Cool Book Of The Day

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Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Readers who are willing to invest in their own self-development and personal and professional improvement.

Q: What is the book about?
A: The usual will power and discipline strategies people use to overcome procrastination aren’t sustainable; we try them and then beat ourselves up for not making a complete and permanent change. But there’s another set of strategies – for example: You need to drop your goals… right now and get lots more of the right things done. Learn what the heck a hit man has to do with following through, how to stop taking yes for an answer, and how being “normal” is crushing you… and what to do about it.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I’ve helped hundreds of people who have been putting off tasks, goals, and dreams, to achieve them. I’m the author of another book on procrastinaton: Productive Procrastination (Echelon Press, 2007) – and consultant and coach to individuals and organizations, with multiple credentials in my field. I specialize in improving performance and productivity, following through with goals and objectives (the other side of which is procrastination), work/life balance, time and resources mastery, and sustaining effort through challenges. I have internationally recognized programs on time management, getting balanced and organized, saying no, and getting things done. My clients are executives, small business owners, professionals, and corporate organizations like NASA, Sony, Hilton, and Volvo. I was recently quote in TIME magazine as a procrastination “nichepert”.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: Ending Procrastination is much easier than you think…and you’ll be surprised at how you do it! That’s what’s completely different about the system this book is going to teach you. It’s not called radical for nothing! More of what’s in the book:

• The “secret pain” of people who do things immediately – and why you as a procrastinator are better off and much closer to getting things done than you think.
• The story of Jo – whose procrastinating “diversion” from her goals got her exactly what she wanted … and how you can do the same.
• The difference between “want to” and “have to” projects – and how to focus on the right type.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: How many procrastinators does it take to finish a long book on procrastination? None – they’ll finish it next week. That’s why this book is short and sweet, a breezy and entertaining read, printed in easy-to-read font, and will prompt new insights and perspectives on procrastination.

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Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Anybody who works for a living. Its stories support practical principles that can be utilized by managers and their teams and all employees.

Q: What is the book about?
A: Fun Works is about leveraging the “soft science” of organizational development to support and reinforce positive, inspired performance. The book’s powerful perspective concerns the connection between happy, empowered employees, and the cogent and vital principles that underlie how it is successful companies create enthusiastic, passionate, and energized workplaces. The second edition of Fun Works, Creating Places Where People Love to Work, revisits eleven case studies five years after the original research to find that they all have continued to prosper and advance the cause of fun at work. Many of these companies simply out-perform their competition and, nowadays, their high performance cultures exemplify what other companies can do to be more competitive.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I don’t think of myself as the best person to write this book. I’m part of a wide spectrum of people who are researching, theorizing, and developing practical methods for the sake of developing innovative, high performance workplaces. This said, I’m the only one who could write this particular book! I’m passionate about the nature of successful companies and have been investigating the relationship between business success and what I term, ‘bringing the whole person to work and the Fun-Work Fusion,’ ever since I noted, in my consulting, how unhappy and (often) conflict-filled workplaces are immensely counter-productive to achievement and success. This is a book about what I’ve learned and what I understand may help companies be more successful. I’ve revamped what already was the most practical and accessible book on this important topic.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: This second edition represents a deepening and evolution of my research and findings. It struck me that the original emphasis on a variety of positive principles and practices coheres into a soft and human science of workplace development. I’ve centered the revision around the idea that real organizational synergy requires just as much attention to the soft science as it does to the ‘hard,’ usually quantitative, conventions of management science. Fun Works, Creating Places Where People Love to Work, is different because it both tightly argues for its research findings while, at the same time, it provides simple and accessible practices that can be tried out and put to the test in any business. I don’t know of another book that puts it all together in one place like Fun Works does!

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: When Fun Works first was released it was among a handful of books about viewing employees as whole persons rather than cogs in a hard science driven machine. The global business space is more competitive today, and the cost of finding and hiring personnel has grown. Some companies will churn through employees at great expense and do so in an unforgiving and uncaring manner. But, because anybody who works would rather wake up and run to work rather than drag themselves out of bed and slink off to an unpleasant workplace, it is my mission to point out what successful companies do to inspire people to love to come to work. The Fun Works page on my web site contains an excerpt, comments, and links to what others have said about the book.

