Customer Reviews

The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I knew that the organization I work for was stuck in the stone-age (Dismal Leaders). Then Something amazing happened. Upper management decided we needed a change. Due to my backround in Teambuilding, I was asked to Champion the change for the future. I decided to utilize most of the things I learned from reading this insightful book. The results to this point have been outstanding. People are beginning to come out of their shells and be creative again. Barriers are slowly coming down throughout the organization. Real Work is getting done through cross-funtional teams of people who care about customer satisfaction. We have a long way to go, but as long as management sticks to their word, change will happen. This book is a useful tool for that transformation.Everyone who is in a management position should read this book and learn what it's like to truely lead your fellow workers. I also recommend the Team Handbook.

Scholtes expects to shock people right from the first page of his Preface. Let me quote extensively:
"More than 95 percent of your organization's problems derive from your systems, processes, and methods, not from your individual workers....

We look to the heroic efforts of outstanding individuals for our successful work. Instead we must create systems that routinely allow excellent work to result from the ordinary efforts of ordinary people.

Changing the system will change what people do. Changing what people do will not change the system.

Certain common management approaches--management by objectives, performance appraisal, merit pay, pay for performance, and ISO 9000--represent not leadership but the abdication of leadership.

Current buzzwords like empowerment, accountability, and high performance are meaningless, empty babble..." (ix-x)

The old organizations's leaders need: forcefulness, ability to motivate and inspire, decisiveness, willfulness, assertiveness, result- and bottom-line orientation, being task-oriented and having integrity and diplomacy.

Scholtes' new leadership competencies (much influenced by Edward Deming's ideas...) are based on a new mentality and understanding of: systems thinking, variability of work, how we learn, psychology and human behavior, interactions of these components, and vision, meaning, direction and focus.

The bulk of the book gives clear elaborations of these new competencies, with charts, illustrations, pertinent questions and many tools. Ch. 4 on "Getting the Daily Work Done" is a tough one, partly because it takes much effort to grasp the author's use of a Japanese term, "Gemba" (even when I can read the original Chinese characters). Issues of waste, standardization, change versus improvement, performance without appraisal, use of measurement data... are all seen in the new light of systems thinking.

Carefully study the differences between "Crazymakers" and "Healing and Learning" in the workplace (pp378-387). There is a summary of the book under "The 47 Habits of Pretty Good Leaders" (pp391-6). Peter Senge's books give excellent background material. This one is a real handbook that should be methodically studied, discussed, adapted and applied to one's own institutions. One must not forget the advice given in Chapter 1: "leaders must be patient with themselves and others, persistent, and humble, and allow themselves and others to be inelegant." (p12,p391)

This is a very good book that I would recommend to any manager. I also think many employees would learn a lot from reading this book as well. So why just three stars?

The main reason is because the book talks very little in the way of leadership or inspiring your people. This is a book primarily focused on process and quality improvement, but learning about leadership and inspiring my employees is the reason I bought this book. To me, the difference between a manager and a leader is that the successful manager gets his people to do what needs to be done. A successful leader gets his people to *want* to do what needs to be done. There was a lot more information on that topics in The Team Handbook, which Scholtes co-wrote.

The truth is that I think this is a very good book, and I'd gladly give it four stars if the title was more descriptive of the book's content. What I like most about this book is the way Scholter walks the reader through the thought process of analyzing an existing process and finding ways to improve it. He bases many of his principles from Deming's work on quality improvement and, not surprisingly, many of his examples are from Japanese companies. Many of his ideas transfer easily to the American workforce, but I'm not convinced that all of them would be so effective outside of Japan, due to the cultural differences between the two workforces.

Amazon has enabled Search Inside This Book, so I would encourage anybody thinking about purchasing this book to take a peek and see the topics that Scholter covers. Flip through the Surprise Me feature and you'll likely see some of the many charts and diagrams that Scholter uses to great effect to show the reader a process, or give them a tool to analyze their own processes.

