Primal Management: Unraveling the Secrets of Human Nature to Drive High Performance by Paul Herr
Winning Workplaces review:
Paul Herr has spent 30 years exploring the links between biology, psychology, physics and the workplace, and has proven that there is scientific evidence that employees have natural emotional needs that are often overlooked at work. He defines these hardwired needs, demonstrates how they operate and presents tools that can help create organizational superorganisms that achieve extraordinary results in his new book Primal Management.
Herr's thesis is that organizations that work in harmony with human nature can achieve far more than those that resist it. He defines five "social appetites" that motivate human behavior and work in congruence with five basic biologic appetites and argues that if organizations can tap into these basic needs, they will be far more successful.
The book goes beyond theory to offer tools to measure an employee's "emotional paycheck" and gauge an organization's overall "horsepower metric." He also demonstrates how the tools he offers can be used as a diagnostic to understand which employee needs should be addressed to improve the horsepower metric.
With this book Herr provides a new way of looking at employee motivation and creates a compelling argument that if organizations can effectively work with the basic needs of people, defined in his social appetites, they can achieve far more than they ever imagined.
Fortune & Freedom: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Success by Jim Hirshfield
Winning Workplaces review:
It doesn't get more authoritative or authentic than a book by an entrepreneur, for entrepreneurs. That's Hirshfield's M.O. in Fortune & Freedom, and he should know: He founded cable company Summit Communications in the early 1970s and grew it to over 130 employees.
You'd be hard pressed to find revenue growth for Summit that came with that kind of employee growth, whether in this book or on the Internet, and that is in part by design. Hirshfield's goal aligns with many leaders of our Top Small Workplaces: He seeks to provide guidance first and foremost on doing what you love and living a comfortable life.
But in this aim, the author gets into the real nuts and bolts. He separates the true leaders, those who have a visceral passion for leading a group of people, from all the rest in chapter six. And his entire part three (of five) is devoted to the art and science of making deals. His concluding part five circles back to deals in terms of life expectancy and not burning oneself out; it's definitely worth the price of admission.
Bulletproof Your Job: 4 Simple Strategies to Ride Out the Rough Times and Come Out on Top at Work by Stephen Viscusi
Winning Workplaces review:
Before the current recession, we would argue this is a book by careers professional and frequent NPR contributor Stephen Viscusi is intended primarily for entry- to mid-level employees. But with times as bleak as they are – The Huffington Post just reported that four states are experiencing double-digit unemployment – this book is a must-read for anyone hoping to keep their job and, ideally, grow their responsibilities and salary.
Worth the price of admission alone are Viscusi's four key strategies: be visible, be easy, be useful and be ready. Yet readers get further guidance via a road map of 50 ways they can implement these four strategies.
This book will find perhaps the best use in its ability to turn "A" and "B" performers into engines for positive change at the organizational level, from the bottom up. (Companies that are already Winning Workplaces typically have processes and programs in place to solicit feedback from and bring out the best in employees.)
Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur's Guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work by Dave Pollard
Winning Workplaces review:
One pattern we routinely observe in our Top Small Workplaces is an abundance of passion among the staff, often originating in the founders themselves. In his many years with Ernst & Young and beyond, Dave Pollard served as practice leader and advisor to entrepreneurs, becoming very familiar with the conditions that make for a successful and emotionally satisfying endeavor. In his recent book, Finding the Sweet Spot, he examines precisely this nexus, which occurs "where your gifts, passions and purpose intersect."
Looking at organizations that have been environmentally sustainable, economically resilient and "overall joyful enterprises," Pollard identifies basic attributes which he feels can lead to greater success across industries.
Although he is certainly an advocate for raising environmental responsibility, his use of the term "Natural Enterprise" is more a comment on the dynamic of a business as one which is naturally organized as to facilitate the quality, resilience and sustainability he highlights. Clarity of purpose, innovation, quality and responsiveness define these businesses, tied together through strong, collaborative networks and central, principled operation.
