Customer Reviews:
Great reference/cheat sheet.......2007-07-26
I have used this book on all my performance reviews, it is so good, that I could not stop picking phrases from it, and my boss had to tell me to be "less verbose" in my self assessment!
Book for new managers.......2007-07-15
This book was recommended in one of my management classes. I was able view it during one of the class breaks. Immediately, I knew it will save me time and effort. Many useful phrases to help and prompt thoughts for reviewing team members.
A good guide .......2007-07-05
I purchased this guide for the supervisors on my team because it gives phrases to use when appraising employees. Its also gives phrases to use when writing awards or other evaulations of performance. The guide is organized into different areas-teamwork, communication skills, productivity, etc. which helps find helpful phrases to use. This guide is simple but elegant in its usefulness.
Who needs this? .......2007-06-12
If I sat on a toilet all day thinking of sycophantic half-sentences, this is probably what I'd come up with. I hate to think about what the brain-dead, incompetent boob who needs a book like this looks like.
It's management speak like this crap that inspired movies like Office Space and television shows such as The Office and Just Shoot Me. On that note, maybe I should give this book five stars.
One thing's for certain, anyone in your office who orders this book should be fired immediately.
Helpful Tool.......2007-05-16
Very helpful tool in writing performance reviews and avoiding redundancy when writing performance reviews.
Book Description
Dashboards have become popular in recent years as uniquely powerful tools for communicating important information at a glance. Although dashboards are potentially powerful, this potential is rarely realized. The greatest display technology in the world won't solve this if you fail to use effective visual design. And if a dashboard fails to tell you precisely what you need to know in an instant, you'll never use it, even if it's filled with cute gauges, meters, and traffic lights. Don't let your investment in dashboard technology go to waste.
This book will teach you the visual design skills you need to create dashboards that communicate clearly, rapidly, and compellingly. Information Dashboard Design will explain how to:
- Avoid the thirteen mistakes common to dashboard design
- Provide viewers with the information they need quickly and clearly
- Apply what we now know about visual perception to the visual presentation of information
- Minimize distractions, cliches, and unnecessary embellishments that create confusion
- Organize business information to support meaning and usability
- Create an aesthetically pleasing viewing experience
- Maintain consistency of design to provide accurate interpretation
- Optimize the power of dashboard technology by pairing it with visual effectiveness
Stephen Few has over 20 years of experience as an IT innovator, consultant, and educator. As Principal of the consultancy Perceptual Edge, Stephen focuses on data visualization for analyzing and communicating quantitative business information. He provides consulting and training services, speaks frequently at conferences, and teaches in the MBA program at the University of California in Berkeley. He is also the author of Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten. Visit his website at www.perceptualedge.com.
Customer Reviews:
Buy this Book!.......2007-09-12
This book is great, it gets to the point, tells you what you need to know, provides many examples and is entertaining at the same time. The people who are still fascinated by all the colors in their kids Crayola boxes probably would object to some of Few's points.
Over-raed approach to stern looking dashboards.......2007-09-03
The key elements of dashboard design (avoid clutter, focus and limit visual cues, beware of rainbow colors, carefully chose when to show numbers, tables or (appropriate) graphs), converted in a very lengthy and expensive piece of litterature. And the results is by all accounts debatable in terms of look and feel, in particular as very little attention is given to who your audience is...
I would not recommend this book.
Another Tech Book Killed by Frills and Filler .......2007-09-02
There can be no doubt that the pages of this book contain some of the most original and decisive ideas about dashboard design of any book to come out on the market. Yet this strength cannot quite redeem it. This book is mostly pictures, figures, and graphs, many of which are not needed. The same could be said of dashboards in general. The prose is watered down and childlike, as if the author would spoon feed his ideas, one per chapter, to an infant audience. In the end I am forced to conclude that, like many tech books in HCI, a hard core text filled with complex ideas, lean, well-written chapters, and something like wit is both outside the reach of its authors and outside the bounds of contemporary techie marketing. This book may sell, but it does nothing to promote a sophisticated, confident HCI core at a time when awareness of the profession is still patchy. It will be a great day for HCI when its "Gurus" stop condescending to their audience.
Excellent Treatment of the Material.......2007-08-17
This is an easy to read book which does a fantastic job of conveying the topic material. I strongly agree with Few's perspective and think that you wouldn't go wrong with a design that's in alignment with this book.
Great design principles.......2007-08-08
This manual is a great resource for best practices and principles for designing dashboards. It doesn't matter if you buy or build, the material is golden.
Customer Reviews:
Simplistic.......2007-05-14
I work in a CPA firm and found this book to recommend simplification in writing to the point of absurdity. It is a fact that there is a 'language' for business, and this book spends far too much time advising the reader to take complex or wordy phrases and simplify them to an almost moronic degree. While I agree that business writing is often overly and unnecessarily convoluted, this book seems to ignore a business-like paring down and instead invite the reader to return to elementary-school quality writing. I definitely did not feel that the book was a worthwhile investment, especially at the inflated price for which it retails. It is possible that it would benefit those in the accounting field whose clientele are completely non-business oriented or have little business knowledge.
Excellent for College Students in Business.......2007-03-08
I'm an accountancy major at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This has greatly helped me on my group cases where I write memorandums and other professional communication. Writing hasn't come easily for me (like numbers have) but this book helps me find my weaknesses and gives me suggestions for them. At first I wondered why such a small book was so expensive, but the price is definitely worth it!
Book Description
A step-by-step resource for clear communication of all types of policies and procedures.
Policies and procedures—they're what make a company run efficiently and legally. Now managers have a definitive guide to creating accurate policies and procedures documents. The book is useful for professionals in such areas as:
• health and safety
• human resources
• office management
• administration
• quality
• manufacturing
• customer service
• finance and accounting.
Readers will enjoy the unusually friendly, informal approach of this book. Loaded with examples, checklists, guidelines, quick tips, work plans, and forms, it is ready for immediate use. The book shows how to:
• write (and design) documents clearly (so employees will understand and follow the policies)
• plan, analyze, and research each element
• help employees increase efficiency, reduce mistakes and frustration, and save time and money—by providing clear guidelines to follow
• avoid legal mistakes that can get a company in trouble.
Customer Reviews:
Good writing tips but not applicable to dynamic workplace.......2007-03-13
Some of the basic writing tips regarding word choice, sentence length, reading level, and formatting are great. The rest might apply if your company has never documented its policies and procedures before or if you work in a static workplace (government office?) where policies or procedures are added or changed only a couple of times a year (do people really still print these on paper?) However, if you work at a dynamic, constantly changing company that must respond to thousands of different customer queries a day, much of the advice is not applicable.
A LONG history with this title..........2006-04-04
I have used this book frequently as a business consultant and teacher over the last 10 years. It is THE "How To" book on the subject. It goes very well with POLYPROC Policies and Procedures (also available on Amazon - search on Polyproc or Sarbanes Oxley).
Excellent. Easy to read or use as a reference........1999-11-09
No dry reading about theory here. Ms. Campbell has created a very useful tool.
Poorly Written, Hard to Understand.......1999-11-03
I found this book hard to understand and it didn't follow any great pattern or flow.
Useful, but a bit too general.......1999-05-18
The book is easy to read and understand. It provides helpful guidelines and background material to design procedures. It works a bit as a checklist, in order to remember all the elements in procedure writting. However, it's not meant for any particular industry, and is very general. I would have liked to find more specific examples, and maybe sections for particular industries.
Book Description
Leading Minds and Landmark Ideas In An Easily Accessible Format
From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series delivers the fundamental information today's professionals need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world.
With topics that include how to run a successful meeting, change frontline employees' behavior, and build effective management teams,
Harvard Business Review on Effective Communication offers useful tips for all businesspeople. A Harvard Business Review Paperback.
Customer Reviews:
Drivel.......2007-03-30
Absolutely uninteresting, I'm returning it. Over the years, I've bought, oh probably like a dozen of these books (from this series, I mean) and, with the exception of Managing High-Tech Enterprise, found them completely unhelpful and uninteresting. Always self-contradictory, unintelligent, and droning, they remind me of the "self-help" book genre -- which is to say, politically-correct, vapid tripe that the publishers probably believe will sell in any quantities and no matter how bad, simply because people look forever for advice and will probably buy and keep buying. Very disappointing; I'm through with this series.
Solid and Insightful (as expected).......2006-08-29
Didn't get five stars because some of the articles are a little dated. Updates from a time after e-mail was invented would be helpful. Fernando Bartelome's article is worth the price of the book all by itself.
