Organizational Behavior Leadership

If you have ever been part of a great team, you will know it is exponentially better than being part of a mediocre team. Teams are at the heart of working in complex domains and are essential to the success of agile approaches yet relatively few teams achieve greatness. Agile and leadership coach Geoff Watts has pulled together his many years of experience with all sorts of teams from software to product development, from medical teams to sports teams and has identified five common characteristics of great teams:

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.

Every business leader today should be asking themselves these questions. Systems and processes have been skewed too long in favor of some at the expense of others, and things are changing - fast. How to Be an Ally shows how to take personal responsibility for driving change that's good for people - and for business.

Effective leadership comes down to implementing everyday, common-sense practices to help organizations thrive - and yet so many leaders are still missing these fundamental principles from their personal and professional lives. Renowned business experts Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley disclose the simple truths about leadership they have gathered over their long and distinguished careers to help bring common sense into common practice.

We've all been taught that we must suppress or avoid emotions at work, but this inevitably leads to a loss in productivity, diminished creativity, and crushing job dissatisfaction. Research shows 85 percent of us avoid communicating crucial workplace problems upward, and many of us who are employed are actively looking for a different job. What's going on?

Richard Branson, one of the world's most famous and admired business leaders, argues that it's time to turn capitalism upside down - to shift our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities, and the planet as he writes: "People often associate me with challenges, with trying to break records while sailing the Atlantic or flying in a jet stream in a balloon or going into space with Virgin Galactic. But this audiobook isn't just about fun and adventure and exceeding one's wildest dreams."

Surviving Toxic Leadership with Gratefulness is the result of my struggle to make sense of the experiences HR professionals generously shared with me, as well as my own nearly decade long experience with a toxic leader. In this audiobook, I share gory details along with a systemic research-based perspective on toxic leadership, recognizing that the problem of a toxic workplace is never encapsulated in the leader alone. I argue throughout the audiobook that it is crucial and urgent that we not only learn about toxic leadership but act to end it.

In the new edition of this fascinating book, a book that has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Slashdot.org, Lifehacker.com and in the New York Times, best-selling author Scott Berkun pulls the best lessons from the history of innovation, including the recent software and web age, to reveal powerful and surprising truths about how ideas become successful innovations - truths people can easily apply to the challenges of today.

According to studies, we all work for the same thing--and it's not just money. It's meaning. Through our work, we seek a sense of purpose, contribution, connection, value, and hope. Digging down to the meaning of work taps our resilience in hard times and our passion in good times. That's the simple but profound premise behind this groundbreaking book by renowned management expert Dave Ulrich and psychologist Wendy Ulrich.

The original edition of Discipline Without Punishment introduced a positive approach for getting problem employees to meet - and often even exceed - job requirements. The book still delivers on that promise, and in this revised edition, Dick Grote provides new insights, along with sample dialogues, memos, and worksheets.

Organizational structures are ineffective when they do not delineate and define accountabilities. Brian Dive focuses upon the implications of clear accountability for leadership, with an in-depth analysis of “distributed leadership” - a concept neglected in the leadership literature to date. Dive explores the relationship between leadership, accountability, and organizational structure. He argues that the majority of leadership-related problems arise not from ineffective individuals but from organizational structures that lack accountable jobs.

This audiobook is about the stuff you learn when you've worked for a boss you'd swear jumped out of a Dilbert cartoon; worked in a business whose performance careened up and down like a runaway clown car; when you've faced legal or ethical problems that needed the wisdom of Solomon to sort out while they roiled your guts at night; or when you've sat on the stand across from some third-rate Perry Mason, or tried to be one yourself.

The Corporate Culture Survival Guide is the essential primer and practical guide every organization needs. Corporate culture pioneer Edgar H. Schein breaks the concept of "culture" down into real terms, delving into the behaviors, values, and shared assumptions that define it, and explains why culture is the central factor in an organization's success - or failure. This new third edition is designed specifically for practitioners needing to apply these practices in real-world settings.

For decades, alarms have sounded about declining engagement. Yet companies continue to struggle with toxic cultures, and the low productivity and unhappiness that go with them. Why is "culture" so difficult to improve? What makes so many good employees check out? Neuroscientist Paul Zak shows that innate brain functions hold the answers. It all boils down to trust. When someone shows you trust, a feel-good jolt of oxytocin surges through your brain and triggers you to reciprocate.

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.

In Why Smart Executives Fail, Sydney Finkelstein uncovers - with startling clarity and unassailable documentation - the causes regularly responsible for major business breakdowns. Why Smart Executives Fail relates the stories of great business disasters and demonstrates that there are specific, identifiable ways in which many businesses regularly make themselves vulnerable to failure.

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.

How can we create workplaces where people thrive and love what they do and where they work? Al Lopus, cofounder and CEO of Best Christian Workplaces Institute, has studied hundreds of organizations to discover eight key drivers in companies with healthy cultures and engaged employees. With compelling case studies, behind-the-curtain revelations, and enlightening personal anecdotes, Road to Flourishing will motivate leaders, managers, and their teams to reimagine, reassess, and renew their commitment to building healthy work cultures where everyone can flourish.

Shola Richards had reached the end of the road: after nearly two years at a soul-sucking job, he felt numb and suicidal. So he quit and devoted himself to nothing less than transforming the workplace, turning it into a space of respect, courtesy, and endless energy. