If you are a first time manager or a verteran and you find difficulty in keeping your employees accountable for their results then this book is for you. It draws a plan from the authors vast experience to guide you through an action of providing key deliverables from your direct reports or subordinates and monitor them on an ongoing basis. You do not have to wait till an annual performance review to be in trouble.

All managers want to hold their employees accountable for results, but few know how. Moving beyond the far-from-ideal annual performance review — which only evaluates what has already occurred, and not what the manager wants to achieve — Keeping Employees Accountable for Results contains checklists, how-tos, and other tools to manage performance on an ongoing basis. The book gives busy managers quick, step-by-step advice on: * Setting expectations * Monitoring progress * Giving feedback * Following through Light on theory and heavy on practical application, Keeping Employees Accountable for Results gives time-pressed managers the proven, practical information they need to help their people accomplish more.

It has taken four years, but with Head First Java the introductory Java book category has finally come of age. This is an excellent book, far more capable than any of the scores of Java-for-novices books that have come before it. Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates deserve rich kudos–and big sales–for developing this book's new way of teaching the Java programming language, because any reader with even a little bit of discipline will come away with true understanding of how the language works. Perhaps best of all, this is no protracted "Hello, World" introductory guide. Readers get substantial exposure to object-oriented design and implementation, serialization, network programming, threads, and Remote Method Invocation (RMI).
Key to the authors' teaching style are carefully designed graphics. Rather than explain class inheritance (to cite one example) primarily with text, the authors use a series of tree diagrams that clarify the mechanism far more succinctly. The diagrams are carefully annotated with arrows and notes. Also characteristic of the unique teaching strategy is heavy reliance on exercises, in which the reader is asked to complete partial classes, write whole new code segments and do design work. Though there's little discussion of why the exercises' correct answers are what they are, it's clear that the practice work was carefully designed to reinforce the lesson at hand. If you've waited this long to give Java a try, this book is a great choice. –David Wall

A practical process for turning human resources into a crucial component of success — from an HR professional who really did it

"Foreword by Dave Ulrich

""It is easier to conceptualize, conceive, and write about utopia than to actually make it happen. Thirty years ago, when some of us chose to go into academics and live more in the world of ideas, Ralph Christensen chose to go into the world of practice. To be honest, he was then and is now one of the best ‘thinkers’ in the profession — and he has shown repeatedly that he can turn ideas into action.""

– Dave Ulrich, from the Foreword

For decades now, human resources professionals have sounded the drumbeat of change: HR must transform itself from an administrative function into a strategic business partner. But it has been said so often, for so long, and with so little concrete, real-life information on how to actually achieve this new mission, that the message often sounds like a wouldn’t-it-be-nice scenario.

But it isn’t. More and more traditional HR activities are being farmed out to service centers, external vendors, and line managers. The work of HR is changing, and more and more professionals realize that to succeed in the future they must be part of the team that makes important business decisions.

Roadmap to Strategic HR is a sorely needed prescription for achieving strategic focus in complex organizations. Drawn from the author’s more than 25 years of experience and insights as an HR practitioner at Hallmark and other companies, the book outlines a 10-step, results-oriented plan for making the transition. It helps you integrate top-quality tactical work with innovative internal systems — talent systems, training systems, reward systems, or work processes — that will meet the strategic business demands of your organization.