Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers [Hardcover]

Stan Slap (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2010

#3 New York Times Advice/How-To Bestseller #7 Wall Street Journal Nonfiction Bestseller

"This book is game changing in a way I have never seen in a business book. I learned about myself and gained new insights into the work I've been doing for thirty years. It is a spectacular read."
– John Riccitiello, CEO, Electronic Arts

This is not a management book. This is a book for managers.

Ever have the feeling that no matter how rewarding your job is that there's an entirely different level of success and fulfillment available to you? Lingering in the mist, just out of reach…
There is, and Stan Slap is going to help you get it.
You hold in your hands the book that entirely redraws the potential of being a manager. It will show you how to gain the one competency most critical to achieving business impact, but it won't stop there. This book will put a whole new level of meaning into your job description.

You Will Never Really Work for Your Company Until Your Company Really Works for You

Bury My Heart at Conference Room B is about igniting the massive power of any manager's emotional commitment to his or her company-worth more than financial, intellectual and physical commitment combined. Sometimes companies get this from their managers in the early garage days or in times of tremendous gain, but it's almost unheard of to get it on a sustained, self-reinforced basis.
Of course your company is only going to get it if you're willing to give it. Slap proves that emotional commitment comes from the ability to live your deepest personal values at work and then provides a remarkable process that allows you to use your own values to achieve tremendous success.

This is not soft stuff; it is the stuff of hard-core results.

Bury My Heart at Conference Room B is the highest-rated management development solution at a number of the world's highest-rated companies—companies that don't include "patience" on their list of corporate values. It has been exhaustively researched and bench tested with tens of thousands of real managers in more than seventy countries. You'll hear directly from managers about how this legendary method has transformed their careers and their lives.

As Big as It Gets Stan Slap is doing nothing less than making the business case for a manager's humanity-for every manager and the companies that depend on them. Bury My Heart at Conference Room B gives managers the urgency to change their world and the energy to do it. It will stir the soul, race the heart, and throb the foot used for acceleration.

Buckle Up. We're Going Off-Road. Slap is smart, provocative, wickedly funny and heartfelt. He fearlessly takes on some of the most cherished myths of management for the illogic they are and celebrates the experience of being a manager in all of its potential and potential weirdness. And he talks to managers like they really talk to themselves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"There is more mythology, misdirection, superstition, and generalized academic babble about leadership than any other business subject," says management consultant Slap in this must-read for anyone who cares about organizational success. Slap shares the techniques he's used over several decades to transform the performance of some of the world's leading companies, quickly cutting to the chase with irreverence as he emphasizes drawing deep loyalty and vital energy from every rank in the workforce and allowing "each manager to work according to their individual values." Drawing on his successful engagements at such companies as Microsoft and software company, SAS, which has a culture so compelling and attractive that last year "they had 23 job vacancies and received 23,760 applications," he illustrates his points powerfully and persuasively. If Slap's discussion grows repetitive and drags on a few chapters too many, the strong kickoff and exploration of individual values makes for a provocative read sure to appeal to managers who want to connect with their employees in a fresh, meaningful, and lasting way.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The notion that values matter––in the workplace as well as at home––is certainly not new to the ranks of management gurus and corporate leaders. What is novel in consultant Slap’s first book is his passion for the subject, which bleeds from every page, and his easy-to-use framework for identifying and promoting values throughout the business world. Setting the stage, first, involves explaining the business case for values: why everyone must live his or her personal values in the workplace and which companies adhere to that philosophy. In sidebars, Slap tells the stories of EMC, HP, Rhino Records, SAS, Quad/Graphics, and others that showcase the bottom-line impact of managerial emotional commitment. Next, then, are the value exercises: the list and definition of 50 values and the winnowing to 10, 5, and, finally, 3. As to be expected, the author leads us to organizational implementation, focusing on the selling of values to staff and, ultimately, to the C-suite. In a passion-infused narrative, Slap gives every manager the tools to change. Now, if it will only stick! --Barbara Jacobs

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (August 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591843243
• ISBN-13: 978-1591843245
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How do you put a price on the value this book delivers?, January 8, 2011

By 

steven pierce - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers (Hardcover)

A number of the reviews of Bury My Heart at Conference Room B reference

having experienced it as a solution delivered within their company, which

the author states was used to test the book's central premise and gather

deep input from managers around the world before he wrote the book.

I am one of those managers whose career and life have been impacted by this process.

I was amazed that such an intense and individualized experience could be translated into a general

read. I don't know how he did it.

