Organizational Leadership

Most employees feel invisible to their leadership, and many times prefer to stay hidden in the corporate shadow lands. The Invisible Employee, part fable, part business advice, teaches managers how to actively engage employees, and find the way to bring out the best in them.

Does it have to be this way? Can’t resist checking your smartphone or mobile device? Sure, all this connectivity keeps you in touch with your team and the office - but at what cost? In Sleeping with Your Smartphone, Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow reveals how you can disconnect and become more productive in the process. In fact, she shows that you can devote more time to your personal life and accomplish more at work. And the good news is that this doesn’t require an organizational makeover.

As management ages and prepares to work longer than previous generations, and Millennials join companies at steady rate, companies are suffering through tension and dissonance between Millennials and Boomers, and realizing that they can't just wait for management to age out to fix it. Finding productive ways to work across the generation gap is essential, and the organizations that do this well will have significant strategic advantages over those that don't.

Organizations are coming to the reality that work-life balance is no longer solely an issue for working women. As we progress further into the 21st century, workers and ways of working are changing. We have four generations operating together in the workplace and a tremendous variety of professional expectations, values, goals, and needs. People want to work, but more and more need work to work better in their lives.

For many years, there has been quite a bit of talk about employee engagement as a means to lift corporate profits and reduce absenteeism and turnover. However, this talk has not produced better companies. Additionally, with profit as the primary goal of organizations, most employees view any benign treatment they receive as a secondary convenience that will dissipate once corporate fortunes decline. This book turns that equation around by examining the practices of 21 companies that put the interests and needs of employees first.

The future of work is already here, and what this future looks like must be a pressing concern for the current generation of leaders in both the private and public sectors. In the next 10 to 15 years, rapid change in a post-pandemic world and emerging technology will revolutionize nearly every job, eliminate some, and create new forms of work that we have yet to imagine. How can we survive and thrive in the face of such drastic change?

Thoroughly revised and updated, David Noer's classic book about downsized organizations has never been more relevant. Reports of the most recent layoffs are making the front pages of our newspapers with frightening regularity. And massive downsizing continues to reshape the face of American business. But what about those who remain behind? Healing the Wounds provides an antidote to the widespread malaise on the American business scene left in the wake of workforce reductions.

In this follow-up guide to The Great Workplace, experts from Great Place to Work Institute, Inc. reveal the most common excuses managers use for why they can't create a great workplace. Authors Jennifer Robin and Michael Burchell poke holes in every single excuse. Whether the reasons involve the organization's leadership, employees, environment, or any other factor, the authors explain that if managers lead people properly, they can create a great workplace. The authors explore how managers can interrupt their own negative thought patterns and instead create lasting change.

Think One Team has been specifically designed to help listeners, and everyone in their organization, to create and sustain teamwork across boundaries. Beginning with the fable of the big jelly bean team, listeners join one company's engaging, enlightening, and at times funny journey from silo-afflicted to one team. From their experiences you will learn the five practices that define the difference between think silos and think one team, and see what these practices mean for leaders and employees across an organization.

Gerard Tellis, a noted expert on innovation, advertising, and global markets, makes the compelling case that the culture of a firm is the crucial driver of an organization's innovativeness. In this groundbreaking book he describes the three traits and three practices necessary to create a culture of relentless innovation. Organizations must be willing to cannibalize successful products, embrace risk, and focus on the future. Organizations build these traits by providing incentives for enterprise, empowering product champions, and encouraging internal markets.

When Jochen Zeitz and Anselm Grun first met onstage as "the manager and the monk", Zeitz was CEO and Chairman of Puma, and Father Grün was a monk serving as the business manager of his Benedictine abbey. They discuss what it means to lead and manage responsibly and sustainably in today's shifting world. Available now in English, The Manager and the Monk features these topical essays and dialogues, drawing on sources as diverse as the Bible, contemporary religious thought, psychological theory, and the innovative "environmental profit & loss account" Zeitz developed for Puma.

In this book, Blades and Fondas offer business professionals an indispensable handbook for transforming the way we work and breaking free from the old, inflexible, 40-hour workweek. The authors show creative ways for individuals to fit work requirements with life obligations, and persuade managers to adopt these custom-fit work strategies to improve their bottom line.

Spirituality is the basis for all successful organizations and the most important asset you have in elevating you and your business to a new level of performance. The most successful individuals and firms in the world are changing the way they do business, in order to access a vast resevoir of untapped energy. You too can join the revolution, because the tools these people are utilizing are found inside each and every one of us.

From Workplace to Playspace is about visionary, courageous, innovative, and persistent organizations that challenge long-held preconceptions about the incompatibility of workplace and playspace. Each day organizations across industries and with wide-ranging missions are discovering that playspace is the space they can and must create every day at work if they are to think creatively, question old assumptions, respond effectively to the unexpected, and engage all to work at the top of their talent.

In the stormy seas of today's world economy, organizations need people to own their work, not just rent a spot on the organization chart. All Hands on Deck is a fun-to-listen-to story that is both a business strategy book about creating competitive advantage through corporate culture, and a personal development book that will inspire listeners to be more committed and engaged with their work and their organizations.

Managers are significant actors in contemporary organizations, and yet there is very little deep-level analysis of what managers do and how they understand their managerial selves and social situations. Instead of evaluating management techniques according to their internal logic and systematic qualities, this audiobook advances the "practice perspective" using behavior and activities of successful, experienced, and skilled managers as the primary data for theorizing good management.

Entrepreneur Voices on Growth Hacking shares the inspirational stories of unconventional entrepreneurs who retooled companies and industries and were rewarded handsomely for it while giving you the tools you need to do the same.

If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.

Let It Go! is a fresh look at delegation that gets to the heart of why we struggle with it. You’ll learn step by step how to shift your mindset and implement proven techniques to create space for more of what you love. Then, you’ll discover how to scale delegation across your organization, giving your team the permission, autonomy, and tools they need to better leverage their time. By making this simple shift, you’ll attract and retain great talent while creating limitless potential for business growth.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization's products or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.