Out of the Box Leadership or Managing Business Process Flows

Out-of-the-Box Leadership

Author: Alan M Blankstein

Develop a leadership style that inspires an entire school community to achieve high goals!

In this second volume of The Soul of Educational Leadership series, editors Paul D. Houston, Alan M. Blankstein, and Robert W. Cole offer creative perspectives on the challenges of reframing leadership practice. Presenting key strategies from leadership experts such as Thomas Sergiovanni and Dennis Sparks, this compact resource combines research, reflective exercises, and day-to-day school leadership procedures for motivating students and providing meaningful cultural change in school communities.

An ideal handbook for principals, assistant principals, superintendents, and district administrators, this copublication with AASA and the HOPE Foundation discusses:

• Developing high-quality leadership
• Inspiring transformative leadership
• Embracing leadership alternatives
• Evaluating current school reform practices
• Meeting the challenges in leadership roles

Out-of-the-Box Leadership is the perfect guide to help administrators rethink, reshape, and strengthen their leadership styles and provide confident, focused direction that will help build real success for students and all members of the school community.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     vii
About the Editors     ix
About the Contributors     xiii
Preface     xvii
Out-of-the-Box Leadership   Paul D. Houston     1
What It Means to Be an Outside-the-Box Leader   Dennis Sparks     11
Caring, Serving...Leading   Les M. Omotani     31
An Epistemological Problem: What If We Have the Wrong Theory?   Thomas J. Sergiovanni     49
Reflections on Leadership: When Hearts and Minds Are Open   Kari Cocozzella   Thomas J. Kasper     69
Out-of-the-Box Leadership: A Reflection on Leading Educational Transformation   Jane A. Kendrick     87
Through Others' Eyes: A Collaborative Model of Leadership   Hank Rubin     111
Embracing the Enemy: Moving Beyond the Pain of Leadership   Jerome T. Murphy     133
Index     155

Book review: PrimeTime Women or Intermediate Financial Theory

Managing Business Process Flows: Principles of Operations Management

Author: Ravi Anupindi

This unique and comprehensive book presents a unifying paradigm for understanding operations, based in the belief that a large part of operations management is the design and management of business processes. The overall objective of the book is to demonstrate how managers can control process structure and process drivers to achieve desired business process performance. This framework is applied to understand which levels managers have to control: cycle time, capacity, inventory, and quality. Providing a conceptual and logically rigorous approach, Managing Business Process Flows discusses the subject in three steps: model and understand the process and its flows; study causal relationships between process structure and certain performance metrics; and formulate implications for managerial actions by filtering out managerial levers ("process drivers") and their impact on process performance. The book also identifies managerial levers, and establishes a connection between operational and financial measurements. An essential resource for all management professionals, especially Management Consultants specializing in operations and supply chains, Managers and VPs overseeing supply chains, and Plant Managers.

Booknews

A text/CD-ROM for MBA level operations management courses, presenting a process-flows approach to studying core concepts. This approach concentrates on modeling and understanding the process and its flows, studying causal relationships between process structure and performance metrics, and formulating implications for managerial actions by filtering out managerial levers. The CD-ROM contains a version of Process Model, a simulation software that provides a graphical method of testing and improving business processes, plus tutorials. Exercises are available on a Web site. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Table of Contents:

I. PROCESS MANAGEMENT AND STRATEGY.
1. Products, Processes, and Performance.
2. Operations Strategy and Management.
II. PROCESS FLOW MEASUREMENT.
3. Process Flow Measures.
4. Flow-Time Analysis.
5. Flow-Rate and Capacity Analysis.
6. Inventory Analysis.
III. PROCESS FLOW VARIABILITY.
7. Managing Flow Variability: Safety Inventory.
8. Managing Flow Variability: Safety Capacity.
9. Managing Flow Variability: Process Control and Capability.
IV. PROCESS INTEGRATION.
10. Process Synchronization and Improvement.
V. APPENDICES.
1. MBPF Checklist.
2. Background Material in Probability and Statistics.