Organizational Behavior Leadership

Digital technologies are disrupting organizations of every size and shape, leaving managers scrambling to find a technology fix that will help their organizations compete. This book offers managers and business leaders a guide for surviving digital disruptions - but it is not a book about technology. It is about the organizational changes required to harness the power of technology. The authors argue that digital disruption is primarily about people and that effective digital transformation involves changes to organizational dynamics and how work gets done.

The greatest threat we face is not robots replacing us, but our reluctance to reinvent ourselves. We live in an age of wonder: cars that drive themselves, devices that anticipate our needs, and robots capable of everything from advanced manufacturing to complex surgery. Automation, algorithms, and AI will transform every facet of daily life, but are we prepared for what that means for the future of work, leadership, and creativity?

Great business leaders understand that acceptance of greater personal accountability and responsibility leads individuals, teams, and organizations back on the path to success. But with the evolving nature of 21st century business, the practical steps that go into creating a high performance culture of accountability have become more muddled than ever.

In A New Kind of Diversity, best-selling author Tim Elmore brings his decades of research and leadership experience to bear on what might be the biggest, most dramatic, and most disruptive shift the American workforce has ever seen: the vast diversity of several generations living—and working—together.

As a manager, it’s your role to achieve the highest possible return on the physical, emotional, and mental efforts your people put forth. It’s not just a return on investment ...it’s a return on energy. But how are you supposed to light a fire under each employee when studies find that most of them are working at only a fraction of their potential?

Going well beyond the recycled, superficial tactics in most leadership books, Thrive by Design introduces you to the triggers of exemplary workplace behavior at a neurological level. Tapping into these triggers leads to increased productivity, well-being, accountability, and retention. As you apply the practical approaches and tools outlined in the book, you will see less absenteeism, corrosive gossip, employee drama, accidents, and quality shortfalls.

Positive mentoring relationships can change the way we lead and help us succeed. In One Minute Mentoring, legendary management guru Ken Blanchard and Claire Diaz-Ortiz, a former Twitter executive and early employee, combine their knowledge to provide a systematic approach to intergenerational mentoring, giving listeners great insight into the power and influence of mentoring and encouraging them to pursue their own mentoring relationships.

Based on research from over 1,200 companies, including WalMart, Google, and JPMorgan Chase, this book follows real-world cases from companies where employees evolved from silent contributors to masterminds steering corporate strategies. These cases are the vanguard of a vibrant era in which workers will be the architects of their destinies, shaping not just their own careers but the entire trajectories of their organizations.

Rapid change defines the world around us, requiring a more effective type of organization. New discoveries change our understanding of how the world works, and Margaret J. Wheatley shows us how the “new science” can lead to a powerful new view of the business world. Our world has become nonlinear and filled with constant transition, and this new understanding can be applied to the way we organize work, people, and our lives. Wheatley invites us to transform our way of thinking and adapt ourselves—and our companies—to the 21st century by offering a new way of thinking.

In The High-Velocity Edge, the reissued edition of five-time Shingo Prize winner Steven J. Spear's critically acclaimed book Chasing the Rabbit, Spear describes what sets market-dominating companies apart and provides a detailed framework you can leverage to surge to the lead in your own industry. Spear examines the internal operations of dominant organizations across a wide spectrum of industries, from technology to design and from manufacturing to health care.

In The Business Playbook, serial entrepreneur Chris Ronzio walks you through his proven framework for building a playbook: the profile of your business, the people who work in it, the policies that guide it, and the processes that operate it. He shows you how to codify your culture and create a living document that allows you to let go of day-to-day responsibilities and empower your team to run the business without you. If you want to build a company that doesn’t rely on you putting in more hours, this book will show you the way.

Deliberate Discomfort follows the journey of Jason Van Camp as a new Green Beret commander taking over a team of combat-hardened Special Forces veterans. This true story tells firsthand the intense, traumatic battles these warriors fought and won, sharing lessons learned from their incredible backgrounds. A cadre of scientists further break down each experience, translating them into digestible and relatable action items, allowing the listener to apply these lessons forged under fire to their own lives.

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.

Stop chasing hot trends and start driving real growth. It's Not Rocket Science blasts through the trends and false promises permeating the business world to help you and your company get back to basics and get things done. Why doggedly pursue the "next big thing" when the most effective drivers of growth are right under your nose? This audiobook asserts that you've already heard, been taught, and know well the key fundamentals that spell business success.

In nearly every industry, smart machines are replacing human labor. It's not just factory jobs - automated technologies are handling people's investments, diagnosing illnesses, and analyzing written documents. If we humans are going to endure, Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig say we're going to need a dose of humility. We need to be humble enough to let go of the idea that "smart" means knowing the most, using that information quickest, and making the fewest mistakes. Smart machines will always be better than we are at those things.

Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone. According to The Boston Consulting Group's fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past 60 years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness - that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems - has increased by a whopping factor of 35.

Humans have two basic desires: to stand out and to fit in. Companies respond by creating groups that tend to the extreme - where everyone fits in and no one stands out, or where everyone stands out and no one fits in. How do we find that happy medium where workers can demonstrate their individuality while also feeling they belong? The answer, according to Stefanie Johnson, is to Inclusify.

Whether you're stuck in middle management, stalled in mid-career, or mulling over a major career change, sometimes the proverbial glass ceiling feels very real indeed - a barrier keeping you from fulfilling your potential. Unlike other books, which focus on fixing you, Kick Some Glass empowers you to break through your glass ceiling and guides you toward understanding your context and uncovering what you really want, what your definition of success is, what your values are, and how to set the goals to reach your potential.

You can bring about positive, lasting change in the world, and you don’t have to be rich and famous or lead a big organization to do it. Global leadership icons and best-selling authors John C. Maxwell and Rob Hoskins provide the inspiring and practical roadmap to get started being the change you want to see - in your community and beyond.

You don't have to do a dangerous job to endure a health-destroying, possibly life-threatening workplace. Just ask the manager in a senior finance role whose immense workload required frequent all-nighters, leading to alcohol and drug addiction. Or the dedicated news media producer whose commitment to getting the story resulted in a 60-pound weight gain thanks to having no down time to eat properly or exercise. These individuals are not exceptions. Every industry is filled with them, and the costs, to both employees and their companies, is enormous.