Best Comunications Book Ever!.......2005-07-22
Talk about efficive. This book has increased my comunication effictiveness 110%. The articles are very inciteful. Before I read this book my meetings went terrible. I was rarely a project lead. This book showed me how terribily incompetant I really was. The book Effective Comunications completly undressed me. Then, I let its articals dress me with confidence. People pay attention in my meetings and they are productive in a new way.
Breadth of articles that help business communication work.......2002-02-22
Though the collection of articles may at first seem sort of old (the oldest is from 1957), the content is very apropos for today. While building a Training Roadmap for our company, I found articles that I think will be extremely useful for a wide range of positions.
What first attracted me was the article on "Listening to People", where I found the clearest presentation on why our listening fails. Even better, it tells how we can improve our listening as a skill that has to be learned.
The next article on "How to Run a Meeting" was enlightening, almost literally! I rushed into my boss' office with new insights on why certain meetings had to be held and how they should run.
I haven't read word-for-word the whole book, rather I've read some others and skimmed some others. That sampling seems to indicate they're all of the same quality.
Good as almost always in this series.......2000-05-11
I already own five of the paperbacks in the Harvard Business Review series. The articles in it are really state-of-the-art in the field the book is about. And so it is in the case of the Harvard Business Review on Effective Communication. I appreciate the chance to read what the most important authors have to say in short articles, not in long books. The articles are long enough to understand and give many good ideas worth working on.
Book Description
From persuasive memos to complaint letters, sales letters to executive summaries -- this exceedingly useful guide helps the business worker write clearly and in an appropriate format, style and tone. Numerous examples show how to overcome writer's block, organize messages for maximum impact, achieve an easy-to-read style, find an efficient writing system and much more.
Customer Reviews:
Go to book.......2006-11-03
I bought several similar reference books at the time of this purchase. Effective Business Writing is my go-to book, my first choice, and usually all I need.
Great reference book - - timely, too!.......1999-04-22
This is a well-written, carefully organized book that belongs on desks across America! Topics covered include organizing before writing, overcoming writer's block, suiting letters to complex situations, and using grammar and punctuation properly. If I had to provide one criticism, it would only be that the book is too short! As a reader, I didn't tire of the useful sample letters and would have happily read more and more. A great reference for the tentative writer and a good refresher for seasoned writers, as well.
Book Description
The Proven Program Used by 600,000 Job Hunters!
You put hours and hours of hard work into your job search and the companies you've contacted never call. It's a story all too common in the fast-paced, highly competitive world of job hunting. Nothing is more discouraging than sending one resumé after another into the job-hunting void. Eventually, you expect silence from the other end.
The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search was written so this never happens to you again. These techniques, developed by author Orville Pierson, have been used successfully for ten years by Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH), the world's premier career services company. Here, Pierson provides you with the job-search techniques that up to now have been limited to the LHH consultants he trains.
Orville Pierson has helped thousands of job hunters during his career, taking note of the characteristics that have led to success as well as failure. In The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search, he supplies key information on how professional job search consultants structure the job search project so you can apply the same winning strategies to your own search. You'll also be privy to inside information on how decision makers operate, enabling you to get the inside track on job openings before they are announced.
This insider's guide covers every phase of the job search, leading you step by step through the process of creating a clear-cut plan-essential to every job search. Using the Pierson Method, you'll learn how to
- Develop a Target List (the key ingredient to every job search)
- Measure your progress
- Create a “core message” about yourself that decision makers won't forget
- Present yourself in the best possible light to prospective employers
Using these strategies, Orville Pierson and LHH have helped 600,000 people land great new jobs. Employ the Pierson Method in your hunt for employment and you'll soon be doing what you love in the company that's right for you.
Customer Reviews:
somewhat helpful in organizing my search efforts.......2007-10-02
this book didn't say anything new that you can't find elsewhere or on the internet. but it surely saves me a lot of trouble googling by putting everything together.
Nice Overview... but there are better books out there.......2007-07-06
When I checked out this book, I was expecting some innovative method that would drastically change my approach to the job search. Instead, what I read was repackaged information that you could find on the Internet. Instead, I would recommend 10 Insider Secrets to a Winning Job Search: Everything You Need to Get the Job You Want in 24 Hours - Or Less. I found that book to be a more concise and thought provoking tool that helped me succeed in getting my most recent job as a Regional Sales Director.
