Organizational Behavior Leadership

Institutions remain essential to human flourishing. They are the means by which communities thrive, individual vocations are fulfilled, and society is changed for the good. As a result, we all need to learn how to work effectively within institutions. That is just what Gordon Smith provides. He unpacks the core of institutional intelligence - the wisdom of working effectively within an organization. At the same time, he explains how team leaders, directors, executives, board members, key stakeholders, and employees can avoid what is often their greatest source of stress on the job,

Andy Grove, founder and former CEO of Intel shares his strategy for success as he takes the listener deep inside the workings of a major company in Only the Paranoid Survive. Under Andy Grove's leadership, Intel became the world's largest chip maker and one of the most admired companies in the world. Grove underscores his message by examining his own record of success and failure, including how he navigated the events of the Pentium flaw, which threatened Intel's reputation in 1994, and how he has dealt with the explosions in growth of the internet.

Linda Kohanov, author of the bestselling The Tao of Equus, pioneered a deep understanding of "the way of the horse," including the extraordinary nonverbal communication of skilled riders and the collaborative power of "herding cultures" through the centuries. She has adapted this profound, time-tested approach to modern life and the organizations in which top-down management hierarchies have become obsolete.

Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust. With insights from leading experts, this book will inspire you to identify areas for personal growth; assess your strengths, work preferences, values, and contributions; build your skill set and stay relevant; develop learning agility; map out a plan for where you'd like your career to go - both short and long term; find fulfillment in your work; and prepare for your next opportunity.

This comprehensive road map for optimal leadership features: breakthrough research that connects increased leadership effectiveness with enhanced business performance; the first fully integrated Universal Model of Leadership; the five stages in the evolution of leadership - Egocentric, Reactive, Creative, Integral, and Unitive - along with the organizational structures and cultures that develop at each of these stages; six leadership practices for evolving your leadership capability at a faster pace; a map of your optimal path to greater leadership effectiveness; and more!

In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring. Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing on more than a decade of research and packed with practical examples, Humanocracy lays out a detailed blueprint for creating organizations that are as inspired and ingenious as the human beings inside them.

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.

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It's their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives—consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly.

The Fearless Organization offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent, but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule, or intimidate.

Your organization's culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. People's competencies should be measured and their weaknesses shored up. People crave feedback. These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they're lies. As Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall show in this provocative, inspiring book, there are some big lies - distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking - running through our organizational lives.

Managing people is difficult wherever you work. But in the tech industry, where management is also a technical discipline, the learning curve can be brutal - especially when there are few tools, texts, and frameworks to help you. In this practical guide, author Camille Fournier (tech lead turned CTO) takes you through each stage in the journey from engineer to technical manager.

While your compliance efforts may have served you well compared to industry standards, your best efforts that yield only "acceptable" results are not nearly good enough. You are missing an essential yet elusive component. Good leaders who lead good organizations adhere to both OSHA and industry standards. But that is just the foundation. They also own their moral responsibility to ensure safe outcomes and likewise require all team members to be worthy partners in keeping themselves and the people they work beside safe.

Eileen Sharp and Vic Hightower were frustrated. After years of profitable, predictable growth, Swan Services was in a rut. Meetings were called and discussions held, but few decisions were made and even less got done. People were pointing fingers and assigning blame, but nothing happened to solve Swan’s mounting problems. It felt as though they were working harder than ever but with less impact. The company Eileen and Vic had founded and built for 10 years was a different place. It just wasn’t fun anymore.

In their eagerly awaited book, Kim and Spear bring to light a new theory of high-achieving organizations. They examine how companies solve the most important problems better, faster, and easier than their competitors by quickly and regularly closing the gap between aspirations and real-world success. This book teaches companies that are struggling to perform how to achieve the continual greatness seen in the best of the best.

This new edition of this best-selling guide offers an integrated approach to process improvement that delivers quick and substantial results in quality and productivity in diverse settings. The authors explore their Model for Improvement that worked with international improvement efforts at multinational companies as well as in different industries such as healthcare and public agencies. This edition includes new information that shows how to accelerate improvement by spreading changes across multiple sites.

Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity. In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help listeners choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization.

A new generation of business leaders is turning to mindfulness as a cutting-edge leadership tool. Scientific research suggests that the practice of mindfulness (a technique for learning to live in the present moment) can help individuals to gain clarity, reduce stress, optimize performance, and develop a greater sense of well-being. In The Mindful Leader, Michael Carroll explains what mindfulness is and how to develop it in the hectic and often stressful environment of the twenty-first century workplace.

The second installment of the Traction Library's EOS Mastery Series, People gives listeners all the tools they need to create a thriving workplace culture and shows why it's an absolutely essential part of any successful business.

Many of Philip K. Dick’s books and short stories seem like hallucinations, leading us to distant future scenarios or into surreal parallel worlds. On a second look, we discover that these social and technical developments are emerging, if they do not already exist. Dick’s philosophy is in harmony with W. Edwards Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge. Both ideas jointly together show important ways to prevent a dystopia and to use the new technologies to humanize the corporate world, including a focus on ethics, compliance, and sustainability.

Difficult people are the worst part of a manager's job. Whether it comes from direct reports or people above, outbursts, irrational demands, griping, and other disruptions need to be dealt with - and it's your responsibility to do it. Leading the Unleadable turns this dreaded chore into a straight forward process that gently, yet effectively, improves behaviors.