AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: All Hat and No Cattle: Tales of a Corporate Outlaw by Chris Turner, Alan Webber ISBN: 0-7382-0366-1 Publisher: Perseus Books Group Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3.82 (11 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: Old Hat and Great Title
Comment: There is an old syllogism of organizations. 1. We must do something. 2. This is something. 3. We must do this.

Many a budding institutional innovator, frustrated by the hidebound habits of her colleagues, has nonetheless stifled her creativity for fear of losing influence, job, or respect. Then there are those like Chris Turner, who resolutely turn their horse's head and take the road less traveled. In Turner's case, that means donning the proud mantle of change agent, leading corporate learning programs at Xerox Business Services. Since leaving XBS, Turner has turned consultant and speaker, using her irreverence, Texan argot, and impatience with untested convention to inspire revolution.

Turner wants change, and she wants it now. She wants to replace institutional fear with "love-based systems." She believes in "disturbing the system," doing something - anything - differently to provoke a reaction. Most of all she castigates "all hat and no cattle," a Lone Star State expression for all style and no substance. Pay for performance, obsessions with measurement, corporate welfare, bad PowerPoint slides: "all hat and no cattle," declares Turner, and she delights in taking the high and mighty down a notch or three.

Irreverence can be entertaining, even when it fulminates on a soapbox. But like another successful Texan who partied throughout college, Turner tends to assume that the people in charge are self-interested, greedy mediocrities who can't be trusted. Appealing though they may be, generalizations cut both ways: we mustn't assume that all managers are automatically right, but nor should we assume that they're automatically wrong. Turner is mad as hell and not going to take it any more: fair enough, but by condemning any activity that perpetuates the status quo, she often veers from passion to petulance. It's imprudent for a sans-culotte to show frustration at not being queen.

If you're a stymied OD professional, you may be inflamed by this call for revolution. You'll certainly welcome Chapter 6, in which Turner offers specific, detailed suggestions for revamping organizational meetings. And you can always add to your storehouse of quotations, as Turner strews aphorisms across her pages with Barlettian generosity - Emerson, Wilde, Einstein, Didley, all are grist to her mill. But in the end All Hat and No Cattle suffers from the same syndrome it so gleefully diagnoses: too much prate, not enough practice. Change agent, heal thyself.

Rating: 5
Summary: Enjoyable reading, written by someone who has done it.
Comment: Chris Turner has done it. She has written a highly entertaining and insightful book based on lots of experience. Her stories illuminate the main threads of her argument effortlessly. If you want a few dozen ideas on how to create change and democratic environments at work, your time will be well spent with Turner's book.

Rating: 5
Summary: Insightful and Provocative
Comment: After reading this book, I recommended it to several friends, who in turn told several friends, and so on. This is a powerful and insightful glimpse by a trained observer, into organizational dynamics. I've used Turner's stories and exercises, always with profound results. Her focus on the human aspect of the organization is critical for those wishing to bring change to the vapid, smokey halls of corporate America. "When the student is ready, the Master will come". Turner is Masterful.

Similar Books:

	Title: First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman ISBN: 0684852861 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 05 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $27.00
	Title: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins ISBN: 0066620996 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 16 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $27.50