The Leadership Solution

Jim Shaffer

Retail Price: $24.95 LS Price: $0.00 Availability: Out-of-Print Format: Hardcover, 307pp. ISBN: 0070790639 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Pub. Date: May 2000 Average Customer Review:

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As technology blurs international borders, and the resulting global competition becomes more intense than at any time in history, a leaders ability to connect each employee to the organizations business strategy and goals becomes a new key to long-term success, especially in an ultra-tight labor market. The Leadership Solution presents a step-by-step plan to manage knowledge and information in a way that engages people and substantially improves business performance.

Leadership expert and Towers Perrin principal Jim Shaffer draws on his experience with dozens of global powerhousesToyota, IBM, Motorola, and others to outline a complete leadership process that will work for any organization in any industry. Lively anecdotes and examples reveal how leaders confronted real business problems from free-falling stock prices to chaotic mergers and acquisitions and worked through these problems, connecting the dots to emerge stronger and more successful both as organizations and as leaders.

What does Jerre Stead do that helped IngramMicro become one of the worlds largest technology companies? What does Jack Welch do that helped him restore GE to its status as one of the worlds most valuable companies? What does FedEx do that helps it maintain its next-day delivery leadership? What does Pat Kelley do at PSSWorld Medical that has helped create one of the worlds true hyper-growth companies? The Leadership Solution provides distinctive insight into how these and other companies are able to create compelling places to work, places where everyday people think and act like business owners to achieve extraordinary goals.

Fascinating case studies and leadership tools offer up:

• A 6-step course on what is required to connect people to your business strategy
• 20 things you can do today to begin to generate commitment from your people
• Techniques to replace sleep-inducing meetings with performance-based huddles
• Specific approaches to manage communication as a business process and improve quality, service, speed, costs, innovation, and productivity
• 3 people principles that consistently guide the best of the best
• 9 guidelines for negotiating through a merger or acquisition
• 4 key components for creating a more engaged work force
• Hands-on techniques to show each company member the route to excellence

Todays world is changing rapidly, and the knowledge and skills needed to be an effective leader are changing rapidly with it. Jim Shaffers complete, no-nonsense leadership seminar, The Leadership Solution, doesn't provide complicated formulas or secret strategies, just top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top techniques for managing information and knowledge to achieve top performance from everyone in the business. Use it to discover what the best of the best do to get their people on board and moving in the same direction. Then design a plan that does the same for you.

Communication Techniques to Focus Everyone in Your Organization on the Same Goal and Point the Way to the Next Level


Reviews

"Destined to become the classic treatise on how communication transforms hum-drum organizations into compelling places to work. "

—Jack Zenger Chairman, Zenger Institute

"The Leadership Solution is a book that offers meaningful solutions to the essential need of any organization today--to have in its' people a sense of being part of the organization--and not just filling functions for them."

—Horst H. Schulze, President and COO The Ritz Carlton

"Jim Shaffer has created a great package for all leaders to learn how to become better leaders. I raced through the book, learning every minute."

—Jerre L. Stead, Chairman and CEO Ingram Micro, Inc.

"In The Leadership Solution you will find tools that will help you connect your people to your mission. As we say around here, "we can learn to lead. So can you."

—Patrick Kelly, Chairman and CEO PSS/World Medical, Inc.

"If you are running a business today,or aspire to running a business,you should read this book. It's a practical, common sense look at how leaders use communication to solve business problems."

—James F. Orr, III former Chairman & CEO, UNUMProvident Corporation

Jim Shaffer is one of the world's leading change management and communication consultants, having been a senior consultant and principal of Towers Perrin for 20 years. The author of nearly 100 articles, Shaffer has consulted to the leadership of The Mayo Clinic, Medtronic, Labatt Breweries, 3M, Hallmark, Dow Chemical, Royal Bank of Canada and many others. He also conducts seminars and workshops for corporate leaders in numerous countries.

	Preface
	Introduction
	Acknowledgments
PART ONE:	THE PAYOFF
	When the Dots Connect
	Lessons Learned
PART TWO:	GROUND SCHOOL: THE SIX STEPS TO CONNECTING PEOPLE TO STRATEGY
	Managing Decision Moments
	Guiding by Best Principles
	Leadership: Making the Weather
	Systems Speak
	The Power of Huddles and Channels
	Linking People to Strategy
	Lessons Learned
PART THREE:	THE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
	Say and Do—A Sailing Metaphor
	Tell Me the Story
	Stories Start with Leaders
	Find the Flaw
	Benchmarking and Best Practices
	Lessons Learned
PART FOUR:	CONNECTING THE DOTS
	The Furniture Company
	The Oil Company
	Earthshaking Events
	Lessons Learned
PART FIVE:	STARTING OVER
	Starting Over
	Are You Willing?
	Twenty Things You Can Do Now
	Lessons Learned
PART SIX:	THE COMMUNICATION FUNCTION
	Organizational Communication: A Vision
	Reinventing the Communication Function
	Lessons Learned
	Epilogue
	Endnotes
	Index

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