Organizational Leadership

Corporate boards are under great pressure. Scandals and malpractice at companies like Theranos, WeWork, Uber, and Wells Fargo have raised justified questions among regulators, shareholders, and the public about the quality of corporate governance. In How Boards Work, prizewinning economist and veteran board director Dambisa Moyo offers an insider's view of corporate boards as they are buffeted by the turbulence of our times.

Shorter tells the story of entrepreneurs and leaders all over the world who have discovered how to shrink the workweek without cutting salaries or sacrificing productivity or revenues. They show that by reducing distractions, eliminating inefficiencies, and creating time for high-quality focus and collaboration, four-day workweeks can boost recruitment and retention, make leaders more thoughtful and companies more sustainable, and improve work-life balance.

Inappropriate workplace conduct, lateness, sexually offensive behavior, productivity and communication issues...these are just a few of the uncomfortable topics bosses must sometimes discuss with their employees. 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees offers realistic sample dialogues managers can use to facilitate clear, direct interactions with their employees, helping to sidestep potential awkwardness and meet issues head-on.

In Bringing Out the Best in People: How to Apply the Astonishing Power of Positive Reinforcement, renowned thought leader and internationally recognized workplace expert Aubrey Daniels takes a look at today's rapidly changing work environment, providing a timely update to his seminal book on performance management.

In the modern workplace, conflict has become a dirty word. After all, conflict is antithetical to teamwork, employee engagement, and a positive company culture. Or is it? The truth is that our teams and organizations require conflict to get things done. But we avoid conflict and build up conflict debt by deferring and dodging the difficult decisions. Our organizations are paying the price - becoming less productive, less innovative, and less competitive.

We all know that meetings suck, right? You hear it all the time. It's the one thing that almost everyone in business can agree on. Except it's not actually true. Meetings don't suck; we suck at running meetings. When done right, meetings not only work, they make people and companies better. In Meetings Suck, world renowned business expert and growth guru Cameron Herold teaches you how to use focused, time effective meetings to help you and your company soar.

Where can you turn when your attempts to resolve conflict fail? Most approaches emphasize collaboration. You are supposed to sit down, calmly talk through your differences, and find a solution. But what if nothing seems to work, no matter what you do? When situations resist resolution, the Optimal Outcomes Method teaches us conflict freedom. Optimal Outcomes reveals eight groundbreaking practices proven to help people everywhere free themselves from conflict.

From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work - and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed. "We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing". So says Laszlo Bock, former head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge.

Know What You're For details an effective growth strategy for businesses and nonprofits by closing the gap between two simple questions: What do you want to be known for? What are you known for? When the two answers match, organizations gain incredible momentum by unleashing the most powerful marketing force there is: lasting word-of-mouth support.

Leaders have talked about the importance of corporate culture for decades, but the success of iconic companies like GE, Apple, and Google show how culture is a strategic lever that can be utilized for driving growth, change, and innovation. In this new age of globalization, rapid technology shifts, and constant disruption, the 21st-century marketplace is more volatile and uncertain than ever. To thrive, businesses need a new kind of emphasis around culture.

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.

The companion to the blockbuster best seller, Getting Things Done. Since its publication in 2001, Getting Things Done has become, as Time magazine put it, "the defining self-help business book" of the decade. Having inspired millions of readers/listeners around the world, it clearly spoke to an urgent need in an increasingly time-pressured society. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel Making It All Work, Allen unlocks the full power of his methods across the entire span of life and work.

The Oz Principle is the groundbreaking work that demonstrates the vital role of accountability in the achievement of business results and the improvement of both individual and organizational performance. With more than a half million copies sold, The Oz Principle has emerged as one of the most influential and useful business ideas of recent times. The Oz Principle shows how to overcome The Blame Game that is so prevalent in organizations today.

This book offers a concise, accessible guide to the key concepts and applications in Otto Scharmer's classic Theory U. Scharmer argues that our capacity to pay attention coshapes the world. What prevents us from attending to situations more effectively is that we aren't fully aware of that interior condition from which our attention and actions originate. Scharmer calls this lack of awareness our blind spot. He illuminates the blind spot in leadership today and offers hands-on methods to help change makers overcome it through the process, principles, and practices of Theory U.

The central problem Hammer saw is that despite good intentions, companies don’t perform at the levels they need to because the way they do things is screwed up. This book is a tool kit for how to do things right, providing its listeners with the skills to make deep and fundamental changes in how companies do their work.

"Your story is your life," says Loehr. As human beings, we continually tell ourselves stories: of success or failure; of power or victimhood; stories that endure for an hour, or a day, or an entire lifetime. We have stories about our work, our families and relationships, our health; about what we want and what we're capable of achieving.

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.

Think of your to-do list at work. Chances are the most important tasks require you to work with others - and the success of those endeavors depends on the effectiveness of your collaboration. According to management expert Leigh Thompson, collaboration that is conscious, planned, and focused on generating new ideas builds excitement and produces what she calls a "creative conspiracy". Teams that conspire to organize themselves, motivate one another, and combine their talents to meet creative challenges are the hallmark of the most successful organizations.

In Culture Is the Way: How Leaders at Every Level Build an Organization for Speed, Impact, and Excellence, former NFL pro, world-renowned keynote speaker, and management consultant Matt Mayberry delivers an incisive and hands-on blueprint to employee engagement and peak productivity. In the book, you'll explore how leaders, at every level, can build a workplace culture that drives organizational excellence and unleashes the full potential of every employee.

Global technology executive, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high-growth, tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Stripe, and Square as they've grown from small companies to global enterprises. Across all of these breakout companies, a set of common patterns has evolved into a repeatable playbook that Gil has now codified in High Growth Handbook.