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Solutions: 411: Workplace Answers 911:Revelations For Workplace Challenges and Firefights
Solutions offers you strategies, insights, answers and revelations Some are simple, others innovative and surprising—and all ones that can change your work life for the better. Solutions offers you sixty of the best real-life dramas—and enlightening answers from Dr. Lynne Curry's three decade weekly newspaper column run in multiple newspapers. Written by a successful management consultant and coach, Solutions offers you your personal workplace 411/911 written in Curry's warm, personal, enlightening and fun style.
You Need a Solution When: You face a problem or challenge that doesn't solve easily
Your work life is good—you want it to be great
You want excellence or more than what comes easily
You can't see past your blind spot
You need an answer—and now
You feel stuck—and want to move forward
You're in a workplace firefight
You Need a Solution When: You face a problem or challenge that doesn't solve easily
Your work life is good—you want it to be great
You want excellence or more than what comes easily
You can't see past your blind spot
You need an answer—and now
You feel stuck—and want to move forward
You're in a workplace firefight
160 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 15, 2014
About the author
Lynne Curry
6 books82 followersHi, if you would like 700 interesting posts on writing, personal and professional development, career and other topics, you might find my two blogs valuable to you.
One is Lynnecurryauthor.com and the other is workplacecoachblog.com.
I started writing when I learned what words meant. It was a raisin bran cereal box that did it. Even though I read backwards (I was dyslexic), I was stunned to learn that people could communicate with others even without being physically present.
The newspapers became a candy land of writing -- there was so much there and I wanted to be in them. Despite being died-in-the-wool shy, I started carrying my poems to my town’s newspaper office and leaving them in their mail slot.
I was eight when the newspaper surrendered and published my first poem. I was hooked!
Before and after college I dreamed of becoming a full-time writer. I sent my poems and one awful play to every publication I could find. The desire to eat convinced me to get a day job and to go to college, though I used that play to substitute for a formal college application. They gave me a full-tuition scholarship, no doubt for chutzpah.
I still loved newspapers and reading Ann Landers, Amy Van Buren and Mike Royko’s columns convinced me I could write an advice column. I wanted to change the world and was convinced that words were a powerful way to do that.
“The Workplace” started in the Anchorage Times, then was picked up by the Anchorage Daily News, the Tri-city Herald, the St. Petersburg Times, the Morris Daily Herald and a small Vancouver-based syndicate. Although it started out a narrative column, after six weeks in the ADN, the editor called me and said there was a packet of mail waiting for me. Readers liked the column and had written me questions, which created the current “dear Abby of the workplace” approach. The best of these columns are published in Won By One and Solutions, still available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Along the way, I wrote Managing Equally and Legally, McFarland, 1990 and 200 articles for a wide variety of business, trade, women and teen magazines.
Fiction still tugs at me. I’m a third of the way through a novel on internet dating scams, have written two short stories and had a memoir published in Anchorage Remembers.
On July 17, 2014, I wrote a one page query for Beating the Workplace Bully and sent it to 7 agents. One wrote back within the day and two others within the week. All three liked the proposal I wrote and I went with the agent who first wrote me; within six weeks we had offers from six publishers and AMACOM is releasing the book in January of 2016; Brilliance Audio has the audio rights.
What do I need now? Readers:)
One is Lynnecurryauthor.com and the other is workplacecoachblog.com.
I started writing when I learned what words meant. It was a raisin bran cereal box that did it. Even though I read backwards (I was dyslexic), I was stunned to learn that people could communicate with others even without being physically present.
The newspapers became a candy land of writing -- there was so much there and I wanted to be in them. Despite being died-in-the-wool shy, I started carrying my poems to my town’s newspaper office and leaving them in their mail slot.
I was eight when the newspaper surrendered and published my first poem. I was hooked!
Before and after college I dreamed of becoming a full-time writer. I sent my poems and one awful play to every publication I could find. The desire to eat convinced me to get a day job and to go to college, though I used that play to substitute for a formal college application. They gave me a full-tuition scholarship, no doubt for chutzpah.
I still loved newspapers and reading Ann Landers, Amy Van Buren and Mike Royko’s columns convinced me I could write an advice column. I wanted to change the world and was convinced that words were a powerful way to do that.
