If management theories and systems (think: "Management by Objectives" and "Process Optimization") are the religion, consultants are the high-priests. With years as a top Fortune 100 executive and, yes, management consultant, Karen Phelan exposes the whole game. Takeaway: consultants have forgotten that business are made up of real people, not numbers. Empathy, not MBA's, is the real future of management.It’s the People, Stupid! Karen Phelan is sorry. She really is. She tried to do business by the numbers—the management consultant way—developing measures, optimizing processes, and quantifying performance. The only problem is that businesses are run by people. And people can’t be plugged into formulas or summed up in scorecards. Phelan dissects a whole range of consulting treatments for unhealthy companies and shows why they’re essentially fad diets: superficial would-be fixes that don’t result in lasting improvements and can cause serious damage. With a mix of clear-eyed business analysis, heart-wrenching stories, and hard-won lessons for both consultants and the people who hire them, this book is impossible to put down and impossible to ignore. Karen Phelan and other consultants may have “broken” your company, but she’s eager to make amends. “Finally, an author challenging our broken management models who has credibility—she has been there. Karen Phelan not only explains why the emperor—our sacred ways of managing—has no clothes but provides us with insightful alternatives that promise to add real value to our organizations and the people that make them function.” —Dean Schroeder, award-winning coauthor of Ideas Are Free “Funny, irreverent, and outrageous, this book is making a deeply serious point: talking to actual people and figuring out how to help them work together better is what’s going to make organizations stronger, not another PowerPoint presentation.” —Rosina L. Racioppi, President and CEO, Women Unlimited, Inc.

This book presents a practical guide to building a successful, competitive, and cost-effective HRD practice that meets customers' needs. Results teaches readers a highly effective, easy-to-learn, field tested system for assessing organizational results within three domains: performance (system and financial), learning (knowledge and expertise), and perceptions (participant and stakeholder).

Why measure results in HRD? Because the "corporate school" and "human relations" models of HRD practice, whereby development occurs simply because it is good for employees, no longer works. If HRD is to be a core organizational process, it must act like one and hold itself accountable. Measuring results, particularly bottom-line performance results, is key to gaining support from top management. And those who measure results ultimately find it a source of program improvement and innovation as well as pride and satisfaction.

While Results is theoretically sound, it is firmly rooted in practice, offering a core five-step assessment process that gives readers a simple and direct journey from analysis inputs to decision outputs. Whether they have assessment tools but no theory, theory but no tools, or no tools and no theory, this book will equip them to quickly and effectively assess their results.

• Shows human resource development (HRD) professionals how to measure organizational results within the domains of performance, learning, and perceptions using the effective and efficient Results Assessment System
• This widely praised system simplifies the complex issues of assessment, enabling HRD professionals to clearly demonstrate their results
• Real-life examples illustrate how the principles work
• From the author of Analysis for Improving Performance , winner of the 1995 Outstanding Instructional Communication Award from the International Society for Performance Improvement and the 1995 Society for Human Resource Management Book Award

Are you the type of leader people want to follow? You can be—but first, you've got to understand what sets great leaders apart from all the rest.

Certainly, leaders need people skills, execution skills, a deep knowledge of industry trends, the ability to articulate a vision, and more—they must be competent—but that's just the tip of the iceberg. What's below the waterline? What's deep inside the best leaders that makes them different?

Mark Miller contends it is their leadership character. In his latest enlightening and entertaining business fable, he describes the five unique character traits exhibited by exceptional leaders and how to cultivate them.

The Heart of Leadership begins with young and ambitious Blake Brown being passed over for a desperately wanted promotion, despite an outstanding individual performance. Confused and frustrated, he turns to his former mentor, Debbie Brewster. Rather than attempting to solve Blake's problem for him, she sends him on a quest to meet with five of his late father's colleagues, each of whom holds a piece of the puzzle he's trying to solve.

As Blake puts the pieces together, he discovers that in the final analysis, a lack of skills isn't what holds most leaders back; skills are too easy to learn. Without demonstrated leadership character, however, a skill set will never be enough. Most often, when leaders fail to reach their full potential, it is an issue of the heart. This is Blake's ultimate revelation.

This book shows us that leadership needn't be the purview of the few—it is within reach for millions around the world. The Heart of Leadership is a road map for every person who desires to make a difference in the lives of others and become a leader people want to follow.

