Customer Reviews

Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Though this book has some decent information, most everything contained within is so simple that it should be obvious to anyone that has spent anytime in management. The material is perhaps better suited as an introduction to management in a high school class or 101 college course. It teaches you to motivate through trust, not fear. It teaches that positive reinforcement works better than being negative or overbearing. Got it, check. I was hoping to get new ideas from this book - perhaps a way to motivate employees that wasn't obvious. Unfortunately, this book simply re-states what good managers should really already know.

Let me stress that I think the message and idea behind this book is a great one. Learn how to treat your employees and make them excited about coming in to work. Once they're there, lead them to apply all of their effort to the job they do. However, I just think this book presents the actual methods of achieving this in all too simplistic a nature.

It seems this book, and many just like it, was banged out by a PhD that applies basic psychology to the workplace without having spent any time actually working in the environments they wish to help you improve. I not only want to know why... I want to know how. Tell me how it worked in your workplace. Give me real world examples, not just basic pie in the sky ideas.

Overall, this is a great idea for a book that ultimately falls short on delivery.

This book is Management 101, Light. The basic premise is a critical one for anyone in a management position: "paying positive attention to the people who work for you has a DOMINANT impact on their productivity." This is a message every manager needs to understand and internalize.

While the authors add a number of sidebars and references to studies that support their points, the main portion of the book explores this fundamental concept told as parable, and this is where the message weakens. The story of Nancy Kim and her "turnaround" of the fictitious "BizTrenz" is told in such a Pollyanna fashion as to risk alienating readers. The airline Nancy and her cohort visit is a thinly disguised Southwest Airlines, and the overnight transformation of J.T. from an S.O.B. who couldn't see his employees as anything but numbers to "Supportive Boss of the Year" is less than believable. Nevertheless, if you can get around these negatives, this book is a worthwhile and quick read for a busy executive.

Consider "Instant Turnaround" an appetizer. For those wanting more "meat", read "Nuts" by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, for a look at the management practices at Southwest Airlines and consider "The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent and Accelerate Performance" for a more in-depth discussion of this topic.

"Instant Turnaround" employs the popular format of storytelling to teach a management lesson, like "Fish" or "Who Moved My Cheese." A fast good read that you can get some benefit out of. However, if you're looking for the magic bullet to the eternal challenge of getting people to do what they were hired to do - especially in our current economy - you'll be disappointed.

The major problem with all of these type of books is their over simplification of the issue - along with their implication that accomplishing their outcome (here being turnaround and employee job satisfaction) is easy. Balancing the often conflicting pressures of people and the business (numbers, profits, stock equity, etc) is challenging, much more difficult than this book admits. Not a serious business or leadership book, but an enjoyable read that will remind you of many fundamentals.

There are summary points after every chapter, along with a chapter that clearly outlines the steps and behaviors to turn work into a exciting place that employees look forward to coming to

Goal: to turn work into a destination - a place that employees are excited about coming to every day.

Step 1: Focus on people as well as performance numbers
Step 2: You bring out the best in people by motivating with trust instead of fear
Step 3: Turn work into fun.
Step 4: Senior management must execute Destination: work with frontline employees.

Some key behaviors are:
- Be nice because you care, not because you want something
- Don't come across as someone who superior, instead reach out and embrace employees as equals
- Thank people in ways that are meaningful to them
- Regularly circulate among employees, letting them get to know you while listening and getting their opinions on things which you act upon when appropriate
- Smile and do things that brightens each person's day.

Mr. Tamayo summarized the positive elements of "Instant Turnaround" the best: this book is "a simple, effective way for every manager to create a work environment of genuine care, where people willfully choose and act toward getting desired results. For the new supervisor or manager, this superbly written parable provides a good foundation from which to lead others. For the experienced middle manager and executive leader, a 90-minute investment of reading time is enough to remember and acknowledge that the key to inspiring others to do their best lies in satisfying their needs first."

The best use of this book may be to let grumpy front-line managers read it so that you can set your expectations with them.

Remember back when you were a little kid, probably around kindergarten age, and your Mama said, "Be Nice. Nobody likes a bully." Later on, Mama or Grammy said things like "You can always find the best in people if you just look." Finally, you might have heard, "You can catch more flies with sugar than you can with vinegar!"

(Then again, maybe it's only my immigrant mother and foreign grandparents who talked like that)

In a nutshell, "Be Nice" is the entire lesson that this book teaches. It takes what you learned in preschool or kindergarten and dumbs it down to a level that even a CEO could understand. It also gives them a nice smack upside the head with the only thing that will get their attention: money.

