivity methods and policies. While the men and women on the team had read about lean production, they were disquieted and perhaps even disturbed by obviously highly performing plants that were organized and operated according to principles foreign to their beliefs. At each plant we visited their discomfort deepened. Then, somewhere between the second and fourth visit, each manager had an epiphany. There was some kind of logical reorganization of the manufacturing furniture in their minds and they "got it", as they described the event. Others said, "the light came on." They saw the fundamental logic and sense underlying each lean factory even though each facility assembled pieces of Toyota's productivity methods and policies into its own unique manufacturing system. Interestingly, each member of the visit team became a passionate believer of lean manufacturing. The greatest skeptics became the most outspoken advocates. They called it "getting religion."

People who successfully implement lean manufacturing must be strong believers and must have a personal mental model of lean that functions at the level of a craft - a creative skill for assembling productivity methods and policies into powerfully efficient manufacturing machines. As the great Japanese coaches from Toyota teach Westerners, there is no cookbook, lean is a way of thinking.

The literature on lean production is disappointing. Lean manufacturing books tend to be long dreary laundry lists of productivity methods and technical techniques for quality. There is little available that gives insight into how the great master craftsmen and craftswomen put together marvelous lean machines of production - until now.

This book by Richard McCormack finally brings us face to face with the creative processes of great designers of production systems. Imagine yourself as a novice artist sitting down for a conversation with Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec or Michelangelo. That is what McCormack brings us in this book - chats with the virtuosos of lean production. Forget those paint-by-numbers books. Either go see the real thing or read "Lean Machines".

A lot has been written about lean, but nothing yet compares to what this book has done.... It's the first time anyone has provided straight answers about the true nature of lean. The author asks the right questions and gets surprising responses. Having spent 20 years in the automotive business, I found this book extremely useful.

This is a hot book! I coached a team of manufacturing managers who worked in a large traditional factory. Our job was to study manufacturing operations in companies that had adopted Toyota's productivity methods and policies. While the men and women on the team had read about lean production, they were disquieted and perhaps even disturbed by obviously highly performing plants that were organized and operated according to principles foreign to their beliefs. At each plant we visited their discomfort deepened. Then, somewhere between the second and fourth visit, each manager had an epiphany. There was some kind of logical reorganization of the manufacturing furniture in their minds and they "got it", as they described the event. Others said, "the light came on." They saw the fundamental logic and sense underlying each lean factory even though each facility assembled pieces of Toyota's productivity methods and policies into its own unique manufacturing system. Interestingly, each member of the visit team became a passionate believer of lean manufacturing. The greatest skeptics became the most outspoken advocates. They called it "getting religion."

People who successfully implement lean manufacturing must be strong believers and must have a personal mental model of lean that functions at the level of a craft - a creative skill for assembling productivity methods and policies into powerfully efficient manufacturing machines. As the great Japanese coaches from Toyota teach Westerners, there is no cookbook, lean is a way of thinking.

The literature on lean production is disappointing. Lean manufacturing books tend to be long dreary laundry lists of productivity methods and technical techniques for quality. There is little available that gives insight into how the great master craftsmen and craftswomen put together marvelous lean machines of production - until now.

This book by Richard McCormack finally brings us face to face with the creative processes of great designers of production systems. Imagine yourself as a novice artist sitting down for a conversation with Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec or Michelangelo. That is what McCormack brings us in this book - chats with the virtuosos of lean production. Forget those paint-by-numbers books. Either go see the real thing or read "Lean Machines".

This is an excellent book for students, parents and especially teachers.
It is a great story written by an amazing woman who REALLY cared about the education of her children. It also provides an extensive reference list for reading material for teachers.
This is proof that one person CAN make a difference. Rock on Ms. Meehan !

You know how people say, "I don't have kids so I'm not really qualified to offer an opinion," Learning Like A Girl makes you feel qualified to start a school, join your condo association or coach your kids' soccer team. That's the big story here. I loved it.

The reason that private girls' schools are important is that girls are important. Yes, "children are our future," but if past is prologue, girls represent a much better future than boys.

Traditionally, boys are taught to win (and, often, win at any cost). You have only to raise your eyes from this screen to see a world powered by such dog-eat-dog ethics, disguised as a concern for "shareholder value". Another generation or two of boys being raised to emulate their fathers, and the greatest Empire of the modern world may crumble in our lifetime.

