The Guidebook for Performance Improvement: Working with Individuals and Organizations
Author: Roger Ed Kaufman
The ultimate resource for improvement and planning! This treasure trove of information gives you expert direction for helping your organization and its employees improve performance. Unlike most resources on organizational improvement that consider only the micro- (individual) and macro- (organization) levels, this guide incorporates the mega- (customer/client) level in planning success.
- Among the many leading contributors to this volume are:
- Dale M. Brethower
- Diane Dormant
- Judith Hale
- Roger Kaufman
- Danny G. Langdon
- Bette Madson
- Ann W. Parkman
- Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan
- Odin Westgaard
- Jack Zigon . . . and many more!
- You'll learn vital performance improvement steps including:
- Defining objectives and ensuring that they are useful
- Determining what results to achieve
- Designing and implementing interventions, programs, and activities that will achieve results
- Planning appropriate evaluation efforts . . . and much more!
Look this: What Is Six SIGMA or Essential Windows Communication Foundation
Breakthrough Performance: Accelerating the Transformation of Health Care Organizations
Author: Ellen Marszalek Gaucher
Transform your organization. Learn to inspire the critical shared sense of urgency that is key to effective and successful innovation with acclaimed quality management gurus Ellen Gaucher and Richard Coffey as your guides. Drawing on analysis of the most current research and highlighting instructive case examples, Gaucher and Coffey will show you how to enhance organizational readiness and stimulate innovation beyond evolutionary incremental upgrades to achieve revolutionary breakthrough-level improvement in organizational performance.
Peter S. Pruessing
This is a comprehensive overview of the concepts, applications, and literature of innovation with a wide variety of examples from enlightened contemporary industry. The authors state that they not only want to provide ""insights, approaches, and tools"" for leaders but actually want to stimulate ""big changes"" in personal and organizational performance for everyone who reads the book. This book suffers from an identity crisis -- or, perhaps more accurately, a crisis of ""voice,"" resulting from an attempt to speak to every audience. This undermines the utility the book would otherwise have for specific audiences. It claims to be written for organizational leaders and managers within healthcare (the primary audience); leaders and managers in other industries looking for ""practical knowledge"" to guide breakthroughs; and general readers who just want to know more about breakthrough change, including university students and employees interested in understanding and contributing to their organizations' successes. Unfortunately, it reads like a compendium for college students in a survey course, and as a result, the voice is actually rather pedestrian (which does the subject injustice) and fails to capture the excitement of breakthrough experience. This is all the more puzzling because the authors are successful and respected practitioners who are excited about their subject. This is a wide-ranging and useful discussion of breakthrough performance for those who want an overview with a lot of references, illustrations, and working examples. The references are current and demonstrate that the authors are sophisticated advocates who are in touch with their field. Ironically, the primaryaudience will find precious little here that is actually about healthcare -- even the one chapter with healthcare in the title is about general management principles not specific to healthcare or even illustrated with concrete healthcare examples. In short, this book summarizes contemporary thinking about organizational management, customer service, quality improvement, empowerment of employees, leadership, change management, ""value,"" etc. This is one of those books that makes a reviewer feel guilty. The authors are recognized experts who have assembled a substantial amount of information about an important topic, but it felt like every clichй in the book was being thrown at the reader, as were references and quotations seemingly intended to impress more than enlighten. I can imagine a serious student finding this helpful in getting grounded in these principles and their real life applications, but I can't imagine experienced leaders and managers in healthcare organizations finding much of this new or energizing or responsible for a personal epiphany. I wanted to like it more and to appreciate the service the authors were providing, but instead I found myself impatient and wishing for a breakthrough that didn't happen.
Doody Review Services
Reviewer: Peter S. Pruessing (Medical College of Wisconsin)
Description: This is a comprehensive overview of the concepts, applications, and literature of innovation with a wide variety of examples from enlightened contemporary industry.
Purpose: The authors state that they not only want to provide "insights, approaches, and tools" for leaders but actually want to stimulate "big changes" in personal and organizational performance for everyone who reads the book.
Audience: This book suffers from an identity crisis:or, perhaps more accurately, a crisis of "voice," resulting from an attempt to speak to every audience. This undermines the utility the book would otherwise have for specific audiences. It claims to be written for organizational leaders and managers within healthcare (the primary audience); leaders and managers in other industries looking for "practical knowledge" to guide breakthroughs; and general readers who just want to know more about breakthrough change, including university students and employees interested in understanding and contributing to their organizations' successes. Unfortunately, it reads like a compendium for college students in a survey course, and as a result, the voice is actually rather pedestrian (which does the subject injustice) and fails to capture the excitement of breakthrough experience. This is all the more puzzling because the authors are successful and respected practitioners who are excited about their subject.
Features: This is a wide-ranging and useful discussion of breakthrough performance for those who want an overview with a lot of references, illustrations, and working examples. The references are current and demonstrate that the authors are sophisticated advocates who are in touch with their field. Ironically, the primary audience will find precious little here that is actually about healthcare:even the one chapter with healthcare in the title is about general management principles not specific to healthcare or even illustrated with concrete healthcare examples. In short, this book summarizes contemporary thinking about organizational management, customer service, quality improvement, empowerment of employees, leadership, change management, "value," etc.
Assessment: This is one of those books that makes a reviewer feel guilty. The authors are recognized experts who have assembled a substantial amount of information about an important topic, but it felt like every clichй in the book was being thrown at the reader, as were references and quotations seemingly intended to impress more than enlighten. I can imagine a serious student finding this helpful in getting grounded in these principles and their real life applications, but I can't imagine experienced leaders and managers in healthcare organizations finding much of this new or energizing or responsible for a personal epiphany. I wanted to like it more and to appreciate the service the authors were providing, but instead I found myself impatient and wishing for a breakthrough that didn't happen.
Booknews
Shows organizational leaders and managers in health care how to enhance organizational readiness and stimulate innovation to achieve breakthrough-level improvement in organizational performance. Provides tools to help organizations develop new products or services that have breakthroughs in performance, or provide products or services at substantially lower costs to customers. Gaucher is affiliated with Wellmark, Inc., Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa and South Dakota. Coffey is affiliated with the University of Michigan Health System. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Rating
2 Stars from Doody
Table of Contents:
Tables, Figures, and Exhibits.Preface.
The Authors.
Health Care's New Sense of Urgency.
The Relationship Between Business Excellence and Breakthrough Performance.
Creating a Climate for Breakthrough Performance.
The Characteristics of Breakthrough Performance.
How Health Care Leaders Create Breakthrough Performance.
Sharpening Your Customer Focus.
Aligning the Organization for Action.
Team Culture for Breakthrough Performance.
Involving the Individual.
Seven Indispensable Tools for Breakthrough.
The Baldrige Criteria: Your Secret Weapon.
Conclusion.
Appendix A. A CompAndium of Questions for Breakthrough.
Appendix B. Actions to Achieve Breakthrough.
References.
Index.
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