Design Leadership

Businesses, organizations and society-at-large are all subject to unforeseeable events and incidents that often have a dramatic impact upon prosperity and profit. Due to their unpredictable nature, business leaders and executive teams are unable to prepare for these specific events. But, through innovation, strategizing and an open-minded approach, they can restructure their organization and practices in order to mitigate (or even take advantage of) the impact of such events.

Whether you're rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful. In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works in three steps.

No single factor - not sales, marketing, finance, strategy, or operations - has more influence over the ultimate success of an organization than its culture. In the game-changing first edition of Culture by Design, David Friedman cut through the fog and provided a simple, clear, and practical road map that thousands of organizations have now used to build high-performing cultures. In this new updated edition, you'll learn how to take the strategies he originally taught and adapt them to meet the unique challenges presented by today's remote work environment.

In Design Any Disaster, certified emergency manager and master business continuity practitioner Patrick Hardy reveals the secrets of disaster preparedness that helped him build the largest and most successful small business and family disaster planning company in the world. He explains why: You should never, ever "remain calm" during a disaster, 99% of all disaster plans are a complete waste of time, and fancy disaster equipment and supplies actually leave you less prepared.

Frugal Value contests the notion that companies can rise to the great challenges of our time by adopting so-called "sustainable business" practices. Instead, the acute ecological crisis requires an all-round rethink of what business does and how it does it. This book explores what business responsibility looks like today and how it could be put into practice through far-reaching changes to companies, ranging from new approaches to product design and business models to reconfiguration of operations and innovative ownership structures.

Hartmut Esslinger, internationally acclaimed designer and founder of frog design, inc., reveals the secrets to better business through better design. Having spent 40 years helping build the world's most recognizable brands, Esslinger shows how business leaders and designers can join forces to build creative strategies that will ensure a more profitable and sustainable future.

As companies evolve to adopt, integrate, and leverage software as the defining element of their success in the 21st century, a rash of processes and methodologies are vying for their product teams' attention. In the worst of cases, each discipline on these teams - product management, design, and software engineering - learn a different model.

It's no secret that culture is the key to attracting and engaging top talent and seizing the competitive edge. But the vast majority of culture efforts fail as quickly as they started. Why? Because leaders are missing the big picture. They're creating and communicating values but failing to ensure the values are tied to the purpose and the strategy of the company while also being integrated into processes, operations, and behaviors.

IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.

Changemakers is an essential playbook for designers and nondesigners who want to drive change at work, at home, and in their communities. Groundbreaking designers Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland-armed with insights from some of today's top minds in business, tech, and social justice-offer a pragmatic, people-centered approach to change.

This book guides listeners through best practices around planning, designing, building, and implementing a design system, with insights and first-hand experiences from lead designers at Shopify, Google, Apple, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

This game-changing audiobook gives you a refreshing science-based approach to the classic challenge of motivation in the workplace and is ideal for any leader or manager looking to take their workplace culture in a new direction. The Game Changer includes practical advice for creating highly productive, motivated, and innovative teams.

Evidence shows culture drives fiscal performance. It's no secret that a toxic work culture can drive away employees and drive down profits. Creating a dynamic work culture that promotes both employee and business growth is key to ensuring an organization's success. However, culture is a moving target and hard to get right. In Great Mondays, brand strategist Josh Levine introduces a proven formula for building and managing a workplace culture that maximizes employee engagement, performance, and retention for long-term business success.

We are oddly paradoxical creatures who long to be happy while creating our own suffering. We replay past anguish, anticipate future distress, and stew in self-righteous anger. In Hard to Be Human, Ted Cadsby focuses on five cognitive design flaws that foster underthinking and overreacting, and reveals powerful strategies to overcome them.

RAISE Your Value is the ultimate guide to elevating Architecture and Engineering firms out of the trap of commoditization. Learn how to Uncover Hidden Value, Design a Winning Advantage, and Charge More. As your firm pursues business, your staff must navigate difficult conversations around fees and pricing every day. Pressures from existing and potential new clients to lower fees often force your team to give away profits and avoid asking for change orders to get the work and “be competitive.”

In The Leader Within Us, business leader and experienced mentor Warren Rustand finally puts in writing the basic principles of what he calls a life by design--that is, a life that, through deliberate choice and hard work, reflects the vision and aspirations of the person living it. These are the same principles that Rustand has enacted in his own life and has taught to many other adults who have come to him for guidance. You will find his story, and some of their stories, in this book.

Do you hope to be coached or be a great coach? Or wish that your organization could execute its coaching mandate? Mark Colgate's 8 Moments of Power is the missing piece for those hoping to orchestrate a coaching change. In this engaging book, Colgate takes us on a journey with humorous stories, case studies, and pragmatic frameworks, while examining how organizations can create a coaching system that designs for, and delivers, continuous feedback that simultaneously increases employee and customer engagement.

In this book, you'll learn how to put the thinking-based framework popularized by the Stanford d.school into practice so you can take on challenges in your organization and reach insightful solutions.

As a workplace strategist and business coach, Erica Keswin has spent over 20 years working with top business leaders and executives to build successful organizations that honor relationships. Featuring case studies from top brands such as, Lyft, Starbucks, Mogul, and SoulCycle, to name a few, Bring Your Human to Work distills the key practices of the most human companies into applicable advice that any business leader can use to build a “human workplace”. 

Need to design training in a flash? This step-by-step guide to designing training will help you on your way in record time!