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Rating: 
Summary: Ten Management Principles for Leading Change
Review: "I believe you will benefit from this book because the challenge of setting and achieving performance goals has become very confusing". Douglas K. Smith writes, "It has been more than 30 years since Peter Drucker wrote about the importance of managing for results. His work led to the widespread practice of management by objective. But an awful lot has happened in the past 30 years. The world of business and organizations has changed dramatically, turning many of Drucker's specifics (though not his wisdom) upside down. In the aftermath of total quality, customer service, time-based competition, strategic alliances, globalization, reengineering, core competencies, continuous improvement, innovation, teams, horizontal organization, benchmarking, best place to work, information technology, diversity, environmentalism, deregulation and reregulation, eCommerce, and privatization, those of us left standing in today's organizations are unsure about what performance goals and outcomes make the most difference and why. We know that setting performance goals is key to managing ourselves and others, but we no longer know how".Douglas K. Smith organizes his book in four parts. In the first part (Chapters 1-4), he provides the background, concepts, tools, techniques, and frameworks you need to set specific outcome-based goals that matter to successfully navigate today's most pressing performance challenges. In the second part (Chapters 5-7), he focuses on helping you align and coordinate goals throughout your organization. In the third part (Chapters 8-10), he describes the management disciplines you need to achieve your goals and how to make choices among them. In the fourth part (Chapter 11), he concludes the book with a step-by-step design for building an outcomes management system in your organization. In this context, in Chapter 10, he reviews the management disciplines you must understand in order to succeed in the face of change, and introduces the critical distinction between decision-diven change and behavior-driven change, and describes how to manage each successfully. Hence, he argues that most change efforts fall far short of their potential. Usually that's because leaders fail to address the deep behavioral changes they are seeking. And thus, he lists the following ten management principles as the heart of any successful change effort: 1. Keep performance results the primary objective of behavior and skill change. 2. Continually increase the number of individuals taking responsibility for their own change. 3. Make sure that each person always knows why his or her performance and change matters to the purpose and results of the whole organization. 4. Put people in a position to learn by doing and provide them with the information and support they need just in time to perform. 5. Embrace improvisation as the best path to both performance and change. 6. Use team performance to drive change whenever demanded. 7. Concentrate organizational designs on the work that people do, not on the decision-making authority they have. 8. Create and focus energy and meaningful language because these are the scarcest resources during periods of change. 9. Stimulate and sustain behavior-driven change by harmonizing initiatives throughout the organization. 10. Practice leadership based on the courage to live the change you wish to bring about. Finally, he argues that if you expect others to change their behavior, you have to change yours. It's as simple and as hard as that. I strongly recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: PRAISE FOR MAKE SUCCESS MEASUREABLE
Review: "Doug Smith's work on performance and measurement has been an invaluable management resource for us. We believe that if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Thanks to Doug, we can focus on the right measures to drive performance against today's many new and different challenges throughout our enterprise." -Leon Gorman, President L.L. Bean, Inc. "Make Success Measurable! is a practical and powerful step-by-step guide to setting and achieving the goals we all need to accomplish in a constantly changing and challenging world." -Charles Dolan, Chairman, Cablevision Systems Corporation "No one writes as clearly about today's key management issues as Doug Smith. Whether you're in a small eCommerce startup or a large, already established organization, the frameworks, tools, techniques and exercises contained in this book are the only things you'll need to manage the performance that matters to your customers, your people and your shareholders." -Steve Goldstein, CEO eChores and former CEO, American Express Bank "Achieving results that matter -- to donors and clients -- is the true measure of success for any non-profit organization. This book provides a thoughtful and extremely practical guide for setting goals and effectively meeting them. It is an absolutely indispensable tool for leaders and a model for good management." -Jenna Dorn, President, National Museum of Health Douglas K. Smith is an internationally recognized author and consultant on organization performance, innovation, and change. He is coauthor of The Wisdom of Teams and author of Taking Charge of Change. His work on teams and organizational performance has been featured in Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, and the McKinsey Quarterly. PRAISE FOR MAKE SUCCESS MEASURABLE! "Doug Smith's work on performance and measurement has been an invaluable management resource for us. We believe that if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Thanks to Doug, we can focus on the right measures to drive performance against today's many new and different challenges throughout our enterprise." -Leon Gorman, President L.L. Bean, Inc. "Make Success Measurable! is a practical and powerful step-by-step guide to setting and achieving the goals we all need to accomplish in a constantly changing and challenging world." -Charles Dolan, Chairman, Cablevision Systems Corporation "No one writes as clearly about today's key management issues as Doug Smith. Whether you're in a small eCommerce startup or a large, already established organization, the frameworks, tools, techniques and exercises contained in this book are the only things you'll need to manage the performance that matters to your customers, your people and your shareholders." -Steve Goldstein, CEO eChores and former CEO, American Express Bank "Achieving results that matter -- to donors and clients -- is the true measure of success for any non-profit organization. This book provides a thoughtful and extremely practical guide for setting goals and effectively meeting them. It is an absolutely indispensable tool for leaders and a model for good management." -Jenna Dorn, President, National Museum of Health Douglas K. Smith is an internationally recognized author and consultant on organization performance, innovation, and change. He is coauthor of The Wisdom of Teams and author of Taking Charge of Change. His work on teams and organizational performance has been featured in Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, and the McKinsey Quarterly.