The only area that didn't sit well with me is Chapter 9, Performance without Appraisal. In this chapter it appears as though Scholtes' premise is that workers belong to McGregor's Theory X camp. While some are, the overly simplistic approach that assumes all are makes this chapter very frustrating to read. He spends a lot of time highlighting the fault of performance management, but he provides very little insight how to do it another way.

The net is that this is a very informative book presented in a very clear manner that can provide benefit for almost every manager. The title is a little misleading, so make sure you flip through the book before buying it.

I submit this is the single best book on leadership ever written, and I've read hundreds. It is comprehensive AND practical. It's a complete system of leadership and management with useful tools on every page. You can read it from cover to cover, or dip in when you need it by using the excellent index. Powerful. Sensible. Useful. Peter Scholtes is incredibly insightful and funny. I get no money for saying that!

To all those who want to have a business, read this book. At first I hated Peter Scholtes method, but then I grew to love it. It is very similar in the methodology of Steven Covey that at first it is annoying because it is right, but then you realize use it because it is right.

Scholtes make the terms of business easy to understand. There are no complex terms. It is just straight talk that is fairly fascinating.

I especially liked his talk on presenting data. Its not complex graphs or mathematical concepts, its just straightforward presentation. Look for some data from the Napoleonic wars.

Anyway, a good read. No matter what.

As a performance improvement specialist for over 25 yrs, I am always on the look out for good resources that those I work with can use day to day to help them do what they know they should, what they dream of doing, and what their mission, vision, values call them to do. The problem is that many books contain "needle in a haystack" pearls of wisdom that take so long to discover that people give up on finding them. THE LEADER'S HANDBOOK is NOT like that. Each easy-to-read, well organized section contains tons of practice, roll up your sleeves and do this kind of advice. Additionally there are tons of tips and traps for today's busy leaders. This is NOT a book that will gather dust bunnies on a leader's bookshelf. It will be read, used, referred to, and shared. I have used this book to train, mentor, and coach leaders at all levels in engineering, transportation, healthcare, biotech, federal and state government, the military, and non-profit groups. It has always been well received and I have had several calls/emails back from those I recommended this book to that said, "Where was this book when I first started leading/managing? It is fantastic!"

So, do yourself and your leadership teams a favor. Buy this book.

Although the author is more than qualified the book is awkward to read and at times large sections are so disagreeable. He is very judgmental and acts that his word is gold despite many contradictory scholars against him. I am okay with the mixed information but the lack of acceptance that it may not be perfect for every situation is just annoying. I will never read this again or recommend it to others, it is not a total waste of time but there are better books out there (Senge, Covey)

Peter R. Scholtes claims that Knute Rockne's classic "Win one for the Gipper" speech had nothing to do with Notre Dame's victory over Army in 1928. What blasphemy! Instead, Scholtes says, Notre Dame won because of its superior "training, conditioning and coaching" - its unbeatable system. Throughout this outstanding business management book, Scholtes insists on the superiority of such team-driven systems, in which every member makes a contribution, over individualistic, top-down management. As a former colleague and disciple of the fabled W. Edwards Deming, who inspired the Japanese method of Total Quality Control, Scholtes speaks and writes with singular authority on this topic. His book is designed to be used, with a spiral binding, charts, bulleted lists, illustrations, sidebars (including the one about Knute Rockne) and suggestions for further reading. getAbstract suggests that if you want to learn more about business management, you'll score a touchdown when you read this comprehensive guidebook.

I purchased this book since it was a required textbook for on of my online MBA classes. It has been the most interesting and relevant read to date.

Having attended one of his talks, I gathered this book to be condensed from Scholtes' personal experience and practical knowledge which can also be seen in his "Teams" predecessor. A functional manual covering leadership in all aspects, with its depths and substance manifested in simple and easy to follow guidelines.

An ideal recommendation for any modern manager.