Streetwise Motivating & Rewarding Employees [Paperback]

Alexander Hiam (Author)

Book Description

Series: Streetwise | Publication Date: March 1999

Streetwise is devoted exclusively to business topics. From writing business plans, to financing, to building Web site traffic, these books provide everything ambitious business professionals need. Business happens in the real world, not the classroom. Streetwise recognises this and delivers the goods - fast. No fluff. No wasted time. Just cutting-edge information managers and small business entrepreneurs need to run their business successfully.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alexander Hiam, a trainer and consultant, developed the Commitment-Based Leadership course, the Creativity by Design course, and other popular management trainings. He has served in management roles in Fortune 100 organizations, and has run his own firm for more than a decade. Educated at Harvard and U.C. Berkeley (MBA) his recent clients include Kellogg's, Coca-Cola, and General Motors. Hiam also authored Marketing for Dummies, The Vest-Pocket CEO, and The Portable MBA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 319 pages
• Publisher: Adams Media Corporation; 1 edition (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580621309
• ISBN-13: 978-1580621304
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #784,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hiam has written extensively on business topics ranging from leadership and conflict management to marketing. He is an award-winning author of more than 20 books, including: Vest Pocket CEO, Adventure Careers, Marketing For Dummies, Closing the Quality Gap, and The Manager's Pocket Guide to Creativity.

His newest work, Business Innovation for Dummies (June 2010, Wiley), is a how-to guide that offers practical techniques for stimulating imagination and developing ideas into successful innovations.

When he's not writing, Hiam is a sought-after speaker on innovation, creativity and leadership. Thousands of managers - including Fortune 500 and government leaders - have attended his workshops and idea-generation retreats, and relied on his guides: Creativity By Design, Creative Roles Analysis, and The Entrepreneur's Complete Handbook.

Hiam holds a B.A. from Harvard College in anthropology and an MBA in marketing and strategic planning from the University of California, Berkeley. For more than 12 years, he has worked at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Isenberg School of Management, with additional teaching posts at American International College and Western New England Collage.

Today, Hiam is a consultant to a diverse set of clientele. At the U.S. Coast Guard's Leadership and Management School, he provides assistance with curriculum design for leadership development. His leadership novella, The Starfish Files, is required reading for U.S. Coast Guard leaders. Hiam also provides leadership training to nonprofit and government groups, extending his well-honed innovation principles beyond the private sector for clients ranging from the U.S. Army and U.S. Senate to the City of New York. In the business arena, Hiam's creativity exercises are used by top advertising agencies to help their staff be more open to fresh ideas.

His educational publishing company, Trainer's Spectrum (www.trainersspectrum.com), features assessments, workshops, books, and learning games for team building, leadership, conflict management and other employee development programs. He is also the developer of the Dealing With Conflict Instrument and the Strategic Leadership Type Indicator. His personal Web site is at www.alexhiam.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A practical and inspiring collection of methods and ideas., May 26, 1999

By 

Philip T. DiPeri - See all my reviews

This review is from: Streetwise Motivating & Rewarding Employees (Paperback)

I recommend this book as a problem-solver if you have a difficult employee, or for boning up on how to be a more effective manager and supervisor in general. Lots of useful methods and guidelines, covering everything from how to give good feedback to how to design effective incentives and boost performance. Hiam goes much farther than other authors to articulate the core elements of employee attitude and motivation. A user-friendly framework for time-pressured managers to help their people become the best they can be. Just paste a Post-It note on this book saying: 'No smoke 'n' mirrors here...only solid content.!'

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best motivation books ever written., June 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Streetwise Motivating & Rewarding Employees (Paperback)

Streetwise Motivating and Rewarding Employees is one of the best books about motivating that I have ever read. It is full of so many great ideas for motivating employees. I highly recommend it!!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Motivation does in deed relate to productivity, April 22, 2006

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Streetwise Motivating & Rewarding Employees (Paperback)

I recently picked this book up on the discount rack at one of my local bookstores. It only cost me $3 plus tax. I'm glad I bought it because it does a nice job explaining the important role an employee's motivation in doing his or her work can have on his or her productivity. Leaders and managers should not underestimate his or her employee's motivation level to perform and be productive while at work. Most of this book explains ways that leaders and managers can raise employee motivation levels.

I highly recommend leaders and managers give this book a quick read. Unfortunately, the book is kind of wordy and uses the first person way too much. What took 319 pages could easily have been done well in about 150. And I don't think the title is entirely accurate when it claims that the book will provide "New and Better Ways to Inspire Your People." There is nothing "new and better" included in this book.

When a person is not motivated much to do something, then that something usually does not get done very quickly. And the slower something is done translates into lower productivity. Workers can be motivated to do their work by encouragement, praise, rewards, and other positive means, or they can be motivated by negative means, i.e. punished, threatened, yelled at, or intimidated. The author suggests that positive means are better than negative means, but he fails to acknowledge that it is not always practical.

When positive means are used to inspire, then both employees and managers benefit. When negative means are employed to enforce compliance, then managers benefit more than employees. The author seems to make a judgment call in his book that positive means should be used exclusively. But the author does not mention that not all jobs are created equal and motivation of employees at jobs cannot always be increased by positive means. Some jobs are lousy by definition, and nobody can be motivated positively to do them. One such job that comes to mind is a crew job at a fast-food restaurant. I think the author should have avoided making a judgment call that positive means of increasing employee motivation is better than negative means. That topic was really beyond the scope of the book.

Leaders with subordinates who are just putting in their time at work will learn a lot about how to motivate their subordinates to higher productivity levels by reading this book. Leaders with subordinates who are working hard, but not smart, will benefit from reading this book. But managers with subordinates who are working hard and smart probably will not. And it doesn't matter if this last group of subordinates is motivated by positive or negative means. However, it they are being motivated by negative means, then you may be able to figure out how to motivate them through positive means by reading this book.