Follow this Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential

Follow this Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential
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Philip G. Trent

interesting theory

Subtitled "Hire Gallup"

Manifesto for a Revolution

I agree, it's a great book

Follow this Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential
Curt Coffman , and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina
Manufacturer: Business Plus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Book Description

When it comes to getting ahead in business, The Gallup Organization has led the way with two landmark books: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers First, Break all the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. In its latest guide the world's hottest management consulting firm reveals your company's most valuable asset-and, with groundbreaking new findings and methods, shows you how developing that asset can lead to a quantum leap in cost efficiencies and profits.FOLLOW THIS PATHWhat do the world's greatest organizations have in common? They know that their most valuable resource is human-their employees and customers. And the best companies understand two important facts: people are emotional first and rational second, and because of that, employees and customers must be emotionally engaged in order for the organization to reach its full potential. Gallup research not only bears that out, but has uncovered the secrets of creating and managing an "emotional economy" that will provide boom possibilities for your company.FOLLOW THIS PATH shows you how the traditional ways to engage people no longer apply in today's world. Instead, it offers a system it calls The Gallup Path, based on the proven, revolutionary strategies of the most successful businesses. You'll learn the prerequisites of an effective workplace, forge unbreakable bonds between employees and customers with the book's 34 Routes to Superior Performance, know the three crucial links that drive productivity and growth, discover the best employee and customer motivators, and much more.Ignore the emotional economy-and miss out on financial performance. Helping you build relationships one customer and one employee at a time, this important book offers a unique new path for your organization to follow. All you have to do is value and develop human relationships all around you to transform your business-starting today.

Customer Reviews:

Philip G. Trent.......2007-09-11

What a great book! Simple, straight-forward, and relevant to sales managers today. Follow This Path was recommended to me by a friend and fellow manager. Like most managers, I've read dozens of books on management and leadership so I didn't expect any new revelations. However, this one surprised me. It gets right to the heart of what makes a great organization and why its people are key to any competitive advantage. Much of this book has been described as plain common sense, but the authors incorporate extensive research from the Gallup Organization to support their conclusions. If an organization isn't as productive as it should be - according to Gallup approximately 75% of employees in most companies are not engaged - then the number one goal is to get people engaged. The challenge is to figure out what people are good at, align those skill sets with company objectives, and focus more on outcomes instead of the process. That's where Follow This Path can help. The book offers a practical, sensible guide to maximizing individual strengths and talents in order to gain a competitive advantage - focusing more on heads and hearts and less on hands and feet! When you're working with people who are engaged and truly enjoy their work, managing them can be very rewarding. I highly recommend this book to managers who need a simple, yet proven approach to motivating employees and helping them reach their potential.

interesting theory.......2006-12-18

Like most management theory books this theory will probably be replaced by yet another but it does provide an interesting thought for human resources and management alike. The idea that you can unlock human potential by helping your employees maximize their work experience should be common sense. This book gives some great suggestions on how to start out along that path but like most business you will have to find your own. If you are interested in academic management this is probably a book that you will enjoy otherwise I would not waste your time.

Subtitled "Hire Gallup".......2005-03-15

We use Gallup at my workplace. Gallup is an excellent organization and we're better for working with them. However, this was too much. It's not a book. It's a brochure. Their Engagement Index is brilliant, but you can skim the other 260 pages without missing anything important.

Manifesto for a Revolution.......2003-08-16

Review of "Follow This Path"

The central thesis of this valuable and highly readable work can be summed up in three words: Feelings drive actions.

This book from The Gallup Organization focuses on applying that briefest but most fundamental truth to business success. The authors' conclusion can be simply stated: The feelings of your employees influence the feelings of your customers, and that drives their buying behavior and your profits.

