Amplifying Your Effectiveness: Collected Essays - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932633471 ISBN 13: 9780932633477

Publisher: Dorset House, 2000

Synopsis

Gerald M. Weinberg, James Bach, Naomi Karten, and a group of successful software consultants present powerful ideas on how software engineers and managers can amplify their professional effectiveness -- as individuals, as members of teams, and as members of organizations.

The collected essays address diverse topics in personal empowerment, interpersonal interaction, mastering projects, and changing the organization. Contributors include James Bach, Marie Benesh, Rick Brenner, Esther Derby, Kevin Fjelsted, Don Gray, Naomi Karten, Bob King, Pat Medvick, Brian Pioreck, Ken Roberts, Sharon Marsh Roberts, Johanna Rothman, Steve Smith, Eileen Strider, Gerald M. Weinberg, and Becky Winant.

The idea for this collection arose out of a brainstorming session for the Amplifying Your Effectiveness Conference (AYE), which debuted on November 6-8, 2000, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Like the book, the annual conference is designed to help technical people become more effective individually, within a team, and within an organization. The contributing authors served as hosts of the inaugural AYE Conference.The variety of techniques and perspectives represented in the book will help you amplify your effectiveness -- whether or not you are able to attend the live event.

About this title

About the Author

A highly influential lecturer and consultant, Gerald M. Weinberg is author, coauthor, or editor of fifteen Dorset House books.

Tester, developer, speaker, consultant, and writer James Bach is founder and principal of Satisfice, Inc., based in Front Royal, Virginia.

Popular speaker and consultant Naomi Karten offers people-oriented perspectives and practical techniques. She is the author of Managing Expectations and editor of a newsletter, Perceptions & Realities.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Gerald M. Weinberg Introduces the Four Parts:

Although "organizational change" is a comforting executive concept, Virginia Satir, the great family therapist, was fond of reminding us that "change happens one person at a time." As the essays in Part One demonstrate, there is no organizational change without individual change, no organizational effectiveness without individual effectiveness.

A recurring dream of technical workers is to have the opportunity to work in perfect isolation. For better or worse, though, the vast majority of technical work puts us in relationships with other people. So, as Part Two reveals, if we are to amplify our effectiveness, we must learn how to amplify the effectiveness of our interpersonal interactions.

Projects are team efforts aimed at bringing something new into the world, which makes them sensitive measures of our individual and team effectiveness. To paraphrase an ancient Chinese proverb, managing a large project is like boiling a small fish -- a delicate job. The essays in Part Three explore a master’s techniques.

Once we have succeeded in demonstrating our effectiveness by successfully completing a project or two, our aspirations naturally turn to helping others do the same. But change is not the simple linear process that we might hope for, as the essays in Part Four illustrate.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dorset House
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0932633471
• ISBN 13: 9780932633477
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 146
• Editor: Weinberg Gerald M., Bach James, Karten Naomi