Making Work Work: New Strategies for Surviving and Thriving at the Office Book

Maintaining control in today's hectic workplace is a challenge -- everything is lean, competitive, and uncertain. What does it take to survive? Must you sign away your life in blood? Live in fear of being fired? Quit your job and move to the countryside? Not at all.

Through the mastery of nine essential skills, Morgenstern shows how small changes in your thinking and behavior will help you achieve the seemingly impossible -- boost your value, increase your job security, and afford you the time to still have a life. Morgenstern has helped clients of all levels take control of their work lives in every industry imaginable. This book mirrors the individual consulting services she provides by showing you how to start with yourself and then tackle the more complex external issues of working relationships and the job.

Publishers Weekly

Whether in the executive boardroom or a windowless cubicle, the key to a more balanced, productive existence, according to organizer extraordinaire Morgenstern, is PEP (physical health, escape and people), the four Ds (delete, delay, delegate and diminish) and a healthy dose of reality about what is doable, and what is impossible, at work. Written in the same to-the-point approach as her Organizing from the Inside Out, this volume espouses a combination of philosophies that not only makes a whole lot of sense but is practical and applicable to the real world, no matter what the job or office setting. Each "competency" (as the chapters are called) includes scenarios taken from actual clients, bullet-pointed tips known as "grab-and-go-strategies," from getting away from wasteful e-mails to planning your day better and always dancing "close to the revenue line." Morgenstern promises readers a significant change in their workload, productivity level and all-around confidence if they refrain from reading, replying to or even perusing e-mail in the first hour of the day. This may be a hard sell for some desk-based professionals, but it's clear that Morgenstern knows her stuff. The habits of workaholics and perfectionists, she argues, are impractical and will render one unproductive. In accessible, encouraging prose, Morgenstern helps readers learn their boundaries, limits, strengths and weaknesses. Agent, Joni Evans. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.