It works like this: Understand your employees so that they are assigned to do work for which they're really best suited at the deepest personal level ('cuz they'll do that work better than any other). And treat your employees in ways that encourage them to be fully engaged in their work ('cuz that gets you more loyalty and productivity at no extra cost). And then, in turn, your employees will treat your customers in a way that makes your customers feel good about your company ('cuz that leads them to spend more with your firm for a longer time). And, voila!, your company makes more money with less effort.

At this point you might feel compelled to release a loud exclamation of, "Well, duh!"

But hold on.

The premise of "Follow This Path" seems deceptively simple for two reasons:
1) It contrasts markedly with the "rational" model that still shapes most interactions with both employees and customers in most organizations; and
2) It stands in direct opposition to the assumptions underlying most business initiatives that are supposed to improve quality, productivity, or even customer satisfaction. Most, if not all, of those projects are aimed at mechanistically tweaking operational processes. And they don't positively affect the people on either side of the transaction: employees or customers. And so they have little to no effect on fundamentally improving the business. (But they sure do suck up a lot of time, create many distractions, and generate healthy fees for consultants.)

MORE THAN A REHASH
While tempting, it is misguided to characterize this book as a mere rehash of its predecessors from the Gallup Organization, "First, Break All the Rules" and "Now, Discover Your Strengths." Candidly, when first flipping through the book, "rehash" was my impression, too.

However, "Follow This Path" is a significant contribution in its own right. It integrates and extends Gallup's two previous works. This book's insights derive from an expanded data set supplied by Gallup's massive survey-based research, and the book also (as is all the rage in business tomes these days) draws on much of the historical and current research into the origins of behavior from both psychological and biological underpinnings. A smattering of readable anecdotes from real people help to bring the principles to life. (The end notes also are worth reading as the text there is written as a narrative and adds worthwhile insights. In addition, this work contains an appendix of what likely will strike most readers as mind-numbing statistical mumbo-jumbo, aimed, no doubt, at quieting critics who question the validity of the data underpinning Gallup's claims and conclusions.)

The effect is to validate sound, albeit somewhat non-traditional, perspectives on what really lies behind the elusive, mercantile holy grail of successfully competing in today's crazy, cut-throat marketplace.

THE UPSHOT
The good news is that these principles are easy to grasp and make intuitive sense (after reconsidering traditional biases).

The bad news is that for organizations to take advantage of these simple truths, they must unlearn much of what their managers "know" about how business works. The challenge is to move managers from the realm of the rational, definable, and controllable --- the hallmark characteristic of virtually every manager in virtually every corporation (perhaps with the exception of those strange and intrepid folks populating the marketing communications department).

The new reality: To compete effectively, managers must migrate to the still largely uncharted domain of the emotional, psychological, and personal in order to affect both employees and customers. In a gross understatement, this imperative represents a frighteningly major shift and no easy undertaking.

Making such a dramatic and fundamental change in both mindset and behaviors implies considerable adaptations at two levels: In the minds and hearts of individual managers, and in the policies and systems of their employing organizations.

All exaggeration aside, we're talking social revolution here. Undoubtedly, it will keep Gallup's consulting organization, and firms such as my own, very busy for many years to come.

But what if your boss or CEO is a Neanderthal and "doesn't get it"? Press on. Start with yourself and your very own work group. As the research from Gallup and many others makes clear, that's the only level at which real change actually occurs anyway.

Get the book and read it with a scientific mind, skeptical but open. Then get busy charting your own course through the new frontier of what Gallup aptly terms The Emotional Economy.

Chances are, you'll feel better...with rising productivity and profits...because customers feel better...because your employees feel better.

I agree, it's a great book.......2003-08-08

I really didn't want to like this book. It just sounded too much like some new age, pop psychology dribble on how to feel good. I couldn't have been further from the truth. Although this isn't a great book, it is a very valuable book, not only for the businessman, but for leaders of nonprofits as well.