Rating:
Summary: Ten Management Principles for Leading Change
Review: "I believe you will benefit from this book because the challenge of setting and achieving performance goals has become very confusing". Douglas K. Smith writes, "It has been more than 30 years since Peter Drucker wrote about the importance of managing for results. His work led to the widespread practice of management by objective. But an awful lot has happened in the past 30 years. The world of business and organizations has changed dramatically, turning many of Drucker's specifics (though not his wisdom) upside down. In the aftermath of total quality, customer service, time-based competition, strategic alliances, globalization, reengineering, core competencies, continuous improvement, innovation, teams, horizontal organization, benchmarking, best place to work, information technology, diversity, environmentalism, deregulation and reregulation, eCommerce, and privatization, those of us left standing in today's organizations are unsure about what performance goals and outcomes make the most difference and why. We know that setting performance goals is key to managing ourselves and others, but we no longer know how". Douglas K. Smith organizes his book in four parts. In the first part (Chapters 1-4), he provides the background, concepts, tools, techniques, and frameworks you need to set specific outcome-based goals that matter to successfully navigate today's most pressing performance challenges. In the second part (Chapters 5-7), he focuses on helping you align and coordinate goals throughout your organization. In the third part (Chapters 8-10), he describes the management disciplines you need to achieve your goals and how to make choices among them. In the fourth part (Chapter 11), he concludes the book with a step-by-step design for building an outcomes management system in your organization. In this context, in Chapter 10, he reviews the management disciplines you must understand in order to succeed in the face of change, and introduces the critical distinction between decision-diven change and behavior-driven change, and describes how to manage each successfully. Hence, he argues that most change efforts fall far short of their potential. Usually that's because leaders fail to address the deep behavioral changes they are seeking. And thus, he lists the following ten management principles as the heart of any successful change effort: 1. Keep performance results the primary objective of behavior and skill change. 2. Continually increase the number of individuals taking responsibility for their own change. 3. Make sure that each person always knows why his or her performance and change matters to the purpose and results of the whole organization. 4. Put people in a position to learn by doing and provide them with the information and support they need just in time to perform. 5. Embrace improvisation as the best path to both performance and change. 6. Use team performance to drive change whenever demanded. 7. Concentrate organizational designs on the work that people do, not on the decision-making authority they have. 8. Create and focus energy and meaningful language because these are the scarcest resources during periods of change. 9. Stimulate and sustain behavior-driven change by harmonizing initiatives throughout the organization. 10. Practice leadership based on the courage to live the change you wish to bring about. Finally, he argues that if you expect others to change their behavior, you have to change yours. It's as simple and as hard as that. I strongly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book and apply its lessons
Review: Make Success Measurable tells you how to set business goals that matter for shareholders, customers, and employees. That is good advice, and it is backed up by "workbook" exercises that help you focus on what is really important. The "mindbook-workbook" format makes room for exercises that you can work on with your colleagues at the office. I found that the "mindbook" portion held my interest as an individual reader. I started getting REALLY interested about halfway through the book when Smith introduced the concept of "working arenas" - the different groupings of people (sometimes in multiple companies) that are necessary to achieve these goals. Smith explains that you need to shape your goals and methods to fit the appropriate working arena, rather than a pre-set corporate structure. If you work in a complex organization, you should read this book and apply its lessons. I would compare Make Success Measurable very favorably to the Kaplan and Norton book on The Balanced Scorecard. The Balanced Scorecard tends to be vague and anecdotal on the subject of how to set measurable goals, and it is hard to finish. In contrast, Smith packs his book with original analysis and specific recommendations on topics like "Vertical versus Horizontal Management Disciplines" and "Injecting Creative and Personal Tension into Goals". The Balanced Scorecard presents a four way cause and effect chain from employees through process improvements, customers, and shareholders. Make Success Measurable presents a three way performance cycle as including employees who provide value to customers who provide rewards to shareholders...who provide rewards to employees and so on. The "process" piece doesn't appear in Smith's analysis, because focusing on process measures doesn't necessarily help anyone. In fact, it is a trap that can lead to meaningless work. Smith encourages us to focus on "outcomes" - measures that matter directly to employees, customers, and shareholders. This brings us quickly to reality and hopefully to consensus with our colleagues. Get real. Get this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Bottom Line of Success
Review: Make Success Measurable! is definitely becoming the Bible at work. Very well written, and Smith's ideas are well-supported. We've received positive feedback from clients, and we've expanded our client base because of this good word-of-mouth. I strongly recommend Make Success Measurable! It's as good as Guerilla PR: Wired, which focuses on techniques to getting solid public relations coverage, especially nowadays.
