Organizational Health

We've decided by consensus that consensus is good. In In Defense of Troublemakers, psychologist Charlan Nemeth argues that this principle is completely wrong: left unchallenged, the majority opinion is often biased, unoriginal, or false. It leads planes and markets to crash, causes juries to convict innocent people, and can quite literally make people think blue is green. In the name of comity, we embrace stupidity. We can make better decisions by embracing dissent. Dissent forces us to question the status quo, consider more information, and engage in creative decision-making.

Pay equity has become a hot topic in recent years with pay transparency viewed as an important way to narrow gender and racial pay gaps. However, pay transparency policies and practices remain highly controversial, with divergent attitudes based largely on conjecture or anecdote. In Exposing Pay, Peter Bamberger provides evidence-based insights into how pay communication policies and practices impact outcomes at individual, organizational, and societal levels.

In this explosive expose of the drug companies and how they are ripping us off, Marcia Angell, M.D., a doctor, medical journalist, and a former editor of the respected New England Journal of Medicine, reveals the many ways in which the pharmaceutical industry has moved away from its original purpose of finding and producing useful new drugs.

Many factors shape the success or failure of a new business, whether it's a stand-alone start-up or a venture inside a larger corporation. But the most important and least understood of these factors is the personality of the entrepreneur - the particular combination of beliefs and preferences that drives his or her motivation, decision making, and leadership style. And your builder personality is the one resource you can directly control in growing a business that wins. Simply put, who you are shapes how you build for growth.

Become tough as nails. Bounce back from hurt. Be Calm. Bend without ever breaking. We all get knocked down, but everyone has the choice to get back up or not. How will your life your life? The art of emotional self-defense. The Science of Emotional Resilience is the rare book that understands where you've been, the obstacles you've overcome, and what you need to make sure you are in full control of your life at all times. This is a stunningly detailed and insightful guide into our emotions, our triggers, and why we act against our own interests so frequently.

This book is for anyone who has experienced a difficult person at work. Revealing the nine different types of difficult people, there's a quick quiz so you can work out the personality type you're dealing with, and how to communicate with them effectively.

In The Design of Future Things, best-selling author Donald A. Norman presents a revealing examination of smart technology, from smooth-talking GPS units to cantankerous refrigerators. Exploring the links between design and human psychology, he offers a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrows thinking machines.

Intelligenz wird üblicherweise verstanden als die Fähigkeit, zu denken und zu lernen. Doch in einer Welt, die sich rasant verändert, brauchen wir etwas ganz anderes genauso dringend: die Fähigkeit, Gedachtes zu überdenken und sich von Erlerntem wieder zu lösen. Anhand zahlreicher Beispiele aus dem täglichen Leben zeigt der internationale Bestsellerautor Adam Grant: Nur wer die Komfortzone fester Überzeugungen verlässt, wer Zweifel und unterschiedliche Ansichten zulässt, ohne sich in seinem Ego bedroht zu fühlen, eröffnet sich die großartige Chance, wirklich neue Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen.

Truth: A User's Guide explores how we can guard against the noise of competing truths, in business, in our personal relationships, and within ourselves, but also how we can use them to our advantage. Written with authority and humour, this is an accessible and illuminating narrative that will find a wide audience among listeners in search of understanding why the meaning of "truth" seems to have gone completely haywire.

In this fascinating examination of our widespread obsession with winning, Cath Bishop draws on her personal experience of high-performance environments to trace the idea of winning through history, language and thought to explore how it has come to be a defining concept in fields from sport to business, from politics to education. Faced with the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, Cath offers a new, broader approach - the long win.

Why do the Yankees always seem to win and the Red Sox fade? Why do companies such as Dell and Gillette never seem to lose their halo? What lessons does Nelson Mandela offer leaders in trouble spots like the Middle East. From sports to business and the most complicated political situations, a common element, a truth, persists: people succeed when leaders give them the confidence to do so.

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Neste livro, o consagrado psicólogo Dan Ariely uniu forças com o comediante Jeff Kreisler para revelar como as emoções dominam nossa maneira de lidar com o dinheiro e para derrubar as mais consagradas—e equivocadas—premissas das finanças pessoais.

For the past few years, mindfulness has begun to transform the American workplace. Many of our largest companies, such as General Mills, Ford, Target, and Google, have built extensive programs to foster mindful practices among their workers. Mindful Work is the first audiobook to explain how all sorts of businesses and any kind of worker can benefit from meditation, yoga, and other mindful techniques.

In The Best Place to Work, award-winning psychologist Ron Friedman, Ph.D. uses the latest research from the fields of motivation, creativity, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and management to reveal what really makes us successful at work. Combining powerful stories with cutting edge findings, Friedman shows leaders at every level how they can use scientifically-proven techniques to promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance.

With a spectacular array of true stories and case studies of the hidden benefits of mess, A Perfect Mess overturns the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, organization, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success.

You don't have to do a dangerous job to endure a health-destroying, possibly life-threatening workplace. Just ask the manager in a senior finance role whose immense workload required frequent all-nighters, leading to alcohol and drug addiction. Or the dedicated news media producer whose commitment to getting the story resulted in a 60-pound weight gain thanks to having no down time to eat properly or exercise. These individuals are not exceptions. Every industry is filled with them, and the costs, to both employees and their companies, is enormous.

Many people today are so dazzled by the long-term potential for artificial intelligence that they overlook the much clearer and more immediate potential for a new form of "collective intelligence": the intelligence of groups of people and computers working together. In Superminds, Thomas Malone explains what we need to do to take advantage of this potential. Groundbreaking and utterly fascinating, Superminds will change the way you work - both with others and with computers - for the better.

Mindfulness at Work Essentials for Dummies explores the many benefits of utilizing mindfulness techniques in the workplace, offering managers, HR professionals, and business people of all levels guidance on how mindfulness can help with the development of core business skills. You'll discover the key concepts of mindfulness and quickly grasp how its implementation in the workplace is a win-win for you, your team, and your organization as a whole.

Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the front lines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns - and even to corruption and misconduct.