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R.D. Cecil and Company

   

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Incorporated 1966

   

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Comments by Academicians and Practitioners

 

About the book, Next-Generation Management, Leadership, and Organization Development

Initial Reviews (complete original statements)

“The concepts and ideas in Next Generation Management Development: The Complete Guide and Resource are powerful tools to help train managers to be effective leaders.” ― Jay W. Lorsch, Louis E. Kirstein Professor of Human Relations, Harvard Business School  (Over more than forty years at HBS, Professor Lorsch has been Chairman of the Organizational Behavior Department, the Continuing Education Program, and the Executive Education Program.)

“This monumental work is a ‘must read’ for management educators, organization development executives, and even those managers who know much about management but have never quite tied it all together. Packed with gems such as well-known gurus’ concepts, an exceptional number of innovative insights and models, and many practical tools, it’s the closest to being a comprehensive bible on general management that I’ve ever seen.  ― Thomas G. Plaskett, Chairman of the Board, Novell, Inc.; former Chairman and CEO, Pan Am Corporation; and corporate director of Alcon, Inc. and RadioShack Corporation.

“Cecil and Rothwell have combined over 50 years of practical experiences into a treasure chest of training materials complete with useful concepts, models, tools, and techniques for MD/OD professionals, Chief Learning Officers, senior HR professionals, strategic planners, and general managers. It’s a truly magnificent piece of work that will become the ‘must have’ reference for developing managers, leaders, and entire organizations.”  ― Patrick A. Cataldo, Jr., Associate Dean for Executive Education, Pennsylvania State University, and formerly a member of the board of directors, ASTD (American Society for Training and Development).

Additional Reviews/Comments

Linda Hill of Harvard Business School’s organizational behavior department and Len Schlesinger, once an assistant dean of Harvard B-School, said, “(Several of) your management models are ahead of what we’re doing at Harvard and are better than any I’ve/we’ve ever seen―but we’re working on similar things.” (They were mostly referring to The Managerial Target® and Unified Practice of ManagementTM models.)

Janice McCormick, a (now-retired) Harvard Business School professor of organizational behavior before becoming executive director of the HBS doctoral program, said of my book, No one has ever written anything even close to this (in terms of interrelating and integrating so many management concepts and models in one model—the Unified Practice of ManagementTM model).

“The book covers all the major topics typically found in a basic organizational behavior textbook.” . . .  (It provides) “a framework in which the authors have linked the multiple jigsaw pieces of various theories and concepts regarding management and management development. Their diagrams of how these pieces fit together are quite extensive and logically laid out. It is easy to see how the works of various authors, such as Ouchi, Drucker, Mintzberg, Senge and a multitude of others, fit within their framework.”. . . “The authors do an excellent job of outlining The Managerial Target® model and their approach to organization and managerial development.” . . .  (The Unified Practice of Management™ model) “has successfully integrated decades of theories and research to develop a best practice or 'how to' model which provides an excellent guide on the process of management.” . . . (Thus, the book) “is an excellent resource for program developers and trainers.”  ― Quotes excerpted from a review of the book in Academy of Management Learning and Education, Volume 8, Number 2, June 2009.)

Next-Generation Management Development is an impressive analysis of management complexity.”    Joan V. Gallos, Ph.D., Professor of Leadership, Henry W. Block School of Business and Public Administration, University of Missouri–Kansas City, and a former President of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society (OBTS).

“As a corporate executive, management trainer, and management consultant for over forty years, I’ve participated in, reviewed, selected, used, and applied many of the best management training courses and programs available. In my opinion, R. D. Cecil’s Next-Generation Management, Leadership, and Organization Development contains a program that is miles beyond anything I’ve ever seen in terms of its comprehensiveness and depth, its many innovative perspectives and models, and its full integration with both organization development and strategic management. In fact, you’re so far ahead of everybody else that, regardless of how much you try to explain it to them without their actually seeing it, they’re not going to understand what you’ve done and will just think it’s more of the same old stuff.” ― Keith L. Irons, Chairman, Irons Group Ltd., successful business executive, and long-time management trainer and strategic planning consultant.

Robert Hogan, Ph.D., a psychometrician and head of the internationally known psychological testing firm, Hogan Assessment Systems, called my Managerial Target® model “ingenious (in the way it relates the levels of various groups of personal traits to an individual’s tendency to use a particular managerial or leadership style―most of the time and in the absence of contravening socio-technical/cultural influences operating both inside and outside an organization).

 

About the 2,400-page Management Training Series from which N-GML&OD Was Excerpted

Kenneth L. Grisham, a previous VP of Development for NETg (National Education and Training Group in Naperville, IL, then a competitor of Smartforce and University of Phoenix Online), once said, “If we were to adopt your management training program, it would put us years ahead of any of our competitors” (because everybody else’s many little training modules are so disjointed and unintegrated).

Janice McCormick, the Harvard B-School professor of organizational behavior who became executive director of the HBS doctoral program, said that an earlier book, Managerial Behavior and Development, is “better than anything else out there on managerial behavior―especially in terms of synthesizing what many have said on the subject.” She called The Managerial Target® “nifty.” And she called the entire (management training) series “formidable”―in terms of all that has been pulled together, integrated, and put into perspective. In addition, she described these materials as “clear, concise, and practical.”

 

About Marketplace Analysis, Strategic Planning, and Knowledge Management Materials and Tools

John W. McCarter, a now-retired senior partner in the Chicago office of Booz-Allen (at one time the premier strategic planning consulting firm), once said, “We have maybe two-thirds of all the planning materials you’ve developed.”

Gerald A. Smith (now retired from IBM’s Chicago office), a consultant who has also been coordinator of (and facilitator for) the company’s Team Focus Centers around the country, once said, “What you’re doing with factor checklists to develop qualitative knowledge bases (QIBs) and diagrammatic knowledge bases (DKBs) within a strategic planning context is five to ten years ahead of what even IBM is doing.” [He was talking about my “Zero-Base Systems Analysis” (ZBSA) methodology and my use of huge TeamThink Walls™.]

A strategic planner for General Electric once remarked, “We have mountains and mountains of information, but no way to make sense of it all. You have a way to make it all more meaningful.”  (ZBSA.)

Bipin Junnarkar, a former Director of Knowledge Management at Monsanto, once said, “We are inundating our people with data, but they are unable to handle it all. Your methods and tools can help significantly.”  (He, too, was talking about ZBSA.)

 

About R. D. Cecil and Company’s Programs

“The five-day seminar was a completely enjoyable and intellectually stimulating experience. More importantly, it contributed directly to improving the Center’s training capability and mission effectiveness . . .  The objectives established for the seminar were exceptionally well met. The extensive and well-developed materials you provided for our study, and your review of many approaches to managerial and organizational development, indeed provided us with an expanded and reinforced understanding of how to improve managerial performance. I was particularly impressed with your insight, methodology, and the quality of your written material . . .  Your seminar was excellent and our time devoted to it was thoroughly well spent.” --  L.H. Bibby, CAPT, USN, Commanding Officer, Navy Human Resources Management Center, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Your seminar was . . .  a refreshing new approach to management performance improvement. Your analytic techniques for individual and organizational development present an opportunity for trainers and consultants to evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts . . .  Your seminar materials are certainly comprehensive. A great deal of insight, research and innovation is reflected in your writing.  Since I attended the seminar, application of some of the methods is evidenced in my managerial be­havior.”  --  Irv L. Kamradt, District Staff Supervisor, Instructional Technology, Illinois Bell Telephone Company, Chicago, Illinois

“The training was well received, met objectives, and contributed to overall staff awareness, knowledge, and growth . . .  I was particularly impressed with the quality of your texts. I consider them to be ahead of the state of the art. Your synthesis of management skills, as well as your insight into “9,9” (and how to implement it) were highlights. I particularly liked the manner in which you integrated the week’s activities, and found those models very useful. In fact, your emphasis on models and model building was a strong point.”  --  J.F. Donovan, CAPT, USN, Commanding Officer, Navy Human Resources Management School, Memphis, Tennessee

“Your program is a vehicle which in my estimation will enable today’s management to move beyond commonly accepted limitations into a new, unexplored frontier—that being a systematic approach to mental development incorporated with necessary managerial tools.”  --  James M. Hennahane, Plant Manager, Consumer Prod­ucts Group, Manufacturing Division, Warner-Lambert Pharmaceuticals Company, Rockford, Illinois

Copyright © 2023 by R. D. Cecil and Company             Last edited or revised:  3/02/2023