Chaff: Proven Leadership Concepts that will add to an Organization’s Success - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

This is not the type of leadership/managementbook that you will find in the college bookstore. Itis a common sense, reminder, and food for thoughttype of book. It is an easy read and most likelyyou will immediately have a reaction and opinionabout each topic.At first glance you might feel the book’s topics aretoo simple, but most experienced leaders realizethat many important aspects of leadership are notoverly complex. What makes them complex is theapplication, since most aspects of leadershiprevolves around relationships with other people.The book is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle with manyseparate pieces that when put together form apositive leadership culture.The book is based on the work, experiences,success and wisdom gained during the author andeditor and contributor’s years in management,teaching and over a century of life experiences.Parts of their experiences were from top-levelprofessional training and the study of those whoresearched leadership concepts. But an evengreater part was the experience derived from therelationships with hundreds of very decent andsound thinking people (and some not so decent orsound thinking) in all walks of life.And while their religious beliefs are notspecifically exampled in the text, it is extremelyimportant to them that readers understand that theirindividual beliefs greatly impacted their writingthis book and their ability to achieve positive endresults in their own work endeavors.The organizations the author and contributor andeditor served were very successful and theconcepts covered in this book contributed greatlyto their success. The organizations had a culturethat embodied providing its customers or studentsexcellent service. Those that served theorganizations felt they had ownership in theirorganizations, were highly motivated, enjoyedtheir work and therefore were very productive.This contributed to making the organizationsfinancially sound.This book’s prologue paints a picture of theexcitement of threshing day on a small Midwesternfarm in the mid 20 th century. Hopefully you have amental picture of that day and also a mental pictureof oat chaff and how it looks like high quality oatsand yet has little or no value. The value of youhaving that picture is because often that is the waythings may look to you as a leader. Some issuesmay seem like the real thing, but after a closer lookthey are found to be as irrelevant as oat chaff.Too often, and often for reasons lacking anycommon sense or good judgment, some leaderswallow in the chaff endlessly. This wallowing iswhat some call analysis paralysis where leaders goon and on doing endless evaluations thatconsequently fail to add any real value to thedecisions that need to be made. Some peoplelove to wallow in the chaff, especially if it meansjudging other people. At times the chaff takes onthe aspects of a soap opera. To combat this aspectof chaff the first main theme of this book is theencouragement of thinking and acting in a moreconcise manner and eliminating the waste of timeand energy on the irrelevant.The second main theme of this book is asking youto seriously consider that you will achieve muchmore as a leader by using positive and commonsense decent approaches. On the Midwesternfarms, when the fall harvest yielded a poor qualityoat crop or chaff, the result was poor quality offeed for the milk cows which resulted in poor milkproduction. In leadership, when one uses negativeapproaches the result will usually be poorproductivity.The structure of the book is that each chaptercovers a different concept or topic. All chaptersinclude, in bold type, experiences of people theauthor and contributor and editor have known. Atthe end of each chapter are a few questions aboutthe chapter’s content. Hopefully you will find thebook’s structure enhances your learningexperience.Read, reflect, and enjoy!

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