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Summary: The book lives up to its audacious title!
Review: This is a very good book for people in the early stages of business careers, particularly in large companies. The author does a great job of illustrating and explaining the "unwritten rules" of life in big companies. I wish I had read it 20 years ago.
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Summary: Practical guidance for everyone
Review: This is an excellent book. I particularly like the nine strategies it provided. Anyone who has been backstabbed at workspace should read this.
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Summary: Emotional intelligence in the work place.
Review: This is an excellent book. The nine strategies make perfect sense. They are innovative, and will work for you. This is how to apply all your intelligences within the workplace and not just your IQ. You will recognize the ones who apply these strategies. They are the ones who may not have MBAs from Harvard, but yet are well liked and respected and go up the corporate ladder seemingly effortlessly.The author strategies are also quite original. He stresses how strong "followership" is just as important if not more as "leadership." This is a really important point that is rarely mentioned in management seminars. If you are a Harvard MBA, good for you. Nevertheless, this book will be invaluable to your success as it will give you the strategies and people skills you may need to truly leverage the superior business education you got.
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Summary: Need proof you can jump-start your career? Read this!
Review: Unlike so many "self-help" guides I've come across, many which are little more than rambling collections of buzzwords, this book by Robert Kelley should be considered a must read for anyone in the working world. It's not a "How Should I Act?" nor is it a "What Should I Wear?" variety book. What makes the book so refreshing to me is that the guidance is clear and concise and the readers can incorporate Kelley's ideas into their own recipe(s) for success. And for those already succeeding on-the-job, this book shows several suggestions to cover those areas you may be overlooking. I'd like to think that I'm doing OK at work, but with Kelley's "nine star work strategies" I'm much more confident about the future.
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Summary: The secret is no more!
Review: When I first reviewed the manuscript of, "How to Be a Star at Work : Nine Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed" last year, it dawned on me that through his research Dr. Kelley has explained what all of us wonder about. We see our highly successful colleagues at work and wish we knew the secret of their success. Dr. Kelley makes the secret transparent. First of all he shows that it is not a secret, the true achievers are not geniuses nor are they miracle workers - they are in fact masters at using "nine strategies". Second, he demonstrates that these strategies can be learned and mastered by us all. And finally, using real life stories Dr. Kelley explains and demonstrates how these strategies have helped transform the average performers into star performers at some of our leading corporations, organizations and institutions. I have shared Dr. Kelley's strategies with my corporate clients, as part of my course on "Knowledge Asset Management". I do hope these strategies not only become part of business education programs but also that Dr. Kelley's message is made available to young adults during their high school years. We owe much to Dr. Kelley for staying with the secret long enough (over a decade) until his research converged into "nine breakthrough strategies.
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Summary: Missed Opportunity for Stars-to-be? Valuable for Coaches.
Review: When I review a book, I consider a number of different factors. Among my considerations is the suitability of the book to what appears to be the intended market-the intended reader. Looking at a title like "How to be a Star at Work," I assume that the book is designed to inspire and instruct people who are not stars at work. Perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic here, but I question how many non-stars would gleefully pick up a 300+ page book to learn the Secrets of Business Life. OK, I've got that out of my system. Let's dig a little deeper. The book is based on research, written by a college professor. Kelley teaches at Carneigie Mellon University's business school and, as may be expected, does a lot of research and publishing. Goes with the territory. This book reports on ten years of research at major companies, revealing nine factors for success: initiative, networking, self-management, perspective, followership, leadership, teamwork, street smarts, and show-and-tell (to the right audience). As you read that list, you may be thinking, "no-brainer; should I waste my time with this book?" On a shallow level, that's a fair assessment. As you read deeper through these pages, however, you'll discover many subtle innuendos in each of these categories. You'll learn from the thought-provoking anecdotes-all with the names changed, of course. The experiences of the employees described are somewhat interwoven with political issues that are more prevalent in large companies than smaller enterprises. This environment-resident factor may taint your sense of relevance if you don't work for a big organization, but don't be fooled. The advice is solid for all sizes of employers. This book may not be read heavily by its assumed primary target, but will still be quite valuable to supervisors, managers, leaders, and mentors who coach and guide others to improve their effectiveness and strategic career development.
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Summary: Productivity Improvement Claims are false. Yet, useful book.
