The Internal Frontier: Creating the Personal Transformations That Lead to Success Hardback - 1998

Welcome to the communication-intensive Fifth Wave. We are in a new business and entrepreneurial age where achievement is more than just graduating from a good school and obtaining a set of skills. In an era where information travels and technology spreads almost instantaneously, the next frontier is about us, not the external Forces that we often blame for our own lack of achievement. Great strides and advantages in competitive business are now attained through self-knowledge, which is available to everyone regardless of your skills or education. All it requires is the desire to confront yourself, and to make difficult but ultimately rewarding decisions for the sake of personal and professional growth.Based on Morris Shechtman's change-management consulting to hundreds of top executives worldwide, The Internal Frontier explains that our work-related problems are almost universally based in our past, which leads us to become stuck: in the same types of jobs, and in no-growth relationships. Shechtman's provocative questions and tools teach us to recognize our familiar: an amazingly strong and persistent collection of attitudes rooted in our childhood that cause us to act in certain predictable ways.Morris Shechtman introduces several important concepts that lay the path toward self-discovery and personal transformation:
-- Learning your on-the-job role: As we reproduce our familiar, we take on prototypical roles in the workplace. By identifying whether you are primarily a Fixer, a Bully, an Avoider, or a Schmoozer, you will begin to confront your core issues.
-- Drilling down: Addressing our core issues and examining our long-buried demons -- known as drilling down -- is our most productive tool for crystallizing a new familiar, and working toward stronger challenges and growth in all aspects of our personal and professional lives.
-- Creating accountability groups: Strong workplace relationships can be fostered by accountability groups. The author shows readers how to set up these groups, which are designed to increase members' productivity by giving and receiving clear, compelling feedback, creating action plans off that feedback, and holding group members accountable for implementing their plan.In his work with major corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Pepsico, and Time Warner, Morris Shechtman has applied these principles with great success and helped prominent business people learn to self-disclose, build stronger teams, and modify their behavior to increase productivity and advance in their careers. Utilizing organizational case histories and stories of successful individuals who reinvented their familiars and embraced change and growth, Morris Shechtman once again prepares us for an increasingly complex future by teaching us to find the solutions within ourselves.