The 3 Keys to Empowerment

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The 3 Keys to EmpowermentThe 3 Keys to Empowerment: Release the Power Within People for Astonishing Results
by Ken Blanchard, John P. Carlos, and Alan Randolph

Written in an easily accessible Q & A format, this book closely examines and expands on the three keys to empowerment originally presented in Empowerment Takes More than a Minute—sharing information with everyone, creating autonomy through boundaries, and replacing the hierarchy with teams.

It clearly outlines the promises and challenges of each stage of the journey, providing managers with thought-provoking questions, clear advice, effective activities, and action tools that will help them create a culture of empowerment. Wherever they are in the journey, managers will find a clear roadmap in this user-friendly action guide.

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Mission Possible

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Mission PossibleMission Possible
by Ken Blanchard and Terry Waghorn

This book was written for all living in organizations today who are dealing with the reality of having to improve their present operation and design their future at the same time.

The authors have a message for you: Your organization is dying! To stay alive in the short run, you must improve quality, profits, and customer service. Blanchard and Waghorn tell you how.

But that’s not enough. Before you know it, your organization may be obsolete, unless you start re-creating it for the future. Managing your present organization while creating a world-class future—that’s your mission—should you and your organization choose to accept it. Blanchard and Waghorn say, Mission Possible!

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers

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sacred-cows-make-the-best-burgersSacred Cows Make the Best Burgers: Developing Change-Ready People and Organizations
by Robert Kriegel and David Brandt

Tackling one of the most important business issues of today, the authors demonstrate why the latest panaceas—re-engineering, virtual teams, outsourcing, reinventing, restructuring, downsizing—almost always prove unsuccessful. They expose how these buzzword programs overlook the most fundamental element of all business: people. After all, people are the gatekeepers of change, with the power to breathe life into a new program or kill it. If they’re excited and positive, it’s open sesame; if they’re resistant, they’ll slam the door in your face.

Outmoded beliefs, practices, and processes … why do so many business people cling to their established ways as if their lives depended on them? The very things they refuse to give up, the sacred cows of the business world, are the lodestones that will kill their careers and their companies’ path to success? In this insightful and unique guide, the authors reveal why people hold on to the old and how to inspire them to bring on the new—to the point where they’re enthusiastically turning even their favorite sacred cows into burgers. This entertaining book offers concrete strategies to help you identify sacred cows, round them up, and put them out to pasture. Getting to the heart of the matter, Kriegel and Brandt show you how to coach yourself and others to create Change-Ready people.

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

The Dance of Change

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The Dance of ChangeThe Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations
by Peter Senge

A follow-up on his groundbreaking book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge has written The Dance of Change for managers and executives at every level of an organization, revealing how business leaders can work together to anticipate the challenges that profound change will ultimately force the organization to face. Filled with individual and team exercises, in-depth accounts of sustaining learning initiatives by managers and leaders in the field, and well-tested practical advice, this book provides an insider’s perspective on implementing learning and change initiatives at leading organizations around the world.

You don’t have to read this book from cover to cover. Just open to any page; you’ll be surprised and challenged. On every page an idea stops you in your tracks and makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about the subject.

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Management Challenges for the 21st Century

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management-challenges-for-the-21st-centuryManagement Challenges for the 21st Century
by Peter F. Drucker

In this book, Peter F. Drucker discusses the new paradigms of management—how they have changed and will continue to change our basic assumptions about the practices and principles of management. Drucker analyzes the new realities of strategy, shows how to be a leader in periods of change, and explains “the New Information Revolution,” discussing the information an executive needs and the information an executive owes.

Incisive, challenging, and mind-stretching, Drucker’s new book is forward-looking and forward-thinking. It combines the broad knowledge, wide practical experience, profound insight, sharp analysis, and enlightened common sense that are the essence of Drucker’s writings, which are continuing international bestsellers and “landmarks of the managerial professional.”

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Journey to the Emerald City

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Journey to the Emerald CityJourney to the Emerald City
by Roger Connors and Tom Smith

Building on the success of their previous book, The Oz Principle, the authors explore the direct link between a company’s culture and the results it produces. Journey to the Emerald City details a clear road map for accelerating the move to a culture of accountability in which people focus on achieving the results critical to a company’s future.

