General-partnership

If Riane Eisler's CHALICE AND THE BLADE (C&B) excited you (or if you're dying to read it), and you'd like to share it with others, this book is for you. Begin to break down the dominator paradigm by sitting in a circle with a bunch of friends or fellow travellers and working the exercises in this book.

THE PARTNERSHIP WAY provides nine "lessons" which guide a group through C&B. This path is structured so that the group follows it together, without relying on the "authority" of a "leader." The experience of covering this material in a "partnership way" is what they didn't teach you in school. Learning to work together without ranking ourselves is a skill that we lost thousands of years ago. This book presents an opportunity for those who would like to reclaim that skill.

This book goes into the real world of business by examining the basic cause of most business failures--a breakup of the partnership among those who started or joined the business. It does not matter what form the business has--corporation, limited liability, partnership, or whatever. When things go wrong, members of the firm can involve others in crimes, tax liabilities, and other personal asset robbing schemes even when the victims have no idea what's happening. This book tells what to look for when joining with others, how to protect personal assets against government, creditors, and others who punch right through the corporate shield to strip personal bank accounts, houses, and other assets from their owners. Even if those assets had been in the family years before the business was started.

Tells what to do in setting up a company, how to use a "Key Indicator" approach to running it so as to catch malfeasance before it even affects the firm, and to keep everyone on the right track to make the firm grow.

Most books on persuasion teach you ways to find you "advesaries" weaknesses and exploit them. This book actually gives you the tools to persuade people through true understanding. It also allows the people involved to come to a decision together, so that no one feels like they were manipulated into the solution.

It is truly ethical!!

This is an outstanding, easy to read, reference guide for the beginning or experienced tax professional. One thing I particularly like about it is that it addresses compliance and procedural considerations for every main topic -- something that's hard to find in any other comprehensive volume. I highly recommend this book as a desk reference.

I gave Mr. Crouch 5 stars because it is obvious that he is not simply repeating the same old thing I can find in most other books relating to corporations and LLCs and their benefits. He walks you through most of the technical matters in a tutorial way, explaining the significance of different laws and what they say & don't say. He provides much food for thought that I found nowhere else. He is a breath of fresh air after reading extensively on these topics. This book should be on your shelf if you own, manage, or have a need to learn about LLCs.

Roger Martin has lain down business organizations in the therapist chair, but you won't notice it because the author avoids skillfully the psychological labels currently in vogue.

If you often wonder about why you end up working more than others, why some people don't understand what you clearly state or why everybody sees what is wrong in the company and they don't do anything to fix it, this book is for you. It goes to the root of the problem, explains it plainly and offers a step by step program to solve it. The book also provides a better understanding of what's behind the Enron debacle and the government agencies mishandling of security issues before, during and after September 11.

It doesn't matter if the reader is a CEO, a manager, a professional or a secretary, he or she will find familiar faces and situations; people that could be your boss, your vice-president of sales or your managing editor. Why do we have the chance to see ourselves and others in these pages? The book is simply about human nature. It deals with the underlying emotions, culture and language that make many bureaucracies what they are: an incompetent and unfulfilled mass of otherwise intelligent, good and hard working people.

Martin explains that lack of collaboration between leadership and other parties in the organization brings an unbalanced approach to responsibility. The author describes what he calls the "heroic leader", which takes more responsibility that he or she should. Conversely, the other parties react giving up responsibility. Once the leader is unable to meet the goals, he or she sits back and takes the position of the followers. Meanwhile the frustrated followers take responsibility for their part, but because they can not attain the needed broad or bold solutions, parties induce the leader to take again more responsibilities that he or she can handle, and the infectious cycle of dependency starts again.

The mysterious Responsibility Virus is nothing more than the very human fear of failure. According to Chris Argyris, cited in the book, there are "governing values" that guide the way we interpret and deal with the world. They reside so ingrained in human nature that they apply to people across ages, cultures, economic status, and educational levels. Humans-Agyris claim--will always try to win, maintain control, avoid embarrassment and stay rational in any situation. Fear of failure triggers the governing values and they make us either take more responsibility (fight) or abdicate responsibility (flight).

Martin proposes the use of some "tools" to improve collaboration (choice structuring process), eliminate the mistrust and misunderstanding (frame experiment) and to balance capability and responsibility (responsibility ladder) among the parties in the organization. All these tools have the general objective of untying the person from the situation that requires attention and put aside the biased frame of mind from which we see the problem. Once all the parties involved in decision-making have a better perspective of the issue, they are in a position to find a middle ground between capabilities and responsibility.

