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"Get Weird!"
101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work
by, John Putzier, M.S., SPHR
Published by AMACOM, New York, 2001
Does your company waste a lot of time and money trying to win the war for talent?
Do your people need to get their creative juices flowing again? Is your company in need of a little culture shock?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need a copy of the new book,
"Get Weird! 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work" by John Putzier.
In the same spirit as John's speaking and consulting style, this book is chock full of practical
get-to-the-point ideas that will instantly have a positive impact on your ability to attract, retain, motivate, train, recognize and even get employees to return to your company who have left, without spending more money.
You gotta get a little weird, if you're gonna make a little difference!
The first section of "Get Weird!" is called "Tapping Your Natural Weirdness!" after John's popular creativity and innovation program, and teaches the reader how to overcome the three common barriers to creative thinking and problem-solving and is accompanied by a series of tools, techniques and exercises for new idea generation.
After that, he gives you 101 "out-of-the-box" best practices (with weird titles like "Bribe the Bride" "Food for Thought" "I'll Scratch Yours" and "Lose the Legalese") that can be implemented as is, tweaked for your own purposes, or used as thought-starters to generate your own great ideas.
John said that a key motivation for his writing this book was after
speaking to and attending hundreds of conferences over the years,
and hearing people repeatedly say that "If I can just get one or two
good ideas that I can take back to work and implement, it will be
worth it."
He realized that people spend thousands of dollars and many days away
from work attending these conferences just to get one or two ideas?
These same conference-goers' biggest complaint (and rightfully so)
is when presenters waste their time spewing theory, reciting boring
statistics, giving a history lesson, or making an obvious sales pitch.
So, John decided that since today's workers and managers want to bag
the theory, skip the sales pitch and cut straight to the stuff people
really want (great ideas, strategies and solutions that they can use
right now), why not just put a whole bunch of really innovative ideas
into one book that is fun and easy to read, cross-referenced and purely
bottom-line oriented?
And that's exactly what "Get Weird!" does. Now you don't have to eat
airplane food, sleep in a hotel bed or spend thousands of dollars
to get a whole lot more than just one or two great ideas. And,
you can have it right now!
If you're into FREE SAMPLES, click here to view
the complete Table of Contents for "Get Weird!"
Just click here
to order your copy of "Get Weird!", and change your world of
work today!
Customer Book Reviews:
(unsolicited customer
reviews from Amazon.com)
The Real Deal
Reviewer: John P. Fixmer from Atlantic, Iowa United States
As an insatiable consumer of business books, I can confidently
say that "Get Weird!" is the most engaging, entertaining,
yet useful business book I've ever read. It's chock full of great
ideas guaranteed to make your workplace the one people on the
outside want to get into. Putzier's humorous writing style and
knack for knowing a great idea when he sees one make this one
of the most enjoyable and beneficial business books you'll ever
buy. I've recommended it to hundreds of people and will continue
to for the rest of my career.
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Good conversational thought-provoker
Reviewer: Roger E. Herman from Greensboro, NC USA
When John Putzier was a child, his mother told him he was weird.
For most kids, being told they were weird might be traumatizing.
Not John. He prided himself on being weird-different. Over the
years of his career in human resource consulting, professional
speaking, and college teaching, he has prided himself on being
weird-just a little bit different, off-beat. The power of being
off-beat is encapsulated in a quotation I learned in my growing-up
years, "It's the usual thing, done in the unusual way, that
captures the attention of the world."
John certainly has captured the attention of
the world with his work. And how he shows us how to make this
happen in our lives as executives, managers, and human resource
professionals.
Weirdness is doing things differently. The results
can be very positive, both in your confidence and in the results
you can achieve. Putzier spends the first part of the book explaining
this and setting up the reader to receive and consider 100 thought-provoking
ideas. This section is titled Tapping Your Natural Weirdness,
aka [also known as] Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving. The
double title theme continues through the other parts of the
book, enabling the reader to comfortably transition between
Putzier's weird titles and terminology that will be more familiar.
One hundred ideas are presented in the balance
of the book, categorized in seven sections. Titles of those
sections are Weird Ideas to Win Today's Talent, aka Recruitment;
Weird Ideas for the Care and Feeding of Today's Talent, aka
Retention; Weird Ideas for Changing Your Company, aka Fun &
Games with a Purpose and a Profit; Weird Ideas for Perks, Pay,
and Pats on the Back, aka Recognition and Incentives; Weird
Ideas for Educating Today's Talent, aka Training and Development;
and Weird Ideas for Enhancing Your Company Image, aka Sales,
Service, Public Relations & Personal Satisfaction. Idea
101 is in Part 8, where the author suggests that you have other
ideas in your head that you can add to his list. Remember, Putzier
is endeavoring to stimulate your thinking, not just give you
pat answers or magic pills.
There are several additional features that add
value to this book. The Table of content includes a phrase under
each idea listing to quickly explain what the idea entails.
An alphabetical list of ideas appears at the end of the book
as an unusual, but helpful, index.
The book is easy to read and serves as a fine
read-through in addition to a good reference book for follow-up.
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Great insights--full of meat and fun to read
Reviewer: Joe Healey from McMurray, PA
You will very quickly realize that this person is a veteran who
is not talking theory. There is very serious substance and great
ideas that can make a difference in the workplace.
I must add that it was delightful to read in
terms of being a fun book I did not want to put down.
Worthwhile investment of time!
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