Getting it Done: Amazon.co.uk: Roger Fisher: Books

Review

"This timely, practical, skill-based book beautifully answers the typical seminar complaint, This is good, but the person who really needs it is not here.' It'll inspire you with the power of example, clear thinking, and the tools to pull off successful, sustainable collaboration with or without formal authority."-- Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People""Negotiation master Roger Fisher has done it again. "Getting It Done" is a highly useful, clear, no-nonsense guide to successful persuasion and influence. It should become the best friend to managers, professionals, and ambitious working people everywhere."-- Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of "World Class" and "Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontiers of Management""Profound lessons made simple by one of the world's great teachers."-- Ronald A. Heifetz, author of "Leadership Without Easy Answers""To get the work done today, you must be able to collaborate. Roger Fisher and Alan Sharp have provided the best road map that I have seen for collaborating, navigating, and leading your way through ambiguity and unclear lines of authority."-- Philip J. Harkins, president and CEO, Linkage Incorporated"Improving the way we work with others requires changing both their habits and our own. "Getting It Done" shows how to produce the kind of joint behavior that produces results."-- Robert B. Cialdini, author of "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion""This book is must reading for those seeking to maximize their contribution to the constructive work of the world."-- Charles T. Munger, vice chairman, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Product Description

Let's face it. In this chaotic world of teams, matrix management, and horizontal organizations, it's tougher than ever to get things done. How do you lead when you're not the one in charge? How can you be effective when joint action is needed? You need an edge in order to reach solutions and effectively work with others.

"Getting It DONE" is your edge.

Cowritten by Roger Fisher, an acknowledged authority on negotiation, "Getting It DONE" is the book to help you make things happen when you're not the boss. Fisher is the man who redefined the way the world negotiates with his megabestseller "Getting to YES." Now he has teamed up with management consultant Alan Sharp to move beyond negotiation and give us the definitive book on collaboration.

Introducing the technique of lateral leadership, Fisher and Sharp take collaboration to the next level and offer surefire ways to help anyone get better results from coworkers. Gleaned from their decades of experience as negotiators, mediators, and consultants to organizations, "Getting It DONE" gives you the practical tools you need to influence your peers and bosses and get the results you seek.

"Getting It DONE" explains how you can best help a group formulate a clear vision of the results they want, suggest a course of action that you can all implement, and learn from past experiences. It describes how to ask questions effectively, offer ideas that will be heard, and influence the actions of others through your own behavior. The invaluable skills of lateral leadership enable you to achieve the ultimate goal--successful collaboration:

Diagnose: identify the causes of a problem in order to solve it

Prescribe: create anapproach that deals effectively

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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

Stirring and self-developing book 17 Nov 1999

By ben-zwi.onu@st.com

Format:Hardcover

I read and read this book as an IT professional and really learnt about most of the problems I've been encountering. I hence moved from complaint to contributive proposition and got self-confident in any further action taken since. Moreover, most of the examples produced are common to major enterprises. I am convinced things could be better in some enterprises, had the management read this sort of best-practice-minded book. I have started disseminating the book around me and hope it'll help go ahead solving problems and sharing knowledge. It's clear problems mostly arise due to a lack of managerial culture.

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34 of 36 people found the following review helpful

Indispensable 20 Jan 2002

By Chris (mcmurdofromtheair@hotmail.com)

Format:Paperback

Packed with useful advice, techniques and plans for collaborative working and altering the way your colleagues and organisation works. Useful section on analytical thinking: how to make those unstructured, going nowhere meetings more productive. They're also willing to say when trying to change your colleagues' attitudes you won't get it right or be successful all the time, but they make a great case for sticking at it. Very useful, I'll be referring to this for some time to come.

42 of 47 people found the following review helpful

Solid Advice for the Most Common Business Problem 27 May 2004

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAME TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE

Whenever I meet with bright, motivated business people who want to improve the world, they always complain about others in their organizations who will not cooperate in a change process. Get those reluctant people on board the progress train, and the more positive future will soon arrive. Almost never do these complainers realize that their own habits, perspective, and behavior are contributing to delaying the progress by making others oppose the initiative.

Getting It Done is a wonderful book for helping each of us see ourselves as part of the problem and part of the solution in situations when many people must cooperate. That's a first in my experience.

The book builds on that valuable perspective by suggesting what skills we each need to improve, and how we can implement a process that will lead to genuine, effective progress. That is very critical, because most improvements occur because someone has designed an effective process to ease their implementation. In new areas, by definition, there is seldom such a process. My suggestion is that you try this one if you have no other.

I also liked the way the authors went on to generalize about how lateral leadership (influencing peers) provides lessons for when you are the boss. The same lessons apply here as well. Influencing people through genuine involvement leads to both better solutions and to better implementation.

If you only read and learn to apply one book this year, Getting It Done should be that book. My reasoning is simple. If you cannot help those you work with to make successful collaborations, you and everyone around you will always operate at a low level of effectiveness. Also, your work day will be filled with stress, conflict, pressure, too much to do, and worry. That's not the way you want to live. Getting It Done can help you develop the skills to get the benefits of how all of us know and can do more than any one of us. When you are able to get that benefit from being in an enterprise, life becomes very interesting, rewarding, and meaningful. You will also feel good about living closer to your potential as a person.