Business Change

Having spent the last few years in Denmark uncovering the secrets of the happiest country in the world, Helen Russell knows it's time to move back to the UK. She thinks. Maybe. Or maybe that's a terrible idea. Like many of us, she suffers from chronic indecision and a fear of change. So she decides to give herself a year for an experiment: to overhaul every area of her life, learn how to embrace change and become a lean, mean decision-making machine.

The subject of “design thinking” is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press - due in large part to work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this audiobook to reveal how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is an audiobook for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Since its inception, the funeral and cemetery business has stuck to the status quo. After all, other than taxes, death is the only sure thing in life. But the world is changing more rapidly than ever. As a funeral or cemetery professional, you have to keep up if you don't want to get buried.

If you as a leader hold on too tightly—to your people, to everyday decision-making, to the past, and more—you will cut off vital oxygen necessary for growth. The solution: stop being a control freak and instead empower your employees, get out of your own way, and establish a clear vision for the future. Embrace the growth paradox to get unstuck and grow your company to the next level. By leaning into some key, counterintuitive business ideas, you’ll make space for changes that will lead to nonlinear growth.

Fifty-two inspiring stories from the best-selling author of the international phenomenon, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Bronnie Ware's The Top Five Regrets of the Dying became an international sensation, giving people the licence to focus on the most important aspects of life in this realm. Having spent several years listening to, and then writing about, the regrets of dying people, Bronnie Ware understands the importance of acknowledging death and finding the courage to live a happy and authentic life in the meantime.

Directed at managers on all rungs of the corporate ladder, this thoroughly updated and expanded edition of the best selling Managing Transitions provides practical, step-by-step strategies for reaching goals and minimizing the disruptions caused by workplace change. It is an invaluable managerial tool for navigating an inevitably tumultuous time.

Bestselling author Herminia Ibarra presents a model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we've learned from "career experts"—and is tailor-made for changing careers in today's uncertain world. Career transition is not a linear path toward some predetermined identity, according to Ibarra, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become. Successful reinvention comes not from deciphering and analyzing our past, but from inventing and testing our possible futures.

A Wall Street tech leader explains how small behavioral changes lead to major self-improvement. Whether trying to lose weight, save money, or get organized, we' re always setting goals and making resolutions but rarely following through on them. Determination and willpower aren't strong enough to defeat our mass of ingrained habits; to succeed we have to learn how to focus our self-control on precise behavioral targets and overwhelm them, according to longtime Wall Street technology strategist Caroline Arnold.

Why do as many as 75% of change initiatives fail? We live in an era where constant change is the norm rather than the exception. Given globalization, increased competition, and constant technological turnover, no organization can run in place: change is not optional. However, the sad fact is that the vast majority of change efforts fail. As authors Gregory P. Shea and Cassie A. Solomon argue, they do not fail for a lack of trying or leadership. Chances are you have led or been part of a failed change.

The Mobile Wave argues that the changes brought by mobile computing are so big and widespread that it’s impossible for us to see it all, even though we are all immersed in it. Saylor explains that the current generation of mobile smart phones and tablet computers has set the stage to become the universal computing platform for the world. In the hands of billions of people and accessible anywhere and anytime, mobile computers are poised to become an appendage of the human being and an essential tool for modern life.

Performing with David Bowie, surviving the murky depths of the music business, enduring a painful divorce, and making the first music video in outer space, award-winning recording artist Emm Gryner has navigated through life’s highs and lows using a secret compass: singing. Her voice, and her desire to express herself in music, has been a constant, from the early days of playing in bands while growing up in a small town, to playing arena rock shows and stadiums. Across these years and on many travels, she’s discovered the human voice to be an unlikely guide.

Getting heard is a tricky business: It’s what you say and how you show up, filtered through your audience’s assumptions and biases—and maybe even your own. For women, people of color, immigrants, and queer folks, there’s often a dissonance between how you speak and how we collectively think powerful people should speak: like the wealthy white men who’ve historically been in charge. But, fortunately, the sound of power is changing.

We are not positive because life is easy. We are positive because life can be hard. As a leader, you will face numerous obstacles, negativity, and tests. There will be times when it seems as if everything in the world is conspiring against you and your vision seems more like a fantasy than a reality. That's why positive leadership is essential! Positive leadership is not about fake positivity. It is the real stuff that makes great leaders great.

So many of us feel lonely, unfulfilled, or trapped—in our roles and relationships, in cycles of self-sabotage and bad decisions, by our patterns and misguided attempts to feel happy or to feel something. According to existential psychotherapist Sara Kuburic, it doesn’t have to be so difficult. Really. The answer is found in facing ourselves—whatever version that might be, regardless of whether we like the person we see reflected back to us. It’s about accepting full responsibility for the choices and actions that create our reality.

From the bestselling authors who taught the world how to have Crucial Conversations comes the new edition of Crucial Influence (previously published as Influencer). Drawing on cases studies of remarkable leaders and the research of renowned behavioral scientists, this guide explains why people do what they do and how leaders can influence behavior to drive results. It all comes down to a powerful yet simple model—the Six Sources of Influence®.

Organizational change can be a complex process, requiring guidance and support throughout in order to deliver the end product successfully. Unfortunately, 70% of businesses fail to deliver transformational change successfully, repeating familiar mistakes over and over again. The Art of Transformational Change: A Handbook for Managers and Leaders provides invaluable step by step advice on how to get it right.

Dynamic corporate speaker and coach, Cassandra Worthy, introduces a growth mindset practice that helps readers to view change and the emotions surrounding it as a gift. Cassandra's practical yet inspiring strategies can inspire anyone to authentically embrace change and find their own unique power of resilience during turbulent times. Using insights gleaned from her life, those of her clients, and the tools and exercises she has refined over the years, Cassandra Worthy has written the playbook for anyone leading, influencing, going through, or embarking upon change.

In this guide to navigating the change management process, four FranklinCovey colleagues offer invaluable advice on how to not only accept, but own change, inside and outside of the work office.

The Art of Conversation will show you step by step how to converse skillfully and enjoyably with other people, at home, at work, on the phone, and in the street. Even if you're daunted now, discover the difference good conversation can make in every aspect of your life.

Leadership is all about others - inspiring them to believe, then enabling that belief to become reality. That's the essence of Leadership U: it starts with U but it's not about U. Those timeless words are timelier than ever today, as leaders look to accelerate through the crisis curve. As author Gary Burnison observes, "There will likely be more change in the next two years than we have seen in the last 20." Now, in Leadership U, Burnison lays out a framework - his Six Degrees of Leadership - to show leaders how to create change.