Organizational Leadership

It is commonly acknowledged that successful organizations adjust quickly and intelligently to shifts in consumer tastes, political climate, and economic opportunity. But how are some able to succeed at change while so many others fail?

A must-listen for service professionals of every level, this essential book takes the proven Lean principles of the best-selling Toyota Way series and applies them directly to the industries where quality of service is crucial for success. Jeff Liker and Karyn Ross show you how to develop Lean practices throughout your organization using the famous 4P model. Whether you are an executive, manager, consultant, or frontline worker who deals with customers every day, you'll learn how take advantage of all Lean has to offer.

Reap the benefits of a diverse workforce. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you create a culture that seeks and celebrates difference. This book will inspire you to: identify and address bias; short-circuit discrimination instead of unintentionally feeding it; attract, retain, and engage talented people who represent myriad identities; ensure that everyone has equal access to growth opportunities; trade outdated policies for practices that are proven to foster inclusion; and more.

Based upon research of what successful teams do to overcome severe odds, Do Big Things presents an intuitive, seven-step process that equips teams with how to quickly and consistently operate in a manner necessary for success. Filled with practical tools and engaging stories of teams today, Do Big Things equips leaders with “the how” to quickly identify and activate the behaviors needed to achieve more than you or your team ever thought possible.

Many leaders miss out on their teams’ full potential because navigating the complex and ever-changing business landscape is more and more challenging. Traditional leadership models often fail to address the intricate interplay of organizational intentions, external factors, and internal dynamics resulting in subpar performance and disengaged teams. As a result, executives find themselves ill equipped to set their organization and leaders up for success in an increasingly complex world.

The workplace is going through a large-scale transition with digitization, automation, and acceleration. Critical skills and expertise are imperative for companies and their employees to succeed in the future, and the most forward-thinking companies are being proactive in adapting to the shift in the workforce. Kelly Palmer, Silicon Valley thought leader from LinkedIn, Degreed, and Yahoo, and David Blake, cofounder of ed-tech pioneer Degreed, share their experiences and describe how some of the smartest companies in the world are making learning and expertise a major competitive advantage.

In this fascinating and empowering book, King outlines the invisible barriers that hold women back at all stages of their careers, and provides readers with a clear set of takeaways to thrive despite the sexist workplace, as they fight for change from within. Gender equality is not about women, and it is not about men - it is about making workplaces work for everyone. Together, we can fix work, not women.

Are your organization's ideas growing stale? Do your employees need to refresh their thinking? We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the 10 most important ones to help you instill creativity across your organization.

Every year, millions of top performers are promoted to management-level jobs - only to discover that the tactics that got them promoted are not the tactics that will make them effective in their new role. In Welcome to Management, Ryan Hawk provides practical, actionable advice and tools designed to ensure that transition is a successful one.

Remote and hybrid workplaces are here to stay, and they pose formidable obstacles that complicate managing projects and launching new products. Against this backdrop arrives Project Management in the Hybrid Workplace. In his inimitable style, Simon adeptly fuses critical research and concepts from a slew of diverse and seemingly unrelated fields, including Agile software development, human resources, supply-chain management, organizational behavior, cognitive psychology, and labor economics. Brimming with case studies, insights, and practical advice, the book is a tour de force.

In today's increasingly diverse, global, interconnected business world, diversity and inclusion is no longer just the right thing to do, it is a core leadership competency and central to the success of business. Working effectively across differences such as gender, culture, generational, race, and sexual orientation not only leads to a more productive, innovative corporate culture, but also to a better engagement with customers and clients.

In this bold, enlightening book, social psychologist and professor Daniel M. Cable takes leaders into the minds of workers and reveals the surprising secret to restoring their zest for work. Disengagement isn't a motivational problem, it's a biological one. Humans aren't built for routine and repetition. We're designed to crave exploration, experimentation, and learning - in fact, there's a part of our brains, which scientists have coined "the seeking system", that rewards us for taking part in these activities. But the way organizations are run prevents many of us from following our innate impulses. As a result, we shut down.

Berkshire Hathaway, the $300+ billion conglomerate that Warren Buffett built, is among the world's largest and most famous corporations. Yet for all its power and celebrity, few people understand Berkshire, and many assume it cannot survive without Buffett. This book challenges that assumption. In a comprehensive portrait of the corporate culture that unites Berkshire's subsidiaries, Lawrence Cunningham unearths the traits that assure the conglomerate's perpetual prosperity.

Culture Rules is a clarion call for leaders around the world. The pandemic has magnified the essential role that culture plays in an organization's health, vitality, and sustainability—some passed the test with flying colors while others are seeing with fresh eyes, deeply rooted issues and challenges within their culture. After completing a global study with over 5,000 participants from ten countries, Mark Miller and his team have exposed the most predominant fissures and their fixes.

Today's ways of working are not working - even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 job expectations. In Overload, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition, and underperformance. "Flexible" work policies and corporate lip service about "work-life balance" don't come close to fixing the problem.

Working late at night, Lucas, a middle manager in a large organization, meets a custodian named Ted. The two strike up a friendship as Ted teaches Lucas three vital questions with the power to transform the disillusionment he is experiencing at work. Listeners follow Lucas as he learns how to shift from feeling like a victim to acting as a creator in his career. With the wise guidance of Ted and Kasey, a senior manager, Lucas applies the three vital questions and begins transforming his workplace relationships, with exciting results.

Rapid change defines the world around us, requiring a more effective type of organization. New discoveries change our understanding of how the world works, and Margaret J. Wheatley shows us how the “new science” can lead to a powerful new view of the business world. Our world has become nonlinear and filled with constant transition, and this new understanding can be applied to the way we organize work, people, and our lives. Wheatley invites us to transform our way of thinking and adapt ourselves—and our companies—to the 21st century by offering a new way of thinking.

In A New Kind of Diversity, best-selling author Tim Elmore brings his decades of research and leadership experience to bear on what might be the biggest, most dramatic, and most disruptive shift the American workforce has ever seen: the vast diversity of several generations living—and working—together.

Today, not only is everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, we also have the Internet. When these two revolutions - one in technology and the other in communications - joined, an explosive force was unleashed that changed the very nature of innovation. And with any change, we have seen many strategic blunders and extraordinary learning curves along the way.

Former consultant Dr. Paul Friga distills the guiding principles first presented in the best-selling The McKinsey Way and the tested-in-the-trenches methodologies outlined in The McKinsey Mind, and combines them with many of the principles and procedures implemented by the military and other organizations. The result is nothing less than the business equivalent of a Special Forces Field Manual.