Shackelford
has served as editor and contributor to Best Practices in IT Leadership
and has had articles published in the Cutter IT Journal and T+D
Magazine. His November 2001 article on CRM and E-Learning was selected
by Cutter Consortium for inclusion in it�s a Practical Guide to
Customer Relationship Management. Shackelford served five terms as
president of the Chicago Organization of Data Processing Educators. In
May 2002, ASTD Published Shackelford�s Project Managing E-Learning as
part of its E-Learning series. He has been a frequent speaker at
seminars and conferences internationally, including OnLine Learning,
OnLine Learning Europe, ASTD�s International Conferences (2002 and
2003), Training 2003, DCI Conferences on Y2K, Data Warehouse, JAD/RAD,
North American Simulation and Gaming Association, E-Learning Expo 2002,
the 19th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning.
Shackelford is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Indianan University, where
he received both his bachelor�s and master�s degrees. Shackelford
teaches both online and in the classroom on the faculty of the Keller
Graduate School of Management in their Project Management M.B.A.
program. An avid opera buff and Wagnerian, he is the Chicago
correspondent for Opera (UK) and editor of the journal Wagner News of
the Wagner Society of America.

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Six Sigma demands results. These results are delivered by projects
that are tightly linked to customer demands and enterprise strategy. If
you’re leading a Six Sigma initiative in your organization, this
hands-on guide is designed to help you achieve these results quickly
and effectively by treating a Six Sigma project like any other project
that must be managed and completed on time and within budget.

Written by leading Six Sigma expert Thomas Pyzdek, The Six Sigma Project Planner
offers a project management approach to Six Sigma. You’ll learn how to
rigorously measure and analyze problems, implement solutions, and
choose and complete the quality improvement projects that offer the
largest payoff. Pyzdek provides dozens of reproducible, downloadable
project management tools and worksheets for each step of the DMAIC
process (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control). The step-by-step
guidelines will help your team:

• Identify high-payoff projects to tackle
• Define project goals and estimated ROI
• Employ breakthrough techniques to develop and implement entirely new processes that meet project goals
• Correct problems in current processes
• Identify stalled projects and jumpstart them–or pull the plug before they consume too much time and resources
• Perform a process capability study using Statistical Process Control
• Establish control and continuous improvement systems

The Six Sigma Project Planner enables all team leaders to identify the “Critical Path” to successful project completion–while you stay on time and on budget.

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Now translated into 11 languages! This reader-friendly, icon-rich series is must reading for all managers at every level All managers, whether brand new to their positions or well established in the corporate heirarchy, can use a little “brushing up” now and then. The skills-based Briefcase Books series is filled with ideas and strategies to help managers become more capable, efficient, effective, and valuable to their corporations. The Manager’s Guide to Effective Meetings is a hands-on guide to planning and conducting meetings that fellow professionals will want to attend. It provides techniques for keeping a meeting focused and on target, reveals latest tools for meeting “virtually,” and more. This latest addition to the popular Briefcase Books series will prove invaluable to anyone who has to plan or conduct meetings, in any environment.

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Chock-full of valuable tips, techniques, illustrative real-world
examples, exhibits, and best practices, this handy and concise
paperback will help you stay up to date on the newest thinking,
strategies, developments and technologies in knowledge management.
Order your copy today!

Reader-friendly survey of
Knowledge Management (KM): a business optimization strategy that
identifies, selects, organizes, distills, and packages information
essential to the business of a company. Provides best practices in
knowledge management, examines enabling technologies, and discusses
implementation issues. Softcover. DLC: Knowledge management.

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Anyone who thinks the audiocassette adaptation of Stephen Covey’s bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,
is a shortcut to reading the book has another thing coming. As a
preview, the cassette is worth every one of its 90 minutes; as a
substitute for the original, it will only leave you wishing for the
rest. There’s a reason 7 Habits has sold more than 5 million
copies and been translated into 32 languages. Serious work has
obviously gone into it, and serious change can likely come out of
it–but only with constant discipline and steadfast commitment. As the
densely packed tape makes immediately clear, this is no quick fix for
what’s ailing us in our personal and professional lives.

The
tape opens to the silky-smooth, overtrained voice of the female
narrator, who’s responsible for tying together audio clips from actual
Covey seminars. Leaving aside the occasional attempts at promoting
Covey and his institute, her script does a first-rate job of making
sense of Covey’s own intense, analogy-rich style of explaining his
habits. There’s nothing simple about his approach to becoming an
effective person. The first three habits alone–which have to do with
personal responsibility, leadership, and self-management–could take
years to master. Yet the last four are unattainable, the narrator
insists, if you can’t acquire the personal security–the “inner core,”
says Covey–that presumably comes from a mastery of the foundation.

