Product Description

Lead your organization into the 21st century with the help of this groundbreaking book that is already creating a stir in corporate boardrooms across America! In a book that does for managers what his mega-bestseller, The Team Handbook, did for teams, Peter Scholtes, who is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential Quality leaders of the decade, shows the real root of management problems. Learn how to stop blaming your workers and start changing the systems with the help of activities and exercises that enable you to immediately begin implementing breakthrough improvements in all your work processes!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #229278 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 415 pages

Synopsis
Lead your organization into the 21st century with the help of this groundbreaking book that is already creating a stir in corporate boardrooms across America! In a book that does for managers what his mega-bestseller, "The Team Handbook", did for teams, Peter Scholtes, who is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential Quality leaders of the decade, shows the real root of management problems. Learn how to stop blaming your workers and start changing the systems with the help of activities and exercises that enable you to immediately begin implementing breakthrough improvements in all your work processes!

From the Author
Peter Scholtes introduces us to his new book
Author’s comments on The Leader’s Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done It took me a long time to write this book... a process of distillation and percolation, even before I put words on paper. This was the result of a long labor and delivery. My publisher had asked what my purpose was in writing this book. Here is what I said: I want a book that will make a difference. I want my book to say that simple answers to complex issues will not accomplish anything worthwhile. Behind the complexity is a simplicity that we can come to understand only by struggling. Oliver Wendell Holmes said it eloquently: "I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; But I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." I hope this book is more than a management book. Leadership is a universal experience both for the leader and those being led. While much of my book applies to leading a business the insights and learnings apply to educators, healthcare, leaders, government, social groups, religious organizations... anywhere people try to make things happen and get things done together. I’ve tried to make The Leader’s Handbook fun to read. I write as I speak, with lots of side bars telling various anecdotes. I try to lace it with humor. And I try to feel passionately about what I have to say. For all of this the reader, of course, will be the final judge. This is what some of my friends have to say about The Leader’s Handbook: Peter Scholtes has done it again! The Leadership Handbook is the perfect guide for people trying and hoping to accomplish positive change. It's witty, deceptively simple, clear and, most of all, wise and effective. The conclusion with 47 Habits of Pretty Good Leaders should be required reading for everyone of voting age. An excellent and easy to understand primer for continual improvement for the individual and any organization in today's turbulent world. - Clare Crawford-Mason "The Leadership Handbook is a rare gift for all leaders who want to continue their personal path of learning. Scholtes writes as gracefully as he speaks. His unending supply of insightful models, delightful stories, and practical suggestions for action offers an exceptional bridge to the future. How can you argue with the teachings of a master?" - Daniel K. Oestreich, co-author Driving Fear Out of the Workplace and The Courageous Messenger It is not often one finds top notch theory and practiced in one place, but The Leaders Handbook is a treasury of specific suggestions informed by a wise, humanistic model of how organizations work - and ought to work. Peter Scholtes may actually manage to give consultants a good name - Alfie Kohn Peter Scholtes’ delightful new book should be required reading for all managers and executives. He goes beyond the anecdotal fluff which is common today and gives us a way to become effective leaders which is based on sound theory and practice. - Donald J. Wheeler, President of Statistical Process Controls and author of several best selling books on statistical thinking Peter Scholtes has made another prominent contribution to the complex world of quality improvement. The Leader’s Handbook is a great companion to The Team Handbook and relates, in an uncomplicated, easy to read and understand format, the necessary knowledge and role of a leader in improving organizations. Business, education, and government leaders will all benefit from this handbook. I highly recommend it for anyone serious about leading their organization into the 21st Century - David P. Langford Co- Author of Orchestrating Learning with Quality There are more references to Peter Scholtes in my own book on the Deming philosophy that virtually anybody else other than Dr. Deming and Shewhart. He’s great! This comprehensive presentation of Peter’s work over recent years will prove invaluable to everyone who is serious about managing and leading in a much better way. - Henry Neave, Director of Education and Research of the British Deming Assoc. and Principal Lecturer in Management in the Quality Unit at Nottingham Trent University, Author of The Deming Dimension When Peter Scholtes talks, I listen. When he writes, I read. If you want to learn about quality, you should do the likewise - Myron Tribus Finally, in one place, a compendium of the many ideas and methods that Peter has shared with audiences over the years. The Leader’s Handbook is a valuable companion to The Team Handbook and should benefit anyone desiring to improve the performance of their organization. - Dr. Edward M. Baker The following chapters make up the book: - Forward by Russell Ackoff 1. Train Wrecks and Bad Radios: How we got where we are 2. The New Leadership Competencies 3. Systems Thinking: The Heart of 21st Century Leadership 4. Getting the Daily Work Done 5. Giving Meaning, Purpose, Direction and Focus to Work 6. Breakthrough Improvement 7. Keeping Track: Measurements of Improvement, Progress and Success 8. Leading by Asking Good Questions 9. Performance Without Appraisal 10. Leadership into the Next Millennium There are some comments in the book that are unconventional. While they are not the way managers usually approach the subject of leadership, these statements reflect my strong beliefs, the net output of my nearly forty years of observing leaders and leadership. - We look to the heroic efforts of outstanding individuals for our success. Instead we must create systems that routinely produce excellent work with the everyday 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. - Ninety-five percent of the changes undertaken in organizations have nothing to do with improvement. - The greatest conceit of managers is that they can motivate people. Managers’ attempts to motivate people will only make things worse. - Behind incentive programs lies management’s patronizing and cynical sets of assumptions about workers: managers implicitly say to workers, "I’m OK, you need incentives." Managers imply a belief that their workers are withholding a certain amount of effort waiting for it to be bribed out of them. If you are intrigued with these statements and want to hear more explanation about why they are true, I encourage you to read The Leader’s Handbook

From the Back Cover

For Anyone Serious About Leading Their Organization Into the 21St Century

This groundbreaking book, already creating a stir, could only have been written by Peter R. Scholtes­­author of the best-selling book ever written on teams: The Team Handbook. In The Leader's Handbook, Scholtes, widely acknowledged as one of the most influential teachers of leadership and management of the decade, does for managers what The Team Handbook did for teams. Scholtes shows how bad systems, not bad workers, cause the vast majority of management problems. He takes controversial stands against performance appraisals and incentive compensation. And he takes you from theory to practice with a wide variety of state-of-the-art activities and exercises to help you immediately begin implementing breakthrough improvements in all your work processes.

Customer Reviews

A true handbook on management techniques, tools and systems
Peter R. Scholtes claims that Knute Rockne's classic "Win one for the Gipper" speech had nothing to do with Notre Dame's victory over Army in 1928. What blasphemy! Instead, Scholtes says, Notre Dame won because of its superior "training, conditioning and coaching" - its unbeatable system. Throughout this outstanding business management book, Scholtes insists on the superiority of such team-driven systems, in which every member makes a contribution, over individualistic, top-down management. As a former colleague and disciple of the fabled W. Edwards Deming, who inspired the Japanese method of Total Quality Control, Scholtes speaks and writes with singular authority on this topic. His book is designed to be used, with a spiral binding, charts, bulleted lists, illustrations, sidebars (including the one about Knute Rockne) and suggestions for further reading. getAbstract suggests that if you want to learn more about business management, you'll score a touchdown when you read this comprehensive guidebook.

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.

Enjoyed
I liked the substance of this book, and was impressed by the ideas. Still, it doesn't get to the heart of leadership and empowering people. I suggest a recent book I read from Amazon that does this and does it well---------you'll love it: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills."