Getting It Done: How to Lead When You're Not in Charge

There is no doubting that working in a team we get more done than working alone. This book is packed with tips on how we can work/collaborate better with others. The advice is based on a method of "lateral leadership", which consists of three steps: "The first step is to organise and sharpen your personal skills at getting things done by yourself. The second step is to understand clearly your strategic goal of an organised way of getting things done with others. The third step is learning some tactics of participatory leadership." The first two steps I kind of skim-read. Techniques pertaining to the third step I found particularly thought-provoking and useful; techniques related to asking, offering and doing things that "stimulate others to become skillful at working together".

In summary: another good book from the Harvard Negotiation team; well-structured and plenty of examples to demonstrate the advice.

There was strange assumption that organizations greatest problem is inefficiency that is caused by lack of co-operation and bad communication. Other problems such as management which living in different reality or work over loading of every person in organization. What if management decides to cut of bonuses and outsource to India? Thous currently very common situations where not mentioned.

One might think that issues in previous paragraph where not worth mentioning at time of publishing of this book (which makes the book outdated). I think hard stuff was cut out because everyone knows that quiting is only reasonable solution to handle Dilbert organization. After all we all have only one life and it is not worth to waste doing something utterly insane with people who you don't care and getting only pennies for salary.

In other words view of devil's advocate was completely missing. Funniest thing is that the book is telling how important it is to listen different opinions. I wonder did authors listen anything but yes men.

Whenever I meet with bright, motivated business people who want to improve the world, they always complain about others in their organizations who will not cooperate in a change process. Get those reluctant people on board the progress train, and the more positive future will soon arrive. Almost never do these complainers realize that their own habits, perspective, and behavior are contributing to delaying the progress by making others oppose the initiative.

Getting It Done is a wonderful book for helping each of us see ourselves as part of the problem and part of the solution in situations when many people must cooperate. That's a first in my experience.

The book builds on that valuable perspective by suggesting what skills we each need to improve, and how we can implement a process that will lead to genuine, effective progress. That is very critical, because most improvements occur because someone has designed an effective process to ease their implementation. In new areas, by definition, there is seldom such a process. My suggestion is that you try this one if you have no other.

I also liked the way the authors went on to generalize about how lateral leadership (influencing peers) provides lessons for when you are the boss. The same lessons apply here as well. Influencing people through genuine involvement leads to both better solutions and to better implementation.

If you only read and learn to apply one book this year, Getting It Done should be that book. My reasoning is simple. If you cannot help those you work with to make successful collaborations, you and everyone around you will always operate at a low level of effectiveness. Also, your work day will be filled with stress, conflict, pressure, too much to do, and worry. That's not the way you want to live. Getting It Done can help you develop the skills to get the benefits of how all of us know and can do more than any one of us. When you are able to get that benefit from being in an enterprise, life becomes very interesting, rewarding, and meaningful. You will also feel good about living closer to your potential as a person.

Packed with useful advice, techniques and plans for collaborative working and altering the way your colleagues and organisation works. Useful section on analytical thinking: how to make those unstructured, going nowhere meetings more productive. They're also willing to say when trying to change your colleagues' attitudes you won't get it right or be successful all the time, but they make a great case for sticking at it. Very useful, I'll be referring to this for some time to come.

I read and read this book as an IT professional and really learnt about most of the problems I've been encountering. I hence moved from complaint to contributive proposition and got self-confident in any further action taken since. Moreover, most of the examples produced are common to major enterprises. I am convinced things could be better in some enterprises, had the management read this sort of best-practice-minded book. I have started disseminating the book around me and hope it'll help go ahead solving problems and sharing knowledge. It's clear problems mostly arise due to a lack of managerial culture.