"Get Weird!", The Book
101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work
Does your company waste a lot of time and money trying to win the war for talent? Do your people need to get their creative juices flowing again? Is your company in need of a little culture shock?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need a copy of the new book, "Get Weird! 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work" by John Putzier. In the same spirit as John's speaking and consulting style, this book is chock full of practical get-to-the-point ideas that will instantly have a positive impact on your ability to attract, retain, motivate, train, recognize and even get employees to return to your company who have left, without spending more money. You gotta get a little weird, if you wanna make a difference!
The first section of "Get Weird!" is called "Tapping Your Natural Weirdness!" after John's popular creativity and innovation program, and teaches the reader how to overcome the three common barriers to creative thinking and problem-solving and is accompanied by a series of tools, techniques and exercises for generating new ideas.
After that, he gives you 101 "out-of-the-box" best practices (with weird titles like "Bribe the Bride" "Food for Thought" "I'll Scratch Yours" and "Lose the Legalese") that can be implemented as is, tweaked for your own purposes, or used as thought-starters to generate your own great ideas.
John said that a key motivation for his writing this book was after speaking to and attending hundreds of conferences over the years, and hearing people repeatedly say that "If I can just get one or two good ideas that I can take back to work and implement, it will be worth it."
He realized that people spend thousands of dollars and many days away from work attending these conferences just to get one or two ideas?
And these same conference-goers' biggest complaint (and rightfully so) is when presenters waste their time spewing theory, reciting boring statistics, giving a history lesson, or making an obvious sales pitch.
So, John decided that since today's workers and managers want to bag the theory, skip the sales pitch and cut straight to the stuff people really want (great ideas, strategies and solutions that they can use right now), why not just put a whole bunch of really innovative ideas into one book that is fun and easy to read, cross-referenced and purely bottom-line oriented?
And that's exactly what "Get Weird!" does. And you don't have to eat airplane food, sleep in a hotel bed or spend thousands of dollars to get a whole lot more than just one or two great ideas. And, you can have it right now!
If you're into FREE SAMPLES, click here to view the complete Table of Contents for "Get Weird!"
Just click here to order your copy of "Get Weird!", and change your world of work today!
Customer Book Reviews:
(unsolicited customer reviews from Amazon.com)
The Real Deal
Reviewer: John P. Fixmer from Atlantic, Iowa United States
As an insatiable consumer of business books, I can confidently say that "Get Weird!" is the most engaging, entertaining, yet useful business book I've ever read. It's chock full of great ideas guaranteed to make your workplace the one people on the outside want to get into. Putzier's humorous writing style and knack for knowing a great idea when he sees one make this one of the most enjoyable and beneficial business books you'll ever buy. I've recommended it to hundreds of people and will continue to for the rest of my career.
Good conversational thought-provoker
Reviewer: Roger E. Herman from Greensboro, NC USA
When John Putzier was a child, his mother told him he was weird. For most kids, being told they were weird might be traumatizing. Not John. He prided himself on being weird-different. Over the years of his career in human resource consulting, professional speaking, and college teaching, he has prided himself on being weird-just a little bit different, off-beat. The power of being off-beat is encapsulated in a quotation I learned in my growing-up years, "It's the usual thing, done in the unusual way, that captures the attention of the world."
John certainly has captured the attention of the world with his work. And how he shows us how to make this happen in our lives as executives, managers, and human resource professionals.
Weirdness is doing things differently. The results can be very positive, both in your confidence and in the results you can achieve. Putzier spends the first part of the book explaining this and setting up the reader to receive and consider 100 thought-provoking ideas. This section is titled Tapping Your Natural Weirdness, aka [also known as] Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving. The double title theme continues through the other parts of the book, enabling the reader to comfortably transition between Putzier's weird titles and terminology that will be more familiar.
One hundred ideas are presented in the balance of the book, categorized in seven sections. Titles of those sections are Weird Ideas to Win Today's Talent, aka Recruitment; Weird Ideas for the Care and Feeding of Today's Talent, aka Retention; Weird Ideas for Changing Your Company, aka Fun & Games with a Purpose and a Profit; Weird Ideas for Perks, Pay, and Pats on the Back, aka Recognition and Incentives; Weird Ideas for Educating Today's Talent, aka Training and Development; and Weird Ideas for Enhancing Your Company Image, aka Sales, Service, Public Relations & Personal Satisfaction. Idea 101 is in Part 8, where the author suggests that you have other ideas in your head that you can add to his list. Remember, Putzier is endeavoring to stimulate your thinking, not just give you pat answers or magic pills.
There are several additional features that add value to this book. The Table of content includes a phrase under each idea listing to quickly explain what the idea entails. An alphabetical list of ideas appears at the end of the book as an unusual, but helpful, index.
The book is easy to read and serves as a fine read-through in addition to a good reference book for follow-up.
Great insights--full of meat and fun to read
Reviewer: Joe Healey from McMurray, PA
You will very quickly realize that this person is a veteran who is not talking theory. There is very serious substance and great ideas that can make a difference in the workplace.
I must add that it was delightful to read in terms of being a fun book I did not want to put down.
Worthwhile investment of time!
Get Weird!
Does your company waste a lot of time and money trying to win the war for talent? Do your people need to get their creative juices flowing again? Is your company in need of a little culture shock?
Contrary to popular belief, it does not require a lot of time, money or authority to attract, retain and motivate the best and brightest workers.
Weirdos in the Workplace!
Is body odor protected by freedom of religion? Which bathroom should a trans-sexual use? Is it still sexual harassment if I take advantage of it to get a promotion? Whatever happened to the good old days, when people looked and acted normal, came to work every day, didn’t rock the boat, and stayed until retirement?
The answer to these, and many other thorny questions are just a click away, in John Putzier’s newest book, “Weirdos in the Workplace.”