Workplace Management

We made some incorrect assumptions about work, and those assumptions are killing us. We allowed a narrative that is solely about earnings to replace what we know to be true about human motivation. Human beings are hardwired to seek purpose, but according to data, most people don't feel a sense of purpose in their work. Work has become a grind, an endless series of tasks that lack meaning.

What really drives workplace equity and inclusion - beyond strategies and systems? The truth is, all historically excluded persons who have broken through to greater levels of professional belonging and achievement have succeeded not by policy and systems change alone, but because of leaders who chose to remove barriers, open doors, and guide them toward their goals. The bottom line? Someone made a way for them. Using case studies, data, and candid storytelling, Tara Jaye Frank outlines how leaders with power and position can clear the path to workplace equity.

Using numerous examples, Robinson and Schroeder argue that the employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services are in the best position to see where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact.

In this timely and essential guide, McKinsey alumni Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas present a proven approach to workplace anxiety that reduces stress, boosts well-being, and overcomes blocks that get in the way of success. It begins with changing our relationship with fear and then developing strategies that improve outlook and performance, leading to greater profits, sustainable growth, and personal rewards. It’s only possible with a culture of unfear.

Armed with empirical evidence from the provocative studies he leads around the globe, Wagner guides you through the new realities of what it takes to get the highest levels of intensity from people in a more mercenary, skeptical, and wired work world. He explains how elements such as individualization, fearlessness, transparency, recognition, and coolness are reciprocated with loyalty, productivity, innovation, and - inescapably - corporate reputation.

Where can a person go to learn how to become a better team player? Your choices are definitely limited. John C. Maxwell takes the pain out of knowing what makes a team tick. If you want to have a better team, you have to develop better players. Great team players, like great teams, are formed from the inside out. The qualities Maxwell teaches quickly take you to the heart of teamwork. Anybody can understand them and apply them - whether at home, on the job, at church, or on the ball field.

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.

Every manager makes tough calls - it comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the "gray areas" - situations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, you've done the best analysis you can, and you still don't know what to do. But you have to make a decision. In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems.

Common sense and prudence have long been among the guiding tenets of society, but in today's economy they have been completely abandoned in the interest of blindly maximizing profits. Common-Sense Business shows that this current economic model is both detrimental and unsustainable, and that we must transform the global economy along the lines of common sense toward the common good.

Whether you're a manager, owner, or employee, Customer Service Training 101 gets you up to speed fast. The completely revised and updated third edition addresses every aspect of face-to-face, phone, online, social media, and self-service interactions. Using scenarios, guidelines, and practice exercises, this inspiring training manual explains what to say and do, what to avoid, and why interactions go astray.

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.

The only thing you can rely on in today’s workplace is uncertainty. Between mergers and acquisitions, layoffs and team shuffles, pandemics and recessions, only the nimble survive. Change on the Run is your secret weapon to navigating it all. Change on the Run provides a laser-focused guide to navigating your way through disruption, without any time-consuming fluff or theory. Change-management expert Phil Buckley gives you 44 tried-and-true survival strategies for responding to transitions and disruptions as quickly as possible.

Sometimes bad accidents happen. When a fatal accident happens, your organization will find itself at a terrible crossroads. The choices your organization must make will set the course for the eventual recovery from this horrible event. The need to understand and explain how the awful event happened is paramount to bouncing forward to a better and more stable future. How you investigate this event is connected to whether your organization wants to blame and punish or learn and improve.

In this bold, enlightening book, social psychologist and professor Daniel M. Cable takes leaders into the minds of workers and reveals the surprising secret to restoring their zest for work. Disengagement isn't a motivational problem, it's a biological one. Humans aren't built for routine and repetition. We're designed to crave exploration, experimentation, and learning - in fact, there's a part of our brains, which scientists have coined "the seeking system", that rewards us for taking part in these activities. But the way organizations are run prevents many of us from following our innate impulses. As a result, we shut down.

With increased demand for hybrid and fully remote work styles, most firms understand that some form of distance work is here to stay—and have put some remote protocols in place. But many companies either see the shift to remote work as a threat to their culture and management style, or they just don’t know how to make the transition. It’s time to take advantage of the many opportunities remote work presents. This book will tell you how.

In the modern workplace, employees collaborate. Managers are expected to be effective team leaders and employees are expected to be valued teammates. But many teams struggle. Being part of a struggling team can be unpleasant, but it can also hurt your career and waste company resources.

Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow reveals the counterintuitive reasons why so many partnerships and groups break down - and why some break through. The best teams are more than the sum of their parts, but why does collaboration so often fail to fulfill this promise? In Dream Teams, Snow takes us on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring what separates groups that simply get by together from those that get better together.

Berkshire Hathaway, the $300+ billion conglomerate that Warren Buffett built, is among the world's largest and most famous corporations. Yet for all its power and celebrity, few people understand Berkshire, and many assume it cannot survive without Buffett. This book challenges that assumption. In a comprehensive portrait of the corporate culture that unites Berkshire's subsidiaries, Lawrence Cunningham unearths the traits that assure the conglomerate's perpetual prosperity.

In this new audiobook, Time Management: Perfecting the Lifestyle Called Punctuality, you will learn some of the reasons why we are often late, how to effectively deal with the problem, and plenty of advice and strategy to cut down on the instances of it.

After five years of ground-breaking research, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom share some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships. The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed).