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| About Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., The Peripatetic Philosopher & Fisher-of-Ideas |
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Dr. Fisher is a wonderer and thinker. He translates his thoughts and ideas into books and articles accessible to everyone.
His reading of the riddles of our times is based upon his life, education and experience across the globe since being born in the second quarter of the Twentieth Century.
Dr. Fisher has been a chemist, member of the US Navy Sixth Fleet on the flagship (USS Salem CA-139) operating in the Mediterranean, chemical sales engineer and international corporate executive for Nalco Chemical Company working in South America, Europe and South Africa.
He retired the first time in his mid-30's, taking a two-year sabbatical to read and write in an attempt to better understand his times. Confident Selling (1970) was published during that period.
When nearly broke, although the father of four small children, he chose to go back to school in pursuit of a Ph.D. in organization-industrial psychology, consulting on the side to support his family.
While in graduate school in the 1970's, he worked as an adjunct professor teaching in several university graduate programs, acted as a contract consultant to The Professional Institute of The American Management Association, formed a publishing and consulting company, gave keynote speeches, and then came to work for Honeywell, Inc. as an organizational development (OD) psychologist in 1980.
In 1986, he was promoted to director of human resources planning & development for Honeywell Europe Ltd. as the European Economic Community (EEC) took hold, retiring for the second time in 1990 to devote his full time to writing, lecturing and consulting in the genre of the main issues of the day.
Since 1990, he has published more than 300 articles in such publications as Industry Week, The Wall Street Journal, The National Review, Time, The Journal of Organization Excellence, National Productivity Review, Executive Excellence, AQP Journal, and The Reader's Digest, plus scores of newspaper dailies.
He is author of nine books to date, one memoir as a novel and eight books in the genre of organization & personal development. He is also a published poet. His most recent book A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007) claims contemporary society is sick and stuck in nostalgia, seeing American leaders in the private and public sector, academia, and government missing the changes, staying the same, and leaving the future up for grabs. Dr. Fisher sees no evidence of this more palpable then in the sinking American dollar making the US a sinking nation requiring radical correction in its attitude and aptitude for the problem solving.
There are two dominant themes in his writing: the primacy of intellectual & cultural capital and the changing idea of authority. These themes are prominent in all his work, which is likely to prove the case in the novel he is now writing of his time in South Africa during apartheid in the late 1960s.
Dr. Fisher is also a chartered member of THE NAPLES INSTITUTE, a leadership think tank fighting for social justice by identifying leadership problems of the world, producing new leaders, and promoting leadership consistent with its aims of social justice for all people.
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| CONFIDENT SELLING (1970): The theme of this book is that the greatest barrier to success is not the buyer, but the seller. The fear of rejection along with the failure to see the buyer as a partner in the enterprise has resulted in an adversary relationship between buyer & seller. This little book in print for twenty years (1970 - 1990) caught the reader off guard, as most people didn't realize all life is a selling proposition (no longer in print). |
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WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990): This book stunned the management world with its naked boldness. It has become a classic in recognizing management as it has existed was atavistic, and the structure of doing business was anachronistic. The system was designed for failure.
The cause?
The workforce has changed from primarily blue-collar to predominantly professional. This is especially true in Fortune 500 companies. Yet, workers are still managed, motivated, and mobilized indiscriminate of this major change except cosmetically.
Daringly, Dr. Fisher predicted in this 1990 book that entitlement programs would sink major American companies; that the new workforce was not being properly integrated into the emerging global economy; and that markets would continue to disappear, which they have.
Industry Week named it one of the ten best business books of the year, while The Business Book Review Journal named it one of the four best business books of the year. Provocative in 1990, Dr. Fisher's claims, once thought little more than an angry harangue, have proven prophetic.
Caveat: New, but Poor Binding
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Soft Cover Price $10.00 |
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CONFIDENT SELLING FOR
THE 90S (1992): This book elaborates on the theme of Confident Selling (1970) and brings it fully up to date with the professional workforce. It designs a confident thinking format for the young professional who fails to recognize that he or she is always in a selling mode.
It is the nature of the times and the demands of the workplace. So thoroughly has this theme been developed that Confident Selling for the 90s was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction for 1992. It was also widely and positively reviewed and has become an international best seller.
Condition: New & Excellent |
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Soft Cover Price $10.00 |
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THE WORKER, ALONE! GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN (1995): This book is directed at professional workers. It is clear that they have failed to see their time has come. The reason why the focus is specifically on professionals is because they have become essentially all workers, and the key to organization success.
There has been a power shift from the privileged few "managers" to the competent many who are the professionals. This shift has been from position power to knowledge power. Professionals possess such power, but don't know how to use or leverage it either to their or the organization's advantage.
To do so, they must step outside their traditional roles, and go against the grain of traditional practices. The book develops such awareness and promotes the resolve in such a way that professionals need never get fired as they save the company.
Condition: New & Excellent
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Hard Cover Price $12.00 |
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THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR
OWN BEST FRIEND (1996): This book grew out of an article by Dr. Fisher in The Reader's Digest (June 1993), which opened with the line: "To have a friend you must be a friend starting with yourself." More than 25,000 reprints were requested of the article in the following weeks of its publication.
The book argues we have an identity crisis. We look for legitimacy outside rather than inside ourselves. We look for ways to be more self-assertive, to have higher self-esteem, failing to realize this often masks the problem of self-hatred.
We want to deal with others without first dealing with ourselves.
The Taboo is not a "how to" or "quick fix" book, not a potpourri of mechanical solutions to self-understanding without requiring the heavy lifting. The message here is not to celebrate self-indulgence, but to provide a strategy for penetrating it in order to arrive at self-acceptance. That compound word is so easy to say, "self-acceptance," yet so difficult to realize. Be advised, Dr. Fisher offers no detours on this important journey.
The Taboo is written for readers to unravel their hang-ups and angst, and to redefine who and what they are in realistic terms. There is this line in the book: "To attempt to do for others what they best do for themselves is to weaken their resolve and diminish them as persons. The same holds true of ourselves."
Readers are the authority to their own solutions.
Condition: New & Excellent |
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Hard Cover Price $15.00 |
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SIX SILENT KILLERS: MANAGEMENT'S GREATEST CHALLENGE (1998): These killers are the price our capitalistic system has paid for its failure to recognize and deal with intellectual & cultural capital in prudent and fair terms. This is due to its failure to recognize the changing nuances of authority.
The stubborn resistance to change has spawned social termites that are destroying the infrastructure of most complex organizations only to be discovered too late for damage control. These silent killers were first identified in Work Without Managers (1990), but alas, to no avail.
These silent killers are professionals sitting on their hands feeling they are not recognized or appreciated for who and what they are.
Professionals don't want to take on power or its responsibilities. They only want the perks of power. So, when they are denied, they retreat into dissidence and passive behaviors.
The Across the Board (June 1998) of the Wall Street Journal offers this suggestion:
Invest the time, really read the book, and you'll probably agree that the central reason for an unhappy workplace are some well defined "killers." And, ever so handily, Fisher will lead you to one more conclusion: that there's a seventh killer somewhere here. It's a management profession failing to move forward with the times, that talks endlessly about "vision" and "empowerment" while refusing to loosen "the command-and-control" screws even a turn.
Condition: New & Excellent
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Hard Cover Price $40.00 |
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CORPORATE SIN: LEADERLESS
LEADERSHIP AND DISSONANT WORKERS (2000): This book builds on the theme of the primacy of intellectual & cultural capital and the changing idea of authority. It looks beyond the obvious seven deadly sins of corpocracy, so widely reported, to the failure of senior management to solve the complex problems it faces.
Instead, it solves the problems it understands and can solve to put a good cosmetic face on its watch, letting the real problems fester under the surface.
This has led to internal organization stress and strain, resulting in an inability to act prudently and quickly to accelerating and changing external demands. We see this debility in every social, political, economic and military institution without exception.
Meanwhile, professionals demonstrate their angst by retreating into the six silent behaviors, failing to recognize they are part of the problem or there is no solution.
Management and professionals are equal transgressors in corporate sin. A blueprint is provided for getting them on the same page and off on the same dime.
Condition: New & Excellent (soft cover)
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Soft Cover Price $20.00 |
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IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIR OF THE 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL
(2003): This book is a snapshot of what it was like to grow up in the middle of the twentieth century in the middle of the United States when the world was at war (WWI I), and sacrifice, duty, loyalty and dedication were part of the drill.
The 1940s was a different time. Everything seemed to be working for Americans, as there were few distractions and little time for luxuries, if luxuries had in fact existed.
Everything seemed to work as it wasn't all about "them," but about the collective challenges they faced together as one people with one purpose during that war.
The book deals with real people in real time with real events. It was a time when sacrifice was routine and comfort a foreign word. It was also a time of happy campers who had their moral compass firmly in place.
Children invented their own recreation without supervision, and kept themselves occupied in vigorous physical activities, while their parents worked 24/7 in the local factories.
More than sixty years later, the United States, the most affluent society in man's history, is not very happy, or very active, and has apparently misplaced its moral compass.
The book illustrates with painful clarity how much we have given up for how little we have gained in the pursuit of happiness.
Condition: New & Excellent
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Hard Coved Price
$25.00 |
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Coved Price $17.50 |
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A LOOK BACK TO
SEE AHEAD (2007): The book argues we are stuck. This has become a chronic cultural problem and has resulted in societal sickness.
As a society, we have missed the changes, stayed the same, and left the future up for grabs.
Dr. Fisher uses the 1970s to show that the same problems we had then are the same problems we have now only the names of the people, places and things have changed, but not their content or context.
He uses the device of looking back to where we've been to see where we are and how we got there, cutting through the psychobabble to show that talent is not enough to find happiness; nor is a winning personality with its many masks enough to ensure success. Each of us has to find emotional balance in an irrational world.
He provides several keys to this as he shatters the big lie that science will forgive all our excesses and self-indulgences when scientists are not immune to the same problems. Only we can unlock that door because we hold the only key. The book is an invitation to doing just that.
Condition: New & Excellent |
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Hard Coved Price
$30.00 |
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Coved Price $20.00 |
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