Great Job Search Book.......2007-06-13
I have to tell you this book is outstanding. It was both very informative and entertaining. Searching for a job is never fun. And if you're fortunate, you'll never have to search for many jobs in your life. If you're not experienced at looking for work, the search process can be arduous at best. This book provides a structure/methodology by which to conduct a highly effective job search and helps ease the "pain" of looking for work. I would recommend it to anyone from a new college grad to an experienced executive.
At last....a book that "understands".......2007-02-05
As I read through the Pierson method I was so happy to see a job search method that combines an excellent description of the realities of a job search with a true understanding of the job seeker. Readers will come to know why they balk at the idea of a cold call and spend many hours surfing the internet. And they will also gain confidence in themselves, along with a system that works.
Pierson knows the job search trail and he knows what it's like to look for a job. Bravo for this wonderful book.
Jess Dods, MBA
Career coach
Focus, Structure, Accountability.......2006-10-19
The hardest part of a job search, at least for me, is treating the search itself like a job. Pierson provides structure and methodology to your search but also, and importantly, accountability to yourself through the use of a progress chart. He offers a common sense, step by step process that helps you create an effective marketing plan for yourself along with the not inconsequential side effect of a boost in self confidence.
Book Description
This book is the final product of the "excellence project"--a comprehensive research effort commissioned by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation. Going well beyond any of the previously published reports on the Excellence study, this book contains many new statistical analyses of the survey data and more details from the case studies. Discussing theory and data related to several ongoing discussions in the communication profession, this book answers the following questions:
*How can we show the value of public relations?
*What is the value of relationships?
*How do relationships affect reputation?
*What does it mean to practice communication strategically?
*How can we measure and evaluate the effects of public relations programs?
*Should communication programs be integrated?
*How does the new female majority in the profession affect communication Excellence?
This book, as well as the research it reports, is the product of symmetrical communication and collaboration. As such, it is intended for scholars, applied researchers, students, and informed professionals who understand the value of research in developing a profession, such as public relations. Knowledge of quantitative and qualitative research methods will make it easier to understand the book; however, the results are interpreted in a way that makes the analyses understandable even to those with little or no knowledge of statistics and research methods.
Book Description
"When you properly apply Michael's brilliant techniques, your customers will open email from you, read it, respond to it, and pass it along to others. If you want your customers to stay in touch with you, and to introduce you to other people, then read this book."
Customer Reviews:
A couple of points ... .......2004-07-22
First, just to clarify, this is a book for people who own a small business and want to start an e-newsletter (written & edited by themselves) about it; it's not a book for people looking for information on getting into the business of producing e-newsletters.
Second, I found some of the advice ... well, here's an example:
In a chapter titled "What do I do if I can't write?" the author says "The most effective e-newsletters are those that sound as if the company leader is just talking, filled with all the slang, run on sentences and joking around that comes out in person."
That just doesn't sound right. It would have been nice to see an example from a highly successful e-newsletter in this style, but the author doesn't provide any examples to support this assertion(or any of the other dubious-sounding bits of advice in the book).
A Must Buy -.......2004-01-20
Michael Katz is a repository of hands-on real-world knowledge about newsletters. His 141-page text was a quick and informative read, and serves as a handy reference. This excellent book is worth every cent if you're interested in writing newsletters.
Table of Contents:
OVERVIEW
CREATING THE CONTENT
Part I - What do I write about?
Part II - How do I write?
FORMATTING AND LAYOUT
DELIVERY AND LIST MANAGEMENT
APPENDIX I - Outsourcing
APPENDIX II - E-Newsletter launch template and checklist
must-read A-to-Z resource for e-newsletter publishers.......2003-11-11
This is a valuable A-to-Z resource for e-newsletter publishers. I was a partner in a successful e-mail marketing firm for several years; access to Michael's book during that time would have saved me countless headaches and missed opportunities.
Readers new to e-newsletters will find this book a terrific "how-to" guide. Michael's humorous, down-to-earth style is engaging and entertaining, as he demystifies the process of launching an e-newsletter.
Experienced readers will find Michael's book a great checklist and reference for both new and on-going e-newsletter programs.
It's a quick read, but an essential one if you're serious about succeeding with e-newsletters today.
What a Tiny Book! Is That All There Is To It?.......2003-07-15
It's the smallest book I had seen on anything related to the Internet and I had a whole lot of BIG problems with my e-newsletter that I needed solved.
I finished reading it in an hour or so.
