On the night stand

Training & Development, Sep 2002 by Phillips, Patti

I try to read from the stack of books on my nightstand, but most of my reading takes place on airplanes. Here are four books that represent my major interests and challenges.

Work Naked, by Cynthia C. Froggatt, introduces eight principles for peak performance in the virtual workplace. Froggatt focuses on initiative, trust, joy, individuality, quality, dialogue, connectivity, and workplace options. It's a good read for employees who work from virtual offices and independent consultants who work from home.

Robert I. Sutton offers an interesting take on creativity and innovation in Weird Ideas That Work. He covers 11 1/2 practices for promoting, managing, and sustaining innovation with intriguing suggestions-such as Weird Idea Number 1 1/2: "Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike."

The market seems flooded with books on organizational change, but Pierre Mourier and Martin Smith's Conquering Organizational Change is different: It's easy to read and has a great layout and presentation. The authors address how to make change successful and avoid the failure that's commonplace in most change projects. They provide 10 tactics for successful change and 10 recovery tactics to revive stalled or failed change efforts, plus tools, templates, and checklists to help readers address change processes within their organizations.

Nightstand contributor Patti Phillips says she wishes someone had told her earlier in life "how great life would be after 40."

Patti Phillips is an author, consultant, and facilitator in measurement, evaluation, and accountability for The Chelsea Group; thechelseagroup*aol. com.