Pollard's book points to what we can all do to "find more meaningful work, to find a better way to make a living, and in so doing to make the world a better place."
Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When they Create Widespread Empathy by Dev Patnaik with Peter Mortensen
Winning Workplaces review:
It is an understatement to say that in order to be successful, businesses must listen to their clients. Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When they Create Widespread Empathy, a hot-off-the-press new book by the owners of 2008 Top Small Workplace Jump Associates, takes this notion one giant step further. When individuals and companies reach outside of themselves and learn to authentically empathize and connect with their customers and key constituents, big things can happen. The lines between producer and consumer are blurred, revealing unforeseen opportunities.
This book discusses how easy it is for companies and institutions to lose their way when their people lose their connection to others and become isolated. When this occurs, corporations become insular; colleges become ivory towers and political campaigns take on a destructive "bunker mentality." Isolation has disastrous consequences because these companies and institutions depend on the outside world for "revenue, reputation and votes."
While the authors note that Wired to Care is "nominally a business book," it certainly provides invaluable insights and asks the core questions that challenge public and private institutions every day. Firms spend fortunes studying their customers, but at the end of the day, often little is truly known about them or their preferences. How then do we really make that personal connection with the mass consumers? The authors suggest two ways: you can either hire these individuals to work with you and learn from them or, if that isn't possible, you intentionally set up scenarios where you quite literally and figuratively "walk in their shoes". Here the authors do a great service by providing a number of innovative, thought-provoking and even delightful examples of how to "walk in the shoes" of customers and constituents.
Entrepreneur Journeys, Volume One by Sramana Mitra
Winning Workplaces review:
Much has been written about Web 2.0, but are you ready for – or do you even know about – Web 3.0? This is an underlying theme in Entrepreneur Journeys by Sramana Mitra, an entrepreneur herself and a Silicon Valley strategy consultant since the mid 1990s.
Small business owners and leaders can get up to speed on this coming trend, along with another area of interest for Mitra, Enterprise 3.0, in this book that's packed with interviews with leading technology CEOs.
But even though leaders in the tech space are Mitra's interview subjects, readers in a wide range of industries will benefit from her reporting and insights. She unabashedly tackles such topics as taking on giants, disrupting business models and tackling planet-scale problems. This is necessary fodder for leaders who aspire to build great, über-productive workplaces.
The One-Life Solution: Reclaim Your Personal Life While Achieving Greater Professional Success by Henry Cloud
Winning Workplaces review:
If you were drawn to getting the latest phone with email and Internet built in because you don't want to be left behind when it comes to your job, this book by clinical psychologist and workplace consultant Dr. Henry Cloud is for you.
The "one-life solution" that Cloud refers to is a strategy for integrating life and work to better achieve both better job performance and greater happiness and balance at home. Expanding on the thoughts of his previous best-seller, Boundaries, the author writes that, "Balance will be a fruit of your boundaries that will integrate your personality. Then you will not feel torn between many lives and many different people, but you will be one person, one life…."
It might sound a tad Oprah, but Cloud does provide many practical tools for the reader, drawn from his broad experience with leaders at a wide range of companies. Maybe his book can help you, your senior leadership team or others in your organization strike a better balance between work and home life.
The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable by Robert H. Thompson
Winning Workplaces review:
When it comes to the field of business writing, adaptation is not necessarily a means to trounce your competitor (as it can be in other industries). Witness the countless institutions that have had a stab at redrawing Jim Collins' Hedgehog Concept, or "three circles," for their own purposes. They and Collins are not necessarily working against one another.
So we found when we received a copy of workplace leader and speaker Robert H. Thompson's book The Offsite, which uses the concepts presented by Jim Kouzes and Barry Postner in their guidebook The Leadership Challenge.
The leaders of small and midsize firms will have much to gain as they digest the five practices that form the heart of Kouzes' and Postner's thesis, in the form of this rousing fictional account of two rival pharmaceutical companies working toward a mutually beneficial sales strategy.