THE WAYS WE GO about changing organizations usually don't work, asserts Geoff Bellman. Our underlying assumptions predetermine the results and preclude the broad success we so desperately seek. Change efforts often end up off-track because of small expectations. What is needed are grand expectations, so big that they cannot be realized in many lifetimes. It is only when people awaken to and work toward these immense purposes that they have the chance of finding fulfillment. Organizations are the perfect place to do this-these "beasts" which we create and curse, love and hate, that are so essential to our lives. In The Beauty of the Beast, Bellman shows how we can explore our huge potential and shift our daily organizational focus to one of long life and fulfillment-and in the process redesign our organizations for tomorrow. Bellman examines why we keep creating these creatures that fall so far short of our dreams for them. He reveals how to recognize the beast in ourselves, showing how organizational control and hierarchy multiply our natural and less constructive inclinations many times over. He points out that the problem is not the existence of organizations but in the ways we imagine them. Bellman asks us to consider what we want to pass on to future generations, helps us imagine the organizations we would be proud to create, and challenges us to take action from where we are today. He offers twenty renewal assertions to help us in redesigning organizations for tomorrow. These solid guides (with related questions for work groups) open the organization to new possibilities, helping us to embrace the organizational world as it really is while working hard to change it. In the process we will also change ourselves, as we ultimately feel less distant from-and more responsible for-creating those troubling structures we love to vent about. The Beauty of the Beast. will help people see their daily work in a new and larger perspective. It will help them embrace the real organizational world while they work at renewing it. And it will help people to recognize the choices available to them-and to exercise those choices for positive results.THE WAYS WE GO about changing organizations usually don't work, asserts Geoff Bellman. Our underlying assumptions predetermine the results and preclude the broad success we so desperately seek. Change efforts often end up off-track because of small expectations. What is needed are grand expectations, so big that they cannot be realized in many lifetimes. It is only when people awaken to and work toward these immense purposes that they have the chance of finding fulfillment. Organizations are the perfect place to do this-these "beasts" which we create and curse, love and hate, that are so essential to our lives. In The Beauty of the Beast, Bellman shows how we can explore our huge potential and shift our daily organizational focus to one of long life and fulfillment-and in the process redesign our organizations for tomorrow. Bellman examines why we keep creating these creatures that fall so far short of our dreams for them. He reveals how to recognize the beast in ourselves, showing how organizational control and hierarchy multiply our natural and less constructive inclinations many times over. He points out that the problem is not the existence of organizations but in the ways we imagine them. Bellman asks us to consider what we want to pass on to future generations, helps us imagine the organizations we would be proud to create, and challenges us to take action from where we are today. He offers twenty renewal assertions to help us in redesigning organizations for tomorrow. These solid guides (with related questions for work groups) open the organization to new possibilities, helping us to embrace the organizational world as it really is while working hard to change it. In the process we will also change ourselves, as we ultimately feel less distant from-and more responsible for-creating those troubling structures we love to vent about. The Beauty of the Beast. will help people see their daily work in a new and larger perspective. It will help them embrace the real organizational world while they work at renewing it. And it will help people to recognize the choices available to them-and to exercise those choices for positive results.

• A new perspective on organizations from Geoff Bellman, bestselling author of Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge (over 80,000 copies sold) and The Consultant's Calling (over 40,000 copies sold)
• Helps us identify what we love and hate about organizations-and how this affects our success
• Offers eight aspirations and twenty assertions that guide our discovery of new work alternatives for individuals, work groups, and organizations

How can smaller companies create effective Leadership Development programs?

Business Analysts: Chart Your Path to Success with Creative Solutions to Complex Business Problems! Business in the 21st century is rife with complexity. To leverage that complexity and guide an organization through these turbulent times, today's business analyst must transition from a tactical, project-focused role to a creative, innovative role. The path to this transition and the tools to accomplish it are presented in this new book by acclaimed author Kathleen "Kitty" Hass. Winner of PMI's David I. Cleland Project Management Literature Award for her book Managing Complex Projects: A New Model, Hass has again written a book that will refocus a discipline. Hass believes that only by confronting and capitalizing on change and complexity the new "constants" in today's world can organizations forge ahead. The enterprise business analyst is perfectly positioned to understand the needs of an organization, help it remain competitive, identify creative solutions to complex business problems, bring about innovation, and constantly add value for the customer and revenue to the bottom line. The Enterprise Business Analyst: Developing Creative Solutions to Complex Business Problems offers: An overview of the current and emerging role of the business analyst New leadership models for the 21st century Methods for fostering team creativity Practices to spark innovation Strategies for communicating in a complex environment