Managing People Is Like Herding Cats

Cats of course, won't be herded. And the most successful organizations in the 21st Century won't be managed -- they'll be led. The answer to America's current leadership crisis is leaders (not managers) who recognize that "the only capital that really counts is human capital" And whether readers are looking for a leader or looking to be a better one, Warren knows what it takes. In answer to the leadership crisis, Bennis offers insight into developing leaders and their competencies, by explaining ten traits of dynamic leaders, and how these leaders constantly reinvent themselves. The 21st century will require leaders who can inspire and orchestrate change rather than impose it or simply react to it. The section on "Leading Change" will, in itself, make this a must-have book.

This self-help guide is for programmers who need to improve their management and leadership skills.

It is well known that in their professional lives most academics and researchers will - like cats - seek to exercise as much independence as possible.In Herding Cats, Geoff Garrett and Graeme Davies combine their top-level experience of leading/managing international academic and research institutions with wisdom gleaned from 50 senior colleagues around the world. They deal with common leadership and management themes, like making tough strategic choices, leading change effectively, dealing with bureaucracy, allocating resources, managing budgets and ensuring effective implementation.Garrett, Davies and their friends paint a picture of the culture of a typical 'cats' environment - replete with remarkable intellects, passion, arguments, politics and prejudice, and where trying to push people to a destination is usually doomed to failure. Herding Cats guides leaders and aspiring leaders in academic and research institutions through the process of learning to accept and embrace the qualities of their 'cats' so they can tempt them to an outcome with agility and success.

Herding Professional Cats offers advice and insights to leaders in the professions who find themselves facing the classic ‘cats’ dilemma – how to manage intelligent, opinionated, independent and frequently difficult people without losing the competitive edge a professionalised workforce can bring.

A practical handbook for every manager charged with leading teams to creative brilliance, from the author of The Accidental Creative and Die Empty. Doing the work and leading the work are very different things. When you make the transition from maker to manager, you give ownership of projects to your team even though you could do them yourself better and faster. You're juggling expectations from your manager, who wants consistent, predictable output from an inherently unpredictable creative process. And you're managing the pushback from your team of brilliant, headstrong, and possibly overqualified creatives. Leading talented, creative people requires a different skill set than the one many management books offer. As a consultant to creative companies, Todd Henry knows firsthand what prevents creative leaders from guiding their teams to success, and in Herding Tigers he provides a bold new blueprint to help you be the leader your team needs. Learn to lead by influence instead of control. Discover how to create a stable culture that empowers your team to take bold creative risks. And learn how to fight to protect the time, energy, and resources they need to do their best work. Full of stories and practical advice, Herding Tigers will give you the confidence and the skills to foster an environment where clients, management, and employees have a product they can be proud of and a process that works.

In each of the 24 cases examined in this volume, mediation was a multiparty effort, involving actors working simultaneously or sequentially. These accounts attest to the crucial importance of coordinating and building upon the efforts of other players.

Even the most experienced project managers aren’t immune to the more common and destructive reasons for project collapses. Poor time and budget performance, failure to deal with complexity, uncontrolled changes in scope . . . they can catch anyone off guard. Performance-Based Project Management can help radically improve your project’s success rate, despite these and other obstacles that will try to take it down. Readers will discover how they can increase the probability of project success, detailing a step-by-step plan for avoiding surprises, forecasting performance, identifying risk, and taking corrective action to keep a project a success. Project leaders wishing to stand out among their peers who are continually hampered by these unexpected failures will learn how to:• Assess the business capabilities needed for a project• Plan and schedule the work• Determine the resources required to complete on time and on budget• Identify and manage risks to success• Measure performance in units meaningful to decision makersBy connecting mission strategy with project execution, this invaluable resource for project managers in every industry will help bring projects to successful, career-enhancing completion.