Filled with success stories, Connors and Smith introduce a step-by-step model to help people at any level of the organization take action that will alter the culture’s belief system in order to produce the desired results.

Rather than presenting a formula for “one best way” to run an organization, the authors have provided a practical and powerful desktop guide for any organization or team leader who has a genuine interest in shifting his or her organizational culture in a “non-cookie-cutter” format.

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

The Oz Principle

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The Oz PrincipleThe Oz Principle: Getting Results through Individual and Organizational Accountability
by Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman

Like all powerful literature, The Wizard of Oz continues to enthrall audiences because its plot strikes a nerve in most everyone. The book recounts a journey toward awareness, and, from the beginning of their journey, the story’s main characters gradually learn that they possess the power within themselves to get the results they want.

Through these beloved characters, the authors draw many likenesses between the Land of Oz and today’s challenging workplace. The Oz Principle shows how to create a sense of urgency and accountability for change that unleashes a power that only comes when each employee, at every level, fulfills their obligation and realizes the opportunity to participate in creating solutions.

This engaging book will put a smile on your face, warmth in your heart, and real-life tools and strategies in your hands. No doubt, you’ll be sharing the contents of The Oz Principle with everyone you work with.

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Walk the Talk

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Walk the TalkWalk the Talk … And Get the Results You Want
by Eric Harvey and Alexander Lucia

CAUTION! This is a book you’ll find yourself reading time and time again. It is so captivating that several of our CEO clients have purchased a copy for each of their managers and supervisors. It educates and entertains through the journey of two fictitious characters who reveal the many pitfalls that typically lay hidden from management. Walk the Talk will arm you with the solutions to overcome these barriers.

Walk the Talk has answers to some of the most pressing business challenges facing us today and tomorrow. Everyone from corporate executives to individual contributors will benefit from these results-oriented principles and techniques for building a productive, enjoyable and high-performance culture.

The authors have created an entertaining and practical tool to help you understand the power and simplicity of walking the talk. It’s an invaluable tool for anyone who works with or through other people.

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Monster Under the Bed

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the-monster-under-the-bedThe Monster Under the Bed
by Stan Davis and Jim Botkin

In today’s fast-paced world, knowledge is doubling nearly every seven years, while the life cycle of a business grows increasingly shorter. The best way—and perhaps the only way—to succeed is to become a “knowledge-based” business. In this book, the authors will show you how:

  • Every business can become a knowledge business.
  • Every employee can become a knowledge worker.
  • Every customer can become a lifelong learner.

The Monster Under the Bed explains why it’s necessary for businesses to educate employees and consumers. Consider the fact that the vast majority of 60 million PC owners, for example, learned to use their computers not at school but at work or at home. The authors explain how any high-tech, low-tech, or no-tech company can discover new markets and create new sources of income by building future business on a knowledge-for-profit basis—and how, once it does, its competitors must follow or fail.

Filled with examples of high-profile companies that are riding the crest of this powerful wave, this book is an insightful exploration of the many ways that the knowledge-for-profit revolution will profoundly affect our businesses, our educational processes, and our everyday lives.

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 2.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless … Customer Loyalty Is Priceless!

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customer-satisfaction-is-worthlessCustomer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Them Love You, Keep You Coming Back, and Tell Everyone They Know
by Jeffrey Gitomer

While the title may be shocking at first glance, the concept is indeed profound! It may just be the decisive factor in determining the success of your organization.

Loyal.

All have heard about it, and most have experienced it at one time or another. What a wonderful feeling to have the unconditional love and affection that comes from loyalty. It is the highest form of friendship and the highest form of commitment. Loyal is unyielding, unrelenting, and ever faithful. True to the end.

It is with that understanding that this book is centered. So how do you get to “loyal” in the relationships with your customers? Simple—apply the principles that build loyalty in every other aspect of your life. Believe it or not, there are easy answers, but you have to work hard to achieve mastery of them. This book helps you discover those loyalty answers and the best ways to master them.

This book is an easy read laced with bullet points, lists, examples and stories from the viewpoint of cash-paying customers—some are hilarious—some will make you applaud—some will make you nauseous. All will enlighten and educate you in the fine art of creating customer loyalty. This is a must-read for every member of your organization!

(This book review was originally published in 1999 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 1.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.