Can you imagine how rewarding it would be, each day, to truly enjoy going to work? Most people spend the better part of their waking hours in jobs they do not enjoy. The happiest, most productive employees are those who have either found a job they truly enjoy, or found ways to make their current jobs more enjoyable. If we can get more pleasure and satisfaction from our work time, it would immeasurably improve the quality ofour lives. For more than 30 years, authors Joan Goldsmith and Kenneth Cloke have worked with teams and employers to create positive work environments in which communication between all levels is respectful, creativity is encouraged and people are acknowledged and supported. Thank God It's Monday! provides real-world examples and exercises to stimulate employees and employers into creating better work lives. Thank God It's Monday! identifies 14 core values that will make any work more stimulating and satisfying, including: Inclusion of everyone; Celebration of diversity; Open and honest communication; Risk taking; Opportunities for personal growth; Thank God It's Monday! will be valuable to employees seeking to increase satisfaction in their current jobs, displaced employees searching for the work situations that are best for them, and employers and organizational leaders looking to keep their best employees by creating energetic and vibrant workplaces. Thank God It's Monday! provides scores of ready-to-use activities, worksheets and exercises that will help transform the workplace into a second home that everyone wants to return to each day.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
From their experiences as management consultants and specialists in conflict resolution over the past three decades, Cloke (Mediation: Revenge and the Magic of Forgiveness) and Goldsmith (coauthor with Warren Bennis of Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader) address "the human side of change." Whether called "reengineering" or "downsizing," the dislocation caused for those catapulted into the change process, note the authors, is reason for concern. They ask, "Why is the human side of the change process the last element... thought out?" They offer well-articulated strategies and methods to encourage industrial democracy to work, for team advancement to not be in conflict with individual success and for public- and private-sector organizations to promote ownership in a different, humanized kind of workplace. There is much of interest here, particularly for those involved in organizational change or who are dissatisfied with their work situation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Reengineering has become an inevitability for millions of employees, and those who survive it must perform their jobs differently tomorrow from the way they perform them today. Invariably, change causes stress, negatively affecting work performance. Consultants Cloke and Goldsmith have prepared a textbook for those managers who are seeking a humane, and less stressful, implementation of organizational change. Although the authors are unabashed advocates of workplace democracy, and a few of their recommendations will strike some as extreme, e.g., having the management role rotate among employees, their book nevertheless offers valuable advice and assessment exercises for changing organizations.?Andrea C. Dragon, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good book on how to make workplace better,
By A Customer
This review is from: Thank God It's Monday!: 14 Values We Need to Humanize the Way We Work (Hardcover)
When I started Class 27 of the Command College I was repeatedly exposed to the concept of a post-industrial leadership model, a new organizational paradigm for the 21st century. Over the past several months the concept of a new organizational model has been repeatedly visited, as it is throughout Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmiths very enjoyable book, Thank God It's Monday! 14 Values We Need to Humanize the Way We Work.After laying a good foundation (with many of the same tenants as other organizational authors of the day) Cloke and Goldsmith lay out a number of self assessment steps for the reader who is persuaded to shift to what they see as the new organizational and leadership model of self directed work teams. One of the main reasons the authors see this paradigm shift is because they see work as a relationship that needs to provides personal fulfilment. The book is packed with a number of lists and fill in the blank assessments to help the reader make the transition to a more humanized and empowered organization. The fourteen values they believe will humanize organizations, empower workers, reduce conflict and increase employee satisfaction includes: INCLUSION - involving everyone in the process, COLLABORATION - working together for consensus, not compromise; TEAMS and NETWORKS - small work teams; VISION - toward something better and worthwhile; CELEBRATION of DIVERSITY - diversity valued as a source of richness, vitality and strength; PROCESS AWARENESS - the value of process (listening, ability to work with others, ...) more then technical ability; OPEN and HONEST COMMUNICATION - and how destructive poor information sharing can be to an organization's health; RISK TAKING- and the need