Manager

The second half has a tendency to degenerate into repetitive and awfully superficial chronicle, and doesn't bring the 20's and 30's to life in the same way as the earlier sections--even though there were colorful characters galore available.

(I noticed the same flatness in large sections of Alexander's history of baseball, Our Game. There too he often retreats to mere narrative, and away from insight.)

If you've read the 50 or so better baseball books available, or if you enjoy hearing oft-told tales told once more, this is a pleasant enough way to kill two or three afternoons.

In 1901 he helped formed the American League, then tried to kill the AL in 1902. Why no World Series in 1904? McGraw. Inventor of the Hit-and-run? McGraw. Originator of collarless uniforms? McGraw. First to use Relief specialist in the bullpen? McGraw. First in 3 World Series in a row? McGraw. 4 in a row? McGraw. Only his pupil Casey Stengel has matched McGraw for total pennants. His career placed him in a pennant race NEARLY EVERY YEAR in 5 DECADES! (As Manager 10-1st, 10-2nd, 4-3ed place finishes in 32 years.)

Alexander presents the events of McGraw's life in chronological order- enabling the reader to use 'John McGraw' as a reference book for what happened in baseball in any given year due to the detail provided by Alexander. Charles C. Alexander writes history books about baseball; not mere collections of tales and legends set to prose. His facts are throughly researched and documented. However, even well written history books sometimes become tedious in detail. This book is no exception. Personally, I prefer an overkill of facts to haphazard story telling. Not quite as well written as the masterful 'Ty Cobb' and compelling 'Rogers Hornsby' by Alexander, but still the cream of baseball biographies.

I learned that there is much more to process design than basic models based on entry, task, validation and exit criteria. For example, performance measurements and performance efficiency were two areas where this book strengthened my understanding of process design and implementation. They also and enabled me to effectively use iGrafx Process to its fullest.

Other chapters that taught me a lot addressed improvement planning, continuous improvement and process benchmarking. I was able to immediately incorporate the knowledge gained into processes that I was developing, and it made a significant difference in the quality of my work.

The best chapter, in my opinion, was in installing the improved processes. I gained a lot of knowledge and techniques for overcoming barriers and how to objectively measure the degree of improvement. This was reinforced by material that is provided in the appendices, including case studies and an excellent description of Six-Sigma analysis.

Overall, this is a valuable book to anyone who designs or implements new processes, or reengineers existing ones. Most of my work is new design and implementation, so that was the context in which I read the book. If I were assigned to a reengineering project this would be the first book to which I'd turn for guidance and information. It earns a solid five stars and a permanent place in my professional library.

The author's writing style is clear and only uses jargon relative to the context, ensuring a novice to the coaching practice feels immediately able to grasp key concepts. This is the value that managers, HR personnel and coaches alike will gain from the book...ease of understanding and practical.

It is a how to book and refernce guide that sets out to (and I daresay achieves)to establish a relationship with its reader; as a handbook of this nature should.

The life transition model that Hudson introduces, acknowledges the validity of adult hood problems, as being more than mere extensions of our child hood challenges. It acknowledges also the process of transition versus the static nature of a changing event.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I found the floppy disk accompanying the book unreadable. My local computor builder/dealer/consultant couldn't read it either. My computer kept calling for another disk, which did not come with the book I ordered or with its replacement. The disk seems to herald back to the days of DOS; whatever, I'm lost.

More on the downside, the valueline online survey is unmanageable for me (I got a masters in English and I've been studying and investing stocks for 25 plus years). Determining the average for numerous search fields (market cap., P/E ratio, Price/Book ratio, etc.) that O'Shaughnessy calls for cannot be done with the basic online service. A simple piece of data such as "dividend" or "yield" can be tough to pin down with 7-8 different kinds listed (estimated, quarterly, current, etc.).

The book, in spite of my moronic protests, is praiseworthy. The methods make sense. There is something beautiful about their simplicity - the step by step processes of narrowing down fields in order to determine the best bargains (value) or the best upside potential (growth).

A guiding principle of O'Shaughnessy's argument - the answer to the nagging question of why so many portfolio managers fail - is very simple: they either have no useable plan or they do, but they don't stick to it.

I'm convinced this book has the answer. It's just so damn grueling to apply the principles; a dozen calls and emails to valueline still leave me clueless.

You can even improve on the performance of mutual funds because you can follow their strategy in a more consistent fashion and because you can reduce their strategy to its essential elements. Often even good fund managers are not entirely consistent.

An example of a strategy is: from the stocks with

12 month EPS gain >20% and
26 week % price change>20% and
Last Qtr EPS % chg > 20% and
Valueline Timeliness Rank <=5

Pick the ten stocks with highest estimated EPS growth for next year .

He explains how to do all this in detail and derives some good looking strategies. Risk is taken into account and proves to be a very useful measure of the reliability of a strategy.

You can use the same techniques to evaluate your broker's recommendations, and the advice from books and newletters. Do they follow a strategy or is it just random tips and hunches?

He also showed how various fund managers changed strategy quite radically without announcing it eg Magellan in the early 1990s.

There are some good tips on how to avoid common traps when using quantitive strategies eg using single variable strategies.

He also explores combining various strategies and shows how to build your own.

He did not really prove his theory which is that noone really makes money by individual stock picks, it is all strategy.

As a final caveat, if you don't like numbers you will not like this book. But it seems you cannot succeed in investment without being very friendly with numbers.

In adapting project management standards for our district, I also drew upon many of the princples outlined so effectively in this book. It makes project management easy to understand for people who have little or no exposure to the concepts.

I also found that I, as a veteran of many years of project management, found many excellent refreshers and reminders for the best practices of how we should pursue project management.

I would recommend this book to new and experienced project managers, alike.

In adapting project management standards for our district, I also drew upon many of the princples outlined so effectively in this book. It makes project management easy to understand for people who have little or no exposure to the concepts.

I also found that I, as a veteran of many years of project management, found many excellent refreshers and reminders for the best practices of how we should pursue project management.

I would recommend this book to new and experienced project managers, alike.

Also use the tools, worksheets and checklists for both work projects and personal projects at home. The book and the tools are very helpful to ensure projects get off in the right direction. The terms, concepts and exercises have been extremely well received by participants. Have so far had 75 particpants in six 2 to 3 day sessions.

Good quality printing and binding, and well organized by chapters.

Are your employees overloaded with work? Are they clearly demotivated? When you start to see the negative signs you might also see absenteeism is increasing. You could try a employee survey or you can analyze your own talks with your employees to find out what they are feeling.

Some of the power tips I enjoyed reading:

"Praise work well done, even if some targets are missed." -pg. 24 "Provide training in small, regular doses rather than one long course." -pg. 45

Very practical and I think the points in this book will help you to create a more positive work environment for your employees.