Why is it hard to know if you are making a difference in public services? What can you do about it? Public services throughout the world face the challenge of tackling complex issues where multiple factors influence change. This book sets out practical and theoretically robust, tried and tested approaches to understanding and tracking change that any organisation can use to ensure it makes a difference to the people it cares about. With case studies from health, community, research, international development and social care, this book shows that with the right tools and techniques, public services can track their contribution to social change and become more efficient and effective.

The NHS needs to be an organization in which an open dialogue about care quality is part of the natural culture of the organization, not a duty which only arises in cases of service failure. Robert Francis made 290 recommendations in his report, but in truth they boil down to just one - that the culture of 'doing the system's business' is pervasive in parts of the NHS and has to change. Many who raise their concerns in the NHS at present risk serious consequences for their employment and professional status. But disciplinary procedures, professional conduct hearings and employment tribunals are not the proper place for honestly-held concerns about patient safety and care quality to be aired constructively. The NHS standard contract imposes a duty of candour on all NHS providers. This is an essential principle, but it is not adequately understood or applied. It should mean that all providers create a culture which is routinely open both with their patients and their commissioners. The same principle should apply to commissioners so that they are routinely open and accountable to local communities. The Health Committee recommended this approach in 2011 and repeats that now. It should be a prime role of the CQC to encourage the development of this culture within care providers, and of NHS England to develop the same culture within commissioners. The Health Committee will in future work closely with the Professional Standards Authority to develop the accountability process for professional regulators in healthcare

Overbooking? Running late? Feeling overwhelmed by clutter and to-dos? Management consultant Dr. Marilyn Paul guides you on a path to personal change that will bring true relief from the pain and stress of disorganization. Unlike other books on getting organized, It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys offers a clear seven-step path to personal development that is comprehensive in nature. Drawing on her own experience as a chronically disorganized person, Paul adds warmth, insight, humor, and hope to this manual for change and self-discovery. She introduces the notion of becoming “organized enough” to live a far more rewarding life and make the difference that is most important to you.

Assuming the Mantel of Leadership is a book of real-life case studies and activities that are contextual-based within the reader’s own setting and experience. The reader is expected to respond to the cases and the activities by utilizing and reflecting upon their own institution’s policies and context. The scope of exercises is intentionally broad in order to cover situations across academic affairs, student affairs, and enrollment management.

Are you living a fulfilled life? Are you being the best person you can be? Are you living up to your full potential? Are you happy where you’re going in life? Do you know your purpose in life? These are important questions that we should all be able to answer affirmatively. Unfortunately, most of us are unsure about ourselves and many areas of our lives to answer these questions confidently. Before you make another major decision in your life, discover what it means to become the best you to unleash your God-given potential. In Become the Best You…Bruce Francois, an engineer turned social entrepreneur, takes readers on an ontological journey of what it means to become one’s best self, uniquely integrating wisdom, thoughtful science, and deep spirituality along the way. Francois shares with readers how he discovered his purpose in life by dissecting and distilling life through an engineering lens. Learn how to: — Fully process your life struggles — Become aware of your understanding of yourself and your surroundings — Strengthen your beliefs — Discover your purpose and passion — Deploy yourself for your unique mission — Make a meaningful mark on the world You will be inspired by the sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that comes with discovering and operating in your purpose—to experience the freedom of what it means to authentically live, joyfully serve, and experience a deep sense of meaning in life.

