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Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development
Alec Sharp , and Patrick McDermott Manufacturer: Artech House Publishers ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 1580530214 |
Customer Reviews:
Finally a How-To!.......2007-09-15
Very good for newbies in process improvement field.......2007-08-16
Good Book for a Foundation.......2007-08-09
Excellent Business Process Modeling Book.......2006-11-29
Workflow Modeling - This Book Flows..........2006-09-16
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The Consultant's Big Book of Organization Development Tools : 50 Reproducible Intervention Tools to Help Solve Your Clients' Problems
Mel Silberman Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0071408835 |
Book Description
The Consultant's Big Book of Organization Development Tools provides consultants with tools, interventions, and activities they can use to solve individual, team, and organizational performance problems.
This book offers incredible value for the consultant looking to use structured interventions as a vital part of the consultation approach. Many of the tools consist of a simulation or other structured activity consultants can use with leaders in the client organization to address the soft issues in a nonthreatening way. And most include downloadable, customizable handouts that they can freely reproduce and use with clients.
Customer Reviews:
Cookbook of Interventions.......2006-02-24
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Quick Changeover for Operators: The SMED System (Shopfloor Series)
Shigeo Shingo Manufacturer: Productivity Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 1563271257 |
Book Description
The Shopfloor Series puts powerful improvement tools in the hands of an entire workforce. And now Productivity's all-time bestseller, A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System, is available in a condensed version prepared especially for front-line workers and general interest readers. Quick changeover techniques, the basis for "just-in-time" manufacturing, result in dramatically lower costs and vastly improved product quality. This peerless introduction includes chapter outlines, margin assists, illustrations, and helpful application questions. The late Shigeo Shingo was the undisputed master of advanced methods that revolutionized manufacturing worldwide. Dr. Shingo, inventor of the Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) system for Toyota, shows how to reduce changeover time by an average of 98 percent! Application of Shingo's techniques can reduce lead time from weeks to days, and lower work-in-process, inventory, and warehousing costsall of which will improve quality, productivity, and profits.Customer Reviews:
Easy and straight forward for beginners.......2007-03-11
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Build Your Own Garage: Blueprints and Tools to Unleash Your Company's Hidden Creativity
Bernd H. Schmitt , and Laura Brown Manufacturer: Free Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0743202600 |
Amazon.com
Ever since Hewlett-Packard emerged from one in 1939, a "garage" has come to symbolize the no-holds-barred mentality that fosters the kind of creativity that drove this company--and the dozens more it spawned--to heights theretofore unknown. Bernd Schmitt, a Columbia Business School professor who has written several well-received marketing books (Experiential Marketing, Marketing Aesthetics) takes this image to the next level in Build Your Own Garage by relaying strategies that readers can adapt to their own enterprises whether they are housed in a converted parking structure or not.As one might suspect from a book that advocates the unorthodox, Schmitt chooses to deliver his ideas in an unconventional manner. Each chapter begins with an elaborate short story by Laura Brown that encapsulates its central concepts (such as a vampire tale based on Bram Stoker's Dracula that illustrates how "the strictures of traditional corporate culture are enough to suck the life energy out of anyone"). Also sprinkled throughout are photographs and images by graphic artist Gail Anderson, which simultaneously reinforce the book's themes (on topics including technology, branding and "customer experience management") and distance it from buttoned-down management tomes that espouse the very group-think Schmitt is trying to eliminate. Those seeking new ideas who are not turned off by unique presentations should find this intriguing. --Howard Rothman
Book Description
Is your company all bizz -- filled with professional managers, accountants, and financial planners who produce "smooth operations" but offer no customer savvy or soul? Or is it all buzz -- filled with talk, hype, and the brainstorming of half-cooked ideas that often lead nowhere?
To capture the best of these dichotomous worlds, creativity expert Bernd H. Schmitt and accomplished business writer Laura Brown introduce a groundbreaking model of a creative organization they call "The Garage." This powerful new framework demonstrates how any executive can manage the creative tension between the analytic, rational side of business and its dynamic, innovative side. After laying out the broad mission, or "blueprint," for constructing The Garage, Schmitt and Brown present The Toolbox -- specific instruments for infusing creativity into all aspects of a business -- and show how to use The Blueprint and The Toolbox as essential strategy, recruiting, resource, and communications devices. At the center of this immensely readable book are the "Mastercrafts of The Garage" -- technology, branding, and customer-experience management -- the organizational forces that guarantee creative efforts are coordinated and well implemented to provide competitive advantage.
