Beyond the Job Description


Book Description

When work becomes messy and complicated, we stop getting good work done, we lose sight of the things that inspire us, and sometimes we disengage. This book helps you translate your challenges at work into useful insights that boost learning and performance, and make your time spent at work a little better.




Go Beyond the Job Description


Book Description

What do you do well that you don't use at work? In Go Beyond the Job Description, HR professionals and general managers will learn how to increase individual and team contributions by using what they already know and demonstrates in step-by-step style how to increase productivity, motivation, and engagement in individuals with a proven 100-day project called Talent Engagement Optimization (TEO). TEO is using more of what people already have, but are not using, in their jobs. It looks beyond the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities and considers in depth the employee talents, opportunities, and development now and in the future, and incorporates them in practical and meaningful ways that benefits employee and organization. Features include an online assessment to learn your own Talent Engagement Zone, a Development Plan, Strategic Program Transition Plan, and Additional Resources and Tools. A methodical and insightful book with detailed guidelines for any HR manager looking to optimize employee talent and build sustainable engagement, especially those with limited time and funds.




Ask a Manager


Book Description

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together







Beyond the Team


Book Description

An internationally renowned author offers an overview of how people and jobs can best be connected in a new era. 'Beyond the Team' draws on Meredith Belbin's extensive work with organizations worldwide to give further insights into the workings of teams and groups. The modern job needs to be actively interpreted and constantly revised in terms of the balance between a team role, a work role and a professional role. The increasingly complex demands of modern jobs can be aided by a colour system as tested in international trials. A colour based top down, bottom up form of communication creates sensitive feedback with a special value where members of a workforce do not share common language. The socially complex nature of communication about work in a new era offers parallels with the intricacies of the social insect world. Information technology is extending human networking with the potential of creating a form of organization closer to what can be achieved in superorganisms. 'Beyond the Team' shows how eventually, the mature team can learn to distribute work between its own members by giving a comprehensive understanding of how to manage both team roles and work roles.




Work without Jobs


Book Description

In this Wall Street Journal bestseller, why the future of work requires the deconstruction of jobs and the reconstruction of work. Work is traditionally understood as a “job,” and workers as “jobholders.” Jobs are structured by titles, hierarchies, and qualifications. In Work without Jobs, the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau propose a radically new way of looking at work. They describe a new “work operating system” that deconstructs jobs into their component parts and reconstructs these components into more optimal combinations that reflect the skills and abilities of individual workers. In a new normal of rapidly accelerating automation, demands for organizational agility, efforts to increase diversity, and the emergence of alternative work arrangements, the old system based on jobs and jobholders is cumbersome and ungainly. Jesuthasan and Boudreau’s new system lays out a roadmap for the future of work. Work without Jobs presents real-world cases that show how leading organizations are embracing work deconstruction and reinvention. For example, when a robot, chatbot, or artificial intelligence takes over parts of a job while a human worker continues to do other parts, what is the “job”? DHL found some answers when it deployed social robotics at its distribution centers. Meanwhile, the biotechnology company Genentech deconstructed jobs to increase flexibility, worker engagement, and retention. Other organizations achieved agility with internal talent marketplaces, worker exchanges, freelancers, crowdsourcing, and partnerships. It’s time for organizations to reboot their work operating system, and Work without Jobs offers an essential guide for doing so.