Prepare to elevate your game with Superior: Creating a Superior Culture of Excellence, a special edition hardcover that combines the unparalleled wisdom of Rusty Komori’s acclaimed works: Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, each a standalone marvel in its own right. Rusty Komori masterfully fuses the essence of these two groundbreaking books while preserving their individual spirits, delivering the best of both worlds in one extraordinary read. Beyond the Lines delves into the intricate challenges of positive problem-solving, offering a time-tested game plan for any leader in pursuit of sustainable success. Beyond the Game takes this foundational wisdom to the next level, providing a versatile toolbox for leaders eager to enhance their team dynamics. By threading the fabric of these two seminal works into Superior: Creating a Superior Culture of Excellence, readers will reap the unparalleled benefit of both—a true one-two punch of leadership acumen. Drawing upon his 22 years of championship-winning tennis coaching, Rusty Komori brings the text to life with vivid examples and compelling stories designed to shape you into the best possible coach or leader within your team or organization. Superior emphasizes the game-changing impact of honing in on the right objectives and cultivating an overwhelmingly positive attitude—not just as a leader, but as an individual committed to personal growth. Building upon these fundamentals, Komori introduces the notion of superior disciplined details and culture—a level above the basics—that possess the potential to genuinely set your leadership style apart. Here, expectations are not merely met but surpassed, giving way to a competitive drive that naturally ascends and establishes new benchmarks. This transformative echo parallels Rusty’s own journey, emphasizing the universal applicability of these principles across an array of diverse domains. The book unveils Rusty’s unique methods, including the Three Cs of Leadership: Choices, Communication, and Culture, along with the Six Keys for Peak Performance. His insights are organized into five transformative sections, complemented by 50 thought-provoking assessment questions designed to amplify your leadership abilities. Whether you’re steering a nimble team in a startup or overseeing a large corporate ensemble, Superior equips you with the tools and techniques needed to elevate your ‘A-game.’ At its core, Superior: Creating a Superior Culture of Excellence serves as a proven, comprehensive guide for cultivating a high-performance culture rooted in disciplined details and an insatiable appetite for excellence. Seize this opportunity to gain game-changing, actionable insights from one of the most successful coaches in sports history, and prepare yourself to craft a culture that not only performs but surpasses every obstacle in its path.

Technical Support Essentials is a book about the many facets of technical support. It attempts to provide a wide array of topics to serve as points of improvement, discussion, or simply topics that you might want to learn. The topics range from good work habits to the way technical support groups establish their own style of work. This book applies theories, models, and concepts synthesized from existing research in other fields—such as management, economics, leadership, and psychology—and connects them to technical support. The goal is to build on the work of others and allow their success to evolve the profession. The book’s broad perspective looks at proven practices, legal issues, dealing with customers, utilizing resources, and an array of other topics of interest to tech support professionals.

Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility of Being Human is an unprecedented study of the ideas and methods developed by the thinker Werner Erhard. In this book, those ideas and methods are revealed by presenting in full an innovative program he developed in the 1980s called The Forum—available in this book as a transcript of an actual course led by Erhard in San Francisco in December of 1989. Since its inception, Erhard’s work has impacted the lives of millions of people throughout the world. Central to this study is a comparative analysis of Erhard’s rhetorical project, The Forum, and the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger. Through this comparative analysis, the authors demonstrate how each thinker’s work sometimes parallels and often illuminates the other. The dialogue at work in The Forum functions to generate a language which speaks being. That is, The Forum is an instance of what the authors call ontological rhetoric: a technology of communicating what cannot be said in language. Nevertheless, what does get said allows those participating in the dialogue to discover previously unseen aspects of what it currently means to be human. As a primary outcome of such discovery, access to creating a new possibility of what it is to be human is made available. The purpose of this book is to show how communication of the unspoken realm of language—speaking being—is actually accomplished in The Forum, and to demonstrate how Erhard did it in 1989. Through placing Erhard’s language use next to Heidegger’s thinking—presented in a series of “Sidebars” and “Intervals” alongside The Forum transcript—the authors have made two contributions. They have illuminated the work of two thinkers, who independently developed similar forms of ontological rhetoric while working from very different times and places. Hyde and Kopp have also for the first time made Erhard’s extraordinary form of ontological rhetoric available for a wide range of audiences, from scholars at work within a variety of academic disciplines to anyone interested in exploring the possibility of being for human beings. From the Afterword: I regard Speaking Being as an enormously important contribution to understanding Heidegger and Erhard. The latter has received far too little serious academic attention, and this book begins to make up for that lack. Moreover, the book’s analysis of Heidegger’s thought is among the best that I have ever read. I commend this book to all readers without reservation. Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder

Trick…or wicked treat! It was a devastating dirty trick—Joey Silvia just found out her boyfriend of two years is married. What. A. Dick. Joey knows her best chance to get over one guy is to get under another. Of course, heading home to her family's remote cabin in Oregon poses some challenges in the "available men" department…until she discovers this cabin comes with its own hot handyman! Holy crap, Chris Steffensen. When did her brother's best friend turn into a hard-bodied pile of blond-bearded hotness? He's the perfect Halloween treat—and a surprisingly dirty rebound guy. For a couple of weeks, anyway. Except that Chris has other ideas…like proving to Joey that this blast from the past is a whole lot more than a naughty Halloween hookup.