To illustrate particular aspects of creativity, Schmitt and Brown open each chapter with a story or "business parable," each written in a different genre -- horror, detective, love story, or fairy tale -- accompanied by evocative photographs. They also draw on scores of cutting-edge examples of creative, innovative ventures such as American Express's Blue, W Hotels, Eli Lilly's "Answers That Matter," SAP, and NTT DoCoMo's i-mode.
Build Your Own Garage is timely and instructive reading for any manager charged with the mandate to bring to market quickly the most useful and innovative products and services. The book's Web site is www.BuildTheGarage.com
Customer Reviews:
All Buzz and No Bizz.......2005-03-05
Clever stories but no handbook.......2001-12-31
Wake-Up Call for Traditional Marketing Literature.......2001-10-31
Build Your Own Garage.......2001-08-08
Sparking Corporate Creativity.......2001-08-08
I believe that "Build Your Own Garage" is the first business book on creativity that really expresses the complexity of the creative process. Encouraging and managing creativity in a large organization is not a simple job. Schmitt and Brown approach the topic from different angles--analyzing the role of creativity in business organizations, detailing real-world examples of creative initiatives, and also offering creative "business parables" to show different facets of creativity in the workplace. (Look especially for the vampire story about "the Corporate Undead"!)
For all its quirkiness, "Build Your Own Garage" deals with corporate creativity in a down-to-earth way. This is not a giddy, dot-com, anything-goes approach to creativity. The book fully acknowledges the importance of business fundamentals and proposes a variety of realistic techniques to improve performance through creativity. Not surprisingly given Schmitt's background, the chapter on Branding is particularly strong.
"Build Your Own Garage" is a quick and enjoyable read that offers some useful insights into corporate creativity. I highly recommend it.
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Organizational Surveys: Tools for Assessment and Change (J-B SIOP Professional Practice Series)
Manufacturer: Pfeiffer ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0787902349 |
Book Description
With escalating demands upon research and assessment growing more varied, surveys are now used to assess and drive organizational change by examining company performance, customer and employee satisfaction, empowerment, and key aspects of corporate culture.With Organizational Surveys, you'll learn how to:
No other book approaches this collection's range and specificity, or its emphasis on actual practice in organizations. It's your indispensible toolbox for assessment and change!
Customer Reviews:
Comprehensive - but needs an update to accommodate internet surveys and other methodological developments........2006-01-19
Was good to the last chapter...then was a downer........1998-12-10
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Why Teams Can Fail and What To Do About It: Essential Tools for Anyone Implementing Self Directed Work Teams
Darcy Hitchcock Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0786304235 |
Book Description
Teams that work well together can achieve some of the greatest breakthroughs in organizational history. But with the rapid growth in popularity of teams can come failures, and every organization has experienced teams that are disorganized, unmotivated, and ultimately, short-lived. Why Teams Can Fail identifies the most common problems faced by high-performance, self-directed teams and offers specific suggestions for spotting and solving the problems and creating teams that really work. This unique troubleshooting guide shows how to: turn fear and intimidation into confidence and motivation; overcome lack of faith and commitment, and set positive, reachable goals; smooth out adversarial relationships and handle the problem of anarchy.Customer Reviews:
great book for modern work envronment.......2001-03-31
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40 Tools for Cross Functional Teams (Tool Navigator)
Michalski Manufacturer: Productivity, Inc. ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 1563271982 |
Book Description
Cross-functional teams, that is, teams comprised of members from different departments, are an essential element in developing a world class organization. Yet anyone who has tried to build effective cross-functional teams knows that they often fade away; they lack the tools, training, and motivation that would enable them to tackle more challenging tasks.
In 40 Tools for Cross-Functional Teams: Building Synergy for Breakthrough Creativity, Walter Michalski cuts through the tangled thicket of team literature to give us a focused and comprehensive guide to building and sustaining cross-functional teams. This book will teach you everything you need to know about cross-functional teams. The author provides 40 carefully selected tools arranged in eight process stages, including getting cross-functional teams up and running, developing synergy/consensus, creatively solving problems, and recognizing and rewarding teams.
An engaging book with clear illustrations, 40 Tools for Cross-Functional Teams is based on the same user friendly design of the Tool Navigator's Master Guide for Teams. Each tool is presented in a two or three page spread describing the tool, its function, method for implementation, and example of the tool in use. These 40 tools will assist any company in the creation of cross-functional teams to compete in today's team based corporate environment.
Included are discussions of:
Also by Walter J. Michalski:
40 Top Tools for Manufacturers: A Guide for Implementing Powerful Improvement Activities
Customer Reviews:
A TREASURE TROVE OF TEAM BUILDING TOOLS!.......1999-04-09
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Tools for Team Excellence: Getting Your Team into High Gear and Keeping it There
Gregory Huszczo Manufacturer: Davies-Black Publishing ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0891060812 |
Book Description
Provides comprehensive information on building, assessing, and improving team performance.Customer Reviews:
Tools for Team Excellence.......2000-04-25
Huszczo delivers common sense information much like he delivers in person, in a simple pragmatic way- he is easy to understand by all levels in an organization.
This book provides a hands-on guide for team development and teamwork. If you are considering implementing teams this is a good easy read and you'll want to use it weekly as a guide.
I hope to write back one year from now and document how this hands-on guide helped in our process of team development. There are so many unknowns and directions teams can take- "Tools for Team Excellence" provides a roadmap.
Good luck in changing the culture of your organization and team development process.
Joe Boyle
Manufacturing Engineer
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The Boundaryless Organization Field Guide : Practical Tools or Building the New Organization
Ron Ashkenas , Todd Jick , Dave Ulrich , and Catherine Paul-Chowdhury Manufacturer: Jossey-Bass ProductGroup: Book Binding: Ring-bound Similar Items: ASIN: 0787943215 |
Book Description
This hands-on kit contains everything managers need to put the strategies presented in The Boundaryless Organization into actual practice. Based on the renowned WorkOut process initiated at General Electric, this complete resource offers specific guidelines for facilitating dialogues that result in rapid, significant change. Practical tools include PowerPoint slides that reinforce key concepts, a diagnostic questionnaire for assessing your current boundaries, and exercises that apply boundaryless thinking to real-life scenarios. A leader's guide to WorkOut, process mapping, customer-supplier projects, and the employment of technology is also included.
Customer Reviews:
Most Boundaries Are Self-Imposed.......2002-02-24
"In living organisms, membranes exist to give the organization shape and definition. They have sufficient structural strength to prevent the organism from dissolving into an amorphous mess....Like a living organism, the boundaryless organization also evolves and grows, and the placement of boundaries may shift....Because the boundaryless organization is a living continuum, not a fixed state, the ongoing management challenge is to find the right balance of boundaryless behavior, to determine how permeable to make boundaries, and where to place them."
This brief excerpt from the first chapter correctly suggests the purpose of this remarkable book: To explain HOW to meet that challenge. The material is presented within four parts plus a conclusion. The first explains how to achieve "free movement up and down" by crossing vertical boundaries; the second explains how to achieve "free movement side to side" by crossing horizontal boundaries; the third explains how to achieve "free movement along the value chain" by crossing external boundaries; and in the fourth part, they explain how to achieve "free global movement" by crossing geographic boundaries." Then in the Conclusion, the authors discuss "Making It Happen: Leading Toward the Boundaryless Organization." The authors also include a series of six questionnaires. By completing each in sequence, the reader is able to determine (a) where her or his organization is now located relative to "the boundaryless paradigm", and (b), what is needed to eliminate the "gap" between where it is now and where it should be.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read The Boundaryless Organization Field Guide. It contains a wealth of hands-on set of diagnostic instruments, exercises, and tools as well as a disk with presentation slides in Powerpoint format.
Boundaryless Organization Fieldbook Review.......2000-05-17
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Strategic Organization Design: Concepts, Tools and Processes. (Scott Foresman Management Application Series)
David Nadler , and Michael Tushman Manufacturer: Scott Foresman & Co ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0673158608 |
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