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Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge Paperback – September 9, 2001
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In this new edition of his classic book, Geoff Bellman shows readers how to make things happen in any organization regardless of their formal position. The new edition has been written for a wider audience, including people in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors, paid and volunteer workers, managers and individual contributors, contract and freelance workers. More than seventy percent of the material is brand new, including new examples, new chapters, new exercises, and much more.
- Print length176 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBerrett-Koehler Publishers
- Publication dateSeptember 9, 2001
- Dimensions6.06 x 0.47 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101576751724
- ISBN-13978-1576751725
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
We succeed by helping others succeed; our accomplishment is dependent on theirs. In our more expansive moments, we might say that we make them successful. In their more generous moments, they might say that they couldn’t do it without us. We are often in-between, wondering how best to contribute and how much difference we make. Some of us get trapped “on hold,” waiting for the authority, waiting for others to tell us what to do. That does not work.
Our only chance for contributing is to quit waiting and wondering and do something. We serve ourselves and others best when we do not wait. Initiate, with the organization and all involved people in mind. No, we are not in charge but we can act. No, we are not formally designated leaders, but we can lead. This book will help you think of yourself as a leader, as someone who helps an organization, its people, and resources move in new directions. Yes, right from where you are, not waiting until you’ve moved into a more powerful position. Whether you are an individual contributor, a middle manager, a school principal, or a precinct chair, there is much you can do from your position right there in the middle of things. Whether you are an entering programmer, a journeyman mechanic, a PTA parent, or a social worker, you can choose to lead others. And, the first step in leading others at work is leading your own life.
2
The Illusion: Someone Is in Charge
Many of us grew up with the expectation that someone will watch over us, take care of us, be “in charge,” “know best,” and that this will turn out okay. Our families, schools, communities, and organizations taught us to believe this, but their teachings began to fray pretty early, usually before we became adults. Our contradictory experience confused us; we saw people “in charge” producing very mixed results. The people in position to “do what’s best” disappointed us. Programs they created, decisions they made, did not turn out okay—at least not for us and what we wanted out of our lives. We discovered that they would not watch over us. An extremely hard part of this learning is not our disappointment in them but our struggles with our own responsibility: If they are not in charge, who is? If I cannot count on them, who can I count on? What is my responsibility in helping my family, my community, my employer, or this world? What can I, what will I, do with my life? These are the big questions lurking behind the work questions we struggle with daily.
You may be thinking, “But someday I will be in charge of that committee (or agency or division or team) and I will change things!” Well, think again. That’s akin to getting married with the plan to start changing your spouse immediately after the ceremony. My research says that does not work very well. I have often heard executives lament about their difficulties in getting things done. When the president of a telecommunications company (with 23,000 employees across five states and nine hierarchical levels) first saw this book, he said “Finally, a book written for me!” His employees may not see him as not in charge, but he frequently feels that way. He knows the limitations of authority. It is too easy for us to attribute power to a position that we have yet to hold, or that others hold, and to diminish the power we currently have. This book works with the powers we now hold.
The Life Game
For a few minutes, imagine your life as a game with rules and goals, roles and scores. Life is much more complicated than a game, but tem- porarily imagine playing Life as you might play bridge, or Myst™, or soccer. Within this game called Life, you decide its purposes and rules. You decide the roles you will play; you decide what earns points; you keep score. Actions that move you toward your life goals earn points. Actions that move you away from your life goals lose points. You create the game of Life as you play it; you can change the rules. Unpredictable, uncontrollable, unreasonable outside forces influence Life. You are in the middle of Life now; you are playing.
3
That is how life works when seen through the simpler game metaphor. It is the largest of the many games we play: games like School, Parent, Politics, Citizen, Child, and Work. In this book, most of our attention will be directed at the game of Work as a subset of the game of Life—and the challenge of playing the two games while keeping Work subordinate to Life. Often, other people decide the explicit rules and goals for Work before you arrive. And you have implicitly decided the rules and goals of Life before you arrive to “play” Work. The challenge is engaging deeply with both games, and keeping Work within the larger context of Life. Five guides shape this book:
Create your life game. The secret of getting things done when you are not in charge is to establish a life larger than work, in which you are more in charge than at work. Without this larger, more important life game, you will end up playing by the rules of the work game, or reacting against them with no clear sense of purpose.
Learn the work game. There is a work game where you work. It has its own rules and roles, goals and penalties—whether you are aware of it or not. There are ways for people to succeed. Certain behaviors are respected; others are disparaged. Learn this. It is not a matter of liking but of understanding how this work game works.
