Biblio
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(2003). The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work.
"Much of what we call 'project management' stands upon Taylor's flat-earth perspectives. When applied to repeatable manufacturing situations, his primitive notions have great utility. The same ideas fall apart when applied in more human, less mechanical contexts." (p. 7)
(2003). Breathing For A Living.
"A team is a team because of their spirit, not always because they play perfectly together all the time." (p. 189)
(2003). Business Leaders and Success: 55 Top Business Leaders and How They Achieved Greatness.
"Deming's sometimes-gruff nature reflected impatience with managerial abuses of power. He thought that power carried a precious responsibility. 'Research shows', Deming said, 'that the climate of an organization influences an individual's contribution far more than the individual himself.' " (p. 206)
(2003). Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It.
"Organizations that value you only for your business skills—a lot of Wall Street firms fall into this category—are very antiseptic. They tend to be built on addictions, but not loyalties: addictions to the money, addictions to the process. They are a bit like galley ships. The overseers don't care about the relationship. They just want you to keep rowing.
This is fine when times are good, but if you should ever fail to handle your oar well, you are overboard. Such firms will have no compunction about firing you and even ruining your reputation, if it serves their purpose." (p. 54)
(2003). Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You.
"Other people's definitions of us are not just absurd—if unchallenged, they erect prison walls around us. As they rise higher, the light of awareness fades. The world darkens. We lose freedom, safety, confidence, conviction, and sometimes ourselves." (p. 77)
(2003). Developing More Curious Minds.
"[Colleen Rowley replied to the Senate Judiciary Committee], 'I go back to the "don't rock the boat, don't ask a question" problem.' Any question, she said, might be perceived as a 'complaint', or 'as a challenge to somebody higher up and they get mad or whatever' (Excerpts...,2002)." ...
"People who ask 'hard questions' too often have been fired because of their challenges to accustomed ways of thinking and doing business." (p. 6)
"People who ask 'hard questions' too often have been fired because of their challenges to accustomed ways of thinking and doing business." (p. 6)
(2003). The Geek Syndrome.
Flattened workplace hierarchies are more comfortable for those who find it hard to read social cues. A WYSIWYG world, where respect and rewards are based strictly on merit, is an Asperger's dream.
(2003). How to work for an idiot: survive & thrive– without killing your boss.
"The plan I suggest in this chapter is the old 'false identity' ploy. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Or make it appear as if you're joining 'em. Sometimes it's just no use fighting the system. Burn your personal fuel cells on things you have some control over and enjoy. If you're trapped in a culture of idiots with no possibility for improvement in your lifetime, you might as well blend in. Why burn yourself out?" (p. 32)
(2003). I Am Never Lonely: A brief history of employee personality testing.
"This first boom in personality testing reached its apogee with Henry C. Link's Employment Psychology, in 1919, in which he proclaimed:
'The ideal employment method is undoubtedly an immense machine which would receive applicants of all kinds at one end, automatically sort, interview, and record them, and finally turn them out at the other end nicely labeled with the job which they are to do.'
(2003). I Don't Know What I Want, but I Know It's Not This : A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Gratifying Work.
"Being bored or plateaued does not mean that you aren't working hard or that you don't have enough work to do. Being busy and dealing with the excessive stimulation that the workplace provides us with today have little to do with being bored. The combination of the two merely leads to a greater level of burnout." (p. 123)
(2003). In Praise of the Purple Cow.
(2003). Leaders: strategies for taking charge.
"We must learn to perceive power for what it really is. Basically, it's the reciprocal of leadership." (p. 16)
(2003). Sick Caesars - Madness and Malady in Imperial Rome.
"Sick Ceasars is an account, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, of men transformed, and more often deranged, by absolute power." —from the cover jacket
(2003). The Social Psychology of Stigma.
"How do people come to accept their own unjust treatment of the stigmatized? Ideological commitments lead them to self-justification. A justification ideology exempts stigmatized individuals from full moral inclusion, and as a result, the stigma in conjunction with the ideology can lead to rough treatment." (p. 128)
(2003). Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank.