Greening Your Office - From Cupboard to Corporation: an A-Z Guide by Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert
Winning Workplaces review:
We all spend a tremendous chunk of our time at work. With more and more of us trying to minimize our impact on environment in all walks of life, many workers are asking how they can bring their conservation efforts into the workplace.
This A-Z guide provides a concise toolkit for changing things for the better, and is supplemented by a short and solid list of green business resources all responsible organizations should have at hand. With tips pertaining to the office ins and outs we're all familiar with in alphabetical format (the C's include Coffee, Commuting and Correction Fluids – oh my!), the book also digs deeper, covering employee engagement best practices designed to get everyone interested in and excited about going green, which might be the hardest part of all.
A Manager's Guide to Coaching: Simple and Effective Ways to Get the BEST Out of Your Employees by Brian Emerson and Anne Loehr
Winning Workplaces review:
We've all heard the expression, "People don't quit companies; they quit people." In other words, managers have the power to turn the employees they supervise into all stars. Conversely, they also have the ability to add them to the attrition total for the year based, in large part, on their attitude. Of course, as a leader you want to try to avoid the latter scenario.
This is where effective coaching comes in, which can help improve both productivity and profitability. (All those voluntary leaves can cost your organization up to 1.5 times their salary in recruiting and retraining costs.) The authors of this guidebook, the co-founders of the Safaris for the Soul worldwide leadership development retreats, put their literally world-class coaching best practices to the page, and get at the real nuts and bolts of what makes for truly great coaching, and how that differs from merely average coaching.
They also explain how crucial a manager's attitude is to getting it right, and how that can strengthen the business. "Focusing on it is more than 'a nice thing to do,'" the authors write. "[It] is perhaps the most vital component in the entire equation, and focusing on it is a manager's business imperative."
Executricks: Monday Morning Choices: 12 Powerful Ways to Go from Everyday to Extraordinary by David Cottrell
Winning Workplaces review:
Leadership coach David Cottrell, in his new book Monday Morning Choices, argues that success is a matter of making the right choices. "Your success increases or decreases in value everyday on the basis of your choices," says Cottrell. The author studied successful people and found three main categories of the choices they made that distinguished them from the average.
Cottrell discusses 12 life-changing choices in detail, providing his readers with his life examples and related quotes from the commonly recognized successful and wise. As one of the twelve life-changing choices suggests, to make a commitment is a tough choice; only those who are passionate and persistent enough can succeed. The author/coach states that readers would see the most positive changes in their lives when studying in groups and supporting one another along the way – which is not only a powerful learning tool, but also one of the investment choices in the book.
Group learning in a work environment could bring benefits beyond the individual level. Facilitating positive learning opportunities in a workplace – either formal or informal – benefits both individual employees and the business. This book offers some sparkling ideas for small business leaders.
Or How to Retire While You're Still Working by Stanley Bing
Winning Workplaces review:
Stanley Bing, the author of Crazy Bosses, is back with a 173-page guidebook to invoking a lifestyle that, the author says, "if executed with distinction, replicates the faux retirement of the rich and infamous." Geared toward those in the C-suite, many of the suggestions Bing puts forth in Executricks are extreme versions of time-wasting techniques that Bing has no doubt seen in use during his tenure at Westinghouse and other "gigantic multinational corporations" where he's worked.
Examining the finer points of acquiring executive chairs, strategically piling work onto assistants and mastering the "Six Forms of E-Mail" (hint: medium-sized e-mails include "discussion, with ass-kicking potential"), Bing finally admits that, since modern work is so difficult, any tricks executives can throw in to lessen the pain are invariably better than the alternative: perpetual idleness.
Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant
Winning Workplaces review:
The coauthors of Forces for Good are trying to help nonprofits to see the larger, more systematic picture, as well as to engage their stakeholders and supporters in a more entrepreneurial way. Why? According to Crutchfield and Grant, today's great nonprofits are catalysts: They find ways to leverage other sectors to create extraordinary impact; they transform the system around them to achieve lasting social change.
This book is the product of the coauthors spending four years surveying thousands of nonprofit CEOs, conducting hundreds of interviews and studying 12 high-impact nonprofits to uncover their secrets to success. What they discovered is absolutely mind opening. For instance, for those in nonprofits who face the alternatives of advocating or providing direct service, the authors would say "Go for both!"
There is a wealth of new research and great ideas here for nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, business executives, board members and even donors and volunteers.
Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright
Winning Workplaces review:
Tribal Leadership's premise is that modern work gets done through tribes, which consist of groups of no more than 150 people. The authors identify five stages of tribes, from Stage One, consisting of anarchists, to Stage Five, made up of truly enlightened thinkers who understand that they are at once their own leaders and also indebted to their leader-in-title.
The authors argue that most U.S. organizations fluctuate between Stage Two and Stage Three, and the real challenge for leaders who want to move into the highest stages – and reap the associated benefits of higher profits, better-performing talent, improved health statistics and stronger retention – is to move the "critical mass" of their employees, one at a time.
The authors say leaders can do this by using many of the techniques Winning Workplaces has identified among our Top Small Workplaces, including setting up the culture to weed out "bad eggs," telling people how much they're valued, and surveying them often and heeding their feedback.
The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly
Winning Workplaces review:
Retaining top talent has become a strategic priority for many business leaders. But what about the employees that "quit and stay"? These are the disengaged employees that are essentially checked out a portion of every work day. In his 2007 book The Dream Manager, author and international consultant Matthew Kelly maintains that "No single factor is affecting morale, efficiency, productivity, sustainable growth, customer intimacy and profitability more than disengagement."
In this compelling, quick read, Kelly tells the story (based on an actual firm but told in parable fashion) of a fictional janitorial company struggling to remedy its debilitating turnover problem. The leader, desperate for a solution, allows his inspired General Manager to implement his "Dream Program." They hire outside coaches whose sole job is to first understand, then help employees fulfill their dreams – be it buying a house, learning a new language or taking that fantasy excursion to Paris. Money and decent benefits are important, but not enough. Employees' engagement, loyalty and commitment to their company increases when they feel they are making a difference and progressing in their life.
A moral of the story is that a company can only become the-best-version-of-itself to the extent that its employees are becoming better-versions-of-themselves. Their destinies are closely linked so managers need to make it their business to understand what "drives the people that drive the business."
Generation Ageless by J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman
Winning Workplaces review:
In modern American history, the Baby Boomers have been a legendary generation. Today, the generation may be aging, but they do not seem to be getting old. They are still searching for the meaning of life and defining a strong sense of mission to change the world. Our common understanding of the concept of retirement does not apply to Baby Boomers; they are still working to matter, as always.
The co-authors of Generation Ageless are the leadership of Yankelovich, Inc, a leading consumer research company which has spent decades studying Baby Boomers' life attitudes and buying decisions. Their fine work here helps readers understand how the Boomer generation will shape the future of the marketplace.
Generation Ageless is much more than just a marketer's handbook. Today, most of the decision-making positions in our society are occupied by this incredibly powerful generation. For anyone who hopes to work with and impress these decision makers, this book is essential reading.
A Bull in a Glass House by José Astorga
Winning Workplaces review:
Power plus temperance equals wisdom is the theme of this book by José Astorga, a former U.S. Marine who has been working, surviving and managing his passion in a workplace with more or less unethical leaderships for more than two decades. When the plant he worked for was being closed because of reorganization, he rejected the opportunity to relocate. Instead, he finished this book, encouraging employees in Corporate America to step up to the challenge of navigating potentially treacherous career avenues by embracing change and relationships. The book outlines Astorga's building blocks for achieving success in any endeavor.
However, this is not just a handbook on employee survival. Rather, it is a former manager's discussion about how to build a winning workplace. "A combination of the firm leader who leads with empathy and compassion and the employee that performs with integrity and commitment will take the individual and the corporation to new heights," the author says. Current workplace leaders and people who see themselves as future leaders would especially benefit from reading this book.