_Instant Turnaround_ is as plain as that: Be Nice to people and you will get more money. Sounds simple, huh? Well, from the horror stories I've read from people living all over the US and Canada, most upper level executives missed the lesson the day it was covered in school. This book helps them pick up where they should have been all along. It uses the story of a fictional HR manager at a magazine who is challenged by her boss to find a new way of managing people that will earn him more money. Oh So Coincidentially, Ms. HR person is a widow who just happened to go out with the current head of the most profitable airline in the US, a man who just happens to use the "Be Nice" method of management. Except they call it "Destination: Work."

The story then follows the HR person as she attempts to bring niceness into her workplace. I won't give away the ending of course, but they all lived happily ever after.

I gave the book four stars because it does work. Be nice to people and they will do more for you. But I had a few serious misgivings: the book is written at about an eighth grade level, from what I can see; it has great big type that I could read across the room, and the story was very, very predictable.

Even so, if you have the guts, it would be the perfect gift to give to the grumpiest CEO you know. Hey, it could work... right? (But be smart - make it an anonymous gift)

Instant Turnaround: Getting People Excited about Coming to Work and Working Hard
By Harry Paul and Ross Reck. William Morrow, $22.99

If you're looking for a revolutionary, enlightening, or fanciful solution to the age-old challenge of getting people to do what they were hired to do--especially in our current economy--it's not here.

But, what is here is golden: a simple, effective way for every manager to create a work environment of genuine care, where people willfully choose and act toward getting desired results. For the new supervisor or manager, this superbly written parable provides a good foundation from which to lead others. For the experienced middle manager and executive leader, a 90-minute investment of reading time is enough to remember and acknowledge that the key to inspiring others to do their best lies in satisfying their needs first.

Authors Paul and Reck use the challenges faced by an HR director at a struggling publishing company to present their four principles to turning around any organization. Helped by an entrepreneur, the director applies the principles to get immediate and remarkably positive results, to the amazement of her numbers-driven CEO. Key points and examples are interspersed through out the story to reinforce learning and encourage application.

Could practicing the four principles really lead to an instant turnaround in a struggling, disillusioned organization? Could it get people to reenergize and commit to their job, their goals, their manager and the company? Will it work in any industry? If managers, especially executive leaders, genuinely tried to work with others using these four principles--then an instant turnaround is likely. There's nothing fancy about it. It's not new, and it's not complicated. But, it's presented in a way that most people will understand and attempt to use.

I imagine the conversation between Harry Paul and Ross Reck about how to write this book went something like this:

Hey, I bet we can we can take this idea and use it write a book.

Really? Isn't this a little light for a book?

Heck, no, the publisher can use a small book design with larger text, tighter margins and nuggets at the end of each chapter.

Nuggets?

You know, bullets that summarize the key points of each chapter. Throw in some lightning bolts and some large boxes with key steps, like "Motivate with trust instead of fear." We can slap together 10 chapters in no time at all.

Do we really have to tell people that? It sounds, well, I'm still not sure we can build an entire book from...

I tell you what. I'll make sure they print "From the Co-Author of Fish" on the cover.

Do you mean like a sequel?

No, just namedropping for sales; of course it would have to go above the book's title.

OK, sounds good to me.

-------------------

Whereas the world of real estate lives and dies by the golden rule, "location, location, location", management and business leadership books are dependent on another axiom: "timing is everything".

The book opens by citing the success of the New York Giants and, specifically, coach Tom Coughlin, in defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. Since that "achievement" in 2008 (most NFL fans would refer to it as the biggest upset in Super Bowl history or, rather, a fluke), the New York Giants have personified bad management. In fact, the Giants haven't won a playoff game since, finishing 8-8 this season and missing the playoffs altogether.

Yes, timing is everything.

This book only needs a few tweaks to become a satire of the entire industry of management and business leadership books. "Captain Obvious" was an author's moniker that kept rolling off my tongue as I sped through the 158-page book (a 20-page idea run through a taffy puller and replete with contact information for speaking engagements and consulting services).

In summary, if you are already in management and find tips like "regularly circulate among your employees" and "take action when appropriate" to be fresh enough to consider buying this book, perhaps you aren't cut out for management in the first place.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars.

The Theory X/Theory Y management battle rages on, long after one presumes it would have been settled in favor of the latter.

Management by fear (Theory X) has been fully discredited in most industries and vocations, but apparently it's popular enough to require special business books urging managers to do something quite simple if they want to realize instant gains in productivity: be nice to your employees.

