Workplace Management

As Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli implied, you're either predator or prey, and the animal you most resemble determines your position on the food chain. In The Wolf in CIO's Clothing Gartner analyst and author Tina Nunno expands on Machiavelli's metaphor, examining seven animal types and the leadership attributes of each. Nunno posits the wolf - a social animal with strong predatory instincts - as the ideal example of how a leader can adapt and thrive.

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.

Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity. In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help listeners choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization.

Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.

Setting business strategy enables you to develop absolute clarity on priorities, organize resources, and get better results than ever before. It may sound complicated, but Brian Tracy knows how to make it simple. In this practical audiobook, he shares the most important lessons for strategic planning.

From the time we learn to speak, we're told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When you become a manager, it’s your job to say it--and your obligation. Author Kim Scott was an executive at Google and then at Apple, where she developed a class on how to be a good boss. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, Radical Candor. Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly.

"What an asshole!" How many times have you said that about someone at work? You're not alone! In this groundbreaking book, Stanford University professor Robert I. Sutton builds on his acclaimed Harvard Business Review article to show you the best ways to deal with assholes...and why they can be so destructive to your company.

As one of the globe's most trusted leadership mentors, John C. Maxwell debunks the myths that hold people back from leaning into and developing their influence. In this inspiring call-to-action, he shows middle managers how to leverage their unique positions and become 360 degree leaders by exercising influence in all directions - up (to the boss), across (among their peers), and down (to those they lead).

Best-selling author and scholar Michael Roberto presents a thorough investigation of organizational obstacles to creative thought. Highly relevant to the growth crises many enterprises face in today's economic landscape, this book examines how to break barriers to spark creativity and foster new ideas.

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.

In Immunity to Change, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey show how our individual beliefs - along with the collective mindsets in our organizations - combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. By revealing how this mechanism holds us back, Kegan and Lahey give us the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can bring our organizations forward with us.

Being a great leader means getting the fundamentals right. It also means consistently doing the "little things" that make a positive difference in the lives of employees, customers, and other stakeholders. The Busy Leader's Handbook: How to Lead People and Places That Thrive is a practical, easy-to-use book filled with gentle reminders of what we should be doing every day - especially when work is at its most intense.

Tremendous forces for change are radically reshaping the world of work. Disruptive innovations, radical thinking, new business models and resource scarcity are impacting every sector. Although the scale of expected change is not unprecedented, what is unique is the pervasive nature of the change and its accelerating pace which people in organizations have to cope with. Structures, systems, processes and strategies are relatively simple to understand and even fix.

Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have. The new opportunity is that it's easier than ever to find, organize, and lead a tribe. The Web has enabled an explosion of all kinds of tribes - and created shortage of people to lead them. This is the growth industry of our time. Tribes will help you understand exactly what's at stake, and why YOU can and should lead a tribe of your own.

The Employee Experience helps organizations attract and retain top talent, and reveals the secrets for building a deeply engaged workforce. With insights into the dynamics of trust and mutual expectations, this book proves that before you can deliver a transcendent customer experience (CX), you must first build a superlative employee experience (EX). It's not about perks. It's not about creating a worker's utopia, and it doesn't mean that work must be easy; employees are responsible for managing expectations and meeting the organization's requirements

In this revised and updated edition, Block explores what has and has not changed in organizations and in the world in the 20 years since the first edition was published. He argues that the concept of stewardship is more relevant and necessary than ever, and shows how the idea of stewardship can and must be expanded out from organizations into our communities, societies, and nations.

Studies show that asking for help makes us better and less frustrated at our jobs. It helps us find new opportunities and new talent. It unlocks new ideas and solutions, and enhances team performance. And it helps us get the things we need outside the workplace as well. And yet, we rarely give ourselves permission to ask. Here, Wayne Baker shares a set of strategies - used at companies like Google, GM, and IDEO - that individuals, teams, and leaders can use to make asking for help a personal and organizational habit.

Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times best-selling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building.

In this timely manifesto, the authors of the New York Times best-seller Rework broadly reject the prevailing notion that long hours, aggressive hustle, and "whatever it takes" are required to run a successful business today.

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.