Girls, in contrast, tend to be collaborators. They look less for the win than the win-win. And when they achieve, they look to share and mentor.

Or so says Diana Meehan, co-founder of the Archer School in Los Angeles, where girls go to class only with girls and are the better for it. You have heard the reasons why elsewhere: As boys and girls hit adolescence, the boys become classroom gods and the girls fall silent. The boys achieve; the girls support. And when it comes to science and math, guess who gets called on first?

Meehan and two friends decided to start a school --- "where the best teachers could do their best teaching and the girls would have the tools, the risks, the chances to fail and to succeed" --- without having any experience launching a business or serving on a school board. Just as well. "New schools are models of chaos theory," Meehan writes.

The story of how Meehan and her view actualized their "dream in a hurry" will be inspiring to anyone who's ever started any enterprise. You'll become an Archer booster early on, and the school's growing pains will make you wince. Granted, Meehan cherry-picked her anecdotes, but the girls you'll meet along the way are inspiring --- they're everything you'd want your own kids to be. And it all works out; although Archer girls don't grind and compete, they do amazingly well on tests and get into any college they want.

How do you know if your town could use a new school? If the private schools turn away two-thirds of their applicants, there's a need. And an opportunity. But even if you read this book without a new school in mind, it's a great resource. There's a terrific appendix of summer programs for girls that, alone, is worth the cost of the book.

There are aspects of this book that make me grimace. The introduction is by Tom Hanks, obviously an Archer parent and, by every account, a terrific human being --- but not likely to be coming to your town to help a struggling girls' school make a fortune at the Spring Benefit. And that's just the start of the specialness. The Archer board is a Who's Who of female Los Angeles. And then there is language that resides primarily on LA's West Side --- like Meehan saying she wrote the book, in part, to "share the journey." Only in LA can anyone say that with a straight face, and even then, it's better coming out of the mouth of a none-too-clever actress on Oscar night.

But in the end, you come back to the girls. "We'd go into a burning building for one another," one says. My eyes misted. I went to great schools, but I didn't have that. I doubt you did. And as I get on in life, I'm starting to think that kind of bonding is the most important lesson a school has to teach.

If you have a daughter with potential --- or know the parents of a girl who could be somebody --- "Learning Like a Girl" just might be more valuable than braces.

The book presents an alternative to the traditional dicipline approach in a classroom. Marilyn Watson does a great job showing us how the attachment theory can work in a classroom situation. Laura Eckens, a 16 year elementary school teacher, takes us into her classroom over a 2 year period to show us her successes, challenges and failures. She uses real-life experiences to demonstrate what developmental discipline is. She shows how you can manage a successful classroom without providing incentives to the children. This book is an easy read and provides you with all kinds of ideas for your classroom.

Marilyn Watson has written a book relevant to all classrooms, not just "difficult" ones. It is a helpful blend of theory and practice, with Laura Ecken and her classroom serving as a case study. The reader can live with Laura during her two years of transforming her classroom into a caring community of learners. Watson's commentary helps the reader understand not only what works but why it works. I highly recommend this book to all practicing teachers.

This book invites us to step inside a dynamically unfolding classroom, come along side a caring professional educator and her supportive mentor, and vicariously share in the joys and struggles of a group of children who will forever be etched in our hearts.

The genuine interactions portrayed in the classroom vignettes, demonstrate the potential for all children to grow and develop when led by a teacher like Laura Ecken, the teacher in this book. Her commitment to developing trusting relationships in a caring classroom community is guided and sustained by the professional mentorship of the author, Marilyn Watson.

Marilyn, an educational psychologist, assists Laura, and indeed all of us, as we come to understand the needs of children through the lens of attachment theory. Members of the classroom come to life in this vivid narrative account. The thinking, actions and reflections of the teacher are shared in ways that evoke tears of laughter and sorrow. Together, Laura and Marilyn create reachable hopes and dreams for everyone in the learning community. They have given me a powerful resource to use with my new teacher education students at the large, urban, state university where I currently work. The ideals stressed in the work of Dewey, Noddings, Goodlad and others emerge in surprisingly concrete ways. The possibility of creating caring classroom communities where intrinsic motivation is fostered and teaching and learning are facilitated without coercive approaches to management and discipline becomes reachable.

