[.ca] The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting ... (ISBN 0070580286)

Practical, incisive and visionary 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)

Excellent:
Great book using the same style that made the Team Handbook such a success - great ideas, well written, easy to use and in a format that makes it easy to use as a reference book.

A reader:
Being a disciple of W. Edwards Demming, Peter Scholtes has a quality department's process bias; emphasizing systems, processes and statistics. Was I reading another new age quality assurance textbook? Because of this, I felt he overemphasized the present moment. True leaders are going places and have many loyal followers. The book rarely talks about this visionary thinking or how effective organizations are moving into new areas. This is a good book for beginners as long as you're aware he presents a different viewpoint, and because of this, he did bring some useful ideas that other books didn't have. Ironically, he openly admits that you may not agree with some of his viewpoints.

A model for the leaders of the future.:
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.

A Great Manual:
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.