Throughout our lessons, Covey’s presence is both learned and thoroughly
appealing. He drops references to the likes of Socrates, T.S. Eliot,
and Robert Frost with the aplomb of an English professor. And his knack
for mixing everyday stories with abstract concepts manages to clarify
difficult issues while respecting our intelligence. You could argue
that the cassette is nothing more than a clever marketing tool for
selling another few million copies of the book. But, even at that, it’s
worth the investment in time and concentration: in the end, we’re moved
to learn more about integrating all seven habits in our struggle to
become better and, yes, more effective people.

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Executive Coaching is a consumer’s guide for HR professionals and
executives who want to be good clients and savvy consumers of coaching
services. Step by step, the book defines what coaching is, who uses it,
when, and why. In this comprehensive resource the authors outline the
entire coaching process, include key points on the readiness for
coaching, and clients’ first-hand accounts of their coaching
experiences. Valerio and Lee describe the roles of the HR professional,
the client, the boss, and the coach and how all work together in order
to achieve a successful coaching engagement.

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Technology is everywhere in our world. We see it everyday in activities
such as banking, shopping, flying, entertainment, or communicating. We
live with technology, and we are surrounded by it. We cannot escape its
influence and how it shapes our lives. But work organizations are also
as dependent on technology as we all are for our daily activities.
Organizations use technology for manufacturing, sales, production,
marketing, and yes, for human resources actions and interventions. So
this is the focus of this volume electonic HR (eHR), a new world order
for managing human resources in organizations. A world where scientists
and practitioners in the industrial and organizational psychology field
have much to say and much to offer in order to promote the
effectiveness and optimization of eHR technologies and services. And so
the motivation behind this volume to provide practical advice to those
who compose, manage, and develop human resources in work
organizations.” from the Foreword by Eduardo Salas

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The future of business growth is in the partnerships that companies and their executives form. Partnering explains how critical it is for business leaders to “partner” effectively, and features original contributions from more than 30 thought leaders, including such luminaries as Ken Blanchard, Jim Kouzes and Brian Tracy. Topics cover:

* Ken Blanchard on situational leadership
* Beverly Kaye on building, living, and leaving a legacy for the organization
* Kevin Cashman’s Five Touchstones of Authentic Partnering Leadership
* Robert Kaplan on the Balanced Scorecard for leadership
* R. Roosevelt Thomas on fostering trust and resonance through diversity
* Jim Kouzes on building cultures of collaboration
* Brian Tracy on the importance and power of focus
* Jon Katzenbach on where team performance fits in the balanced leadershipapproach

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With the acceleration of technology and information, projects are
becoming more complex, costly, and time-constrained — and every year
thousands of them get cancelled or end up costing significantly more
than their original projections. Project and program managers are
sorely in need of tools to help them avoid failure.

Blueprint for Project Recovery
provides readers with a proven, proceduralized methodology for
identifying where and how projects went off course, and a defined plan
of action to bring them back on track. Based on years of research and
including a CD-ROM packed with all the forms, checklists and resources
used in the text, the book gives readers an entire process for both
evaluating and repairing projects gone off course, and guidance for
planning them more effectively in the first place. The book is designed
as an easy reference troubleshooting guide that readers can use
immediately to solve all their project difficulties.

Every project or program has exigencies that can cause problems with cost, schedule, or outcome. Blueprint for Project Recovery! is the ultimate

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The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management brings you the information
you need when you need it most- now! This practical, easy-to-use guide
gives you instant access to the cutting-edge ideas and hard-won wisdom
of one of today’s leading experts on project management. In short,
lively segments using real-world examples, it delivers the information
you need to navigate complex project management issues. You’ll find
brief descriptions of key concepts, tips on real-world applications,
compact case studies, the most sought-after skills, and warnings on how
to avoid pitfalls. Here are all the tools you need to manage even the
most complex project. You’ll discover how to:
* Coordinate a team by getting everyone to agree on the objectives and schedules
* Find the best sponsor for your specific project
* Set a realistic schedule and budget projections
* Outline and build a specific project plan, step-by-step
* Make accurate estimates and better manage the expectations of customers as well as management
* And much more
The Portable MBA From the creators of the bestselling Portable MBA series comes The Fast Forward MBA
* A quick way to brush up on new ideas
* An easy-to-use format that his in any briefcase
* Real-world information that you can put to use now!

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