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If you know Michael Watkins, please give him a copy of the Heath brothers' excellent book, Made to Stick. He's got lots of good information, but he is a deadly boring writer.

If you want to sleep, Your Next Move can help. Except …

Except if you're actually facing one of the challenges he writes about. Think of this as a reference book that you'll go to when you need to. The core chapters of the book offer helpful advice and insights on specific individual challenges.

• The Promotion Challenge
• The Leading-Former-Peers Challenge
• The Corporate Diplomacy Challenge
• The Onboarding Challenge
• The International Move Challenge

If you're facing one of these challenges, you will go right the appropriate chapter and start reading. Then the helpful information will overcome the deathly prose.

You may be facing one of those challenges. If you are, buy this book.

There are other chapters in the book, too. The Introduction is worth a read for "The Seven Elements of Successful Transitions." That's where Watkins lays out the pattern he's identified in key business transitions. It's helpful and interesting.

He also introduces you to his STARS model for organizational challenges. The acronym stands for Start-ups, Turnarounds, Accelerated Growth, Re-Alignment, and Sustaining Success.

That model also shows up at the end of the book where Watkins concentrates more on organizational challenges. Those chapters are

• The Turnaround Challenge
• The Realignment Challenge
• The STARS Portfolio Challenge

This part of the book is far less well organized and helpful than the chapters on individual challenges. Almost everything here as been covered much more helpfully elsewhere.

If you're facing one of those challenges, you'll get some help here. But don't expect this book to offer more than a cursory introduction to the challenge.

The final chapter in the book is titled "Designing Company-Wide Transition Acceleration Systems." If you are considering hiring Watkins or his firm, read this chapter. It will tell you what they do. In other contexts we would call this a commercial.

So here's the bottom line. If you're facing, or about to face, one of the individual challenges, buy the book. You'll find lots of good and helpful advice. If that's not you, give Your Next Move a pass.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.