Workplace Behavior

A career advisor explains why many talented, hardworking people often miss out on their full career potential, revealing the tells, blind spots, secrets, and unspoken rules you need to know in order to play the game to win.

The Song of Significance is a rousing contemplation on work: why it is the way it is, why it’s gotten so bad, what all of us–especially leaders–can do to make it better.

In the wake of widespread anti-racism demonstrations across the world, many companies have spoken out forcefully. But now comes the real test-harnessing the energy of this moment to further and sustain change for the better. Racial Justice: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you combat racism and bias throughout your company, revitalize your diversity and inclusion efforts, and lead the conversations necessary to bring your organization a step closer to racial equity.

The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to "think outside the box": to brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but it’s a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), a method that systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. SIT requires thinking "inside the box", working in one’s familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems.

Few would disagree that inclusion is both the right thing to do and good for business. Then why are we so terrible at it? If we believe in the morality and the profitability of including people of diverse and underestimated backgrounds in the workplace, why don't we do it? Because, explains Ruchika Tulshyan in this eye-opening book, we don't realize that inclusion takes awareness, intention, and regular practice. Inclusion doesn't just happen; we have to work at it. Tulshyan presents inclusion best practices, showing how leaders and organizations can meaningfully promote inclusion.

Retired four-star general Stan McChrystal has lived a life associated with the deadly risks of combat. From his first day at West Point, to his years in Afghanistan, to his efforts helping business leaders navigate a global pandemic, McChrystal has seen how individuals and organizations fail to mitigate risk. Why? Because they focus on the probability of something happening instead of the interface by which it can be managed.

Executive coaching is a professional and personal development intervention that organizations introduce to address and improve those areas in managers' and leaders' behavior, attitude, and interactions with others that do not allow him/her to work at full potential and also to further improve one's own strengths. The end objective, besides the development of the managers and leaders, is for the organization to benefit in the long-run from the coachee's improved performance.

Here, drawing on revealing, honest stories from his five decades in business - the company's many successes as well as its stumbles - Koch walks the listener step by step through the five dimensions of Market-Based Management to show stockholders, entrepreneurs, leaders, students - and innovators, supervisors and employees of all kinds, in any field - how to apply the principles to generate Good Profit in their organizations, companies, and lives.

Having recently stepped down as chairman and CEO of Best Buy, Hubert Joly shares the leadership principles illustrated by multiple vivid and concrete stories that underpinned the remarkable resurgence of Best Buy and that he believes are at the heart of business: pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center, embrace all stakeholders, and treat profit as an outcome.

Babson College business educator and consultant Mary Gentile challenges the assumptions about business ethics at companies and business schools. She gives business leaders, managers, and students the tools not just to recognize what is right, but also to ensure that the right things happen. She explains why past attempts at preparing business leaders to act ethically too often failed, arguing that the issue isn't distinguishing what is right or wrong, but knowing how to act on your values despite opposing pressure.

Why do some people achieve great personal success, yet never succeed in building a business or making an impact in their organization? John C. Maxwell knows the answer. According to Maxwell, the greatest leadership principle that he has ever learned in over 35 years of leadership is that those closest to the leader will determine the success level of that leader. It’s not enough for a leader to have vision, energy, drive, and conviction. If you want to see your dream come to fruition, you must learn how to develop the leaders around you.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution provides a simple, proven formula for achieving the goals that every individual or organization needs to reach. From Marriott to the U.S. Navy, Covey and his team have worked with more than 200,000 people in hundreds of organizations to improve performance, identifying and honing four secrets of perfect execution: Focus on the Wildly Important; Act on the Lead Measures; Keep a Compelling Scoreboard; and Create a Cadence of Accountability.

Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon. Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways.

Leadership accountability is a major issue in organizations around the globe. Research has shown that teams and individual employees are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the degree of accountability demonstrated by their leaders. Effective teams need responsible and accountable leaders - the solution seems simple. Yet, thousands of businesses are struggling with mediocre performance and widening gaps in leadership.

In this insightful and comprehensive guide, Addy Osmani shares more than a decade of experience working on the Chrome team at Google, uncovering secrets to engineering effectiveness, efficiency, and team success. Engineers and engineering leaders looking to scale their effectiveness and drive transformative results within their teams and organizations will learn the essential principles, tips, and frameworks for building highly effective engineering teams.

Brought to life through real-world examples and backed by rigorous data, The Athena Doctrine shows how feminine traits are ascending - and bringing success to people and organizations around the world. By nurturing, listening, collaborating and sharing, women and men are solving problems, finding profits, and redefining success in every realm.

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!

Journalist Simone Stolzoff traces how work has come to dominate Americans’ lives—and why we find it so difficult to let go. Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers and other workers across the American economy, Stolzoff exposes what we lose when we expect work to be more than a job. Rather than treat work as a calling or a dream, he asks what it would take to reframe work as a part of life rather than the entirety of our lives. What does it mean for a job to be good enough?

Our Iceberg Is Melting is a simple fable about doing well in an ever-changing world. Based on the award-winning work of Harvard's John Kotter, it is a story that has been used to help thousands of people and organizations. The fable is about a penguin colony in Antarctica. A group of beautiful emperor penguins live as they have for many years. Then one curious bird discovers a potentially devastating problem threatening their home - and pretty much no one listens to him.

Linda Kohanov, author of the bestselling The Tao of Equus, pioneered a deep understanding of "the way of the horse," including the extraordinary nonverbal communication of skilled riders and the collaborative power of "herding cultures" through the centuries. She has adapted this profound, time-tested approach to modern life and the organizations in which top-down management hierarchies have become obsolete.