The Business Owner Defined: A Job Description for the Business Owner


Book Description

What is the difference between the duties of a business owner and the duties of a senior executive in a company? If you are a business owner, you probably have already asked yourself this question. But at the same time you may have never seen a complete, detailed, step-by-step description of all the basic duties of a business owner of a typical company. The author of this book is an entrepreneur and a practical man who has established a few successful companies. His description of each individual duty of a business owner is amazingly simple and systematic. It is astonishing how easy and applicable these descriptions are in real life. Each duty is described in a separate chapter with many examples from different business areas. Undoubtedly this book can be called the first professional manual for a business owner of any company. “The book, which you have in your hands, is written for those who started their business, encountered some difficulties and is searching for a way to succeed. The author of this book, Alexander Visoltsky, is not a theoretic who is talking about business at the desk. He is practician, who generalized the extensive experience of running his own business. His observations and recommendations are very useful for those who start this exciting game called “Business.” Small business is not simple at all! It is difficult to run a small business because it creates a lot of problems an owner has to solve. It has a lack of resources and possibilities and big staff turnover. The only solution is skillful and modern management. One needs to create a successful company. But how? At the beginning of his activity the author did not have an idea of how to manage. How to restore order in "your home", organize work and beat competitors. He decided to figure it out and help others. The author proposes solutions based on his experience. These solutions are results of his efforts of solving problems he encountered in his business. They turned out to be typical for all small companies. If you want your business to be successful, use solutions this book gives you!”—A.V Doctor of Economics, Professor “Dear Alexandr! I had read “A Job Description For The Business Owner” book and decided to write down my opinion. This book is not just relevant. I consider that any business owner, despite his achievements, needs this book like air. It is written in simple language. Today not many business companies have “personal face” and your book will help a lot of people to make up their mind and change their viewpoint on the world of “money”. I think it will become a handbook for those who had read it thoughtfully – this is the highest mark for a book and an author. I wish you prosperity, continue creating!”—A.K Owner




Beyond the Skills Gap


Book Description

2018 Frederic W. Ness Book Award, AAC&U How can educators ensure that young people who attain a postsecondary credential are adequately prepared for the future? Matthew T. Hora and his colleagues explain that the answer is not simply that students need more specialized technical training to meet narrowly defined employment opportunities. Beyond the Skills Gap challenges this conception of the “skills gap,” highlighting instead the value of broader twenty-first-century skills in postsecondary education. They advocate for a system in which employers share responsibility along with the education sector to serve the collective needs of the economy, society, and students. Drawing on interviews with educators in two- and four-year institutions and employers in the manufacturing and biotechnology sectors, the authors demonstrate the critical importance of habits of mind such as problem solving, teamwork, and communication. They go on to show how faculty and program administrators can create active learning experiences that develop students’ skills across a range of domains. The book includes in-depth descriptions of eight educators whose classrooms exemplify the effort to blend technical learning with the cultivation of twenty-first-century habits of mind. The study, set in Wisconsin, takes place against the backdrop of heated political debates over the role of public higher education. This thoughtful and nuanced account, enriched by keen observations of postsecondary instructional practice, promises to contribute new insights to the rich literature on workforce development and to provide valuable guidance for postsecondary faculty and administrators.




Beyond Work-Family Balance


Book Description

Everyone who struggles to meet the demands of work and personal-life responsibilities knows how tough it is to do so. This bold new book shows that it is the deeply engrained separation of work and personal life that has limited our ability to deal effectively with the conflict between them. Beyond Work-Family Balance demonstrates why the image of "balance" is outmoded and why a new approach--work-personal life integration--offers greater promise for meaningful change. Providing many examples from action research projects in more than a dozen organizations of different kinds, the authors show how using their method of integrating rather than separating personal-life considerations from the workplace can achieve positive outcomes, not only for workers but also for the work. The method offers a way of looking deeply into the work culture to find inequitable and ineffective work practices that are so embedded and routine that no one thinks to question them3/4they are just the way things get done. Once identified, these work practices can be changed to achieve what the authors call a Dual Agenda: a more equitable workplace where both men and women can achieve their full potential and a more effective workplace where the needs of the work, rather than gendered and outmoded assumptions, determine what gets done and how. Beyond Work-Family Balance offers an approach that achieves what "family friendly" policies, "mommy tracks," and so-called flexibility programs cannot. Such programs address the symptoms of the problem. This book offers a way of changing the everyday work practices and norms that are at the root of the problem.




Beyond HR


Book Description

In Beyond HR: The New Science of Human capital, John Boudreau and Peter Ramstad show you how to do this through a new decisions science-talentship. Through talentship, you move far beyond merely reactive mind-set of planning and budgeting for headcount and hiring and retaining talent.