The premise of the book is simple. In an age where prices have been cut to razor thin margins, and businesses have become commodities, the only way to profitably survive is to unleash the human potential among your employees and customers. The authors ask this simple, but profound question: Why would a customer drive past your competition and pay a higher price to purchase your product? The answer: You have an emotionally engaged customer.

The authors demonstrate the world's greatest organizations connect with their customers on an emotional level. When this happens customers return because of the way they feel- they become emotional engaged. The businesses manta for the last century has been based on reason- if you build a better mousetrap, offer it at the lowest price, people will buy. Studies have shown that people are more driven by their emotions when it comes to purchase and repurchase than they are by reason. The same holds true for employees. The Gallop organization also has shown that emotionally engaged employees produce more, stay longer, have less accidents, etc.

Any problems? Maybe one. When hiring, the authors tell us again and again to commit to talent above education, experience, willingness to work hard, and the usual resume items. Inborn talent produces engaged employees; but what they did not address was the integrity issue. Jack Welch points out that the most dangerous employee is not the rude, insensitive, actively disengaged employee; but the one with the talent who does not hold to the values of the corporation. The actively disengaged employee will hurt the company, and yes, if you have enough of them they will destroy the company, but the real danger lies with talented, engaged employees who love their work but who do not hold to the company's values. These are the ones Welch would immediately get rid of.

All in all, it's a valuable book. For a pastor of a small church, or a midlevel manager, the Q-12 (Questions developed by the Gallop organization which identify the conditions of a great work space) are invaluable. By unleashing the human potential in staff, volunteers and members the leader of a nonprofit can build a great organization.

Follow This Path
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Follow This Path
Curt Coffman , Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina , and Coffman C.
Manufacturer: Random House Business Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Human Resources & Personnel Management | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1844130126

Follow this Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential
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Follow this Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential
Gonzales-Molina, Curt, Gabriel Coffman
Manufacturer: audible.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Download
ASIN: B00007EIDV

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Follow This Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth By Unleashing Human Potential (Simplified Chinese) (Paperback)

Manufacturer: China Machine Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

All Chinese Books | Chinese | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 7111126289

Product Description

This is the Chinese Version. Simplified Characters. Follow This Path: How the world's greatest orginizations drive growth by unleashing human potential.

Book Description

In-depth answers for professionals looking to accurately value foreign equities
Transnational Equity Analysis is today's most thorough guide to its subject, examining and comparing the techniques used by top analysts and fund managers in the analysis of domestic and overseas equities. The book outlines the effects of international differences in disclosure and measurement rules and practices, examines how investors and analysts have discovered coping mechanisms for using fundamental analysis in an international context, and more.
Mark Clatworthy (Cardiff, Wales) is a lecturer in the Cardiff Business School, UK.

Download Description

"In-depth answers for professionals looking to accurately value foreign equities
Transnational Equity Analysis is today's most thorough guide to its subject, examining and comparing the techniques used by top analysts and fund managers in the analysis of domestic and overseas equities. The book outlines the effects of international differences in disclosure and measurement rules and practices, examines how investors and analysts have discovered coping mechanisms for using fundamental analysis in an international context, and more.
Mark Clatworthy (Cardiff, Wales) is a lecturer in the Cardiff Business School, UK."

Book Description

Several orchids are national flowers. Given the large number of orchids (in the hundreds of thousands counting species and hybrids), the relatively few to acquire a national flower status are a very select group indeed. Even in this exalted company, Vanda Miss Joaquim, Singapore's National Flower, stands out. However, beyond its beauty and patriotic value, the National Flower is a plant with an interesting history, complex biology and major horticultural value. This book was written to celebrate its beauty, recall its history, explain its biological complexity and rationalize its horticulture. It is also intended to be a repository of the knowledge which has accumulated about Vanda Miss Joaquim.

