Customer Reviews

Get Weird! 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work

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You will very quickly realize that this person is a veteran who is not talking theory. There is very serious substance and great ideas that can make a difference in the workplace.

I must add that it was delightful to read in terms of being a fun book I did not want to put down.

Worthwhile investment of time!

When John Putzier was a child, his mother told him he was weird. For most kids, being told they were weird might be traumatizing. Not John. He prided himself on being weird-different. Over the years of his career in human resource consulting, professional speaking, and college teaching, he has prided himself on being weird-just a little bit different, off-beat. The power of being off-beat is encapsulated in a quotation I learned in my growing-up years, "It's the usual thing, done in the unusual way, that captures the attention of the world."

John certainly has captured the attention of the world with his work. And how he shows us how to make this happen in our lives as executives, managers, and human resource professionals.

Weirdness is doing things differently. The results can be very positive, both in your confidence and in the results you can achieve. Putzier spends the first part of the book explaining this and setting up the reader to receive and consider 100 thought-provoking ideas. This section is titled Tapping Your Natural Weirdness, aka [also known as] Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving. The double title theme continues through the other parts of the book, enabling the reader to comfortably transition between Putzier's weird titles and terminology that will be more familiar.

One hundred ideas are presented in the balance of the book, categorized in seven sections. Titles of those sections are Weird Ideas to Win Today's Talent, aka Recruitment; Weird Ideas for the Care and Feeding of Today's Talent, aka Retention; Weird Ideas for Changing Your Company, aka Fun & Games with a Purpose and a Profit; Weird Ideas for Perks, Pay, and Pats on the Back, aka Recognition and Incentives; Weird Ideas for Educating Today's Talent, aka Training and Development; and Weird Ideas for Enhancing Your Company Image, aka Sales, Service, Public Relations & Personal Satisfaction. Idea 101 is in Part 8, where the author suggests that you have other ideas in your head that you can add to his list. Remember, Putzier is endeavoring to stimulate your thinking, not just give you pat answers or magic pills.

There are several additional features that add value to this book. The Table of content includes a phrase under each idea listing to quickly explain what the idea entails. An alphabetical list of ideas appears at the end of the book as an unusual, but helpful, index.

The book is easy to read and serves as a fine read-through in addition to a good reference book for follow-up.

As an insatiable consumer of business books, I can confidently say that "Get Weird!" is the most engaging, entertaining, yet useful business book I've ever read. It's chock full of great ideas guaranteed to make your workplace the one people on the outside want to get into. Putzier's humorous writing style and knack for knowing a great idea when he sees one make this one of the most enjoyable and beneficial business books you'll ever buy. I've recommended it to hundreds of people and will continue to for the rest of my career.

This was my 2nd business type book I've purchased.This book is all about how to being a good boss and looking after your staff and making your business a great place to work.Definitely a 101 type book.Plenty of advice here to help all business improve and keep good staff from leaving.

An ideal book that all business owners should have.

I permanently borrowed this book three years ago from my old boss. Its a good book full of unusual and "weird" ideas that business leaders and human resource teams often looks past as solutions to drive creativity, engagement, and workplace satisfaction.

One of my favorite suggestions that seems very small but it is effective is the "Food for Thought" program (Page 87). I have implemented this at many organizations and is best when it is not work related but activity related. One of the most popular activities one of my management teams did was to bring in a Salsa Dancing Group who conducted a class for all our site employees. They loved it! It was a great way to get our minds off of the conference calls and deadlines and get the blood pumping and laugh. Activities like this attract fun, motivation, and inspiration similar to the Zappos way.

A good business book in my house is decided by two things: the number of folded pages and pencil marks. This book has lots of both as I am generating ideas for my clients or for articles or blog content. It's also a great starting point to get inspired for yourself. You can use this book to help create a creative and inspiring workplace for you and your team.


Jessica Miller-Merrell
CEO of Xceptional HR
Author of Tweet This! Twitter for Business
[...]

This is one of the best books on management I have read in a long time! The ideas inside Get Weird by John Putzier are highly adaptable to my own business, Flying Pen Press, a book publishing company. While Putzier directs his narrative at large corporations, the book rings true for the small business owner, as well as within our publisher-author relationships.

