Workplace Leadership

In this audiobook, leading consultants Dick and Emily Axelrod share a way to meet that enables you to get work done right there in the meeting, an approach they’ve spent 30 years field testing. Using the same work-design principles that transformed the mind-numbing assembly line into the dynamic factory floor and make video games so engaging, they offer a flexible, repeatable process that has already been used to run thousands of productive meetings in all kinds of organizations.

Increasingly, new employees and junior members of any profession are encouraged - sometimes stridently - to "find a mentor!" Four decades of research reveals that the effects of mentorship can be profound and enduring; strong mentoring relationships have the capacity to transform individuals and entire organizations.

Research shows you have a 50% chance of hiring the right employee...and a 50% chance of hiring the wrong one. It’s a toss up, but it doesn’t have to be. Mis-hires siphon your energy and erode team culture. Replacing them is stressful and can cost over $40,000 per re-hire. With the right tools, all of that can be avoided, and you can consistently make great hires. After years of scientific research and first-hand interview experience with thousands of candidates, Chaka Booker has created a system that helps employers consistently make great hires.

We've all read about the experts: the artists, the scientists, the engineers - that special group of people known as Imagineers for The Walt Disney Company. But who are they? How did they join the team? What is it like to spend a day in their shoes?

Ori Brafman and management consultant Judah Pollack dramatically demonstrate how even the best and most efficient organizations - from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army - can become more innovative by allowing a little unstructured space and "contained chaos" into their planning and decision-making. Through their consulting work, they realized that while structure and hierarchy are essential both in large corporations and small groups, too much of either can stifle creativity.

Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, IMoral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation.

Business Ethics for Better Behavior concisely answers the three most pressing ethical questions business professionals face: What makes business practices right or wrong? Why do normal, decent businesspeople of good will sometimes do the wrong thing? And how can we use the answer to these questions to get ourselves, our coworkers, our bosses, and our employees to behave better?

Eliminate sexual harassment, unconscious bias, ethical lapses and other HR nightmares! Companies spend millions on legal compliance training and initiatives to eliminate workplace drama and the resulting low morale and lawsuits, but don't always get the results they want. Most organizations understand that simply checking legal compliance boxes around sexual harassment, bias, etc. isn't enough, but are at a loss on how to implement solutions, especially in today's post-#MeToo world.

Running with Purpose is a highly engaging listen with insights, inspirational stories, and tangible takeaways for current and aspiring leaders, entrepreneurs, Berkshire Hathaway enthusiasts, and especially the 150+ million runners worldwide and those in the broader running community who continually invest in themselves and put positive energy into the world.

You're in a matrix, whether you realize it or not. The test: Do you have multiple bosses? Do you depend on a variety of resources throughout the organization to get your tasks done, and do these resources report into other people or teams? If you answered ''yes'' to either, you're in a matrix role. Matrix roles are everywhere. The field customer contact person who writes contracts, negotiates delivery and troubleshoots product issues is in a matrix role.

This. It’s insightful, useful, funny, and incredibly easy to relate to. The audience is distanced in the intro and then pulled into the fold in a unique and engaging way. I love the “tough-love” approach; this audiobook takes a hard, honest look at what people can do to change, what best practices and methods are, and what a toxic work environment looks like. Importantly, it refuses to let the listener bypass recognizing their own flaws and weak points, but it also doesn’t make the listener feel alienated or judged for not being perfect.

Because they're doing the day-to-day work, front-line employees see many problems and opportunities their managers don't. But most organizations fail to realize this potentially extraordinary source of revenue-enhancing ideas. The authors of Ideas Are Free use real-world examples from their work with hundreds of organizations to show how to exploit the virtually free, perpetually renewable resource of employee ideas.

Organizations are facing an engagement crisis. Not surprisingly, these stakeholders have developed deflector shields to protect themselves. Only a privileged few organizations are allowed to penetrate the shield, and even less will meaningfully engage. To penetrate the shield, and engage the audience, organizations need an edge. Gamification has emerged as a way to gain that edge and organizations are beginning to see it as a key tool in their digital engagement strategy.

Creativity, new ideas, innovation - in any age they are keys to success. Yet, as Stanford Professor Robert Sutton explains, the standard rules of business behaviour and management are precisely the opposite of what it takes to build an innovative company. We are told to hire people who will fit in; to train them extensively; and to work to instil a corporate culture in every employee. In fact, in order to foster creativity, we should hire misfits, goad them to fight and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture.

In A Good Time to Be a Girl, Helena Morrissey sets out how we might achieve the next big breakthrough towards a truly inclusive modern society. Drawing on her experience as a City CEO, mother of nine, and founder of the influential 30% Club, which campaigns for gender-balanced UK company boards, her manifesto for new ways of working, living, loving and raising families is for everyone, not just women.

Lean Six Sigma is best learned on a structured framework. As such, this book has been organized in such a way that you will not only understand the solution but also how to apply the same to your problem. To help you do that, the book also presents information in a practical and not overly complicated manner. In short, if you are the one that wants useful information presented to them minus the pomp and fluff, then this book should be worth the while.

Beyond Leaning In is a different kind of business book - based on research, but told as a novel and designed to spark discussion among friends, family, classmates, and co-workers across genders and generations. Through the perspective of female and male characters across generations, listeners gain new insights about why gender gaps are so hard to close despite our best intentions. We are inspired to think differently about what both individuals and organizations must do to ensure all employees thrive.

Kindness isn’t merely about getting along with people and being nice. It’s a game changer in business, the door opener to opportunity, and the key to authenticity and confidence. It’s a superpower that can be honed through an intentional lifestyle of kindness and is especially important in these divisive times.

As organizations of all kinds move increasingly toward shared and rotating leadership, they are calling on the circle model to form sustainable teams and adopt circle-driven group processes such as World Caf, Open Space, and Art of Hosting. Meetings in the round have become the preferred tool for moving individual commitment into group action. This book lays out the structure of circle conversation, based on the original work of the co-authors who have studied and standardized the essential elements that constitute circle practice.

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day demands of your current job and lose sight of the big picture, but with a typical career spanning fifty years or more, you do so at your own peril. It's up to you to chart your own course to professional success. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the 10 most important ones to help you develop yourself, make the right career moves, navigate inevitable detours and disruptions, and turn your professional dreams into reality.