Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters.

Here's a business book that gets right to the problem that plagues so many organizations: Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing "great work" or work that leads to "great work" the kind of innovative work that pushes business forward, stretches creativity, and offers true satisfaction. The rest of the time (50 percent or more) employees are treading water with "good work" the work that keeps the business going but will never move it ahead and are mired in "bad work" (upwards of 25 percent of the time) the endless meetings, the energy-draining bureaucratic processes. Michael Bungay Stanier, Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006, is a business consultant who's found a way to move us away from bad work (and even good work), and toward more time spent doing great work. This inspirational, motivating, at times playful book uses fifteen short, thought-provoking exercises that effectively force the reader to look at what his or her work really is, and find ways to change the mix. The exercises, called Maps because of the quick, visual way they lead the reader from A to B to Z, begin with defining great work assess your personal bad-good-great ratio; tap into the power of role models; analyze those moments when work turned into a flow. There are maps that explore personal creativity and inspire brainstorming. And maps to help put ideas into motion, including how to structure time, how to elicit help from members of your team, even how to navigate an idea through the organization. And along the way, there are tips for clearing time to move away from bad work including how to use the drama triangle of transactional analysis and stop being a "rescuer" who takes on other people's problems, and how not to say "no," but how to say "yes" more slowly, making sure you're doing what's most important.

Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder and senior partner of Box of Crayons, a company that works with organizations, ranging from AstraZeneca to Xerox, to help them do more great work. A Rhodes scholar who earned both arts and law degrees with highest honors from Australian National University and an MPhil from Oxford, he is a popular speaker at business and coaching conferences, and was named Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006. He lives in Toronto.