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THE COLUMNS

by Michael Finley

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"The American business approach to workplace teams is filled with powerful subtleties and is also quite different from the Japanese. The phrase, "How come all this quality stuff don't work," nicely sums up the challenge making teams work in America. Authors Robbins and Finley present practical solutions to the problems with and misconceptions about teams that will be valuable to any organization inclined to assign teams to work on legitimate operational issues. Pragmatic team tips covered here include team decision-making, communication skills with teams, reward and recognition ideas, the importance of effective team leadership, and the fundamental factor of organizational culture that could help or hinder team success. The authors swap narration of chapters, enlivening this useful handbook on how to make the commitment to teams a success. Serves well any manager's interest in maximizing productivity and quality improvement with teams. Recommended for all quality professionals." -- Quality World

Winner, Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Award, Best Management Book - The Americas, 1995


Table of contents and sample chapters of this book...


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"Finley examines the issues of 'computer mania' with clarity, comedy, and comradeship, making us feel that normalcy is within reach. I highly recommend this book to every compulsive computer user -- and to anyone who knows one." -- Steve Deyo
Michael Finley
Paperback
Table of contents and sample chapters of this book...
Why Change Doesn't Work:
Why Initiatives Go Wrong and How to Try Again and Succeed
Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley
Hardcover
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"This is the first treatise on change we've seen that is actually entertaining. The authors cover human and organizational barriers to change and change theories, and then take a tour of management theory that's guaranteed to upset every reader at one point or another." -- HR ONLINE

Table of contents and sample chapters of this book...

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"Editors want everything to fall into a neat little box, and your stuff doesn't do that. You don't write merely about technology, you write about what technology means to us and how it has changed us. I like it." -- John Boxmeyer, St. Paul


since you ask... your column stinks.

its good your audience is ignorant, or atleast the people who pay you.

i get a whole lot more info from the likes of tomshardware, cpu-central etc .COM than i have ever from any of your writing.

so there!

MEMEMIMEMO@aol.com


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Read, but do not use these columns. When they are free to reprint, they will appear on the other side!

You May Already Be a Luddite (June 1999)

Flowers in the Dirt (July 1999)

2029: A Space Anniversary (April 1999)


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1997 and EARLIER COLUMNS

These stories are free for your enjoyment -- just click on a title. If you want to contribute to this site, buy your next books, music CDs, or videos after following this link to Amazon.com. Thanks - Mike)

To reprint an item, just drop me an e-mail.  - Mike


1997

Web Site Promotion (Dec. 29, 1997)

Spam That Kills (Dec. 22, 1997)

The Eyes Are The First Things to Go (Dec. 16, 1997)

A Boy and His Video Card (Dec. 9, 1997)

Season's Greetings from the Space Station Mir (Dec. 2, 1997)

"The Ice Father" -- An essay about winter and love (Nov. 27, 1997)

Postcard from the Man Who Loved Islands (Nov. 24, 1997)

Choose Your College the Modern Way, Online (For release Nov. 17, 1997)

Thurston Throckmorton, Telecommuting Needs You! (For release Nov. 10, 1997)

Microsoft versus the Justice Department (For release Nov. 13, 1997)

Business is blooming in the online flower field (10/27/97)

Lost in translation; My Adventure with Portuguese (9/22/97)

"Frontline Coverage of the Bookstore Wars" (10/20/97)

"I Placed a Jar in Tennessee" (10/13/97)

Free At Last: Open Season on Tax Talk (10/6/97)

Four days in Sao Paulo -- Some Observations. (9/29/97)

Sao Paulo, I Hear You Calling. (9/22/97)

How fast can you read this column? (9/9/97)

New Labor Day Archetypes (9/1/97)

To the stocks with you! (8/25/97)

Web Side Story (8/18/97)

Techno head scratchers (8/11/97)

Questions for the Queen (8/4/97)

New techno trend: big guys beating on little guys (7/28/97)

The look on Larry's face said it all ... (7/21/97)

Blessed be the wires that connect ... (7/14/97)

