Rod Collins – författare

This groundbreaking book reveals what it takes for managers of any generation to succeed in this fast-paced and exciting new environment.

Command-and-control may have once been an effective model in managing the large numbers of cookie-cutter clones that business programs were producing faster than anyone could say “MBA,” but the rapid change and increasing complexity of the twenty-first century have rendered that model obsolete. For the most part, today’s managers who were trained in the old ways are not adept to succeed in the current work environment that has evolved from take-it-or-leave-it hierarchies to collaborative networks of workers and managers feeding off each other’s ideas to build the business together. The new age of mass collaboration demands a new and extremely different model to manage by today--wiki management.

Featuring enlightening examples from forward-thinking companies including Google, Whole Foods, Linux, and Wikipedia, Wiki Management outlines the revolutionary, necessary steps companies must take to:

It’s a different world today than the one you were educated in, trained in, and found great success in. This “wiki” world has reshaped both the work we do and the way we do it, making mass collaboration not only possible but usually the best solution.

When we came back out of the cookhouse, someone yelled, "Your house is on fire!" and pointed to the small logged-off canyon that separated our place from the other houses in the camp. I remember a column of black smoke, probably from the tar paper the mill owners used for roofing.

By the time we drove back to the house, it was pretty much gone. Everything my parents owned was destroyed: clothes, dishes, hunting rifles, fishing poles, canned goods, and Mother''s money stash. The only item rescued was a pressure cooker that was on the floor under the kitchen table.

***

Born in 1941, devoted Oregonian Rod Collins began his life in California (to his childhood dismay) and kept this fact from his Oregon friends for years. At two years of age, he moved with his parents to southern Oregon and settled in the beautiful Rogue River Valley. Looking back on his life, Rod describes his early years growing up with the barest of necessities among a community of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins that made the tough times bearable, and the good times treasured. An award-winning author of seven published novels and a self-help management book, Rod applies his fine storytelling talents to his memory now, writing about his life and the people that shaped him with love, lessons, generosity, and humor.

John Bitter scanned the hilltops with his field glasses, blaming unfamiliar territory for his uneasy feelings, but past experience taught him not to ignore his hunches. Something''s brewing, he thought.

Following Lee''s surrender of the Northern Army of Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox, Captain John Bitter of Abiqua Creek, Oregon musters out of the 40th Missouri. A loner, Bitter plans a quick ride home over the Oregon Trail. The good Lord, however, has other plans for him.

After a month on the Trail, two gun battles, a bruising fistfight to settle a blood feud, a new wife, and two adopted sons, Bitter tells Rockford, his big, mean, black horse, "This sure complicates the business of getting back to Oregon."

Bitter now finds himself the leader of a mixed entourage going west: a black pioneer family earlier wagon trains shunned; an Irish rebel turned galvanized Yankee; a dispossessed Cherokee turned Cheyenne medicine man; the rescued sister of a Bannock chief; a white boy adopted by the Cheyenne; and a scout for the Union Army who is also one of the richest men in Oregon.

Bitter''s Run is a spirited and adventurous tale. Told in three parts, it portrays the realities and uncertainties of life on the Oregon Trail, of war-weary men seeking or returning to a homestead in Oregon, and of the courageous women who rode with them.

John Bitter scanned the hilltops with his field glasses, blaming unfamiliar territory for his uneasy feelings, but past experience taught him not to ignore his hunches. Something''s brewing, he thought.

Following Lee''s surrender of the Northern Army of Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox, Captain John Bitter of Abiqua Creek, Oregon musters out of the 40th Missouri. A loner, Bitter plans a quick ride home over the Oregon Trail. The good Lord, however, has other plans for him.

After a month on the Trail, two gun battles, a bruising fistfight to settle a blood feud, a new wife, and two adopted sons, Bitter tells Rockford, his big, mean, black horse, "This sure complicates the business of getting back to Oregon."

Bitter now finds himself the leader of a mixed entourage going west: a black pioneer family earlier wagon trains shunned; an Irish rebel turned galvanized Yankee; a dispossessed Cherokee turned Cheyenne medicine man; the rescued sister of a Bannock chief; a white boy adopted by the Cheyenne; and a scout for the Union Army who is also one of the richest men in Oregon.

Bitter''s Run is a spirited and adventurous tale. Told in three parts, it portrays the realities and uncertainties of life on the Oregon Trail, of war-weary men seeking or returning to a homestead in Oregon, and of the courageous women who rode with them.