Know your position in the work game. This allows you to know where you are starting from. Again, it does not mean that you like it, but that you understand what comes with the position you have. The best starting point for changing your position, or the work game, is to know what you are starting with. Of course, if you hate your position, you should not be playing here. Which leads to. . .
Recognize there are other work games. There are other places in this world of work where you could be offering your talents. All of those other places have work games of their own. Choose the work game you play, always honoring your larger life game. If your life game is not being served by this work game, then go play somewhere else. Your ultimate power in the work game comes from choosing to play here, and knowing you make that choice daily.
4
Play well and hard at both Work and Life. Concentrate. Keep reminding yourself of what is important. Know your skills and your aspirations.
The most useful ideas in this book link back to this Life and Work game metaphor. Life direction is your source of power; options open when you see your work as a vital part of your life. Creating your life game is difficult; you are the game designer, rulemaker, player, coach, referee, scorekeeper, cheerleader, and spectator. Little wonder that we often opt to play others’ games, winning and losing under rules they have made. Others can help us figure out Life, but no one else can play Life for us. A pattern of playing others’ games usually calls us back to our own life game: What do we want to do with this life? And how might our work support that?
Product details
- Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 2nd edition (September 9, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 176 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1576751724
- ISBN-13 : 978-1576751725
- Item Weight : 9.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.06 x 0.47 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,049,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,157 in Behavioral Sciences (Books)
- #9,355 in Business Processes & Infrastructure
- #11,064 in Leadership & Motivation
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
MY MOST RECENT BOOK
Co-Author Kathleen Ryan and I share a fascination with great teams: What makes them work so wonderfully? How are they different from the teams most of us know? What could an ordinary team do to become extraordinary? We studied sixty great teams with those questions in mind and learned much more than we expected to. Plus, we wrote a book about it: EXTRAORDINARY GROUPS: HOW ORDINARY TEAMS ACHIEVE AMAZING RESULTS. Teams--and committees and crews and boards and groups--are more essential than ever! We are dependent on them in all aspects of our living and working together. Our challenge is integrating good people into effective group structures.
We decided to find out by going to sixty quite different but extraordinary teams. Our logic was why not learn from those teams that are already performing beautifully? Our conclusions reached into realms both gratifying and surprising. We describe all of this in EXTRAORDINARY GROUPS. Go to our website to learn the essence of our discoveries: www.extraordinaryteams.us/essential-elements/
AND...
EXTRAORDINARY GROUPS has since morphed into a team assessment tool. THE EXTRAORDINARY TEAMS INVENTORY allows you to compare your team to extraordinary teams that were part of our continuing research that now includes over 300 teams. Team members complete a twenty minute questionnaire on-line and quickly learn where the team stands on the essential elements leading to being extraordinary. Find out more at www.extraordinaryteams.us/services/ Or www.hrdq.com.
As you will see on our website, our band of consultants, coaches, and trainers have been meeting monthly to continue our research and build on the base our book established over twelve years ago. Meet some of us at www.extraordinaryteams.us/resources/
OTHER BOOKS & BACKGROUND
Over forty years, I've seen organizations and work from many angles. I've been a corporate director, struggling with life in the middle of the company muddle--my first book, THE QUEST FOR STAFF LEADERSHIP, grew out of that. My years as a consultant resulted in THE CONSULTANTS CALLING: BRINGING WHO YOU ARE TO WHAT YOU DO. I put my decades-long love/hate relationship with organizations between the covers of THE BEAUTY OF THE BEAST: BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO ORGANIZATIONS. Watching my clients (and myself)aspire to greatness within companies controlled by others-not-me led to GETTING THINGS DONE WHEN YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE. And along the way I was living my own life, leading to YOUR SIGNATURE PATH: GAINING NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LIFE AND WORK.
ABOUT MY WRITING: Like many of us, I am most effective when I have a chance to step back and reflect before taking action. My books come out of reflection. The process begins with a conversation between myself and my screen, capturing my current fascinations. No outline, no subject really, just reflecting and writing to myself. This results in 200-300 hundred pages before my writing energy is spent. Then, I print it out and read it for the first time. What am I talking about??? I'm usually surprised at the number of useful (and useless) thoughts I generate. The useful thoughts usually merge into a skeletal structure for my thinking and an eventual book. I often don't know what "animal" these bones will form. And, of course, some bones are missing and some I have too many of. Though I am intentional about what I'm creating, I'm always surprised at what emerges in this most creative part of the process.
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