to trust those we work with; INDIVIDUAL and TEAM OWNERSHIP of RESULTS; PARADOXICAL PROBLEM SOLVING - willingness to solve problems with outside the box solutions that are not necessarily consistent with popular notions of the problem; EVERYONE is a LEADER - shift from a leader to everyone playing a role in decision making; PERSONAL GROWTH SATISFACTION - seeking to make work personally and emotionally rewarding for employees; SEEING CONFLICT as an OPPORTUNITY - the positive value of conflict; and EMBRACING CHANGE. If the various concepts described in Thank God It's Monday! were applied collectively, in the manner described, and with a group of people who could work under this model, I have no reason to doubt that the workers and those who were the recipient of their service/product would see the efforts of the leader as a success. If these types of cooperative, self led work groups became a work model of the future, our work places would be very different. Creativity and employee satisfaction would no doubt increase. Customer satisfaction would likely also improve, as would profit because of a better work product and a reduction in overhead costs (less managers, less oversight, less litigation, less conflict management). Two of the themes that Cloke and Goldsmith explore are, "Who Selects the Managers and How do the Manage," and "Who Gets Promoted, How and by What Criteria." If our organizational structures shifted along with our selection processes to those of a self managed group, our para military, hieracical organizations would no doubt change dramatically. This text does a very good job of making a case for more humanized, employee operated work units. Even the skeptic should find himself closing the back page and asking, "Could we really be more effective and have less employee trouble and the associated costs with a model like this?" Given that possibility, I think the forward looking leader will seek out opportunites to implement the concepts communcated in the 233 pages of this publication. The transition might be difficult, and the model may not work in every police situation, but it defintely could improve our work environments and improve many of the distracting situations we deal with daily. The success of this effort would fit well with our community oriented policing efforts. Organizations would be able to easily see self directed work units identify and resolve community problems in a manner that was not only prompt, but also with a degree of creativity that our current structure likely inhibits. The success of this model could also be measured by reductions in management problems, such as worker's compensation claims, medical retirements and grievances. The humanized, self managed work group should reduces the numbers of these actions (and when they do arise they will typically be handled at the work group level) and the management time/cost required to address them. While participative management has for some time been the mantra of leadership experts, the level to which this proposal for humanized organizations takes it, will likely push the comfort level of not only police managers but line level personnel as well. To expect that such a dramatic shift could occur quickly and without some serious transitional problems is unrealistic. However, we live and work in a changing environment. There is no reason to believe that we should not at least have a role in choosing the battles we want to fight. Would we rather have conflict over trying to keep operational a model that will no longer work with the employee of the 21st century, or do we want to deal with conflicts moving us in the direction of making work and our organizations better than they were in the 1990's? If we choose to move forward, and retool our organizations to optimize the potential of our personnel, we will more likely be able to keep pace with an ever increasing work demand and externally imposed mandates to do more with less. Lest it not yet be apparent, I would highly recommend this text for any manager or aspiring leader. The concepts are thought provoking and helpful, and the format of the book is such that it can be used as personal or organizational assessment tool.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The book was a must read for ALL working people.,
By Carson P. Lysik (Canyon Country, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Thank God It's Monday!: 14 Values We Need to Humanize the Way We Work (Hardcover)
T.G.I.M. provides a type of How-To discussion for the enrichment of your personal and professional life. It discussed some major issues commonly facing individuals both at work and at home: values, conflict, relationships. The underlying principles, if applied in daily life, could improve current situations making your life much more successful. Cloke did a fine job at bringing some 'real' issues to light in his enjoyable book, Thank God It's Monday.
0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
it is good for you,
This review is from: Thank God It's Monday!: 14 Values We Need to Humanize the Way We Work (Hardcover)
this book is one of the greatest book that you have to read so read it and tell me what you tought. syed omar the American University in Cairo- egypt
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