Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work

Master the Art of the Workaround to Boost Your Productivity! “With the variety of challenges leaders face every day, Russell Bishop has hit on an amazingly simple and highly effective solution: the ‘workaround.’ This is a brilliant approach to facing day-to-day business challenges, and it works!” —Marshall Goldsmith, world-renowned executive coach and author of the New York Times bestsellers Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There “If you want to succeed big, there is no substitute for sticking your neck out. Russell Bishop shows how to do it without getting your head chopped off. Workarounds That Work offers practical, down-to-earth advice on overcoming obstacles on the job—both big and small. It’s a must-read for anyone trying to navigate the bumpy road of the modern workplace.” —Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief, the Huffington Post “Workarounds That Work tackles one problem area after another, busting myths and giving practical advice along the way.” —Dave Logan, professor at the Marshall School of Business at USC and bestselling coauthor of Tribal Leadership “Workarounds That Work goes where none of the other productivity books go—into the messy, cky, hard-to-control stuff that we all face every single day. You’ll finish this book with a fresh ake on how to think about productivity and at least a half-dozen new ways to get things done.” —Les McKeown, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of Predictable Success “Today’s relentless demands of work require a new model of how we get things done. Workarounds that Work envisions work as a continuous stream of free-flowing accomplishments instead of the headaches, inefficiencies, and stresses we associate with work today. You’ll never experience red tape again. ” —Tony Schwartz, CEO, The Energy Project, and bestselling author of The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working About the Book: You’ve experienced the frustration dozens of times: you need approval on a project, but a key sign-off person is out of town; a product is on a crash schedule, but you’re missing an important detail; you need to move ahead in a process, but company rules cause delays. What you need is a workaround. In Workarounds That Work, Russell Bishop—an expert in personal and organization transformation—teaches the art of the workaround: a method for accomplishing a task or goal when the normal process isn’t producing the desired results. Workarounds help you break through the tasks and systems that keep you from the important stuff. They even help you bring lasting change to your organization by doing away with frustrating institutional inefficiencies once and for all. Workarounds aren’t only about getting things done. They’re about getting the right things done. To ratchet up productivity, your organization needs someone who will ask the big questions, such as: How can our systems—from operational infrastructures to management processes—be more efficient and effective? Do we make the most of our talent? Do our teams work in isolation when collaboration would be more useful? Are we wasting time, placing blame, and fighting fires when we could instead be fixing problems? Is our direction clear, aligned, and focused? Are you ready to be that person—the one who gets things done, no matter what? Workarounds That Work explains how to identify problems that make workarounds necessary and then create the best solution available—without sacrificing quality or doing a less-than-stellar job. With Bishop’s strategies at your disposal, you can conquer anything that stands in your way at work—even when it seems like your organization’s culture is pitted against what you know is best for it.