Customer Reviews:

Additional information.......2005-07-01

This is not a review because I am one of the authors. All I want to do is point out that there is a heated debate about the origins of Vanda Miss Joaquim. Mr. Johnson is strongly opposed to the views of the authors of this book. I have rated the book with only one star because comments with no stars cannot be posted.
Joseph Arditti

Not My Recommendation.......2005-02-28

I have found too many errors in this book. The facts that the Singapore authors should know, they have wrong. Holttum was never Ridley assistant (page 46)! The text is confusing: page 60 "only one parent, Vanda teres is foreign."; on page 225 the first sentence, on the same subject, reads "two orchids from foreign countries". Captions under photographs are confusing as on plate 14. The most serious error is that many of the citations are not in the "Literature Cited" making a check of validity impossible. The problems I had are summed up in the dates for Agnes Joaquim's death: the book on page 41 gives 1898,on page 205 is a picture of her tombstone showing the date as 1899.

Book Description

Petroleum engineers, drilling and production professionals, and advanced petroleum engineering students will welcome this important new book on annular flows in oil and gas well drilling operations. It is the only book on the subject presently available to the industry that combines rigorous theory, practical examples, and important applications.

The book describes several annular borehole flow models that deal with eccentric, nonrotating flow, concentric rotating flow, and recirculating heterogeneous flow. These models are designed to handle the special problems that arise from drilling and producing deviated and horizontal wells, problems such as cutting transport, stuck pipe, cementing, and coiled tubing.

State-of-the-art computer modeling techniques
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Practical rule of thumb and extensive applications to real world problems make this an important reference tool for drilling and production professionals

Book Description

This book describes the design, physics, and performance of high density (Ne> 10E11 cmE-3) plasma sources which have been extensively explored in low pressure (p -0.1-100 mTorr) plasma processing, such as plasma etching and planarization, plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition of thin films, sputtered deposition of metals and dielectrics, epitaxial growth of silicon and GaAS, and many other applications.

Beginning from the early 1970s up to the mid-1980s, only one type of plasma source, namely, capacitive RF discharge excited at a frequency of 13.56 M Hz, was commonly used in etch and deposition tools. The relatively low plasma density (Ne = 10E9 -1 OE1 0 cmE-3) which is typical for this type of source, was one of the major factors that limited plasma process capability, in particular, etching rate and film growth. Low plasma density is an inherent feature of a 13.56 MHz plasma tool, and is the result of the low ionization efficiency of a capacitively coupled RF discharge operating at a RF frequency of a few MHz.

The need for plasma process tools with high plasma densities of Ne> 1 OE12 cmE-3, was one of the motivations in the search for novel plasma sources with higher ionization efficiency. It was widely accepted that such plasmas could be generated in discharges excited at higher RF (including microwave) frequencies, or in discharges employing power coupling schemes which are more efficient than capacitive coupling, and by utilizing confinement and resonant effects of static magnetic field generated by external means (coils, permanent magnets).

In the last few years, substantial progress has been made in the design, research, and development of various types of plasma sources which were considered as candidates for the re- placement of a "traditional" 13.56 MHz capacitively coupled source.

The present book describes the physical principles, design features, plasma parameters, and process operation characteristics of RF and microwave high density plasma sources suitable for use in low pressure (1-100 mTorr) large area D = 15-25 cm) plasma processing.

This book presents a comprehensive survey, and a detailed description and characterization of most advanced high-density plasma sources used in plasma processing. The book is balanced in that it gives both a theoretical treatment, and practical applications. This book should be of considerable interest to scientists and engineers working on plasma source design, and process development.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful cookery book and not a political manifesto.......2007-03-12

This is a lovely book and personally I truly enjoy any such cookery book with a literary twist. Why on earth must some people feel duty bound to make political statements at the drop of the proverbial hat? Get off your soap box. This is a cookbook for lord sake and I'm fairly sure that Mr. Joyce did eat from time to time and benefited from it. Personally, I thought the idea was to learn more of traditional Irish fare whilst also getting a taste of James Joyce's works. Therefore, if this publication should inspire one to read more Joyce, then are we not all the better for having purchased the cookbook in the first place?