Rating:
Summary: The Bottom Line of Success
Review: Make Success Measurable! is definitely becoming the Bible at work. Very well written, and Smith's ideas are well-supported. We've received positive feedback from clients, and we've expanded our client base because of this good word-of-mouth. I strongly recommend Make Success Measurable! It's as good as Guerilla PR: Wired, which focuses on techniques to getting solid public relations coverage, especially nowadays.
Rating:
Summary: A useful and practical book.
Review: This is one of those rare books that makes it points clearly and then guides your through exercises that reinforce its key messages. I found the book incredibly helpful in preparing realistic plans that set you up for success. I have used it extensively to help me design major projects and I am well on my way toward measurable success on those goals.
Rating:
Summary: A "how-to" guide to your top performance challenges
Review: What gets measured, gets done! None of us disagree with this. And, we all know we have a lot to get done including customer service, quality, new strategies, eCommerce, speed, strategic alliances, diversity, globalization, teams, innovation and more. But what, exactly, are the best metrics and goals for these challenges? And how do we manage ourselves and others to use those metrics to set and achieve outcome-based goals instead of the activity-based goals that bedevil most of us in most organizations? I wrote Make Success Measurable! as a comprehensive "how to" guide to today's most critical dilemma: figuring out how to measure success and then achieving it. The book provides you the learning and perspective you need to overcome all the difficulties and obstacles you face in setting and achieving goals. It is filled with specific frameworks, tools and techniques to help you out. You will learn how to pick metrics that are relevant to today's challenges and use them to set "outcome-based goals". You will also learn how to use a concept I call "working arenas" to figure out who you must work with to achieve performance and how to align your goals with the goals of others. Finally, you will learn how to "fix" the balanced scorecard so that you get all of its value with none of its pitfalls. Each chapter includes explanatory Mindbook sections as well as a Workbook section of pragmatic, simple, and straightforward exercises to help you and your colleagues put the tools and techniques to work immediately. Using the book, you will gain confidence and mastery on how to set goals that matter to you, your customers (external and internal), and your shareholders as you set about defining and achieving success at today's most pressing performance and change challenges.
Rating:
Summary: Learn How to be SMART
Review: You can rarely pick up a job description in the public or private sector that does not include a statement seeking "demonstrated experience and success working with the principles of quality management and a commitment to customer service." One of the cornerstones to quality management is the ability to focus on outcomes instead of activities. Make Success Measurable is filled with practical techniques. Even more, it is a workbook, providing opportunities to apply new concepts to real work. Whether you want to be able to create more focus within your own work unit, be able to demonstrate tangible results to your manager, prioritize your own work by aligning your day to day activities with the most important initiatives, or coach customers who are seeking your expertise in developing performance measures, this book can help. As a result of reading this book and trying the exercises, you should be able to: 1) Convert new visions, strategies, and directions into achievable outcome-based goals that can better yourself and others in your organization. 2) Set goals that are specific, measurable, aggressive, achievable, relevant, and time bound. (SMART Goals) 3) Set goals that matter to those expecting a return on their funding dollars. 4) Set goals that matter to you personally in terms of opportunities, rewards, and skills. 5) Choose from a variety of management disciplines to achieve your goals. 6) Set goals that matter to customers who want speed, quality, and prompt service.
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