Mix them all together, and what do you get? Sometimes disaster! Here are fresh insights and practical solutions for easing the inevitable conflicts of today's age- and values-diverse workplace, where people just don't see work (or life) the same way."They have no work ethic.""So I told my boss, 'If you're looking for loyalty, get a dog.""I will not attend meetings that start after 5."There's a serious new problem in the workplace, and it has nothing to do with downsizing, change, foreign competition, pointy-haired bosses, cubicle envy, or greed. Instead, it's the problem of distinct generations--the Veterans, the Baby Boomers, the GenXers, and (coming soon) the Nexters--crossing paths and sometimes colliding.So how can you manage this motley group with their conflicting work ethics, dissimilar values, and idiosyncratic styles? How do you get them to stop snarling at each other? How do you motivate them to work together?Generations at Work is the first book to clearly outline each group's primary characteristics, and to explain the seminal events and cultural icons that shaped their attitudes and values. But it doesn't just provide an astute sociological portrait. The book also offers practical, sound solutions for avoiding (or remedying) the most common mistakes of managing in today's cross-generational workplace.Readers will find profiles of companies with effective strategies for smoothing generational conflict...a true-to-life case study of a manager caught in the crossfire...and 21 key questions and answers for solving cross-gen problems.For anyone struggling to manage a workforce with different ways of working, talking, and thinking, Generations at Work both explains the gulf that separates the generations and offers insightful solutions for creating workplace harmony.

     It is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information we encounter each day. Whether at work, at school, or in our personal endeavors, there’s a deepening (and inescapable) need for people to work with and understand information. Information architecture is the way that we arrange the parts of something to make it understandable as a whole. When we make things for others to use, the architecture of information that we choose greatly affects our ability to deliver our intended message to our users. We all face messes made of information and people. I define the word “mess” the same way that most dictionaries do: “A situation where the interactions between people and information are confusing or full of difficulties.” — Who doesn’t bump up against messes made of information and people every day? This book provides a seven step process for making sense of any mess. Each chapter contains a set of lessons as well as workbook exercises architected to help you to work through your own mess.

    In Fish! the heroine, Mary Jane Ramirez, recently widowed and mother of two, is asked to engineer a turnaround of her company's troubled operations department, a group that authors Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen describe as a "toxic energy dump." Most reasonable heads would cut their losses and move on. Why bother with this bunch of losers? But the authors don't make it so easy for Mary Jane. Instead, she's left to sort out this mess with the help of head fishmonger Lonnie. Based on a bestselling corporate education video, Fish! aims to help employees find their way to a fun and happy workplace. While some may find the story line and prescriptions--such as "Choose Your Attitude," "Make Their Day," and "Be Present"--downright corny, others will find a good dose of worthwhile motivational management techniques. If you loved Who Moved My Cheese? then you'll find much to like here. And don't worry about Mary Jane and kids. Fish! has a happy ending for everyone. --Harry C. Edwards

    Communication is also emphasized, with a focus on how to document and communicate project developments, both within and outside of the team. In-depth coverage of planning, scheduling and cost management is also provided. The authors' goal is to provide many cases that are fun and elicit interesting debates, and this edition includes new end-of-chapter cases. In addition, all new up-to-date Real World Project Management vignettes are included at the beginning and within each chapter, giving you a taste of how project management is practically applied in the workplace. Key points of each chapter are highlighted in Critical Success Factor boxes, providing an overview of the main ideas covered within the chapter. End-of-chapter materials contain questions and Internet exercises that allow you to apply the concepts covered in the chapter. Sprinkled throughout each chapter are boxed questions designed to test your comprehension of key concepts. A trial version of Microsoft Office Project 2007 is included for student use on class projects.

    Project Management For Dummies, Second Edition introduces you to the principles of successful project management and shows you how to motivate any team to gain maximum productivity. You'll find out how to:Define your project and what you intend to accomplish Identify project stakeholders and their expectations Develop a project plan Establish project schedules and timetables Determine which skill sets and resources the project requires Choose team members and define their roles Launch you project and track its progress Encourage peak performance Conclude your project successfully Complete with helpful tips on delegating, shortening schedules, and optimizing your own performance Project Management for Dummies, help you get your project, and your career, off the ground in no time.

    We constantly ask "how? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters. Instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait for bosses to change, we seek the latest fad, we invest in one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe--instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our heads down and stick to the rules. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls. Peter Block puts the "how-to" craze in perspective and presents a guide to the difficult and life-granting journey of bringing what we know is of personal value into an indifferent or even hostile corporate and cultural landscape. He raises our awareness of the trade-offs we've made in the name of practicality and expediency, and offers hope for a way of life in which we're motivated not by what "works," but by the things that truly matter in life--idealism, intimacy, depth and engagement.