The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton, PhD
Winning Workplaces review:
Almost every office has workers who are flat-out rude, selfish, uncivil, mean-spirited or who really don't seem to care on whom they step. Unfortunately, these people, with their strategic use of anger and blame, can be successful in pushing themselves up the hierarchy and knocking others down in a number of workplaces.
Enter Sutton and his "No Asshole Rule" that helps prevent mean-spirited people from doing damage to victims, bystanders who suffer the ripple effects and even organizational performance. As is the case with many successful workplace practices, Sutton's rule needs to be implemented, enforced and kept alive by leaders in order to have lasting positive impact. "Having all the right business philosophies and management practices to support the no asshole rule is meaningless unless you treat the person right in front of you, right now, in the right way," he says.
Get Ahead by Going Abroad by C. Perry Yeatman and Stacie Nevadomski Berdan
Winning Workplaces review:
International experience differentiates you from your peers. Going overseas can fast-track your career and expand your personal horizons beyond your wildest dreams. And this is not an opportunity just for men. According to the book's co-authors, women are endowed with qualities to succeed in working overseas including adaptability and flexibility, the ability to listen and communicate well and skill at building teams and relationships.
The book guides you to land an international assignment, to arrange you and your family's lives as expats and to handle difficulties during the process of exploring unfamiliar countries. This guide will also help human resource professionals and all those in organizations who need to successfully manage employees working overseas.
Your Leadership Legacy by Robert M. Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca
Winning Workplaces review:
Leadership legacy is the enduring impact leaders have on the people with whom they work. It can be seen in the thoughts and actions of the people who have worked with or for you long after your professional affiliation has ended.
Galford and Maruca developed the book based on their experiences at the Center for Executive Development in Boston, working with and talking to CEOs, professionals and executives from a wide range of organizations. For leaders young or seasoned, they argue, if you start thinking about your leadership legacy now, rather than just before you change jobs or retire, you will have every day in the future to build a legacy, thus greatly increasing the odds of leaving one that reflects your best qualities, those you would like to see embedded in the fabric of the organization you leave behind.
This book provides step-by-step guidance to help you look toward the future while making you a better leader today.
Crazy Bosses by Stanley Bing
Winning Workplaces review:
Humorous business author Stanley Bing's abridged edition of his 1992 book is a little bit Kurt Vonnegut (think Breakfast of Champions, complete with illustrations – in Bing's case, one-of-a-kind charts) and a lot Lewis Black. In a completely original, apolitical way, Bing states what many business scribes have before him: The gamut of bad bosses, from amoral to zealot, are not so much a product of their own shortcomings as of those of the corporate world.
Bing's twist is in the ways he argues that the workers can avoid these bosses on the way up the ladder, including becoming one of them once at the top. Regardless of the delivery method, the solution, Bing says – having used it himself – is to "aspire to the most potent level of craziness you can personally achieve in your lifetime." After all, the author says, a sane person in a crazy environment will stand out much more than a crazy person (a crazy boss) in a sane environment.
The Real Wealth of Nations by Riane Eisler
Winning Workplaces review:
Creating an addendum to Scottish economist Adam Smith's classic treatise on free trade and capitalism, which was published just as America declared its independence, is no small feat. Yet, Eisler, who is president of the Center for Partnership Studies, adds a worthy and timely perspective – namely, that in addition to market forces, people and our natural environment enable nations to realize their full economic potential.
In her third of 10 chapters in this insightful book, Eisler writes that investment in people "is the best way of enhancing their productive capacities – and hence ensuring business profits and economic effectiveness." Ideally, the author argues, this investment "should start before birth, with prenatal care for mothers and health care, high-quality child care, and education for children."
Business Innovation in the 21st Century by Praveen Gupta
Winning Workplaces review:
Few books deliver on the promise of their subtitles like Praveen Gupta's latest book, which touts the work as a "Comprehensive Approach to Institutionalize Business Innovation." The Illinois-based consultant and author of several other books, including those exploring the Six Sigma defect-elimination process, begins his look to the future with a detailed history of innovation.
