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

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?