Preface 1. What is Abnormal? 2. What Causes Psychological Problems? 3. Depression and Extreme Moods 4. Problems with Stress and Adjustment 5. Anxiety Disorders 6. Psychosis 7. Physical Problems 8. Addictions and Impulse Control 9. Sexual Problems 10. Child and Adolescent Disorders 11. Personality Disorders 12. Healing and Preventing Problems Appendixes A: Personality Types in Marriage B: Medications Used in Therapy IndexEND

In "Guide", Bud recalls those halcyon days of the 70's with a wit and knack for story telling that makes you feel like he's talking to you personally. His stories are more than just good tales, he teaches through example. The other half of the book is good practical advice, the "How To, Where To" of any quality guidebook. Bud's style is very congenial, never condescending. You feel like you're talking with him one-on-one in his shop, getting straight answers to your questions. "Guide" is well illustrated with excellent color plates of popular western flies and lots of fishing photos relative to the text. Unfortunately there are a number of typos and some text missing, but this doesn't detract from what is otherwise an excellent work.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone considering a fly fishing trip to the west or any fly fisher who remembers the good old days of thirty years ago and wants a fun jog down memory lane.

In this context, Paul C. Green divides his book into two main parts:

I. Clarifying Competencies: In this part;

* He argues that "robust competencies help you define what was done, what is being done, and what needs to be done." And hence, he sets the stage for building robust competencies by identifying the ambiguities, challenges, and rewards of using competencies.

* He explores the different meanings of competencies that are used in organizations and research. And he argues that "HR competency system must be job related and should reflect core competencies, capabilities, core values, and priorities."

* He discusses operationalizing performance skills to enable you to use behavioral observation, description, and inference to communicate clearly what a person needs to do to do a job well. Here he says that "a behavior is an action that you can observe, describe, and verify."

* He explores how the identity of an organization can become the target for alignment, and discusses how an organization's identity can be reflected in and reinforced by interviews, appraisal, coaching, and training.

II. Linking Competencies to Human Resource Systems: In this part, after briefly discussing perception-driven, experience-driven, attribute-driven, and behavior-driven approaches, he offers behavioral approach to link interviews, appraisals, coaching, and training to the identity of an organization. It emphasizes a systemic, job-related approach to support the effectiveness and defensibility of an HR system. He argues that "the linkage of HR applications is easier when the organization consistently uses a behavioral approach. Once behavioral language is used in one part of an HR system, it can be expanded to other applications."

Finally, he says that "the best answers to questions about core competencies, capabilities, core values, and priorities come from real experiences in applying them. Today, each answer is just an opinion at one point in time. However, the big question for the future will be: How can I link HR systems to my organization's identity? At present the most useful answers are those that emphasize a behavioral approach, job relatedness, nimbleness, and open mindedness."

Highly recommended.

Dr. Green goes beyond the individual in applying behavioral understandings and tools, taking them to the organizational level as well. He clearly demonstrates the linkage between high performing individuals, and high performing organizations.

A must read for any manager using Behavioral Interviewing, any trainer teaching Behavioral Interviewing, or any manager tired of spending a disproportionate share of their time and energy dealing with poor performance, low productivity, and poor morale.

While you can easily read it in a few days, you will want your own copy to highlight, make notes in, and refer to from time to time as you grow as a manager.

I had always suspected this, but it still shook me to my roots.

I think his 'Return on Management' measure is flawed - it looks just like 'profit' to me - but otherwise reading this was an epiphany.

Looking for useful measures of the payoff of information systems is a real challenge, and Strassmann goes far into it.

He also explodes the theory that profit is a good measure - how do we measure how well run the business is if it is a welfare society, or a public transport system?

A wonderful book.