Workplace Behavior

Have you ever wondered what it would take to be a better leader, or achieve your wildest dreams, or make a bigger difference in the world? The answer lies in the choices you make: about everything from how you spend your time to the way you view the world. Smart Leadership is the latest essential business title from internationally best-selling author of Win the Heart and Chess Not Checkers, Mark Miller. In this book, he shares the four research-based "smart choices" the best leaders make to scale their influence and results.

The subject of “design thinking” is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press - due in large part to work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this audiobook to reveal how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is an audiobook for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.

With so many forces of change buffeting the business world today, a scary state of flux has replaced any sense of certainty, stability, and familiarity, delivering a wake-up call to make crucial changes happen, make them happen quickly, and make them stick. Traditional approaches to change management fall into one of two categories, but neither of these models offer a full picture to what really happens in an organization. Siobhan McHale offers a third option: organizations are complex ecosystems that require a Hive Mind or Group Intelligence (GQ) to bring about meaningful and lasting change.

We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.

Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were the weapons of choice at Wall Street investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.

Human beings have been organizing to accomplish work for as long as we’ve existed. So why is organizational behavior still so elusive and mysterious? In this book, one of the greatest scholars in his field reframes his career’s work around the seven forces that drive all organizations. Mintzberg identifies them as efficiency, proficiency, consolidation, collaboration, culture, division, and conflict.

Influence Without Authority is the classic guide to getting what you need from people you don't control. Getting things done requires collaboration, and convincing others to contribute requires political skill; this book introduces the Exchange Model, in which you get what you need by offering something of value in return. The key lies in knowing what the other person values - that's their "currency", and it's your immediate tool for coaxing their cooperation. This model has been proven over decades, as organizations around the world have turned toward collaboration.

In a quick, easy listen, you can take the main principles from Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs! John Doerr spells out the recipe for efficiency in corporations by using objectives and key results. A seasoned pro, Doerr traces on his history with OKRs and uses several examples from case studies by people who have implemented his system of utilizing OKRs.

One of the hardest things to achieve in business is getting everyone on your team aligned to the same plan. Picture your business as a rowing team. Most have some people casually rowing, others out of sync, and even some rowing in the complete opposite direction. In Relentless Implementation, you will learn a tried and tested system that will get every person on your team vigorously rowing in the same direction.

Kotter and co-author Dan S. Cohen delve deeper into the subject of change to get to the heart of how change actually happens. Through compelling, real-life stories from people in the trenches, in all kinds of organizations, the authors attack the fundamental problem that underlies every major transformation: How do you go beyond simply getting your message across to truly changing people's behavior?

A groundbreaking book that boldly claims the key to success in business is not talent, connections, or ideas, but the ability to persuade people to take a chance on potential.

Humans rely on body language to connect and build trust, but with most of our communication happening from behind a screen, traditional body language signals are no longer visible - or are they? In Digital Body Language, Erica Dhawan, a go-to thought leader on collaboration and a passionate communication junkie, combines cutting edge research with engaging storytelling to decode the new signals and cues that have replaced traditional body language across genders, generations, and culture.

Who would you be if you felt at peace and had more time and money? An organized life enables you to have more freedom, less aggravation, better health, and to get more done. For nearly 20 years, Regina Leeds - named Best Organizer by Los Angeles magazine - has helped even the messiest turn their lives around. Anyone can get organized-she'll prove it to you!

We live, say Edgar and Peter Schein, in a culture of “tell". All too often we tell others what we think they need to know or should do. But whether we are leading or following, what matters most is we get to the truth. We have to develop a commitment to sharing vital facts and identifying faulty assumptions - it can mean the difference between success and failure. This is why we need Humble Inquiry more than ever.

An inspiring guide from Dolly Chugh, an award-winning social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business, on how to confront difficult issues including sexism, racism, inequality, and injustice so that you can make the world (and yourself) better. Many of us believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion. But how do we stand up for those values in our world? The Person You Mean to Be is the smart, "semi-bold" person’s guide to fighting for what you believe in. Dolly reveals the surprising causes of inequality, grounded in the "psychology of good people".

Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone. According to The Boston Consulting Group's fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past 60 years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness - that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems - has increased by a whopping factor of 35.

In 2001, when Jacqueline Novogratz founded Acumen, a global community of socially and environmentally responsible partners dedicated to changing the way the world tackles poverty, few had heard of impact investing - Acumen’s practice of “doing well by doing good”. Nineteen years later, there’s been a seismic shift in how corporate boards and other stakeholders evaluate businesses: Impact investment is not only morally defensible, but now also economically advantageous, even necessary.

I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. Blindspot is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases.

In Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn, leadership coach Katie Anderson and Toyota leader Isao Yoshino bring you a remarkable book about what it means to learn, to lead, and to care. With a career that spanned nearly four decades at Toyota Motor Corporation, Isao Yoshino’s stories help us understand how Toyota intentionally developed the culture of excellence for which it is renowned today, and how one person learned to lead so that he could lead to learn.