The book is powerfully concrete without creating oversimplified recipes. Instead it illuminates the rich complexity of learning and human development and the rich complexities involved in the kind of teaching that meets the challenge to leave no child behind. Finally, I have found a course textbook that meets the needs of my teacher education students, my faculty colleagues, and the in-service teachers with whom we collaborate.

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"Lessons from the Cyberspace Classroom: The realities of Online teaching" is a great book for someone who is interested in the possibilities of online education and teaching. Palloff and Pratt offer a lot of great tips and ideas that are very concise and easy to understand. They provide commonsense guidelines in conducting online teaching in a way that is simple to digest, entertaining, and useful to teachers, administrators, or whoever else is interested in the realm of online teaching and education.

I personally liked the way the authors really tried the simplify their views on how to make a successful online teaching experience. Their "Keys to Success" seemed to be very helpful and realistic for many institutions to implement with careful planning.

Another especially helpful idea throughout the book was their tips at the end of some sections. By providing these simple tips it helps readers summarize the section and allows readers to easily review the material after they have read though the book once or twice.

I feel that this book is a "must-have" for people who have some interest in this relatively new and every changing field of online teaching.

Growing numbers of K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and businesses have begun offering online instruction, taking advantage of computer and Internet technologies to deliver instruction once confined to the realm of physical classrooms. Indeed, the Internet, so-to-speak, has become a virtual classroom and community where all kinds of instruction can take place - anytime day or night, anywhere around the world.

Lessons from the Cyberspace Classroom offers readers a broad treatment of the issues involved in planning, creating, and carrying out distance education via the Internet. In a concise manner the book introduces the issues, raises many serious questions, and provides many solutions to help meet the educational goals of instructors, their learning institutions, and their students.

The real beauty of the book lies in its effort to motivate instructors and learning institutions to think through the issues for themselves - to evaluate the unique circumstances they face and to encourage them to seek more effective ways of accomplishing their goals. Because each virtual learning experience will be unique, a number of important considerations should be weighed to determine course structure, content, and delivery, such as:

What technologies should be used?
Who will create the course?
Who will own the course material(s)?
How will the course be delivered?
How will assignments, projects, and exams be administered?
How will instructors and students be prepared?
How will student participation be controlled?
How will student behavior be controlled?

Lessons from the Cyberspace Classroom does a superb job of fostering community among educators and their students. The authors express the importance of creating learning communities were serious dialogue takes place - dialogue that enhances the learning process and leads to achieving specific educational goals. This book is must reading for online educational course development.

If "the devil is in the details" of online learning, Paloff and Pratt have done an excellent job exploring the promise and pitfalls of distance learning programs. Anyone in the process of designing online courses or programs in higher education should read both this book and their earlier book before they launch a new course or program. Personally, this book helped me avoid several mistakes I otherwise would have made in my first distance learning adventure.

The book looks at both teacher and administrator perpsectives, and understands that both insitutional support and instructor skill are key elements for success. While the authors are genuine advocates for the medium, they understand that interactivity does not equal mouse clicks, and that building learning communities takes skill, practice, and structures. The book is full of very helpful examples, learning constructs, and realistic assessments of distance learning successes and failures.

A first-rate book on the subject of organizational design.

Chapters focus on:
- tensions of organization design;
- aligning span of attention;
- unit structure;
- diagnostic control systems;
- interactive networks;
- shared responsibilities;
- examples of adjusting the levers; and
- designing organizations for performance.

Central to this book are four key factors that guide effective design decisions: customer definition, critical performance variables, creative tension, and commitment to others.

The book offers great insights and guidance to design an organization that influences how people perform, focus their attention, and how their efforts can be aligned with strategy. Rich in content and value! Very highly recommended.

Finally, an OD book with a solid combination of theory and practice. The theory in this book is the most comprehensive model for OD I've ever seen. Simons' model incorporates all functional areas of business. He does an excellent job of looking at the whole organizational picture. This is where many authors have fallen short with theories that only cover one or two functional areas of business leaving you to guess at how to incorporate the rest. This cross-functional approach to OD is not just refreshing; it's quite necessary in today's business environment.
Simons' theory is based on levers and sliders. Easy to understand and easy to visualize. Part of the value of the book is that the theory is backed up with practical implementation examples. Like any good learning resource (a.k.a. text book) each chapter provides us with a summary and action steps. I give this book an A+ and consider it a "must read" for anyone in the OD field. It is also recommended for management teams looking to assess their organization design. Using this book will provide the understanding you need to get started.