I still have my copy of the shorter "workbook" from that session all these years

later -- well thumbed and annotated. After reading the review complaining that

the content is identical to the workbook I compared the two. They are

sitting side by side as I write this and, as a rough estimate, I find that

about 65% of the book content is completely new or significantly reframed.

There is new documentation of results; interviews, case studies and stories;

tools for discovering personal values; applications for resolving management

issues and implementing the process within my own team, with my own manager

and company-wide; applications for use at home with my partner, children and

friends; a great chapter on how the brain works when deciding to commit; the

framing of the issue as a larger business concern and detailed research

notes. All of this is original to the book and even the central values

reduction exercise has been expanded.

As an Amazon customer and a regular purchaser of business books. I

don't recall ever seeing such a gap between reviews. Most of the reader

reviews for Bury My Heart at Conference Room B are detailed five-star

commentaries and testimonials of results yet oddly there is a column of

one-star reviews. These opinions should be respected but personally I find it fascinating

that the one-star reviews rarely address the central premise of the book: are we, as managers, living our own

deep values at work and is this affecting our emotional commitment to the

enterprise and our own success and fulfillment? That is the critical issue

this book confronts and confronts extraordinarily well: passionate,

engaging, tactical, well researched and documented. I thought it a stunning

read and will unhesitatingly recommend it to others.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!!, September 28, 2010

By 

Andy W. Neillie "Dr. Andy" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers (Kindle Edition)

This book captures what so many hearts struggle to express. I know this content can have a profound impact on the leadership ethos of large corporations, but I've also been challenged to bring it to life in the small space I inhabit. Putting family and integrity at the top of the list with my clients, employees, family and friends is a tough challenge. I've been rejuvenated to keep on trying by this pragmatic, sarcastic, bad boy/good guy book.

Rare is a book that is both inspirational and practical. This one is. It goes on my leadership shelf next to The Power Principle, Principle-Centered Leadership, A Leader's Legacy and The Making of A Leader. Select company. Well-deserved.

Thanks, Stan.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Want get your people more engaged? Get this, Plug In and Go!, August 18, 2010

By 

Phillip Crockford - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers (Hardcover)

Within hours of its arrival, this book was immediately and directly useful to me. Really. As a management consultant specializing in coaching executive teams, I am continually dealing with the consequences of the background mood of resignation that pervades so many enterprises; too many talented people living inside a story that nothing they say or do will really make any difference.

Here's what worked for me: before and during my last three client engagements, I flipped open Stan Slap's book at random, and read a paragraph or two. The subsequent short reflection instantly connected my heart, mind and body with my reason for being there. My game lifted immediately. And so did that of my clients. In my library I have some great books about various aspects of improving and transforming business, but none of them come close to offering that kind of rapidly accessible inspiration.

Bury My Heart at Conference Room B has the kind of authenticity that can only come from working with directly with hundreds, if not thousands of people. Personally, I'm a little over the pseudo academic research approach that is so popular in contemporary management literature. Slap's polemic style has an urgency that is more appropriate to the subject matter. He doesn't hide his passion in this relentless riff on what he calls emotional commitment. At the same time, for me he really delivers the goods by laying out a practical, adaptable plan, while his real life examples impart the grounded confidence to turn insight into action.

In his hip, conversational, seminar leader tone, that is at once irreverent and sincere, Slap lays out his method for aligning personal and organizational values. He does it in bite-sized pieces that are perfectly chunked for busy managers (which has given me confidence to recommend it to my clients).

I found some of the book's chapter and section headings a bit too clever for my taste: "Wallet. Heart. Keys" and "The Dream Denied" didn't tell me much, and thus hindered the kind of casual, diagonal first reading that many busy people like me prefer and enjoy. Nevertheless the book has a solid logic to its unfolding. Slap spices the journey with punchy anecdotes; and includes scores of absorbing snippets in a quirkily attractive "research notes" section at the back.

If you are looking for (yet another) thoughtful analysis, in-depth treatment, with a fresh and well-structured approach, case studies and novel ideas for addressing the "perennial challenge" of motivation and engagement, don't buy this book. If, on the other hand, you want an actionable and versatile way to engage your people with their work for all the right reasons, and to connect their work and life as never before, Bury My Heart at Conference Room B is not only compelling reading, it will get you into action.

Finally, if you want a book you can hang out with long-term, that when you pick it up you can absolutely count on it to remind you, time and again, why you are REALLY here in your work, then don't miss this one.