The Reverend Thomas Jefferson Wildish leads back to a high-ranking jihadist in Portland, Oregon. It also leads to a confrontation between Sheriff Blair and fifty bikers bent on freeing their friends, "or we''ll tear your town apart."

In Portland, FBI Special Agents Wilcox and Brandt investigate a tip about a cargo ship container sitting on Portland''s Pier 6 dock. As they unravel the mystery behind the container, the web expands to include jihadists, bikers, and a rogue FBI agent. When unsubstantiated rumors are leaked of a terrorist plot to kill thousands of people in Portland, the ensuing chaos tests the city''s disaster plans and the patience of first responders.

Cartel vengeance in Oregon''s Lake County plagues Sheriff Henry "Bud" Blair until his friends plan war against the Ortegas in the Mexican state of Sonora in an effort to keep Bud safe from reprisals. In a surprising turn of events, a rival cartel tries to make sure Bud''s friends leave Mexican affairs to Mexicans.

Back at home, Bud has his own hands full. Mariah''s Song also takes the reader into the desperate world of drug addition. When street-wise, thirteen-year-old Mariahfinds her mother passed out on the living room couch, she says "Babs, you''re gonna get high once too often." And when she sees Manny, her mother''s live-in boyfriend trying to beat a man to death, her involuntary shout earns her a threat that sends her running for her life. Her flight takes her to the High Desert where an Amber Alert leads Sheriff Blair and his deputies on a desperate search to find Mariah before Manny does.

Hunted by the terrorist assassins working for the elusive Bloodstone, Lake County Sheriff Bud Blair uses the ego and arrogance of a former U. S. congressman to set a trap for a Colombian drug lord. NCIS, the FBI, and the U.S. Coast Guard wait for the trap to be sprung while Bud battles the paid assassins in the Oregon High Desert.

At risk are Bud''s life, his career, and his planned marriage to a beautiful Yakima Indian woman, Nancy Sixkiller. But when Bud is injured in a gun battle, he and Nancy face a difficult and painful decision.

Someone is helping themselves to funds at the Land and Cattleman''s Bank, and senior teller Susan McDowell knows who. But shy report this to the police when weaving her web if simple extortion will yield a better return?

Elsewhere, an unrelated suspicious death leads to a manhunt and the capture of confessed killer Bill Casey. When Oregon Lake County Sheriff Bud Blair reads the autopsy report, he begins to suspect that someone other than Casey is the actual killer.

Set in a sparsely settled, high-desert landscape of fault scarps, hot springs, big lakes, and timbered mountains, Spider Silk is also a love story. Burned badly by divorce, Bud steers shy of women, but his work makes it almost impossible to avoid contact with Nancy Sixkiller, the beautiful Yakama Native American who managed the emergency Service Center for Lake County, Oregon. When a chase and gunfight injure Bud, and Nancy takes on the role of caregiver, feelings begin to become mutual.

What is the connection between a dead sailor in Washington State and the Lake County, Oregon, murder of an identified John Doe? The more information that turns up, the worse things seem. Is the Navy trying to hide something? Does a drug-running ring in Christmas Valley have connections to the Middle East? What''s up with Crazy Charlie? And is the bottle-and-cans man who drifted into town really who he seems to be? When the dust settles, Sheriff Bud Blair is left with a new homicide to solve, a suspicion that a mole is hiding in the NCIS, and an unpaid debt to a man who doesn''t officially exist--the mysterious Stone Fly.

Congratulations! You have secured a position as a manager...so now what? With your job description folded securely in your pocket, you set out for your first day on the job.

 Do you really know what to do when you get there?

 As you navigate your journey ahead, this straightforward guide will help you with the decision-making, identifying key people, and taking effective action.

If there were a manager''s Hippocratic Oath, it would begin, as this book does with First Do No Harm.

Let this book be your guide. You''ll learn how to:

·     Create a positive work environment.

·     Define and understand the culture of your organization

·     Understand the effectiveness of "management by wandering around."

·     Find your leaders and set them free.

·     Negotiate from principles, issues, and values.

·     Practice leadership.

·     Encourage the best in people.

·     Manage the inevitable.

·     Bring your compassion to the workplace.

·     Unleash human spirit and creativity.

·     Be brave. 

Here''s help for the road ahead.