Unlike subtitles of so many other recently published business books, the one for Levers of Organization Design correctly identifies its author's primary objective: to explain "how managers use accountability systems" to achieve "greater performance and commitment." Simons thoroughly and brilliantly responds to questions such as these:

What are the nature and extent of tensions of organization design or redesign?
How to get "span of attention" in proper alignment?
What is an appropriate "unit structure"? Why?
Which diagnostic control systems can be most effective? How?
Why are interactive networks essential?
How to establish and then strengthen them?
How should shared responsibilities be determined and then managed?
Then, how to sustain productive collaboration?
Which "levers" of organizational design are most effective? Why?
Which examples best illustrate how to make appropriate adjustment of them?
What are the most effective strategies and tactics when designing organizations for performance?

According to research which Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton provide in The Strategy-Focused Organization, only 5% of the workforce understand their company's strategy, only 25% of managers have incentives linked to strategy, 60% of organizations don't link budgets to strategy, and 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy. If true, these are chilling statistics which suggest that few decision-makers in any organization (regardless of its size or nature) would be able to answer, clearly and realistically, each of the questions listed previously. Hence the urgency of their reading Simons' book. I also urge them to check out the several works co-authored by Kaplan and Norton.

This book is defenitly something i would recommend to mothers who are feeling overwhelmed, need advice on how to cope with staying home with young ones & just a great book for those who need a pick me up. It helped me cope when i felt like i wasn't doing everything right..trying to hard to be perfect and trying to manage a blended family with 4 kids!

Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (3/07)

"Life Lessons for Busy Moms," is divided into 7 chapters. Each chapter is filled with wisdom, humor, advice, quotes, tips and stories.

"Make Time To Nurture Yourself."
The emphasis of this chapter is taking care of you, creating boundaries, cultivating your relationship with your husband and creating balance in your life. As a mother you wear many hats and you need to recognize how important your roles are.

"Take Charge of Your Parenting Style/Philosophy."
"Implement Creative Solutions (with an Organized Approach)"
"Feed Your Soul."
As a mother what do you need? What are your goals? What do you see as your future?

"Keep an Organized Home."
This is my favorite chapter. Organization! Our lives are less stressful is we have detailed schedules, systems and a good calendar.

"Solicit Help."
We all need assistance at sometime or other but many of us refuse to ask for it. No matter how hard you try you can't be Supermom!

"Make Time to Slow Down"
When we slow down we come to appreciate "the small things in life" those little moments that later we wish we hadn't rushed through. We come to cherish what's happening right now instead of worrying about what might happen, "the what if's."

I wish I'd had this book years ago when my three children were little. Looking back on those precious years I wish I'd been more organized, more stress free. I wish I'd taken more time to enjoy those special moments as they happened rather than stressing out over unimportant things.

This is a delightful book with sound, sensible advice and suggestions written in a humorous style. The stories are sure to bring a smile to the faces of mothers and grandmothers. This book would make a fantastic gift for a new or expectant mother. I highly recommend "Life Lessons for Busy Moms" to all mothers and grandmothers. My daughter and daughters-in-law will each be receiving a copy.

This book is full of good tips for new moms, humor, inspiring quotes, and warm stories from real moms-including myself. It is easy to read and has some thoughtful simple solutions for everyday challenges.

Chapter 7 alone is worth the price of the book. It outlines a free-market model for a small group ministry. It is a permission-giving model, meaning that it invites church members to start their own groups based on their gifts and callings. The Small Group Ministry runs on a 3-semester basis so that people have the option of switching groups and not getting burned out.

We've been using this model in our congregation for a year now and it's been exciting and fun!

My husband and I belong to a non-denominational church.Our Pastors received the vision for becoming a cell church & went to a cell church conference.The book and information we received were so confusing! THIS BOOK fits our church that really focuses on fellowship and community outreach! Ted Haggards book gave my husband and I an exciting vision of how the cell church could work in our church! Chapter 11 was and still is the foundation from which we built upon after our senior Pastor asked us to head the cell ministry!

Ted Haggard has put together one of the most insightful and challenging books Christian ministry has seen in many years. This book is a very practical manual for ANYONE of any denomination who is starting a church or is looking to improve on an existing church structure. His methods are proven, easy to understand, and will undoubtedly bring a fresh vision for what church life should be like to any reader.