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MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves that Drive Exceptional Business Growth

Dan Janal: I loved reading this book. Each page had an example of a tactic or strategy that could change your business for the better. Everyone talks about going outside the box. This book is your road map for charting that territory!

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Executives in companies looking for new growth vehicles

Q: What is the book about?
A: The book is about how companies, even in tough industries (think cement) or industries that are written off as hopelessly mature (think plastic packaging) or industries where it looks as if everything that can be done has been done (think auto insurance) can nonetheless discover fantastic vehicles for growth. The book looks at successful and unsuccessful attempts, then creates five ‘lenses’ that the reader can use as tools to help them find their own pathways to growth.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: Because I’m a growth and innovation junkie! More seriously, what we bring to bear is both a fascination with the real phenomenon and the discipline that comes from serious social-science training (my Ph.D. is from the Wharton School).

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: Firstly, we don’t just take examples of success and report on those – we look at the failures, too, so you won’t be getting the bias that often comes into stories where only the successes are evaluated. Secondly, we tell you exactly what to do to apply the approach for real. No waving our hands around and saying “oh, now you change the temperature of the sea”. Thirdly, we provide tons of real-life carefully researched examples, many of which can provide inspiration to you. Lastly, the book is meant to be used, so we don’t care if you start with chapter 5 and only get to the rest later. We want it to work for you. And it has, as our success in many workshops has proven.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: We had enormous fun researching and writing it, and I think that comes through on the page. It also has a web site (MarketBusting.com) with an author’s blog and many additional tools and cases you can download.

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Weirdos in the Workplace! The New Normal…Thriving in the Age of the Individual by John Putzier

Question: Who is the audience for this book?
Answer: Business owners, managers and human resource professionals (and workers who are interested in the manifestation of individuality).

Here are excerpts from an interview with John Putzier:

Individuality’s place in the enterprise is underrated, and teamwork can be overrated. Having a few weirdos on staff can be a good thing as long as they contribute value, said John Putzier, president of FirStep Inc., a human resource performance improvement and consulting company based in Prospect, Pa., and author of “Weirdos in the Workplace: The New Normal—Thriving in the Age of the Individual.”

In his recently released second book, Putzier discusses a politically incorrect attitude that companies such as Google, Starbucks and Ben & Jerry’s have adopted in order to stay on top of their respective industries: encouraging individuality, discriminating against employees and negating the idea of equal treatment.

“You can predict what’s going to happen in the workplace if you follow societal trends,” Putzier said. “Society is in the Age of the Individual. In the ’50s and ’60s, the Age of the Organization Man, white men dominated the world and the workplace. In the ’70s and ’80s, the Age of Diversity, the civil rights act of 1964 was passed, and an avalanche of legislation followed for equal opportunity, contributing to the entry of women and minorities into the workplace. The ’90s, the Age of the New Economy, ushered in a new way of doing things. If you had something to offer, you could almost not fail.

The concept of diversity became a non-issue because there was such a shortage of talent that companies suddenly didn’t care if you were purple with two heads if you could write code, sell or whatever it is that they hired you to do.”

He explained, “The expectations of the ’90s didn’t go away—just the reality of that economy went away, and now we’ve got all of these individuals, not just African-Americans and women and Asians and everything else, all wanting to excel, and we don’t live in a collective society. We’re a collection of individuals, and if you look at the media and you look at athletics and politics and who we celebrate, we are rewarding individuality not collectivism. We have a whole bunch of people out there wanting to be individuals and to be successful, and this is creating quite a challenge for organizations because not everyone is exceptional.”

If not everyone can be exceptional; it stands to reason that all workers are not created equal. Putzier said that one of his most frustrating work challenges is how to get organizations to understand that discrimination is not a bad thing. “The word discrimination has gotten a bad rap, particularly from the Age of Diversity when it was shoved down organizations’ throats, and we tried to make numbers,” Putzier said. “Everybody thinks that if you do’t treat everyone exactly the same, then you’re discriminating. You are not. In fact, if you don’t discriminate you cannot possibly be an effective leader or manager. When I say ‘discriminate,’ I mean discriminate on the basis of performance and value and the things that we did in the ’90s, which worked. We didn’t care what you looked like necessarily or what your personal life was like; we just wanted your talent. That concept needs to continue because then diversity becomes a non-issue. We move into what’s called meritocracy, in which you succeed or fail based on your own merit, which is the way it should be.”

