Young readers may touch various surfaces on monkeys that are not the one someone is looking for, until at last the right one appears. On board pages.

The name of the game in business is to deliver an exceptional customer experience to consumers and clients. But if a company's employee experience is subpar, the customer's experience will also suffer. Lance Gibbs, an authority on business process management, understands this important, often-overlooked connection, and he has powerful solutions for improving the workers' side of the equation. Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys shines a light on the in-house issues that negatively affect a company's efficiency and profits. Gibbs provides essential strategies for granting employees the systems, authority, and considerations they need to best perform the work they do. His "7 Pillars of Employee Experience" help executives and business owners focus on internal repairs that will enhance employee/customer interactions, from granting workers authorization for action to establishing a platform that integrates the perspectives of everyone, no matter where they are on the corporate ladder. Investing in your workforce is a must. Businesses that treat their workers with apathy are doomed to disappoint their customers. The tools and practical methods provided in Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys will increase employee engagement and effectiveness and strengthen the key component of a transformative customer experience.

DESCRIPTION "No". A short but powerful word that determines if you will be a champion or a loser. Found in their vocabulary and used very often by the world's most successful. "No" is a complete sentence. It requires no further explanation. Not My Monkey is a life companion meant to guide you towards the achievement of your dreams. It seeks to enlighten on why you should start saying 'No' more often, refusing to own other people's drama. By discussing the what, why and how of developing boundaries in very simple terms, Not My Monkey motivates you to go out and start living a happier and more fulfilled life today. Do not procrastinate your happiness on the time table of others. Do not set yourself on fire to keep others warm. Filled with extremely practical, real life common-sense scenarios, Not My Monkey is the ultimate workbook to your New Year's resolutions. Systematically written with practical advice, every paragraph is poised to set the wheels of your game plan into motion. Part 1 exposes what differentiates Champions from Losers, those who go on to achieve their dreams from those who struggle all through life. If you thought saying 'No' was a luxury you could afford to live without, Part 2 will shock you into the awareness of what you are missing out on by saying no to saying 'No'. Part 3 bears the urban reader in mind as it uses language this generation is sure to understand to give directions on how to say 'no'. After reading Not My Monkey, you will find it easier to turn down requests that do not honor you or your time and values. You will spend time working on your own dreams, gaining more respect in the process. Kudos to you for picking this up. You are on the right path. Read, practice it, and thank me now. My prayer is that this book will be a harbinger of freedom for you. That you will finally see what is within the confines of your control and what is without. That when you finally begin to draw the line and stay within the sphere of the former, you would easily rid yourself of the burden of the latter. May you receive strength to proceed with grace as you begin to use the 'No' stamp to assign more value to yourself and your resources.

When a person goes to the boss with a problem and the boss agrees to do something about it, the monkey is off his back and onto the boss's. How can managers avoid these leaping monkeys? Here is priceless advice from three famous experts: how managers can meet their own priorities, give back other people's monkeys, and let them solve their own problems.

Zine queen Ayun Halliday confesses the best-and worst-of her globetrotting misadventures. "I laughed hard on nearly every page of this shockingly intimate memoir and deeply funny book." -- Stephen Colbert Ayun Halliday may not make for the most sensible travel companion, but she is certainly one of the zaniest, with a knack for inserting herself (and her unwitting cohorts) into bizarre situations around the globe. Curator of kitsch and unabashed aficionada of pop culture, Halliday offers bemused, self-deprecating narration of events from guerrilla theater in Romania to drug-induced Apocalypse Now reenactments in Vietnam to a perhaps more surreal collagen-implant demonstration at a Paris fashion show emceed by Lauren Bacall. On layover in Amsterdam, Halliday finds unlikely trouble in the red-light district -- eliciting the ire of a tiny, violent madam, and is forced to explain tampons to soldiers in Kashmir -- "they're for ladies. Bleeding ladies" -- that, she admits, "might have looked like white cotton bullets lined up in their box." A self-admittedly bumbling vacationer, Halliday shares -- with razor-sharp wit and to hilarious effect -- the travel stories most are too self-conscious to tell. Includes line drawings, generously provided by the author.

Everyone has responsibilities, obligations, and problems to deal with in the workplace and in life. Some people, however, have mastered the art of shifting those monkeys onto the backs of others. They claim they don t know how to solve a problem or do the task, they say they don't have time, they complain, they perform poorly, they find any and every way to avoid the work - and yet somehow, they're never held accountable. Instead, hardworking, loyal employees who care about results end up shouldering those burdens for their lazy or unmotivated colleagues. The slackers get just what they want - less work - while the best employees become alienated and overworked. Who is to blame for those misplaced monkeys? Shifting the Monkey shows how to shift an organization's focus from compensating for, excusing, and working around problem people to cultivating and rewarding the best employees. --Publisher.

This jungle tale reads as a long joke, furnished with a punch line. Designed for young readers, a simple scenario is established, and the repetitive text builds up to the end twist. The story features a cheeky monkey causing mischief in the jungle.

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year. Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs--including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, "Anything is possible: after all, it's the Year of the Monkey." For Smith--inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing--the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.

DIVDIVWhat happens when everything you thought was true about your life turns out to be a lie?/divDIV Thirteen-year-old T.J. always believed that her twin sister and her mother were dead—because that’s what her father had told her. But Mom and Sam are very much alive. And now they want T.J. to be part of their family./divDIV Life with Joe, her troubled but well-intentioned father, is all T.J. has ever known. Joe’s erratic lifestyle has meant lying to social workers and searching through garbage cans for food. But T.J. loves him and the grandmother who has provided stability in her life. When T.J. reluctantly visits her mom and Sam for the first time, she is stunned by how similar she is to her twin sister in many ways, even though their lives have been very different. But while she is drawn to her new family, she is also wary of becoming attached to them and hurting her father’s feelings. When Joe suffers a debilitating accident and tries to ensnare T.J. in another web of lies, however, her loyalties are finally tested. Now she must confront the truth about her family, even if it hurts the people she loves. In this thought-provoking companion to the popular Do You Know the Monkey Man?, author Dori Hillestad Butler has created a highly readable, complex portrait of a family in crisis. Her skillful portrayal of T.J., a conflicted adolescent struggling with her identity and reacting to family pressures, will resonate with readers./div/div