Yet what do many companies do when times get tough?

Can a whole bunch of "valued" employees.

Predictably, the productivity gains expected to be realized by such draconian actions never really materialize.

The reason is simple: nothing confirms the dim view management takes of employees more quickly than sending their friends and colleagues home with a cardboard box of their belongings.

"Instant Turnaround" takes this simple truth---the nicer you are to your employees, the harder they will work for you---and presents a very simple way to test it out yourself.

Highly recommended for new managers or as a "gift" left like a hand grenade in the dead of night on awful managers who have a prayer of changing their ways.

Instant Turnaround is one of a current generation of "fast read" business management books. I read it in two settings, but could have easily done so in one.

The book is about tapping the "discretionary" work available in the work unit, by means of helping the employee feel good about their work environment. It contains a few fact-based scenarios with references to successful companies, but in the most part is a storybook narrative. The style of writing is so simple as to be annoying at times- but then again, if the book required a lot of effort, most business people wouldn't take the time to read it.

So, is it any good?

I personally believe and accept the premise of the book. In my organization I have always tried to follow the managment/ leadership philosophy it expouses. I found it a good reminder of some things that I have let slide a bit and all in all a positive read. To me this makes it an excellent book and an effective counter to the management styles that were popular when I was starting out.

It does over simplify things. Its hard to be a well loved boss when you have to lay people off or exercise discipline to stop bad behavior- but all in all I would recommend it to anyone in a supervisory position as an easy quick read. Those who in the end didn't like book or its premise, I would worry about.

This is a nice, quick (about 90 minutes, tops) read, and I would hate to discourage anyone from reading it since the message it presents is so important, and it needs to be heard. That said, the book probably does more to hurt the central theme (to get the most out of employees, treat them with respect, and motivate them with trust instead of fear) by oversimplifying it to the point where it can easily (and incorrectly) be dismissed as clearly impractical.

While one can't easily fault the logic that employees when treated with respect will, all else being equal, perform better, one can easily find fault with the notion that that's all there is to management, which is the oversimplification the book puts forth. It also makes some other minor errors such as "motivation by trust" - trust is not a motivator. In an environment of trust, and shared concern, one can get employees to collaboratively build business goals that they then are motivated to achieve. In terms of how to create motivation and trust, I highly recommend Open-Book Management: Coming Business Revolution, The.

Another problem with this book is inconsistency with regard to the effects of poor environments on employees. In the beginning of the book, it implies that companies that do not treat employees well will lose their best employees because those typically have the most self respect, and the most opportunities to leave. That is true. But then the book contradicts this when it says that the worst performing department can become "nearly perfect" in one quarter. The type of employee who would have been left in that department, while capable of some improvement, would not have been able to become exceptional without some staff changes, and more time.

It is also very out of touch with many of today's businesses which rely on information workers. The book implies that the "frontline employees" are all doing just manual labor, and suggests that management spend time doing these tasks to show they are just like the frontline employees. Today, many frontline employees are in areas such as IT, analytics, marketing, finance, etc., making many managers and executives incompetent to do these tasks.

It is a shame that so many management books are written by PhDs who never spend a day in a typical environment they write about.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the well woven story revolving around the fictional Biz Trendz magazine and ValueFirst Airlines, and the process of getting people more energized and productive, there is one small problem. INSTANT TURNAROUND: GETTING PEOPLE EXCITED ABOUT COMING TO WORK AND WORKING HARD, by Harry Paul and Ross Reck, may give some readers a very unrealistic view. I wish it were only as simple as the co-authors make it sound.

Although I firmly believe in treating employees with dignity and respect, giving prompt praise and recognition along with reward, and having topline people far more involved with frontline people than is commonly found, reality rears it's ugly head. Now, before I give anyone the wrong impression about this book, I want to stress, I firmly believe in the principles touted here and I do highly recommend this book. It is a very enjoyable read.

It's just not as simple as the authors make it appear. In my experience, doing exactely what is proposed here will have positive results much of the time. What this book teaches is very close to how I have always tried to lead, but don't think there will never be anyone who will try to take every advantage of your kindness and fair treatment. What I want to say is, I think most people will tell you I am an excellent person to work for. Many will tell you I am the best boss they ever had. But that doesn't mean for one minute that I haven't had to also deal with people who were lazy or dishonest or who had no compunction whatsoever about stealing from me. My point being, by all means, treat people well, but don't expect miracles.

Also, don't expect to get the kind of almost instant buy in illustrated here. If only it were that simple.