"Institutional rank abuse skews the judgment of management and employees away from organizational goals toward self-aggrandizement in the first case, self-preservation in the latter." (p. 30)
(2003). The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.
"Employers are willing to pay a higher cost for temp laborers because they are disposable. 'We call it pimping people out,' says Suzie Qusenberry, 'because that's really what it is. I'm going to pimp you out for $8 an hour and all you're going to get is $5.35.' They take the money and you do the work. Isn't that just like pimping?'"
(2003). Thoughts without a Thinker : Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective.
"The purpose of life is to be happy....
On its own no amount of technological development can lead to lasting happiness. What is almost always missing is a corresponding inner development." (p. ix, forward by the Dalai Lama)
On its own no amount of technological development can lead to lasting happiness. What is almost always missing is a corresponding inner development." (p. ix, forward by the Dalai Lama)
(2003). Work to Live.
"We fear the silence of time not filled, the questions and self-judgment that may come up when we're not completely consumed with work or other distractions. Yet it's precisely the ability to stop and still your mind long enough to figure out what you need in life and whether your current course is getting you there that allows you to reach your goals. It frees you from the external noise to find out what a meaningful life is for you. Otherwise, you're running blind on somebody else's track, where busyness and productivity substitute for what's missing inside, peace of mind, which can only be generated within that same mind." (p. 141)
(2002). Dealing with people you can't stand: how to bring out the best in people at their worst.
"All of these intents, getting it done, getting it right, getting along, and getting appreciation have their time and place in our lives. Often, keeping them in balance leads to less stress and more success. To get it done, take care to get it done right. If you want it done right, avoid complications by making sure everyone is getting along. For a team effort to succeed, each party much feel valued and appreciated." (p. 19)
(2002). Power freaks: dealing with them in the workplace or anyplace.
"The primitive brain mechanism drives us into creating hierarchies, an essential for primitive tribal organization and survival. It confers on some of us today an innate need to dominate others in situations where we might also understand rationally that cooperation would make better sense than domination." (p. 44)
(2002). Primal leadership: realizing the power of emotional intelligence.
"Leaders often talk about wanting to get their people 'aligned' with their strategy. But that word suggests a mechanical image of getting all the pencils pointing in the same direction, like a magnetic field lining up the polarity of molecules. It isn't that simple. Strategies, couched as they are in the dry language of corporate goals, speak mainly to the rational brain, the neocortex. Strategic visions (and the plans that follow from them) are typically linear and limited, bypassing the elements of heart and passion essential for building commitment." (p. 208)
(2002). Leadership Skills For Managers.
"W. Edwards Deming, one of the founding fathers of the quality movement, asserted that employees are rightfully entitled to the 'pride of workmanship'. Essential to that pride are job security, expectations, clear communications, and the proper tools." (p. 7)
(2002). 21 Dog Years : Doing Time @ Amazon.com.
"When you work in an office everything becomes an abstraction. The higher you travel up the chain, the less actual work is being done, as everyone becomes responsible for overseeing those below them, who are supervising those below them, ad nauseam. In the Vedic tradtion Hindus believe that the world's firmament rests on four elephants, who in turn stand on the back of a turtle. The question always comes: 'What's holding up the turtle?' And the answer is: 'It's turtles all the way down.' Likewise in corporations—it is all turtles, straight to the bottom, and after a while it becomes impossible to feel what is happening at an experiential level. Only lunch meetings persist. Postmodern capitalism." (p. 167)
See also the second chapter titled "Turtles all the way down" in Kantrow. 1
(2002). The Anxious Organization: Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things.
"In organizations where anxiety is often expressed as blame, to avoid being blamed becomes a constant preoccupation. People attempt to preempt blame by sending each other memos recapitulating who did what and when. Their attention shifts from avoiding a potential problem to avoid being blamed for it." (p. 145)
(2002). Breaking Free from Stress: How to Find Peace When Life's Pressures Overwhelm You.
"People fear losing their jobs and worry about their performances. Too many leave their employment feeling drained and used up. Obviously this leaves little to give to others, particularly family." (p. 63)
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