Let "Bless This Mess" be Your Code of Honor (7/7/97)

The thing that lives under the bridge (6/30/97)

Return with Us Now to the Re-Wired City (6/23/97)

Gonna Lay My Weary Burden Down (6/23/97)

Tom Peters Wants You to Be, like, Wow (6/6/97)

Picnicking with Frank Lloyd Wright (5/26/97)

Thoughts on Memorial Day, freedom, and the nets (5/26/97)

Pentium II is coming atcha (5/19/97)

Beware a program called Restore (5/12/97)

A web page for the RiverDogs (5/5/97)

Wrist in peace: the case for ditching your mouse (4/7/97)

OSP does not stand for Orangoutang Silly Putty (4/7/97)

The end of journalism as we know it (4/1/97)

Something New: the Thrill of the New Computer Smell (3/24/97)

Put a subliminal Tiger in your tank (3/17/97)

Youthful Optimism Is Dented by a Bruised Laptop (3/10/97)

Fashion and technology meet in the land of pen and ink (2/23/97)

Ten Things I Know for Sure (I Think) (3/3/97)

Where home office dogs come from (2/17/97)

An unbalanced suite for unbalanced loners (2/10/97)

Pictures from a bygone era

Late night visit to WCCO

Problems with planting familiar faces in the crowd

Thoughts from a hospital waiting room

My annual Techno New Year's resolutions

The terrible error of our time


1996

Scrambles in the family tree

What to get for the boy

My experience on the red-eye to Las Vegas

On the pyschopathology of chess

Holiday thoughts involving birds

Bringing my brothers to the Net

Techie pie, a Thanksgiving tradition

Overcoming presentation heebie-jeebies

Enlightment in the superstore tech support queue

Sherry Turkle: Finding our selves on the Web

Cybersmut and alien election tampering

Confessions of a third-story man

The world's first fully Internet-worthy RV

What is that strange chirping sound?

Computer chess and the soul

Writer's Digest CD-ROM

Guess who the last people to understand office technology are.

Confessions of a spam artist

Traveling with a PC over rocky terrain, I discover what is fragile and what is not.

Time to update your tech jargon handbook

Using a computer to nurse a loved one back to health

Who knows where the time goes? I do.

Mark Twain in the 21st century

Searching for an outlet in the wilderness

The Unabomber is really no worse than Mork from Ork.

What will become of our dear mother tongue?

What would your role in a medieval kingdom have been?

The new war between the states

Frolicking with a laptop on Mt. Rainier

There's really no reason to ever leave home again.

Reflections on the conclusion of highway construction season

Look yourself up on a Web search engine, see who you find.

Stuff that didn't really happen on April 1

The world's stupidest techno terrorist

Hope for the ion-poor

Newt Gingrich and the war on p7ublic television

The millennium problem, in spades

Before you head up to the lake: new vacation necessities

The return of the Neanderthals

What is your Technology Quotient?

Technology and the ailing body

Disposable encyclopedia? Flip 'em like frisbees!


1995

1995's New Year's resolutions

A Quark for Sister Pat

Do you know where your money has been?

The READ.ME file to end all READ.ME files

Cheers for the passing of three Citadels

Should software come with health warnings?

The abominable Doctor Goldfine

Injuries sustained in the service of technology

Cybercliches

The joy of moving

Negroponte for President

Am I crazy, or is it getting awful hot in here?

My debate with Coach Shula

It takes all kinds to run a computer.

The techie who cried

Get rich quick!

Why computers have no sense of humor

Who knows where the time goes?

Old Mother Hubbard went to the keyboard ...


1994

1994 New Years Resolutions

I Hate Unix

The town so nice they named it Thrace

Wilderness computer user

I go the lavatory to the sound of Muzal

Freeze, Carmen Sandiego!

An unabridged too far


1993

In search of palatable clip art

Speed kills, and here's how.

Don't forget to take your PC with you to the cabin up north

Nano, nano -- little teeny computers

A means it's one of my favorites.

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The NEW Why Teams Don't Work
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