After carrying the discussion to the present day, including examining the Internet's role in innovation, Gupta takes a detailed look at how creativity plays a hand. The author argues that leaders should not abandon the seemingly simple school-age games of their youth when it comes to fostering creativity, which begets innovation, including role playing and drawing. The author provides a sufficient amount of flowcharts and key research and data to help readers "understand the purpose of innovation, its environment, and the input, in-process, and output parameters" (Take Away, Chapter 10) to help their organizations truly benefit from it.
Related: Read our interview with author Praveen Gupta
The Success Effect by John Eckberg
Winning Workplaces review:
In his 2005 book The Success Effect, Eckberg, a veteran Ohio newspaper columnist and business reporter, takes a no-holds-barred approach to asking questions of noted success-seekers. His interview subjects range from Deepak Chopra to Donald Trump. His questions range from the mundane ("CDs in the Changer" is a recurring one for all subjects) to the edge-of-envelope (he asks Doobie Brothers guitarist and little-known technical maven Jeff "Skunk" Baxter what he "brings to the table that West Pointers otherwise can't see").
Small business owners and leaders will be delighted by Eckberg's truly conversational nature – as if he happened to run into these folks at a bus stop and also happened to be acquainted with their friends, colleagues and exploits. He asks financier and recent Chicago Tribune acquirer Sam Zell about his reputation as a "vulture investor," and learns from him the difference between being an eccentric and a schmuck (hint: it has to do with both talent and apparel).
Related: Read our interview with author John Eckberg
The High-Purpose Company by Christine Arena
Winning Workplaces review:
Formerly the managing director of Boston-based integrated marketing firm Polese Clancy, Christine Arena now lives in San Francisco. The High-Purpose Company: The TRULY Responsible (and Highly Profitable) Firms That Are Changing Business Now is Arena's second book, after 2004's Cause for Success. An acknowledged fan of author Jim Collins, Arena recalls two of the overlapping circles/questions from his "hedgehog" model from Good to Great ("What are you deeply passionate about?" and "What can you be the best in the world at?") in developing a ladder system going from the "accepts the status quo" stage to the sixth and final "anchor" stage, at which point Arena writes that "companies 'become' their higher purpose."
In developing her "litmus test" to gauge companies with a higher purpose, Arena engaged 10 MBA students at McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management. Using the test – the simple question: Is purpose invaluable to the company? – Arena and her team identified 75 companies that passed the test, were poised to pass the test, or failed the test. Unsurprinsingly, large companies that have made headlines based mostly on what they don't say or disclose, such as Merck & Co and Halliburton, failed Arena's test. Companies who passed the test included some Winning Workplaces-featured organizations: Eileen Fisher, Patagonia and S.C. Johnson & Son. Arena writes that these companies are "driven by purpose to the extent where purpose becomes a dominant force for corporate performance and development."
Related: Read our interview with author Christine Arena
Make Their Day! Employee Recognition That Works by Cindy Ventrice
Winning Workplaces review:
Cindy Ventrice, a management consultant and workshop leader based in California who has worked in a wide range of industries, sprinkles the firsthand feedback of leaders and managers as well as front-line workers on the topic of effective recognition into Make Their Day! Although in assembling the book she spoke to managers at some large companies, she works under the assumption that most managers – especially those at small organizations – do not have access to a budget solely for recognition.
Therefore, the tips she provides center on the small but oh-so-powerful gestures that supervisors can implement immediately to boost their workers' morale, commitment and productivity. For instance, a support services manager of a software company champions motivating the team to recognize each other – which, in turn, makes the manager's job easier and provides the added benefit of improving employee communication and trust.
Overall, Ventrice makes the compelling case that recognition is something to be given and received on a personal level, and not merely another in-box item requiring the boss’s stamp. "Instead of adding recognition to your to-do list, make it the header," she writes.