Review: When someone says 'You can improve the rate of your productivity by 100 percent', which of the following do you assume? 1. If productivity is represented by some number between 1 and 100 and you were ranked at a 35, that your productivity would go up to 70. 2. If productivity is represented by some number between 1 and 100 and you were ranked at a 35, that your producitivity would go up to 38 (increase of 3). But someone else's producitivity only went up from 35 to 36.5 (increase of 1.5) and they didn't take the program that you did. This is a 100% increase in productivity because your productivity improvement (3) is 100% more than someone else's productivity improvement (1.5). I never thought that anyone would assume # 2 above till I read the book and found out in the Appendix that the authors assume #2 and not #1 above! That is the logic used by the authors for all the claims in their book! Why do I still give a 3 star rating to the book? Is there anything worth reading in the book? Is it worth the money price you pay for it (or lower if you buy it at Amazon.com)? Now that you know to take their claims with a grain of salt, this is what I found in the book - The 9 strategies that the authors outline are absolutely correct and you can get everything you need out of the book by reading pages 31-34 where they describe the 9 different strategies in a perfectly acceptable way. Remember that these strategies are necessary but not sufficient for productivity improvements. There are other strategies that you need to be successful. Even with the 9 strategies in the book, it takes a lot of time to master them. It is absolutely necessary for anyone to master these strategies if you want to be highly successful at work. I found the rest of the book to be too much of a 'ra, ra' session with not much usable information. That isn't my style but I know others who find it useful. You decide if that is what you are looking for. This is also the reason I can't tell you if the authors succeed in helping one figure out how to master these 9 strategies. I couldn't sit through and finish the chapters on each of the strategies. Other than the misleading logic and the particular style of presenting the material ('ra, ra' that could be translated by some to 'inspirational'), a lot of people I know have found the book very enjoyable. It is just not for a certain type of person who is looking at things from an objective and scientific perspective. The other thing is that researchers found out a long time back that no matter what kind of a change you institute, there is always a temporary increase in productivity due to the fact that there was a change. Human beings seem to be respond to any kind of change with a slight productivity improvement. It looks like the authors might have benefited from the same theory at work in their research. You could have replaced the changes they made with better lighting and you might have gotten similar productivity improvements. Also, you have to consider whether the productivity improvements are statistically significant and whether they are sustainable over time. The authors don't address these two issues that are important in any study trying to back their claims through statistics. Leaving the gaping holes in the basis behind the author's claims and the misleading nature of the claims, one has to agree that the 9 strategies are indeed extremely valuable. If you go to a book store, flip through pages 31-34 and if you like what you read in the other pages, go ahead and make the investment. Otherwise, do what I did - borrow it from the company library, makes notes from pages 31-34 and write a review on Amazon.com with your opinions on it. Enjoy!
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Summary: Best for knowledge workers - NOT for cut-throat politicians
Review: When the gold-collar professionals (knowledge workers with hi-tech skills in our financial services business) ask me how to be more successful at work, I now refer them to this book. There is no magic here, just solid social science. This book documents what Kelley and his team observed at Bell Labs. They identified behaviors that are exhibited by those perceived as stars, and that are not exhibited by others. This book describes those behaviors, calling them "breakthrough strategies". The strategies can be taught, can be learned, and can be put into practice. But they aren't easy to do and one must work at developing proficiency and effectiveness. For those who want a terse prescriptive cookbook, with specific instructions, or a book with a magic one-shot one size fits all solution, this book may disappoint. Kelley describes the star strategies with examples and stories, as well as specifics. Those who learn best from examples and narrative will find this book very accessible and useful. If you are serious about working on your "game", and don't believe your failures are the result of everyone else's incompetence and ineffectiveness, this book will be most helpful. But if you believe the world is an cut-throat win or lose place, you'd probably be better off spending your time and money with a counselor or analyst or a coach in knife-wielding politics. If you believe you can get better at what you do, and that what you do is valuable and worthwhile, this book offers some insights on how to improve your "game" and increase your value to those who depend on what you do. You can't learn how to play golf or how to be a star at work just from reading a book. But if you and others read this book together, and coach one another on how you are doing, your "game" will most certainly improve and your value, because you are a star, will most certainly increase.
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Summary: PRACTICAL PRACTICAL PRACTICAL
Review: With so much dross around, regurgitated heaps of crap or theoretical treatise that tie you in knots - it is refereshing to actually read a book that is based on a bed rock of first class research and yet the strategies that it includes are so easy to understand and apply that you keep wondering - "Boy, this is so obvious - why didnt I think if it before?". Finally, a book that bridges the gap between good theory and great application.
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Summary: Rehashing of well known concepts
Review: Years of study and possibly thousands of dollars later the authors have arrived at conclusions that most of us pick up within the first year of working. This book might be worth having if you are fresh out of college or starting work at an US corporation after having come from a considerably different work culture in other countries. But for a majority of the readers it will be an amusing look at the process of formalization of plebeian workplace knowledge. The book though, is peppered with anecdotes which make it easy and intersting to read.
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