It is at the end of the book, redefining leadership, when Martin describes the leader as what sociologists or psychologists would call a mature personality. According to the author, a leader should be capable of splitting responsibility through dialogue, apportioning responsibilities in keeping with capabilities, but more importantly, making apportionment discussable and subject performance to public testing. Although he doesn't mention it, you have the sense that it is the leader a significant carrier of the responsibility virus and also accountable for spreading his or her fear of failure throughout the organization.

In these times of leaders finger-pointing at each other and frustrated managers turned into audacious whistle-blowers this book is a timely required reading to understand not only organizations but the world around us.

this book explores great works and the career of Richard rogers , the quality of photographs ,sketches and text really suitable for this great architect ... Recommend it highly .

This is the best book on the market about school, family, and community partnerships for use in teacher education and school administrator training! Based on decades of research, Epstein has pulled together all the pieces necessary to help educators understand the importance of partnerships, the effects of these partnerships on student outcomes, and the necessary components for building comprehensive school, family, and community partnerships in elementary, middle, and high schools, located in urban, suburban, and rural settings. The research-based framework and approaches Epstein discusses will help all educators create postive relationships and productive partnerships with families and communities, linked directly to school improvement goals. One of the strongest parts of the book is the class projects and assignments found at the end of each chapter. My only regret is that this book was not part of my required reading as a student. If increasing numbers of educators have the opportunity to read Epstein's book and then apply what they've learned, our educational system and students will benefit tremendously.

Getting Stakeholders involved

The following review is from ISO9000 + ISO14000 News 4/1999.

The name of John Marsh should be familiar to readers of ISO 9000 + ISO 14000 News since he contributed the article in our March/April1999 issue on the ISO Technical Report 10014, Guidelines for managing the economic effects of quality. In addition to his participation within ISO/TC 176 as convenor of the working group that produced the above report, he runs TQP, an international training and consultancy company, which specializes in involving stakeholders in process improvement.

As such, he is obviously the right man in the right place at the right time, since the process approach to organizations, continual improvement and stakeholders receive considerable emphasis in the "new, improved" ISO 9000:2000 revisions currently under development (although in the standards, the term "interested parties" replaces "stakeholders", since the latter is difficult to translate into many languages).

In view of the above. John Marsh is also the author of the right book at the right lime: A Stake in Tomorrow: World Class Lessons in Business Partnerships').

From making profits by satisfying customers, more progressive businesses are moving to a new, more holistic mindset, which has no doubt been germinated by environmental issues, rising populations and scarce resources. This mindset places the organi-zation in a wider context. For what has been called elsewhere "a license to operate", it needs to take account not just of customers and shareholders - and, if they are lucky, employees - but also of its suppliers, the community, legislators, and, indeed, society as a whole.

'The big picture' For John Marsh, this recognition of stakeholders in general takes place as organizations of all types become more aware of "the big picture", under the growing influence of systems thinking.

'The challenge for organizational leaders is how to involve these diverse groups, with differing wants and needs, through the planning, delivery and review of products and services.' In this book, leaders will find many practical ideas on how to do so.

One of the main methodologies described is the application of process analysis to organizations to bring out their purpose, customers, core activity, partners and controllers. Examples are given of process analysis applied to an organization, a community, a crime prevention campaign, and the provision of a new hospital.

The author describes methods of involving stakeholders in strategic planning and in process improvement then presents various tools and techniques for specific uses.

Lastly, John Marsh brings it all together with actual examples of stakeholding drawn from both private (waste management, hotels, retailing) and public (schools, defence support, hospitals) sectors.

To sum up, A Stake in Tomorrow is a fascinating book in its own right and also provides insight into one of the strands of thought which have been inputted into the new versions of ISO 9000 currently under development.

This scholarly work of Henry Kissinger's reflects his powers of analysis before he developed politically, and is an observant study of NATO valuable to anyone interested in the subject.

On the original edition, the portion of the title "The Troubled Partnership" evidently appeared prominently on the cover. Book sales for this sort of work were about what one would expect, except in one small portion of the nation, where sales were remarkably robust. The publisher investigated, and found that the book had been placed not in "current events" or "history," but in the section of the store featuring books about marriage and family self-help.