Putzier postulates the rather obvious ideas that people are more likely to join and stay with a company where they are respected, trusted and most of all, where they enjoy themselves. These ideas are obvious, yet so few companies have failed to see this.

With this in mind, Putzier offers 100 different methods of turning these ideas into reality. Each method is easy to implement, inexpensive for the company, and will actually increase productivity and employee retention. Most of them can be implemented by middle managers without need of a superior's authorization, other methods are best implemented companywide by the top executives.

After a full chapter that broadly discusses the basics of creative thinking in the business place, Putzier applies his own creativity to the following topics: Employee Recruitment, Employee Retention, Company Culture, Recognition & Incentives, Training & Employee Development, and a miscellaneous chapter that includes ideas for sales, service, public relations, and personal satisfaction.

Here are just a few of the ideas that I will be implementing at Flying Pen Press:

To recruit employees: #11, Birds of a Feather. We will be assigning a current emlployee to act as host to prospective recruits.

To retain employees: #22 Mind Your Own Business! We will open up the books to everyone so that each staff member can see how their actions, decisions and expenditures affect the company's bottom line.

To improve company culture: #60, You can Call Me Ray! Let each staff member rename his or her own job title in a serendipitous vein.

To give employees recognition and incentive: #72, Cooperation Compensation. Department heads will meet one-on-one with each other and agree in writing on list of what they need from each other. Then at the end of the month, Each department rates the other departments on how they did, and bonuses will be based on that department's average rating.

To train and develop the staff: #83, Road Trip. We will take staff members to visit our suppliers, vendors, and retailers to give them a better idea of how it all fits together.

To recruit authors: #2, All the Wrong Places. We will start recruiting science fiction authors at sci-fi movie premieres and sci-fi conventions.

To retain authors: #24, Come On Down! We will open all of our meetings to authors, so they can see what goes on at their publisher's offices.

To add value to the publisher-author relationship: #51: Camp MED. We will turn one of our offices into a quiet writer's library, with classic books, writing guides and top-notch computer with fast internet.

To recognize our authors and provide incentives: #76, What Are My Options? We will be giving authors shares of the company's profits, over and above royalties, provided that they deliver at least one book each year and communicate regularly with their fans.

To support author training and development: #28, Collect the Dots. We will purposefully add typos and grammar errors to the author's galley, and give a prize or bonus if the author catches them all.

This is just a very small portion of the methods I will be implementing at Flying Pen Press. Our philosophy has always been to give authors and staff the greatest respect possible. Get Weird! by John Putzier will go a long way to putting Flying Pen Press in the vanguard in this repect.

I recommend this book very strongly, and I think it will be most appreciated by human resources personnel, mid-level and high-level managers, company executives, small-business owners with three or more employees, and corporate recruiters.

--David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press
Denver, July 14, 2009

I ready this book cover-to-cover last night! It was wonderful! Tons of ideas and real world examples given for almost every topic. Beautifully put together and an aboslute delight to read.

A definite must read for those in HR AND employees. Everyone plays a part in making a company a great place to work. I work in marketing and found a lot of the ideas are ones that we can use to make our company more customer-focused and a more fun place to buy and experience.

I plan on using several ideas and techniques provided. Very easy, simple concepts everyone can benefit from using them.

Thanks for the great book!

Get Wierd has quite a few good ideas on how to get more out of yourself and your work.

Get Weird is a book full of not-so-weird but some practical ideas on how to make your company better-recognized, your employees happier, and your bottom line stronger. The author of Get Weird is someone who believes creativity in management comes from the HR department, so he is the kind of person who keeps "techies", as he calls them, at arms length and tosses some Hot Pockets in periodically. But, as author Putzier points out, people go to three-day seminars thinking that if they get one or two good ideas from it, it will be worth it. By those standards, everyone will find Get Weird worth it.

My favorite: Family Day, when everyone brings in their children/parents/significant others, so they can see what the company and their loved one does all day. Everyone gets to leave with swag.

Stupider idea, could only come from HR: Casual get togethers that involved forced mingling featuring probing personal questions of fellow employees.

We do it better: Having the CEO take the entire company to a matinee, complete with complimentary snacks for all.