Date of publication: Christmas 1998
Greensleeve
A Christmas Poem
by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1998 by Michael Finley
Get your signed copy of The NEW Why Teams Don't Work by Mike & Harvey Robbins from Berrett-Koehler Publishers Just click on the book cover! A fully revised second edition of this award-winning classic by Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley Paperback "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... Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. 
"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 Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. 
"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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Comments on this column:
Nice. Aqualung meets the Grinch after his heart had grown three sizes.
james
Bravo. Fusion strenght. I wish I knew some words in latin, Aha, there is one I remember. It is Histosol. That is what your poem is like,
Histosol. Thanks. bibi. Hörður Ingólfsson. Iceland
Hardcover, 240 pagesTRANSCOMPETITION
A Business Week Book
![[IMAGE]](http://mfinley.com/transcompetition-book.gif)
Transcompetition: Moving Beyond Competition and Collaboration
by
Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley
List: $24.95
Our Price: $17.47
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Published by McGraw-Hill
Publication date: April 18, 1998
ISBN: 0070530823
I rap every tinted window saying "You sir,
Haven't you heard about the child of the future?"
But the cars don't stop, they don't even toot their
Horns, they are just rush-hour commuters,
They don't have a clue for the child of the future.
To them I'm just another rag-pusher,
Window wiper, sidewalk ambusher.
Greensleeve they call me, and Mickey the Moocher,
But I'm no longer a red-hot hootchy-kootcher.
My nights I sleep on a stoop by the sewer,
and I spend my days dodging motor scooters.
I don't want your dollar to buy me some liquor,
Just go home and wait for the child of the future!
I ask every saxophonist and every panfluter,
Every drum beater and every horn tooter
If they have seen the child of the future,
I would nudge awake every parkbench rooster.
One rooster says to me, "The point is moot, sir.
There isn't gonna be any child of the future."
But I would bear up under excruciating torture
Before I would rat on the child of the future.
Herod mopping his meat in worcestershire
Could not make me turn on the child of the future.
You could be Adolf Hitler, a beerhall putscher.
And I would still not forsake the child of the future.
I'd turn down a contract with Simon & Schuster
I would spurn all their offers of literary lucre
To surrender on paper the child of the future.
Fact is, it would take something thermonuclear
Hoisted on the shoulder of a Titan booster
To blast into nothing my hope for the future.
And even then you couldn't be too sure.
I have pestered every tied-off shooter,
Interrupted every backroom smoocher,
They all give me looks that could neuter
And say the hell with the child of the future.
I want to bring to the table the fire-escape feuders,
I want to cry peace to the burners and looters,
The sexers and pushers and gamblers and hootchers,
Go home to your wives all you salesmen at Hooters,
Drive all the rich from the haunts of haute couture,
Sweep all the porn parlors clean of manure,
Call amnesty for all the homeless refugers.
Go home to the tailors, go home to the butchers,
Teachers and tutors and surgeons with sutures,
Ambulance chasers and blue civil suiters,
Go home to the plumbers and their roto-rooters,
All you priests, jump up from your pew chairs!
Call quitting time for the hackers and hewers,
Uncuff every office worker locked to a computer,
Go home to the winners, go home all you losers,
It's like you're all peering through the wrong viewer
And you're missing a glance of the child of the future.
I'm not no wise man, no shepherd, no drummer,
But I know when a miracle is happening somewhere.
Because the child of the future is newer than you are,
And he's old, he's older than the most ancient culture.
A child is coming who will seem like a soldier,
To streets so blue they could not be colder,
His eyes will be like the sky, only bluer,
And his words will be like the truth, only truer.
And if he feels a chill or kerchooer
I'll offer the sleeve of my greatcoat Mooshwar
To wipe off the snot from the child who blew there,
And open my arms to the child of the future.
|
Get your signed copy of The NEW Why Teams Don't Work by Mike & Harvey Robbins from Berrett-Koehler Publishers Just click on the book cover! A fully revised second edition of this award-winning classic by Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley Paperback "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... Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95.
"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 Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95.
"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... |
Why not bookmark Mike's columns for your weekly enjoyment?
America's Best-Loved Futurist(TM), Michael Finley has a free gift for visitors to http://mfinley.com.