In the Age of the Individual, if you want to be recognized and rewarded for your individuality, then you must contribute value. Organizations need to know when and how to discriminate based on the value an individual brings to the organization, said Putzier.

“I have a thing called the ‘Weird/Worth ratio,’ which essentially says the more you’re worth, the more you can be weird. You don’t have to like it or agree with it. It’s just reality. In our society in particular, we reward things that might be out of whack. If the workplace reflects society, as an individual you’ve got to make yourself worth more. The organization must be able to make the distinctions between which employees and individuals bring value and treat them differently. Individuals must be responsible for maximizing their own personal worth by finding their calling in life. In the book it’s called, ‘AIM to be weird.’ AIM is an acronym for abilities, interests and the market, which means that if you or I can find that thing that we do really well, that we really love to do and that the world will pay us for, then we’re in utopia. It’s no longer work—it’s a calling. You can get away with a lot more in terms of weirdness when you bring a bunch of value.”

That’s where the discrimination comes in. Putzier uses case studies to further illustrate the Weird/Worth ratio. For instance, Blue Suit Bob (BSB) wears the same blue suit to work every single day. Finally, he’s called in to the head office and asked, why doesn’t he buy another suit? He makes enough money to afford one. BSB replies that he does have more than one suit: he has five, and they’re all blue. Circadian Charlie has numerous patents to his credit, but doesn’t like to come to work in the morning because his creative process starts at 3 a.m.

“The bottom line is this guy has brought so much value to the organization, you should accommodate that weirdness,” Putzier said. “You don’t have to let everybody not come to work in the morning. When they have 15 patents, they can come talk to you about coming in late, too.”

The ratio holds four categories of weird and worth: terminate, tolerate, accommodate and celebrate. If an employee does not bring value to an organization, weird or not, that person should be terminated.

“Then you’ve got the ones that you tolerate. Some people are just weird, but they don’t do any harm. They don’t have to be geniuses. They can be good, hardworking, dedicated and well-intentioned, but maybe they just get on your nerves. They have weird habits or eccentricities like Blue Suit Bob,” Putzier said. “Bottom line, get over it. Tolerate it.”

Organizations should accommodate weird employees like Circadian Charlie with his multiple patents, high levels of productivity and contributed value. Organizations should celebrate normal, low-maintenance employees who exhibit genius and have a lot to offer, though they are rare. Geniuses, on the other hand, tend to be a little wacko.

“Part of the reason is because they’re oblivious,” Putzier said. “(Geniuses) do what they do best, and the world be damned. They don’t care if they’re liked or if you think they look weird. This type is also high in self efficacy; they feel they have control over their world. They grab the bull by the horns and take control because they feel like they should have control. They’re good at what they do and can afford to be weird. You can hire all kinds of losers who are easy to manage. If all you want are people who are easy to mange, then just hire warm bodies. Geniuses and high performers can be very difficult to manage and to deal with.”

Q: What else should we know about this book?
A: “Weirdos in the Workplace” has flow charts to help organizations analyze behavioral issues to determine how to discriminate. One is called the Behavioral Change Map, which encourages you first to ask the question: Is it really a problem? Then, do a cost-benefit analysis of the behavioral challenge, which is typically a motivation or skill issue.

“They either can’t do it, or they don’t want to do it,” said Putzier. “It may sound simplistic, but it really is that simple when you get down to it. There are two of these flow charts in the book to help you analyze individual change as well as organizational change. There are also tools in there to help you identify your AIM, abilities, interests and the market, so that you can be a weirdo of worth yourself.”

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: Because I did! Ha! 30+ years in HR, Bachelors and Masters in Organizational Behavior and HR, SPHR lifetime certification, former member of adjunct faculty at Carnegie Mellon University Graduate School, Past President of Society for Human Resource Management High Tech Net, former Board of Directors At-Large of Pittsburgh Human Resources Association, Judge for People Do Matter Awards.