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.

Cheryl Bachelder joined an ailing restaurant chain and turned it into the darling of the industry - by daring to serve the people in her organization well. When Bachelder was named CEO of Popeyes in the fall of 2007, guest visits had been declining for years, restaurant sales and profit trends were negative, and the company stock price had dropped from $34 in 2002 to $13. The brand was stagnant, and relations between the company and its franchise owners were strained.

Exploring and explaining more than 80 of the world's most important theories and big ideas about trade, commerce, and management, this audiobook offers a fascinating look at the world of business past and present. A perfect primer on the fundamental tenets of the subject, The Business Book sheds light on some of history's most important milestone developments and the key business strategies used by leading thinkers and gurus from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs.

Jonathan Smart, business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach, reveals the patterns and antipatterns that will help organizations from every industry deliver better value sooner, safer, and happier through high levels of engagement, inclusion, and empowerment. Through his decades of experience in the technology world, Smart provides business leaders with a blueprint for creating a world-class organization of the future.

Companies, communities, and individuals fail for many reasons, but one of the most common - and easily avoidable - is the failure to reinvent. When people and organizations rest on prior successes rather than driving purposeful transformation, they discover too late that they have lost their market position altogether to competitors and external forces.

Every leader will agree that managing people is challenging and growing more complex. Since The Big Book of HR was first published, dramatic changes have taken place in the workplace and the workforce. This tenth anniversary edition incorporates discussions and reflections on these changes which are useful for any business owner, manager, or HR professional.

Rookie Smarts addresses the questions every experienced professional faces: Will my knowledge and skills become obsolete and irrelevant? Will a young, inexperienced newcomer upend my company or me? How can I keep up? The answer is to stay fresh, keep learning, and know when to think like a rookie.

If keeping employees is a challenge for you, Never Lose an Employee Again offers a proven framework for increasing retention, engagement, and in the process, profits. Joey Coleman, one of the world's leading experts on employee experience, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to recruit top talent, bring them onboard successfully, and keep them engaged while they produce remarkable results for years to come.

Finally, in the first productivity book by a woman in a decade, Erin Falconer will show you how to do less - a lot less. In fact, How to Get Sh*t Done will teach you how to zero in on the three areas of your life where you want to excel, and then it will show you how to offload, outsource, or just stop giving a damn about the rest. In How to Get Sh*t Done she shows how even the most perfectionistic among us can tap in to our inner free spirit and learn to feel like badasses rather than drudges.

It is rare today for employees to stay with one organization for the long tenures that were the norm before the Great Recession. In fact, "job hopping" is the new norm, especially for Millennials. In The Boomerang Principle, companies learn how to leverage this fact rather than fear it. By engendering a lifetime of loyalty from former employees, leaders can see them "return" in the form of customers, partners, clients, advocates, contractors, and even returning employees.

Every year, millions of top performers are promoted to management-level jobs - only to discover that the tactics that got them promoted are not the tactics that will make them effective in their new role. In Welcome to Management, Ryan Hawk provides practical, actionable advice and tools designed to ensure that transition is a successful one.

High achievers definitely approach their workday differently. This book gives access to the secrets and strategies they've found for making things work. Time Wise goes deeper and unveils some of the more counterintuitive but effective methods that boost your productivity. Some of the high achievers featured, along with their personal strategies, include Adam Alter setting systems instead of goals, Rita McGrath who consults her own personal board of directors, Jake Knapp who focuses on the one important thing of the day and Oliver Burkeman's approach to beating the to-do list.

In Love Is Free, Guac Is Extra, Monty shows how he used curiosity, vulnerability, love, and a unique understanding of the true meaning of empowerment to build a distinctive and wildly effective culture. From his teenage days befriending homeless people at a Colorado Dairy Queen to his nuanced navigation of a complex co-CEO relationship, Monty demonstrates a relentless humility and desire to understand the person across from him.

Only 10% to 25% of organizations get it right when it comes to achieving the expected results from their strategic planning. This means 75% to 90% of them are leaving results on the table and wasting their time on things that don't matter. Almost a decade ago, a major steel manufacturer approached Sean Ryan and his team to help them think through how to better convert strategy to results. This was the catalyst for the seven gears that translate strategy to results found in Strategy-Execution-Results (SXR).

Clash of the Generations explores a new and increasingly common workplace phenomenon, and provides strategies to help managers navigate this ever more complex maze: Traditionally, older workers would retire and make room for the next generation; instead, Baby Boomers are now prolonging their time in the workplace, yet the successive generations are still coming in. Senior leaders are now left to manage a blended workplace comprised of up to four generations - each with their own ideas of work ethic, work/life balance, long-term career goals, and much more.

What if you knew the science behind the magic - a science so predictive and powerful that you could transform your organization? What if you could use cutting-edge psychology to unlock people's innate desires to innovate, experiment, and adapt? In Primed to Perform, Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor show you how to do just that. The result: higher sales, more loyal customers, and more passionate employees.

It is taken for granted in the knowledge economy that companies must employ the most talented performers to compete and succeed. Many firms try to buy stars by luring them away from competitors. But Boris Groysberg shows what an uncertain and disastrous practice this can be.

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Corporate boards are under great pressure. Scandals and malpractice at companies like Theranos, WeWork, Uber, and Wells Fargo have raised justified questions among regulators, shareholders, and the public about the quality of corporate governance. In How Boards Work, prizewinning economist and veteran board director Dambisa Moyo offers an insider's view of corporate boards as they are buffeted by the turbulence of our times.

The Lean Leader: A Personal Journey of Transformation uses a compelling novel format to tackle the nuts and bolts of leading a Lean transformation. Listeners follow along as the characters face real crises and what seem to be unreasonable deadlines. As the story progresses, listeners will see how the main character, Don, and his colleagues transform from being "command and control" autocrats - those who make decisions and bark orders - to more Socratic coaches and mentors.