Performance appraisals are used in the overwhelming majority of workplaces. Yet, most organizations that use appraisal-and a similar percentage of givers and receivers of appraisal-are dissatisfied with the process. Many are beginning to deeply question whether appraisal is necessary and consistent with the work culture espoused by progressive organizations. Abolishing Performance Appraisals provides an insightful, well documented look at the flaws of appraisal-including its destructive, unintended effects-and offers practical guidance to organizations that want to move on to more progressive approaches to coaching, feedback, development, and compensation. While many books prescribe cures for appraisal, this is the first to focus exclusively on eliminating appraisal altogether and creating alternative, non-appraisal approaches based upon progressive and healthier assumptions about people. The authors expose and dispel the widely accepted myths and false assumptions that underlie common management strategies surrounding the five key functions of appraisal-coaching, feedback, development, compensation, and legal documentation. They then offer step-by-step practical guidance on implementing alternative non-appraisal strategies that deliver the objectives of each function. And they suggest ways to give supervisors and managers the freedom to choose for themselves the most effective ways of working with people. Filled with real-life examples, resources, tools, and detailed practical advice, Abolishing Performance Appraisals is an entirely fresh and radically different view of performance appraisal and its functions that will help people start over and discover new and more effective approaches.
The Rough Guide to Film is a bold new guide to cinema. Arranged by director, it covers the top moguls, mavericks and studio stalwarts of every era, genre and region, in addition to lots of lesser-known names. With each film placed in the context of its director’s career, the guide reviews thousands of the greatest movies ever made, with lists highlighting where to start, arranged by genre and by region. You’ll find profiles of over eight hundred directors, from Hollywood legends Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to contemporary favourites like Steven Soderbergh and Martin Scorsese and cult names such as David Lynch and Richard Linklater. The guide is packed with great cinema from around the globe, including French New Wave, German giants, Iranian innovators and the best of East Asia, from Akira Kurosawa to Wong Kar-Wai and John Woo. With overviews of all major movements and genres, feature boxes on partnerships between directors and key actors, and cinematographers and composers, this is your essential guide to a world of cinema.
The Off-Hollywood Film Guide cuts through the clutter of the thousands of films currently available on video and DVD by specifically catering to independent- and foreign-film enthusiasts. In addition to a list of essential must-see films, this guide includes hundreds of entries, each with brief commentary and a list of pertinent details, such as release date, cast, director, awards garnered, special DVD features, and double-feature suggestions. The listings are also cross-referenced by genre, director, actors, and country of origin.
A fascinating history of motion pictures through the lens of the Academy Awards, the Best Picture winners, and the box-office contenders. In Best Pick: A Journey through Film History and the Academy Awards, John Dorney, Jessica Regan, and Tom Salinsky provide a captivating decade-by-decade exploration of the Oscars. For each decade, they examine the making of classic films, trends and innovations in cinema, behind-the-scenes scandals at the awards ceremony, and who won and why. Twenty films are reviewed in-depth, alongside ten detailed “making-of” accounts and capsule reviews of every single Best Picture winner in history. In addition, each Best Picture winner is carefully scrutinized to answer the ultimate question: “Did the Academy get it right?” Full of wonderful stories, cogent analysis, and fascinating insights, Best Pick is a witty and enthralling look at the people, politics, movies, and trends that have shaped our cinematic world.
Throughout the ages, plenty of people have written and spoken about success and excellence. But leave it to contemporary philosopher and popular business speaker Tom Morris to gather the best of it into a universal tool kit for achieving nearly any goal.From a clear CONCEPTION of what we want, to a stubborn CONSISTENCY in pursuing our vision, to a CAPACITY to enjoy the process, The Art of Achievement outlines a simple framework that will lead readers down a road of excellence. Peppered with quotes from great thinkers and successful people, such as Plato, Aristotle, Einstein, and Churchill, The Art of Achievement helps readers map out new paths to better health, greater efficiency, and deeper satisfaction. Tom Morris's previous business titles, If Aristotle Ran General Motors and True Success, have each sold 18,000 hardcovers and more than 50,000 paperbacks.
The musical adventure of a lifetime. The most exciting book on music in years. A book of treasure, a book of discovery, a book to open your ears to new worlds of pleasure. Doing for music what Patricia Schultz—author of the phenomenal 1,000 Places to See Before You Die—does for travel, Tom Moon recommends 1,000 recordings guaranteed to give listeners the joy, the mystery, the revelation, the sheer fun of great music. This is a book both broad and deep, drawing from the diverse worlds of classical, jazz, rock, pop, blues, country, folk, musicals, hip-hop, world, opera, soundtracks, and more. It's arranged alphabetically by artist to create the kind of unexpected juxtapositions that break down genre bias and broaden listeners’ horizons— it makes every listener a seeker, actively pursuing new artists and new sounds, and reconfirming the greatness of the classics. Flanking J. S. Bach and his six entries, for example, are the little-known R&B singer Baby Huey and the '80s Rastafarian hard-core punk band Bad Brains. Farther down the list: The Band, Samuel Barber, Cecelia Bartoli, Count Basie, and Afropop star Waldemer Bastos. Each entry is passionately written, with expert listening notes, fascinating anecdotes, and the occasional perfect quote—"Your collection could be filled with nothing but music from Ray Charles," said Tom Waits, "and you'd have a completely balanced diet." Every entry identifies key tracks, additional works by the artist, and where to go next. And in the back, indexes and playlists for different moods and occasions.
Clinical Trials, Second Edition, offers those engaged in clinical trial design a valuable and practical guide. This book takes an integrated approach to incorporate biomedical science, laboratory data of human study, endpoint specification, legal and regulatory aspects and much more with the fundamentals of clinical trial design. It provides an overview of the design options along with the specific details of trial design and offers guidance on how to make appropriate choices. Full of numerous examples and now containing actual decisions from FDA reviewers to better inform trial design, the 2nd edition of Clinical Trials is a must-have resource for early and mid-career researchers and clinicians who design and conduct clinical trials. - Contains new and fully revised material on key topics such as biostatistics, biomarkers, orphan drugs, biosimilars, drug regulations in Europe, drug safety, regulatory approval and more - Extensively covers the "study schema" and related features of study design - Incorporates laboratory data from studies on human patients to provide a concrete tool for understanding the concepts in the design and conduct of clinical trials - Includes decisions made by FDA reviewers when granting approval of a drug as real world learning examples for readers
This is an original investigation of how movies have reflected and helped to shape the values of a generation. From All the President's Men to Wall Street, US films of the 1970s and 80s were a kaleidoscope of shifting values and contrasting moral viewpoints. Knowing that movies mirror the way we think we are – or would like to be – O'Brien focuses on the key values (or their absence) found in films from this period in order to see more clearly what Americans really cherished in life, and how these values have evolved or changed. Comprehensive and thought provoking, this book addresses how and why movies glamorized and portrayed certain professions; the changing role of women; the targeting of religion for satire; the addressing of environmental issues and film's representation of and engagement with history.
It's a typical summer Friday night and the smell of popcorn is in the air. Throngs of fans jam into air-conditioned multiplexes to escape for two hours in the dark, blissfully lost in Hollywood's latest glittery confection complete with megawatt celebrities, awesome special effects, and enormous marketing budgets. The world is in love with the blockbuster movie, and these cinematic behemoths have risen to dominate the film industry, breaking box office records every weekend. With the passion and wit of a true movie buff and the insight of an internationally renowned critic, Tom Shone is the first to make sense of this phenomenon by taking readers through the decades that have shaped the modern blockbuster and forever transformed the face of Hollywood. The moment the shark fin broke the water in 1975, a new monster was born. Fast, visceral, and devouring all in its path, the blockbuster had arrived. In just a few weeks Jaws earned more than $100 million in ticket sales, an unprecedented feat that heralded a new era in film. Soon, blockbuster auteurs such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and James Cameron would revive the flagging fortunes of the studios and lure audiences back into theaters with the promise of thrills, plenty of action, and an escape from art house pretension. But somewhere along the line, the beast they awakened took on a life of its own, and by the 1990s production budgets had escalated as quickly as profits. Hollywood entered a topsy-turvy world ruled by marketing and merchandising mavens, in which flops like Godzilla made money and hits had to break records just to break even. The blockbuster changed from a major event that took place a few times a year into something that audiences have come to expect weekly, piling into the backs of one another in an annual demolition derby that has left even Hollywood aghast. Tom Shone has interviewed all the key participants -- from cinematic visionaries like Spielberg and Lucas and the executives who greenlight these spectacles down to the effects wizards who detonated the Death Star and blew up the White House -- in order to reveal the ways in which blockbusters have transformed how Hollywood makes movies and how we watch them. As entertaining as the films it chronicles, Blockbuster is a must-read for any fan who delights in the magic of the movies.
Soon after winning the presidency in 1845, according to the oft-repeated anecdote, James K. Polk slapped his thigh and predicted what would be the "four great measures" of his administration: the acquisition of some or all of the Oregon Country, the acquisition of California, a reduction in tariffs, and the establishment of a permanent independent treasury. Over the next four years, the Tennessee Democrat achieved all four goals. And those milestones—along with his purported enunciation of them—have come to define his presidency. Indeed, repeated ad infinitum in U.S. history textbooks, Polk's bold listing of goals has become U.S. political history’s equivalent of Babe Ruth’s called home run of the 1932 World Series, in which the slugger allegedly gestured toward the outfield and, on the next pitch, slammed a home run. But then again, as Tom Chaffin reveals in this lively tour de force of historiographic sleuthing, like Ruth's alleged "called shot" of 1932, the "four measures" anecdote hangs by the thinnest of evidentiary threads. Indeed, not until the late 1880s, four decades after Polk’s presidency, did the story first appear in print. In this eye-opening study, Tom Chaffin, author, historian, and, since 2008, editor of the multi-volume series Correspondence of James K. Polk, dispatches the thigh-slap anecdote and other misconceptions associated with Polk. In the process, Chaffin demonstrates how the "four measures" story has skewed our understanding of the 11th U.S. president. As president, Polk enlarged his nation's area by a third—thus rendering it truly a coast-to-coast continental nation-state. Indeed, the anecdote does not record, and effectively obscures complex events, including notable failures—such as Polk's botched effort to purchase Cuba, as well as his inability to shape the terms of California's and the New Mexico territory's admission into the Union. Cuba would never enter the federal Union; and those other tasks would be left for successor presidents. Indeed, debates over the future of slavery in the United States—debates accelerated by Polk's territorial gains—eventually produced perhaps the central irony of his legacy: A president devoted to national unity further sectionalized the nation’s politics, widening geopolitical fractures among the states that soon led to civil war. Engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, Met His Every Goal?—intended for general readers, students, and specialists—offers a primer on Polk and a revisionist view of much of the scholarship concerning him and his era. Drawing on published scholarship as well as contemporary documents—including heretofore unpublished materials—it presents a fresh portrait of an enigmatic autocrat. And in Chaffin's examination of an oft-repeated anecdote long accepted as fact, readers witness a case study in how historians use primary sources to explore—and in some cases, explode—received conceptions of the past.
Performance appraisals are used in the overwhelming majority of workplaces. Yet, most organizations that use appraisal-and a similar percentage of givers and receivers of appraisal-are dissatisfied with the process. Many are beginning to deeply question whether appraisal is necessary and consistent with the work culture espoused by progressive organizations. Abolishing Performance Appraisals provides an insightful, well documented look at the flaws of appraisal-including its destructive, unintended effects-and offers practical guidance to organizations that want to move on to more progressive approaches to coaching, feedback, development, and compensation. While many books prescribe cures for appraisal, this is the first to focus exclusively on eliminating appraisal altogether and creating alternative, non-appraisal approaches based upon progressive and healthier assumptions about people. The authors expose and dispel the widely accepted myths and false assumptions that underlie common management strategies surrounding the five key functions of appraisal-coaching, feedback, development, compensation, and legal documentation. They then offer step-by-step practical guidance on implementing alternative non-appraisal strategies that deliver the objectives of each function. And they suggest ways to give supervisors and managers the freedom to choose for themselves the most effective ways of working with people. Filled with real-life examples, resources, tools, and detailed practical advice, Abolishing Performance Appraisals is an entirely fresh and radically different view of performance appraisal and its functions that will help people start over and discover new and more effective approaches.
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