Powerful Performance Appraisals Easyread Comfort Edition

Managers working in today's organizations often focus more on results than on the people who achieve those results. But regularly evaluating the performance of your employees is critical to improving the efficiency and output of your organization. Performance reviews have changed significantly in the past few years. Companies today are looking for the key characteristics, known as competencies, that help the most successful people in their field to be so successful. Managers and employees need to focus on those competencies, especially during performance review discussions.

John Hoover, an organizational leadership consultant, discusses how to deal with an "Idiot Boss" - or I-Boss - who does stupid things. Hoover distinguishes idiots from other tricky bosses, including those who think they are God, or who are paranoid, sadistic or Machiavellian. He leaves the reader with a couple of issues. First, you'll think no good, caring bosses still exist. Second, he doesn't tell you clearly where to set boundaries or when enough is finally enough. He often advocates appeasing bad bosses, although his other counsel on how to deal with them has some effective pointers. To his credit, Hoover is very candid about how he has learned from experience, including his mistakes. He offers personal examples from his experiences at Disney and elsewhere, and tries to write in a light-hearted or whimsical vein. getAbstract.com finds the book strongest when it is strategic and weakest when it tries to be funny, given that with bad bosses you only laugh to keep from crying.

[This book] analyzes ... the chains of blunders and bad judgments that led to fifteen legendary debacles, including the Firestone tire recall, EuroDisney, and Quaker's failed acquisition of Snapple. In each case, [the author] pinpoints exactly how and where the decision-making process went wrong and shows what managers in any organization can learn from these monumental fiascoes. Based on his analysis of 400 strategic decisions made by top managers in areas such as products and services, pricing and markets, personnel policy, technology acquisition, and strategic reorganization, [the author] estimates that two-thirds of all decisions are based on failure-prone or questionable tactics. He uses the fifteen monumental decision-making disasters to illustrate the potential consequences of these common tactical errors and traps ... He then details successful alternative approaches to decision-making.-Back cover.