Finley, Michael 1950-

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FINLEY, Michael 1950-

PERSONAL: Born July 4, 1950, in Flint, MI; son of Paul (a sales engineer) and Mary (a business owner; maiden name, Konik) Finley; married Rachel Frazin, June 25, 1981; children: Daniele, Jonathan. Ethnicity: "Irish-American." Education: Attended College of Wooster, 1967-69; University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, B.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES: Home—1841 Dayton Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104. Agent—Andrea Pedolsky, Altair Literary Agency, 141 Fifth Ave., Suite 8-N, New York, NY. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, editor, 1973-78; Worthington Daily Globe, Worthington, MN, editor, 1978-80; On the Edge (writing and consulting business), owner, 1980—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Wisconsin arts fellow, 1986; Global Business Book Award, Financial Times, 1995; named "wizard of the wired world," Financial Times Press, 1999; named "American reporter correspondent of the year," 1999.

WRITINGS:

Techno-Crazed, Peterson, 1995.

(With Harvey Robbins) Why Teams Don't Work, Peterson, 1995, new edition published as The New Why Teams Don't Work, Berrett Koehler (San Francisco, CA), 2000.

(With Harvey Robbins) Why Change Doesn't Work, Peterson, 1996.

(With Harvey Robbins) Transcompetition, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1998.

Author, with Harvey Robbins, of the book Turf Wars. Author of "On the Edge," a weekly column in St. Paul Pioneer Press. Author of an Internet journal, Michael Finley's Future Shoes.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Accidental Leader, with Harvey Robbins.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Finley once told CA: "I'm your basic late-blooming writer, though I've been hacking weeds now for thirty years. I've worked as a security guard, soda pop bottler, storefront minister, talk show host, aerial photographer, Fuller Brush man, rock critic, fashion designer, and worse, but I was always writing. I began at the apex, writing surrealistic poetry (eight books), but quickly descended into disreputable genres: book reviews, fiction, essays. Then I went further down into television, public relations copy, and ghostwriting. I didn't hit rock bottom, writing about business and technology, until the last ten years.

"For several years I worked with psychologist Harvey Robbins on a series of books lampooning business fads and fashions: Turf Wars, Why Teams Don't Work, Why Change Doesn't Work, and our summa opus, Transcompetition.

"We're disgusted at the blindness with which so many organizations, from social groups to businesses to governments, consistently achieve the opposite of what they want, because they are unwilling to understand what the other side is after. Our books are the antidote for the happy nonsense that passes for business journalism in this age."