Workplace Management

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.

One of your most important responsibilities as a manager is to motivate your employees to do their absolute best. Managers who create positive, rewarding, high-energy environments reduce absenteeism and turnover while dramatically increasing productivity and quality. In Motivation, success expert Brian Tracy draws on his decades of experience bringing out the best in others to provide 21 of the fastest, most powerful methods ever discovered for increasing the effectiveness of any individual or group.

Whereas the first edition of Beyond Performance introduced the authors' "Five Frames of Performance and Health" approach to change management, the fully revised and updated Beyond Performance 2.0 has been transformed into a truly practical "how to" guide for leaders. Every aspect of how to lead change at scale is covered in a step-by-step manner, always accompanied by practical tools and real-life examples.

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.

Are your organization's ideas growing stale? Do your employees need to refresh their thinking? We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the 10 most important ones to help you instill creativity across your organization.

In The Small Big, three heavyweights from the world of persuasion science and practice describe how, in today's information overloaded and stimulation saturated world, increasingly it is the small changes that you make that lead to the biggest differences. In the last few years, more research-from fields such as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and behavioral economics-has helped to uncover an even greater understanding of how influence, persuasion, and behavior change happens.

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.

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.

In Rising Above a Toxic Workplace, you'll learn how to endure, cope, or quit if necessary. Drawing from authentic - sometimes horrific - real-life stories, authors Gary Chapman, Paul White, and Harold Myra blend their expertise to give you practical guidance, empowering insight, and realistic hope. You'll discover: how workplaces can become unhealthy and how to avoid getting wounded; what drives toxic leaders and why they are so damaging to those around them.

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.

Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a "Circle of Safety" that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside. Sinek illustrates his ideas with fascinating true stories that range from the military to big business, from government to investment banking.

Productivity and effective time management end with multitasking. The false idea that multitasking is productive has become even more prevalent and damaging to our productivity and well-being since the first edition of The Myth of Multitasking was published in 2008. In this revised and updated second edition, author and productivity expert Dave Crenshaw provides a solution for the chaos of distraction that multitasking creates - and a way to combat the temptation to constantly switch between tasks.

Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world. How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room—and memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality.

The ever-increasing pace of change in today's organizations requires us all to understand and quickly adapt to constant shifts in the way our companies operate and how work gets done. Developing your own and your team's learning agility will keep your skills fresh, and help you stay flexible, grow from mistakes, and successfully respond to unexpected challenges.

Become the effective, proactive leader you aspire to be with this practical tool kit for leading people and organizations.

Remote and hybrid workplaces are here to stay, and they pose formidable obstacles that complicate managing projects and launching new products. Against this backdrop arrives Project Management in the Hybrid Workplace. In his inimitable style, Simon adeptly fuses critical research and concepts from a slew of diverse and seemingly unrelated fields, including Agile software development, human resources, supply-chain management, organizational behavior, cognitive psychology, and labor economics. Brimming with case studies, insights, and practical advice, the book is a tour de force.

Paris, 1927, a day in July. A destitute young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist. The relationship between the artist and her muse lasted less than a year, yet in 1980, just before Tamara died, she was working on a copy of Beautiful Rafaela. Author Ellis Avery imagines their affair from Rafaela’s point of view, and the final day of Tamara’s life from the painter’s point of view.

The Respectful Leader presents an engaging, thought-provoking lesson for companies seeking off-the-charts performance. Author Gregg Ward draws on 25 years of leadership consulting, coaching, and training experience to reveal the secret to great results: respect. In this true-to-life business fable, he shares the story of Des Hogan, a CEO who discovers that disrespectful behavior on the part of his leadership team is eating away at his company's morale, productivity, and profits.

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated people for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators, and parents - millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th anniversary edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the seven habits with modern additions from Sean Covey.

Mark Graban, author of the bestselling Lean Hospitals, shares stories and insights from his popular podcast, My Favorite Mistake, to teach leaders and teams how to create a culture of continuous improvement where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth. Drawing on interviews with over 200 successful entrepreneurs, executives, and thought leaders, Graban reveals how to transform mistakes into breakthroughs and cultivate a workplace where employees feel safe to experiment, innovate, and take risks.