Don't Smile Until Christmas: Accounts of the First Year of Teaching

Education & Teaching

Canfield, John

Ryan, Kevin

Schools & Teaching

University of Chicago Press

Think or Sink is a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when people don’t work together effectively, and a hopeful one about what they can accomplish when they do. Think or Sink sets a stage that may occur multiple times every day in companies and organizations around the world. The headquarters of a major corporation sends a request for proposal to three of its regional branch managers. The company has won a major contract, and one branch will get the new business, while the other two will be downsized. Each regional management team has six months to prepare a presentation that will determine the next chapter of their careers. The teams in Phoenix, Atlanta and Indianapolis illustrate that the quality of the ideas we generate, and the buy-in we build for those ideas, is rooted in the way we think and work together. Think or Sink provides an opportunity to consider, compare, and choose a leadership style very likely to help you achieve sustainable gains over the long term – a leadership style driven by good thinking. Dysfunction is an all-too-often used word to describe social and political speed bumps and road blocks in the workplace. It means a thing not functioning properly, or not functioning in a way that would achieve its purpose. Dysfunction in the work place is waste. Think or Sink presents structured, deliberate collaboration as the primary strategy to reduce/eliminate dysfunction. Collaboration can be so much more than just assembling as a team to do work. Think or Sink is intended to be a rallying cry for better collaborators, better leaders, and better employees. The goal of Think or Sink, and the rest of my Good Thinking series to be completed by early 2011, is to provide the approach and tools to help minimize the waste/dysfunction in workplaces. I am hoping Think or Sink will serve as a call to action for many employees and leaders who really want to improve their workplaces.

Think or Sink: A Parable of Collaboration

Business & Money

Smith, Greg

Management & Leadership

Black Lake Press

Idea generating skills are crucial to an organization’s success. They are the stepping stones to decisions and support. Implemented well, the ideas are transformed into improved business performance. Considering that you cannot realize what you cannot imagine, your ability to realize improved ideas can differentiate you from your competitors. Considering that you cannot will yourself a new idea, your ability to purposefully imagine improved ideas on demand can differentiate you from your competitors.

Imagine: Ideation Skills for Improvement and Innovation Today

Collaboration can be so much more than just assembling as a team to do work. Collaboration done well builds decisions better than anyone expected, supported enthusiastically by all of the team’s members. Opinions are substantiated by data. Goals are developed and documented by the team. The team generates, considers, selects, and implements its own decisions. There is lots of conversation, lots of wall charts, lots of productive learning. Team performance improves, and improved team morale follows quickly. The Good Thinking Series of books can help you learn that you don’t have to be captive to personal agendas or corporate dysfunction. We can understand why our meetings are frustrating, why our projects don’t turn out like we expected, and why our goals are just beyond our grasp. We can understand why our teams seem to achieve less than the sum of the team members’ abilities. We can recognize unhealthy expectations, ineffective thought patterns, and unproductive communication styles.

Collaborate: Tools and Techniques for Productive Meetings

Processes & Infrastructure

Plan covers strategic planning and scenario planning. Strategic planning provides an opportunity for a senior team to discuss and decide what they want their organization to accomplish. This book will introduce and practice a ten-step process, ten-great questions, that guides a senior team to learn what it would prefer to do. Scenario planning helps teams consider alternative futures and prepare a successful response plan no matter what the situation. The alternate views will help generate new insights about a company and its possible futures. Thinking this way helps prepare contributors to notice and consider emerging ideas before others even perceive any change. Scenario planning is an excellent complement and second step to effective strategic planning. This may even be the first time these two powerful planning methodologies have been presented together in the same book.

Plan: Ideation Skills for Improvement and Innovation Tomorrow

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Books by Canfield, John