Highly offensive to any reader of Joyce.......2006-11-11

Not even ironic

This book collects a number of mainstream dishes and pats a quote and a title from Joyce on it like basil butter.

Readers of Joyce will remember Lenehan's plate of grocer's peas and vinegar from Dubliner's Two Gallants, or that collection's stir-about in The Sisters, or A Painful Case's corned beef and cabbage. But mostly the hunger inherited from the British stealing every scrap of food in Ireland, creating an artificial famine in the mid-1800's (during which time plenty of food was exported from Ireland to England: see the relevant histories here of which I have several) whose memory still held people from eating in peace and in the luxury described within this horrific book. People were kept too damned poor, and held further from the alleged sin of gluttony by a very oppressive church, believing an unfamiliarly full stomach must be a sin and a satanic possession.

Better the Joyce scholar read the several excellent commentaries on Joyce regarding the colonialist nature of Ireland under British oppression, including the Semi-colonialist Joyce, etc., etc. A good deal of Ulysses in fact is devoted to the cattle "trade" undergoing British imperialist piracy. Cattle were slaughtered by the British throughout Ireland in the name of battling "hoof and mouth disease" without any discernable symptoms (as Joyce directly states in Ulysses' Episode now called Cyclops), in order to maintain high market prices due to scarcity in London. Constantly in the travels walking around Dublin we see herds of cattle being marched off to British ships while the people of Ireland starve. And the hero of the novel, Mr. Bloom, a relatively well-off man, is left the inner organs only to eat in Ireland, the offal. The best he can find for breakfast is a pig's kidney.

Joyce himself was no gourmand but was noted at meals, literary and otherwise, for staring at his food without eating, remembering his family and friends at home starving hopelessly, much as his fellow Irishman and his student/secretary Samuel Beckett also did. In fact it is interesting that Bloom's lunch of Burgundy with a reeking thin sliced Gorganzola sandwich reappears so prominently in Beckett's Dante and the Lobster, with gas lamp burned toast.

In short, this book is as absurdly a blasphemy and a misrepresentation of the author's work as would be the Beckett of Cooking. What? Chicken bones cast aside and fought over by Lucky and Estragon?

I received a copy years ago (a necessary comment for those readers of reviews who do not believe I possess and read the books I review) without this dustcover of vegetable matter I am certain would be unidentifiable to Mr. Joyce, let alone myself.

Hard to imagine a market for this book. But look at its used price, very low. Get instead another copy of Ulysses (the Gabler edition of famously fragile spine) or commentaries (I am enjoying Rickard's right now and awaiting Joyce's Revenge, while replaying constantly the excellent, or as good as can be expected, Donal Donnelly UNABRIDGED recording of Gabler).

By the way, Bloom's dinner that night was a cup of instant cocoa, with a supper of other inner organs.

For a cookbook, please get Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles bistro book instead. You'll enjoy it so much more than this odd hybrid cookbook which shamelessly steals from the starving Mr. Joyce (a metonymy of the cultural imperialism which killed Irish history, commerce and civilization) and be able to cook something out of it as well.

Meanwhile hear constantly that Cyclops episode for comprehension.

Literary and culinary delights.......1999-01-02

This is a great book both as a simple cookbook (best oxtail soup recipe I've found) and just for fun. It takes the dishes mentioned in ULYSSES and gives recipes as well as putting them in the context of the book. Most of the recipes are period; no microwaves here. But I'm no great cook, and I've found that I can do just fine with most of the recipes, though many are too time-consuming for everyday use. But for special occasions, the recipes are wonderful to actually use and the rest of the time the book provides a historical reference and insight into Joyce's masterpiece.

Joyce of Cooking: Food and Drink from James Joyce's Dublin

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Joyce of Cooking: Food and Drink from James Joyce's Dublin
Alison Armstrong
Manufacturer: STATION HILL PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OJQM9K

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