Type a few extra words here, click a few buttons there, start a better (read simple and profitable) business relationship over here, and BINGO! Big problems are all gone, bye-bye.
Yes, the book is funny; Michael Katz is a very witty guy.
Yes, the book is easy to understand; the author has laid the whole thing out in a "FAQ" format and has obviously had it proof-read by a smart 8-year old to make sure he has communicated all his points as clearly as possible.
And Yes, Yes, Yes, the book is not obsolete within 3 minutes of publication; the typical fate of anything related to the Internet. The material deals with Internet publishing on a level that makes it virtually timeless.
I wish every business book I purchased made as much sense, solved as many of my business problems as quickly, and made me WANT to write a review that glows in the dark!
BUY THIS BOOK! It's worth your money.
Terrific!.......2003-05-22
Just what we needed to get started. I didn't even know where to begin, and this book moved us through it. What i liked most is Michael's emphasis on relationship and content in being successful and breaking from the pack. A clear, funny and useful book.
Book Description
Effective Communication for Colleges, 10e, follows and promotes the highly successful Communication- by-Objectives (CBO) approach, a no-nonsense process for preparing messages. The CBO approach provides an essential framework for preparing messages and enables users to grasp principles of effective messages quickly and easily. This text/workbook/reference guide provides thorough coverage of business communication concepts in one convenient package.
Customer Reviews:
Too many editions, too expensive.......2007-09-17
We've used this book for three years to teach college business communications, but it may be time to hunt another book. The book is too expensive at $100. Also, the publisher has issued three new editions in the past three years. That makes it impossible for students to re-sale used books and is frustrating to students and instructors. If the book were a better value, we probably would continue to use it; as it is, we can find something cheaper for our students.
DO NOT USE THIS TEXT.......2007-08-14
I used both the previous edition and current edition of this text to teach college students. Both editions were full of errors and contradictory statements. In particular, you cannot rely on the instructor materials- there are many test questions that have answers that are contradicted in the text. Also, the grammar exercises are too difficult for an introductory text- they test students on advanced grammar concepts that are not even covered by the book! There is a grammar reference section at the end of the text but it does not cover the majority of concepts tested in the end-of-chapter grammar exercises. So, my students were continually frustrated. Many of the examples in the book are also very strange- for example, instead of PowerPoint, they speak of "computer generated slides".
This text is highly effective for teaching communications!.......1999-07-01
Pensacola Junior College has used Effective Communication for Colleges in our Business Communications class for several years. This textbook includes just exactly what we need to enable our students to communicate effectively both orally and in writing. The emphasis on grammar review is highly relevant and well constructed. The examples shown are timely and appealing to our students. Supplementary materials are helpful and easy to access. Keep up the good work!
Books:
- Effective Phrases for Performance Appraisals: A Guide to Successful Evaluations
- Effective Phrases for Performance Appraisals: A Guide to Successful Evaluations
- Effective Writing: Handbook for Accountants (7th Edition)
- Event Planning : The Ultimate Guide to Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives and Other Special Events
- Federal Resume Guidebook: Write a Winning Federal Resume to Get in, Get Promoted, and Survive in a Government Career! 3rd Edition
- First-Year Teacher's Survival Kit: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools & Activities for Meeting the Challenges of Each School Day
- Fundamentals of Organizational Communication (6th Edition)
- Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way Into the Graduate School of Your Choice (Graduate Admissions Essays)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Trading for Dummies
- Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
- Collected Works of John Stuart Mill
- Cracking the AP Economics Macro & Micro Exam, 2004-2005 Edition
- History: Fiction or Science
- Physik
- How to Buy Real Estate Without a Down Payment in Any Market: Insider Secrets from the Experts Who Do
- Beyond Words: A Guide to Drawing Out Ideas
- Ecological and Environmental Economics: Selected Issues and Policy Responses
- Escherichia Coli & Salmonella Typhimurium: Cellular & Molecular Biology
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews : Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Phrases That Describe Your Employees' Performance
2600 Phrases For Effective Performance Reviews: Ready-to-use Words And Phrases That Really Get Results
Perfect Phrases for Setting Performance Goals : Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Goals for Any Performance Plan or Review
Performance Appraisal Phrase Book: The Best Words, Phrases, and Techniques for Performance Reviews
101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems
![Dave Pelz's 10 Minutes a Day to Better Putting [ILLUSTRATED]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1586191012.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)