Mitch Greenlick has produced a book that is as unusual as it is stimulating. The Cat-Herd’s Toolkit is both an e-mail epistolary novel and a discourse on managing professionals in complex organizations. Each chapter of the novel serves as case material for the discursive material that follows. Taken together, they provide the research manager with explicit instructions on how to develop and manage a research culture that will lead to organizational success.
Greenlick has spent decades as a successful health services researcher and research manager. He brings to this tale insights from his life experience, his leadership perspectives, some management stories, and a good deal of wisdom accumulated over a 50-year career.
In 1964 Greenlick became the founding director of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon. He served in that role for more than 30 years and in 1980 became vice-president (Research) of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals. During that time he created the Training Institute for Research Management and its Advanced Management Training program. He has also served as professor and chair of Public Health and Preventive Medicine in the School of Medicine at the Oregon Health & Sciences University. For the past 10 years he has been a member of the Oregon House of Representatives.