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.

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.

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.

Chock-full of valuable tips, techniques, illustrative real-world
examples, exhibits, and best practices, this handy and concise
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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.

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.