Government Leadership

The world is changing fast. Political risk - the probability that a political action could significantly impact a company's business - is affecting more businesses in more ways than ever before. A generation ago, political risk mostly involved a handful of industries dealing with governments in a few frontier markets. Today, political risk stems from a widening array of actors, including Twitter users, local officials, activists, terrorists, hackers, and more. In today's globalized world, there are no "safe" bets.

Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

COVID. Climate change. Refugee resettlement. Global supply chains. We're facing a new generation of complex problems, stretching across the public and private sectors. Historically we've looked to government for big solutions, but the reality is, the government we have now is a poor match for the problems we face. We need a fresh new approach. As William D. Eggers and Donald F. Kettl show in this indispensable book, we need a government of bridgebuilders—public managers and leaders who collaborate with partners, both inside and outside government, to get the job done.

The goal of playing the great game of business has always been to find a way to teach the have-nots how the haves make it. It’s about creating and distributing wealth equitably as a way to close those gaps in wealth that plague our society. It’s about changing the game. We authored Change the Game for those of you who continue to seek a brighter side of capitalism - one that truly transforms lives for the better. This book is about hope: No matter how grim things look, you can make them better.

We live in a period of leadership in crisis. At home, and across the globe, we sense that unqualified and irresponsible individuals are being elevated to positions of power, strong men and autocrats are consolidating their hold on governance, and the people are losing faith in the prospect of a better future. How have we arrived at this point? And how can we correct our course? For the past decade, Moshik Temkin has challenged his students at Harvard University and around the world to grapple with the nature of leadership. Now, Temkin refashions the classroom for a wider audience.

Forty-one-year Army veteran General (Ret.) Martin Dempsey and 41-year-old UC Berkeley associate professor Ori Brafman have been friends for almost 10 years. Though they have almost nothing in common, their collaboration has produced a powerful message. Their new book, Radical Inclusion, examines today’s leadership landscape and describes the change it demands of leaders. The nature of power is changing and should not be measured by degree of control alone.

David Paterson overcame severe disability and racial prejudice to become a state senator, lieutenant governor, and - unexpectedly - governor of New York. Paterson was the first and only blind governor - other than a man who held the title for 11 days in 1975 - and the fourth person of African descent to hold the office of governor in American history. Paterson may also be the only governor in history to have been arrested outside the governor's office prior to his service.

Charles Handy is one of the giants of contemporary thought. His books on management - including Understanding Organizations and Gods of Management - have changed the way we view business. His work on broader issues and trends - such as Beyond Certainty and The Second Curve - has changed the way we view society. In his new book, Handy builds on a life's work to glimpse into the future and see what challenges and opportunities the next generation faces.

Like all of us, though few so visibly, Alan Greenspan was forced by the financial crisis of 2008 to question some fundamental assumptions about risk management and economic forecasting. No one with any meaningful role in economic decision making in the world saw beforehand the storm for what it was. How had our models so utterly failed us? To answer this question, Alan Greenspan embarked on a rigorous and far-reaching multiyear examination of how Homo economicus predicts the economic future, and how it can predict it better.

Governor Charlie Baker, one of the most popular governors in the United States, with a reputation for getting things done, wants to put the service back into public service. Results is the much-needed implementation guide for anyone in public service, as well as for leaders and managers in large organizations hamstrung by bureaucracy and politics. With a broad range of examples, Baker, a Republican, and Kadish, a Democrat, show how to move from identifying problems to achieving results in a way that bridges divides instead of exacerbating them.

Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet. Points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life. Game designer Adrian Hon delivers a blistering takedown of how corporations, schools, and governments use games and gamification as tools for profit and coercion.

This provocative book makes a compelling case for reducing the number of workdays in a week to four. International business expert Robert Grosse draws on scholarly research to construct an appealing argument for why the four-day workweek benefits both the organization and the employee. Research has demonstrated that longer work hours harm the individual and don't amount to a more effective organization. The book goes beyond merely arguing that a reduced workweek is a good idea. It delves into why, explores the means for achieving it, and scrutinizes the barriers to getting there.

The complete rankings of our best - and worst - presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership. Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories - their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with everyone in between.

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone profound changes - economic cycles that veer from boom to bust - from which it has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason's Postcapitalism argues that we are on the brink of a change so big and so profound that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system within which entire societies function, will mutate into something wholly new.

For thousands of years, we've created things called games that tap the tremendous psychic power of fun. In a revised and updated edition of For the Win, authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter argue that applying the lessons of gamification could change your business, the way you learn or teach, and even your life. Werbach and Hunter explain how games can be used as a valuable tool to address serious pursuits like marketing, productivity enhancement, education, innovation, customer engagement, human resources, and sustainability.

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the fifth century BCE). The work, attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (Sunzi), comprises 13 chapters, each devoted to an aspect of warfare and its application to military tactics and strategy. It contains a detailed analysis of the Chinese military, from weapons and strategy to rank and discipline as well as the importance of intelligence and espionage in war.

Tribalnomics is a treatise on alliance and leadership. It was written to empower readers with a system of formulas designed to eliminate emotional fragility and chaos in the management of their tribal roles. These roles may include personal relationships, business leadership, or individual self-improvement. Go to Tribalnomics.com for more information.

The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show, the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot Cohen examines four great democratic war statesmen—Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion—to reveal the surprising answer—the politicians. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture.

This slim primer distills Sharma's decades of experience into 10 rules for identifying nations that are poised to take off or crash. A wake-up call to economists who failed to foresee every recent crisis, including the cataclysm of 2008, 10 Rules is full of pioneering insights on signs of political, economic, and social change. Sharma explains, for example, why autocrats are bad for the economy; robots are a blessing, not a curse; and consumer prices don’t tell you all you need to know about inflation.

From day one of the BP oil spill, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal acted as a leader in a crisis should: quickly and decisively - providing a stark contrast to President Obama, who dithered and bogged down the containment process with needless bureaucracy. In his new book, Leadership and Crisis, Jindal reveals the extent of the Obama administration’s incompetence during the oil spill and shows why commonsense conservative solutions are exactly what we need to solve all of our nation’s biggest problems.