Showing posts with label business leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business leadership. Show all posts

Understanding Organizations Review

Understanding Organizations
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Understanding Organizations ReviewCharles Handy is one of Britain's management gurus. This original edition of this book was written while he was professor at the London Business School. Although this book is not simple to read and is very comprehensive, it is an excellent introduction to understanding organisations (yes, just like the title).
The book consists of three parts. Part I introduces a set of models/frameworks, for better understanding of people and organisations. Handy selected six themes common to organisations - motivation, roles and interactions, leadership, power and influence, workings of groups, and cultures of organisations. Each of these themes receives an excellent, extremely in-depth literature review, which all have been updated in this 4th edition to include the latest literature and trends. Handy looks at each of these themes from various angles and does not really push the reader into any dominant one; "This book is eclectic. ... It is wise to be eclectic, to pick from each anything that helps, to compile the sort of personal anthology which is what book aims to be." In addition, Handy uses a large number of quotes from other academics to explain his comments.
In Part II, Handy looks at each of the themes introduced in Part I and their impact on organisations. This part is a lot less academic and Handy tries to apply the models/framework introduced in Part I into practice. "One bookcase for the theorectical models, another for the tips and hints on current practice. The discussion in this part is not intended to be a review of best current practice but rather an interpretation, often a provocative one, of the implications of some of the theories that we say we all subscribe to." Handy applies it to people of organisations and their development, the work of the organisation - and its design, politics and change, being a manager, and the future of organisations.
In Part III, Handy provides a brief overview of the relevant field of theory, makes suggestions on useful sources and gives references to the major studies mentioned in the text. "Part Three is for those who wonder about the sources of my ideas, concepts, and theories, or for those who wish to pursue any topic in greater depth." Handy does this on a chapter-by-chapter basis, which is very useful for any MBA-student or researcher.
This book is a comprehensive piece of work into organisations. It certainly helps you understand organisations better, but do not take this book too lightly as it is not for the fainthearted. It is so extremely comprehensive that I do not see anybody read this book in one go. On the other hand, I must stress that the literature reviewed and covered is spectacular and done fantastically. Handy's ability to bring this into perspective with practice is also very strong. A MUST for MBA-students and all other people interested in organisational studies.Understanding Organizations Overview

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Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution Review

Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution
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Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution ReviewGreat book. Very interesting discussion on how to apply the techniques in real life. Really liked the appendix, which reviews various personality assessment tools and describes how they can be used.
Very appropriate book for all corporate competitive intelligence staff, but also for those in Sales, for CEOs and product developers.Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution Overview

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Building The Ultimate Network Review

Building The Ultimate Network
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Building The Ultimate Network ReviewThis book has so many different suggestions that I needed to have a notebook nearby to capture the ideas. I wrote one of the chapters, so buying the book was a no brainer, but now that I've read the other chapters, I'm sooooo glad I was involved. Great stuff!Building The Ultimate Network Overview

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The AMA Handbook of Public Relations Review

The AMA Handbook of Public Relations
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The AMA Handbook of Public Relations Review
I loved it. Impressive. I won't say it is a "detailed" handbook to use to actually become expert at PR in the 21st century. But it is a wonderful book that covers the following:
>>New media [Web sites, blogs, & mircoblogs]
>>Old media [Newspapers, magazines, etc.]
>>Public speaking
>>Market research
>>Tactics for keeping up digitally
I'm not sure why "market research" was included. But then the book is sponsored by the AMA. I found the text to be well written and outlined. It is comprised of four parts that are broken into 19 chapters and three appendices. I urge you to examine the Search Inside feature Amazon provides for this book so you can see the 19 chapter titles.
Back in May, 2009 I read and reviewed Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR. In that review I commented that there should have been a chapter on Investor Relations. Well, the instant book has one. See Chapter 13 and the related chapter on The Annual Report (14). I like both books. And I think they compliment one another. I highly recommend any public relations professional who wants to be competent in their field and make things happen today read both as companion books. 5 stars!The AMA Handbook of Public Relations Overview

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Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action Review

Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action
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Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas Into Action ReviewSimplicity is simple. Writing about simplicity is not. That was the big challenge facing John Spence when he sat down to write the book Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for Turning Ideas into Action.
The result is a well-laid out, well-written book that makes 56 key points, asks you to audit 77 things in your organization. It suggests 41 items worthy of thought and discussion and a like number of suggestions for turning those ideas into action. And that's without getting to the meat of the chapters.
This book will be a good buy for you if you're looking for a short, well-written book that will help you review your business and come up with good ideas for improving the way you do things. If you're looking for a high level view, with a few good details thrown in, this is a good book.
The book may not be a good buy for you if you're seeking ways to improve your team or individual performance. The book is written about the whole organization and mostly high level issues. That leaves you with advice to do things like "Fully align all major strategies and objectives of the organization."
The book is written as if you can simply stop operations for a year or so and follow the book's ideas. You simply don't develop a high performance culture quickly and you don't have the luxury of chucking your old culture overboard and starting from scratch.
If that high-level overview is what you want, read on. Here's a review of the content, chapter by chapter.
The first chapter tells you to develop a "clear, vivid, compelling, and inspiring vision for the future of your business." That's simple to say and hard to do.
In the next chapter you are told to "create a corporate culture that attracts, grows, and keeps the best people." Again, it's a simple idea that everyone would favor. It's just hard to do.
Culture is not the result of a design process. The cultures at Ritz Carlton or Nucor or Publix Supermarkets grew out of the values of the company leaders, fed by daily interactions, reward systems, promotions, and feedback. Culture is a slow growing and a fragile thing.
Talent is not a single thing. The world is not divided into people who are talented and people who are not. Everyone is good at some things and not others.
A person might be a great hire for some companies but not for others. Successful companies have strong cultures. But strong cultures work for some people and not others. In fact companies with strong cultures work at driving out the people who don't fit.
And, the advice (page 40) to recruit "highly competent people of impeccable character, who work really well with others, are great communicators and have a driving commitment to excellence" sounds good. It's just not realistic. It's a search for perfect people and there just aren't any of those.
Chapter three outlines ways to practice communication that is "open, honest, frank, and courageous." The chapter includes advice for organizational and interpersonal communication.
Chapter four, on "Sense of Urgency" has some of the best advice I've seen about creating a clear intended outcome. The chapter is about busting bureaucracy and flattening pyramids. There's some good advice about gathering information quickly. The big weakness in this chapter is that the concepts of "speed" and "urgency" are treated as synonymous.
The following chapter discusses what it takes to build a performance-oriented culture. To that end, the author outlines:"Nine Steps to Ensure Disciplined Execution." This is one of those places where the simple overview can be frustrating. You're told to "keep the entire organization focused on a handful of key strategies" The complicated details of how to do that are not covered.
The final chapter is about "extreme customer focus." It's the usual "listen-to-your-customer-and-deliver-more-than-expected" advice, but that fact that you've heard it before doesn't diminish its value here.
The Conclusion is a truly, awesomely simple review of what's in the book. It highlights the important points and covers them in about five pages. My suggestion is that you read the Conclusion before you read the rest of the book.
That will help you focus your attention on the key points. It will help you get the most from the experience.
Bottom Line
If you're comfortable with the normal business-book practice of treating every reader like a CEO, you'll find a good overview and many good ideas in this book.
If you're looking for a way to improve smaller team performance or your own, individual performance, this is probably not the book for you.
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Business Relationships That Last: Five Steps To Transform Contacts into High Performing Relationships Review

Business Relationships That Last: Five Steps To Transform Contacts into High Performing Relationships
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Business Relationships That Last: Five Steps To Transform Contacts into High Performing Relationships ReviewOnce again, Ed Wallace turns "Little Extras" into winning business relationships. This latest work is reminiscent of Dale Carnegie's 'How to Make Friends and Influence People' by providing tangible methods for building rapport, establishing objectives for each meeting and developing credibility. These techniques are proving invaluable for progressing business relationships with clients and partners from acquaintance to professional peer and ultimately respected advisor. Max the taxi driver would be proud to have his name associated with this work that is certain to have a powerful influence.Business Relationships That Last: Five Steps To Transform Contacts into High Performing Relationships Overview

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