“The Workplace” started in the Anchorage Times, then was picked up by the Anchorage Daily News, the Tri-city Herald, the St. Petersburg Times, the Morris Daily Herald and a small Vancouver-based syndicate. Although it started out a narrative column, after six weeks in the ADN, the editor called me and said there was a packet of mail waiting for me. Readers liked the column and had written me questions, which created the current “dear Abby of the workplace” approach. The best of these columns are published in Won By One and Solutions, still available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Along the way, I wrote Managing Equally and Legally, McFarland, 1990 and 200 articles for a wide variety of business, trade, women and teen magazines.
Fiction still tugs at me. I’m a third of the way through a novel on internet dating scams, have written two short stories and had a memoir published in Anchorage Remembers.
On July 17, 2014, I wrote a one page query for Beating the Workplace Bully and sent it to 7 agents. One wrote back within the day and two others within the week. All three liked the proposal I wrote and I went with the agent who first wrote me; within six weeks we had offers from six publishers and AMACOM is releasing the book in January of 2016; Brilliance Audio has the audio rights.
What do I need now? Readers:)
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 31, 2015
Quoting from Trish Casey's review on Amazon. I loved Solutions! It is easy to understand with real life situations & solutions. Business psychology advice from a professional HR consultant at your fingertips. In Solutions, you get a glimpse into the brilliance of Lynne Curry. She has an uncanny ability to get to the heart of the matter and then gives you the answers you need to come out on top!
Quoting from Trevor Bremner's review on Amazon. Whether you are an employee or an employer, this book will resonate. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have already been exposed to many of these problems that cause conflicts at work, resulting in stress and lost productivity, and negatively affecting health and happiness. The advice and case histories in the book are distilled from the author's experience during a long and successful career in human resource management and consulting. Names have been changed for obvious reasons, but at one time or another we have all experienced the Managerial Darth Vader, the Scrooge employee, and the two-faced co-worker, to mention a few of the characters in the short stories that illustrate the various chapter segments. Lynne Curry's book serves as a convenient manual in which you can look up a specific problem, and obtain professional advice on how to handle it, for a fraction of the cost of hiring your own human resource consultant. There is useful advice for employers on improving communication and productivity, motivating employees, effective hiring and retention practices, and meeting legal obligations. The book also provides excellent coaching for employees and prospective employees in dealing with difficult bosses and co-workers, setting and achieving goals, managing expectations, career building, and taking effective interviews. The author is not afraid to be specific, has a very direct, easy-to-read style, and each issue is dealt with in short, one to two page well indexed segments that are internally consistent and can be consulted as needed. This book is a great reference: it's all here. Either as insurance, or as damage control, this book is an excellent investment.
Quoting from Trevor Bremner's review on Amazon. Whether you are an employee or an employer, this book will resonate. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have already been exposed to many of these problems that cause conflicts at work, resulting in stress and lost productivity, and negatively affecting health and happiness. The advice and case histories in the book are distilled from the author's experience during a long and successful career in human resource management and consulting. Names have been changed for obvious reasons, but at one time or another we have all experienced the Managerial Darth Vader, the Scrooge employee, and the two-faced co-worker, to mention a few of the characters in the short stories that illustrate the various chapter segments. Lynne Curry's book serves as a convenient manual in which you can look up a specific problem, and obtain professional advice on how to handle it, for a fraction of the cost of hiring your own human resource consultant. There is useful advice for employers on improving communication and productivity, motivating employees, effective hiring and retention practices, and meeting legal obligations. The book also provides excellent coaching for employees and prospective employees in dealing with difficult bosses and co-workers, setting and achieving goals, managing expectations, career building, and taking effective interviews. The author is not afraid to be specific, has a very direct, easy-to-read style, and each issue is dealt with in short, one to two page well indexed segments that are internally consistent and can be consulted as needed. This book is a great reference: it's all here. Either as insurance, or as damage control, this book is an excellent investment.
