The Quest for Quality: Prescriptions for Achieving Excellence Service. Quality Excellence. Re-Engineering
These and other buzzwords dominate today's business language - but their practical applications and implications often are lost in the translation from rhetoric to reality. In The Quest for Quality, three consultants who have worked with hundreds of companies offer a compelling concept: personalized customer service must be the core organizing principle for any successful business. Customer service flows two ways: yes, good service wins repeat customers and helps a business grow, but good service also empowers employees, giving them responsibility and dignity at every level of business. With example after example from scores of employee/customer interactions, The Quest for Quality demonstrates the difference between poor, good, and truly excellent service.
The book offers:
The book offers:
- Boxed service Rx "prescriptions" that articulate basic principles
- Ways to improve service quality without tearing down your existing program
- Strategies for increasing growth and profits by improving service and employee relations
- Real-life anecdotes from scores of business situations, demonstrating how service can win - or lose - repeat customers
- Four zones of service quality that show where you are - and where your company can go
The Whole Systems Approach
The Whole Systems Approach is a model for transforming any business into a thriving organization by aligning the company's internal systems with external forces, and by engaging employees. Whole Systems changes are sustainable because the key elements can be used to run the business long after changes have been implemented. At a macro level, the Whole Systems Approach is a model for building an effective and successful organization.
In the Whole Systems Approach, every necessary system within the organization is assessed; created, modified, or redesigned; and integrated and aligned. The perspective of every stakeholder group, customer, employee, investor, and supplier/partner is integrated.
The Whole Systems Approach is particularly valuable when
- Business results are marginal or declining
- The company needs or strongly desires fundamental change
- A system or process is not running effectively or optimally
- A compelling business opportunity requires new capabilities
- Current efforts are not on track - they lack speed, quality or broad ownership
- Good company wants to become a great company
The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future
Proven change strategies for tapping human potential in organizations and communities, The Change Handbook features chapters by the originators and foremost practitioners of such high-leverage change methods as Future Search, Real Time Strategic Change, Gemba Kaizen, and Open Space Technology. The authors outline distinctive aspects of their approach; detail roles and responsibilities; share a story illustrating usage; and answer frequently asked questions about how to put it into practice. Examples of successful change efforts acquaint readers with the diverse array of methods being employed today. A one-stop comparative chart allows them to evaluate the methods to determine what will work best for them, and an in-depth reference section helps them locate the resources they need to get started.
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
Whole systems change methods continue to increase in recognition, variety, and use. The first edition of this book included 18 methods and just a few short years later, there are more than 60 methods in this edition. This creative explosion provides great opportunities for reaching further into organizations and communities to engage people in making a positive and productive difference.
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems by Tom Devane, Steven Cady, and Peggy Holman (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) is the most comprehensive guide available to methods of organization and community change. It's designed for quick and easy access to information about high leverage change from today's foremost practitioners.
This new edition is updated to describe more than 43 additional change methods and includes new chapters on selecting a method, mixing and matching methods, responsibilities of the people involved, conditions for success, and more. This tremendously expanded second edition - 400 pages longer, nearly twice the length of the first edition - will undoubtedly become the definitive resource in this rapidly expanding area.
This book offers practical insights and how to affect systems in positive ways to make them do the things we wish them to do and to mitigate the harm cause by some systems. Anyone who is interested in social change and personal change at any level will find the practical suggestions for intervention in this book to be positively enlightening.
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems by Tom Devane, Steven Cady, and Peggy Holman (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) is the most comprehensive guide available to methods of organization and community change. It's designed for quick and easy access to information about high leverage change from today's foremost practitioners.
This new edition is updated to describe more than 43 additional change methods and includes new chapters on selecting a method, mixing and matching methods, responsibilities of the people involved, conditions for success, and more. This tremendously expanded second edition - 400 pages longer, nearly twice the length of the first edition - will undoubtedly become the definitive resource in this rapidly expanding area.
This book offers practical insights and how to affect systems in positive ways to make them do the things we wish them to do and to mitigate the harm cause by some systems. Anyone who is interested in social change and personal change at any level will find the practical suggestions for intervention in this book to be positively enlightening.
The Equality Myth
At one level, The Equality Myth exposes our business world for what it is - predominantly patriarchal. But the book does much more than this. In an engaging and easy-to-read style, it provides insights into how to change the game of business. It celebrates the different strengths and qualities that women and men bring to life and business. It creates a vision for a different and mutually profitable business world in which shared values, diversity, creativity, cooperation and open communication are the norms. And it gives specific 'how to' exercises for women and men who are ready to act to achieve this brighter future for everyone.
The Equality Myth is rich with information including distinctions on personal values, beliefs and attitudes, nature and nurture, difference in 'genderlects', decision making, risk taking, role modeling, achieving dreams and goals and what it means to lead and influence with integrity.
The Equality Myth is rich with information including distinctions on personal values, beliefs and attitudes, nature and nurture, difference in 'genderlects', decision making, risk taking, role modeling, achieving dreams and goals and what it means to lead and influence with integrity.