    But in today’s service- and software-driven world, “done” is less obvious. When is Amazon done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, services powered by digital systems are never done. So then how do we give teams a goal that they can work on?Mostly, we simply ask teams to build features—but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that create no value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to achieve. Using outcomes creates focus and alignment. It eliminates needless work. And it puts the customer at the center of everything you do.Setting goals as outcomes sounds simple, but it can be hard to do in practice. This book is a practical guide to using outcomes to guide the work of your team. "Josh’s crisp volume brims with insight about how to fly at just the right level - the level of outcomes. If you’ve ever wondered how M your MVP should be, or how to get more R in your OKRs, this book will help." --Nick Rockwell, CTO, NY Times

    Dread no longer: Read This Before Our Next Meeting not only explains what’s wrong with “the meeting,” and meeting culture, but suggests how to make meetings more effective, efficient, and worthy of attending. It assesses when it’s necessary to skip the meeting and get right to work. Al Pittampalli shares examples of transforming workplaces by revamping the purpose of the meeting and a company's meeting culture. This book belongs on the shelf of any employee, employer and company looking to revolutionize what it means to do "work" all day and how to do it. Simply put: Stop wasting time. Read This Before Our Next Meeting is the call to action you (or your boss) needs to create the company that does the meaningful work it was created to do.

    But when new Scrum practitioners attempt to apply Scrum theory and high-level approaches in actual projects, they often find it surprisingly difficult. In Scrum Shortcuts without Cutting Corners, Scrum expert Ilan Goldstein helps you translate the Scrum framework into reality to meet the Scrum challenges your formal training never warned you about. Drawing on his extensive agile experience in a wide range of projects and environments, Goldstein presents thirty proven, flexible shortcuts for optimizing Scrum processes, actions, and outcomes. Each shortcut walks you through applying a Scrum approach to achieve a tangible output. These easy-to-digest, actionable patterns address a broad range of topics including getting started, quality and metrics, team members and roles, managing stakeholders, estimation, continuous improvement and much more. Whatever your role, Scrum Shortcuts without Cutting Corners will help you take your Scrum skills to the next level and achieve better results in any project you participate in.

    Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve. We hope that this book helps you and your teams to do retrospectives effectively and efficiently to reflect upon your ways of working, and continuously improve them!

    Everyone wants them, whether to sell more products, spread good ideas, or win more funding. In our busy digital world, the way to results is influencing people on the web. But how?An ad campaign won't cut it. A Twitter account doesn't guarantee it. Manipulative tricks will backfire. Instead, you need quality, compelling web content that attracts people and engages them for the long haul.Clout explains the key principles of influence and how to apply them to web content. Along the way, those principles come to life with lots of practical examples. With this book, you'll: Discover why a technology feature, marketing campaign, SEO effort, or redesign aren't enough to influence online. Understand the business value of compelling web content. Learn 8 principles for influence from the art of rhetoric and the science of psychology. Find out what context is and why it's so important to influence. Jump start your planning for content over time with patterns and diagrams. Learn the basics of evaluation to determine whether your web content is making a difference.

    In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field's leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms.

    Covey's eldest son comes a revolutionary new path towards productivity and satisfaction. Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents —is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization. For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time–killing, bureaucratic check–and–balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

    What you'll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You'll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab, and every person you meet, a chance to experiment.The Charisma Myth is a mix of fun stories, sound science, and practical tools. Cabane takes a hard scientific approach to a heretofore mystical topic, covering what charisma actually is, how it is learned, what its side effects are, and how to handle them.

    People need to be effective.Productivity books focus on doing more, Jim and Tonianne want you to focus on doing better. Personal Kanban is about choosing the right work at the right time. Recognizing why we do the things we do. Understanding the impact of our actions. Creating value - not just product. For ourselves, our families, our friends, our co-workers. For our legacy.Personal Kanban takes the same Lean principles from manufacturing that led the Japanese auto industry to become a global leader in quality, and applies them to individual and team work. Personal Kanban asks only that we visualize our work and limit our work-in-progress. Visualizing work allows us to transform our conceptual and threatening workload into an actionable, context-sensitive flow. Limiting our work-in-progress helps us complete what we start and understand the value of our choices. Combined, these two simple acts encourage us to improve the way we work and the way we make choices to balance our personal, professional, and social lives.Neither a prescription nor a plan, Personal Kanban provides a light, actionable, achievable framework for understanding our work and its context. This book describes why students, parents, business leaders, major corporations, and world governments all see immediate results with Personal Kanban.