January 28, 2016
Employee or employer, if there’s a problem at work, do yourself a favor and read “Solutions”. I just successfully applied what I learned in “Solutions” to someone who’s been difficult to work with for a long time. The relief is immense. “Solutions” showed me how to analyze what was happening, how I was reacting, and how to accomplish what I needed to do to improve the problem. Insight was provided about coworkers who are whiners, shirkers, gossipers, or just plain difficult to spend your work days with, as well as on employment relationships, ethics, and references. It’s a well-designed and easy to use guide by an insightful author.
April 5, 2015
Lynne Curry is a genius when it comes to workplace solutions. She has a special way of connecting with people and getting them to use new techniques to gain better work relationships (at all levels). Her writing style is unique and entertaining, making it it fun AND informative! It's a must read!
October 31, 2015
I began reading Solutions and it is really an awesome book. I love how Curry keeps the reader captivated where they want to continue reading. It is an excellent book. I wish I had such information when I was working and being intimidated and harassed by work place bullies.
January 30, 2016
This is a handy book. Well founded on Curry's decades of experience in the field and organized on a kind of how-to-system, whereby you can find the problem you're interested in quickly and easily. A useful reference tool for employees and managers alike.
April 5, 2015
Clear, concise, and effective workplace schools of thought that can be helpful from entry to senior level management personnel. Must read!
February 21, 2016
A must for all new managers as it is full of helpful tools on dealing with a variety of office problems. It is also great for employees who are dealing with issues with co-workers.
July 10, 2016
Navigating the Workplace
In Solutions, Lynne Curry takes a broad view of the workplace environment, identifying classic management challenges which puzzle so many of us, leaving us confused and perplexed, without a solid approach on how to solve them. The widely ranged subjects include: less than truthful employees; employees who suck the life from an organization; employers who are less than honest about the job offer; cops who show up at the front door needing to see one of your employees; employees fired for retaliation; the whole scope of human resource issues appears within this slim volume. Curry’s book is dedicated to those of us who can benefit from common sense solutions that help us better navigate the workplace.
In the vein of dispensing common sense prescriptions Curry gravitates toward an emphasis on personal responsibility which in any business environment is a smart way to proceed. When she advises those seeking her advice to take responsibility for their own attitudes and stresses that each of us can opt to make conscious choices and that we owe it to ourselves to take back control of situations, she is telling us good stuff. A concern is that many of these directives are neither original nor articulated in such a way that differentiates them from very similar recommendations written in a host of other human resource directed tomes.
A good way to think of this volume is to view it as a resource tool which can point you in the right direction or actually give you the solution you may be seeking. All of the entries are worthwhile; their drawback is if you happen to be looking for something with depth – not there, because Curry mainly skims the surface. A good example of this is her “Scrooge Employee” entry. Less than two pages, it outlines what the Scrooge employee is like and how this Dickensian character manipulates, humiliates and enervates the kind-hearted, softy manager. She concludes that if managers who suffer from these types of management maladies would only view them as insights into their own Achilles’ heel then that manager could “turn your Scrooge employee experience into a New Year’s resolution, you turn a problem into your gain.” What may have been more helpful for this hapless manager would have been some concrete recommendations on how to make that a reality. We all know about New Year’s resolutions.
There are a few aspects of her otherwise helpful manual that may cloud the advice proffered. For one, the book’s organization lacks a rhythmic flow. Some entries are written in a Q&A format, while others are not. Then, some appear to have been lifted from columns she had previously written. Still, others are written in an anecdotal style. While any and all of these techniques are perfectly acceptable ways of handling these HR hurdles, as Curry connects them, there’s a lack of consistency from one to the other.
Another distraction is stylistic. Strands of Curry’s narrative appear dated, not congruent with most of the book’s language. Although published in September, 2014, there are passages suggesting it was written much earlier. In one instance she references Google as “google.com, the search engine.” Another time, when advising job seekers on ways to prepare for interviews, she suggests they “read possible questions into a tape recorder.” And early in her book when writing about “energy vampires” she uses the old colloquialism “when he gets on his high horse.” All of these anachronistic examples function as written tics, interrupting the reading process.
Her suggestions run the gamut from quite inventive to simply mundane. Curry’s proposed solution to relieve writer’s block is clever and something most folks, at any writing level can easily grasp and implement. And while advising readers to use the active, not passive voice is solid advice, it’s just not that original and most likely has been recommended countless times by many others. The same goes for her recommendation to eliminate jargon.
In the final analysis, Curry’s book tries to cover too much ground. Attempting to touch upon such a very wide array of topics within a sparse 160 pages is a leap too far. If Curry’s focus had been tighter, concentrating on less, she would have delivered a more valuable book. However, despite the flaws, Curry does present a number of potential solutions to a host of vexing conundrums that await employees of all hues and ranks, job seekers, new managers and supervisors who simply don’t how to handle the multitude of workplace challenges confronting them.
Review first appeared in Anchorage Press on February 18, 2016
In Solutions, Lynne Curry takes a broad view of the workplace environment, identifying classic management challenges which puzzle so many of us, leaving us confused and perplexed, without a solid approach on how to solve them. The widely ranged subjects include: less than truthful employees; employees who suck the life from an organization; employers who are less than honest about the job offer; cops who show up at the front door needing to see one of your employees; employees fired for retaliation; the whole scope of human resource issues appears within this slim volume. Curry’s book is dedicated to those of us who can benefit from common sense solutions that help us better navigate the workplace.
In the vein of dispensing common sense prescriptions Curry gravitates toward an emphasis on personal responsibility which in any business environment is a smart way to proceed. When she advises those seeking her advice to take responsibility for their own attitudes and stresses that each of us can opt to make conscious choices and that we owe it to ourselves to take back control of situations, she is telling us good stuff. A concern is that many of these directives are neither original nor articulated in such a way that differentiates them from very similar recommendations written in a host of other human resource directed tomes.
A good way to think of this volume is to view it as a resource tool which can point you in the right direction or actually give you the solution you may be seeking. All of the entries are worthwhile; their drawback is if you happen to be looking for something with depth – not there, because Curry mainly skims the surface. A good example of this is her “Scrooge Employee” entry. Less than two pages, it outlines what the Scrooge employee is like and how this Dickensian character manipulates, humiliates and enervates the kind-hearted, softy manager. She concludes that if managers who suffer from these types of management maladies would only view them as insights into their own Achilles’ heel then that manager could “turn your Scrooge employee experience into a New Year’s resolution, you turn a problem into your gain.” What may have been more helpful for this hapless manager would have been some concrete recommendations on how to make that a reality. We all know about New Year’s resolutions.
There are a few aspects of her otherwise helpful manual that may cloud the advice proffered. For one, the book’s organization lacks a rhythmic flow. Some entries are written in a Q&A format, while others are not. Then, some appear to have been lifted from columns she had previously written. Still, others are written in an anecdotal style. While any and all of these techniques are perfectly acceptable ways of handling these HR hurdles, as Curry connects them, there’s a lack of consistency from one to the other.
Another distraction is stylistic. Strands of Curry’s narrative appear dated, not congruent with most of the book’s language. Although published in September, 2014, there are passages suggesting it was written much earlier. In one instance she references Google as “google.com, the search engine.” Another time, when advising job seekers on ways to prepare for interviews, she suggests they “read possible questions into a tape recorder.” And early in her book when writing about “energy vampires” she uses the old colloquialism “when he gets on his high horse.” All of these anachronistic examples function as written tics, interrupting the reading process.
Her suggestions run the gamut from quite inventive to simply mundane. Curry’s proposed solution to relieve writer’s block is clever and something most folks, at any writing level can easily grasp and implement. And while advising readers to use the active, not passive voice is solid advice, it’s just not that original and most likely has been recommended countless times by many others. The same goes for her recommendation to eliminate jargon.
In the final analysis, Curry’s book tries to cover too much ground. Attempting to touch upon such a very wide array of topics within a sparse 160 pages is a leap too far. If Curry’s focus had been tighter, concentrating on less, she would have delivered a more valuable book. However, despite the flaws, Curry does present a number of potential solutions to a host of vexing conundrums that await employees of all hues and ranks, job seekers, new managers and supervisors who simply don’t how to handle the multitude of workplace challenges confronting them.
Review first appeared in Anchorage Press on February 18, 2016
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews