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Garden Synchronicity: Defective Cucumbers and Resistance to Change

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I started a garden for the first time last year (2011). I wasn't very good at it, but I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. I learned that planting flowers with the vegetables helps attract beneficial insects. I learned that too much water can be just as bad as not enough. I also learned that plants grow better when organic material (a.k.a. compost) is tilled into the soil. So at the end of last year, I put all of the garden and yard waste in a compost bin. Rotten tomatoes, corn stalks, grass clippings, fallen leaves, and dried sunflower plants all went into the bin. When spring came, I dumped out the compost bin and used a roto-tiller to mix it all into the garden patch. As a process improvement over last year's garden, I actually had a plan for Garden 2012. I knew that I didn't want any more sunflowers, because they blocked out the sun for other plants. I knew that I wanted cucumbers, so I bought premium seeds and planted them in the northeast corner o

The Primes: How Any Group Can Solve Any Problem

The Primes: How Any Group Can Solve Any Problem by Chris McGoff (List Price: $29.95; 2012 Wiley). Would you pay for a list of generalities that described the way groups operate? Groups sometimes need a leader. Groups sometimes must choose between competing priorities. Groups sometimes experience interpersonal conflict. If such a list of generalities is useful to you, then The Primes delivers. If, on the other hand, you want practical and application-oriented instruction in group problem solving, then The Primes misses the mark. Don't get me wrong, Chris McGoff's commentary on his list of group generalities is very insightful. His accompanying pictographs adds real value to the discussion. I liked the book, but I am struggling a little bit with who would benefit from reading it. For a very experienced change practitioner, I think The Primes would be useful as a way to stimulate thought and reflection. I think most other audiences would find that the book does not deliver o