Related: Read our interview with author Cindy Ventrice
It's All Well & Good by Beth Moses
Winning Workplaces review:
It's All Well & Good is Indiana-based workplace stress management therapist Beth Moses' Second Edition of her 1997 CD-size book. Moses tells us the small size is purposeful; employees should want to keep the book handy on their desks. And for good reason – if stress has a worker feeling unproductive, he or she can turn to any page to find a quick self-healing remedy. Moses' voice as a therapist comes through as she advises modern remedies to curb stress while providing the ancient foundations they're based on. Moses' Guide to Healing, an index based on what ails you, is color coded and extremely helpful for finding quick fixes for particular mental and physical issues. For instance, for workers who are feeling the burden of taking on new responsibilities, the author provides massage, meditation and visualization techniques.
As Moses says, it all goes back to breathing, in whatever fashion works best for the individual, and that is an underlying theme in It's All Well & Good. For employees who need to take a moment to center and heal themselves, this book is an indispenable guide. What's more, it's a complete stress management system – witness the "30 Days to Total Enlightenment" chapter, a day-by-day guide to wellness that provides readers interested in making gradual but substantial improvements to their lifestyles the inspiring fodder to do just that.
Related: Read our interview with author Beth Moses
Monday Morning Mentoring by David Cottrell
Winning Workplaces review:
Monday Morning Mentoring, published in August 2006, sets as its protagonist a fictional mid-level manager named Jeff, who is experiencing some hardships at work: Two of his superstar employees recently quit, he's not getting along as well as he would like with his boss and his team seems to meander under his direction. Luckily, Jeff looks up Tony, a friend of his father who ran a highly successful business. Over the course of 10 weeks, Jeff meets with Tony every Monday morning over coffee, laying out his problems and receiving Tony's astute advice, which often takes the form of questions that provoke Jeff's thought and action involving his team in the interim of the meetings. Cottrell successfully skates the fine line between presenting Jeff's comeback plot and presenting Tony's why-didn't-I-think-of-that observations to the manager-reader through the use of quotes, Jeff's post-meeting notes and follow-up of these points in subsequent meetings/chapters.
The New American Workplace by James O'Toole and Edward E. Lawler
Winning Workplaces review:
Recently the follow-up to 1973's Work in America, The New American Workplace, was published. Featuring new research by the original report's authors, James O'Toole and Edward E. Lawler, III of the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations, the updated report is less academic and more urgent in tone than its predecessor. Among other conclusions, the authors argue that, "America cannot look to its large, global corporations to provide enough new, good jobs." Instead, they point to entrepreneurs and "High-Involvement" (HI) small businesses as the harbinger of the best new jobs.
Related: Read our interview with co-author Edward E. Lawler
Small Giants by Bo Burlingham
Winning Workplaces review:
All of the companies Bo Burlingham profiles work hard to both define their internal community and strengthen their ties to the external community, typically on a local scale with a strong emphasis on personal relationships. The author argues that a sense of community hinges on maintaining three pillars: integrity, professionalism, and human connection. "Indeed, the relationship between the employees and the company is the entire basis for the mojo they exude. You can't have the second without the first," Burlingham writes. "Everything ... that makes a company extraordinary ... depends on those who do the work of the business, day in and day out."
Related: Small Giants website cites Winning Workplaces review
Winning Workplaces review:
Donna Fenn outlines the strategies for success that eight small businesses have used to come from behind to outperform the competition. In explaining one of the steps, 'convert your employees into true believers,' Fenn profiles Dayton, Ohio-based upscale grocer Dorothy Lane Market. She notes the unusual practice the company’s CEO, Norman Mayne, has undertaken for the past 20 years, based on a suggestion from a 16-year-old cashier: talk to each new hire about Dorothy Lane’s company culture, customer retention and competition. Fenn notes that although this training program costs the organization $25,000 annually, it results in a part-time employee turnover rate of 20 to 30 percent – far below the industry average of 100 percent.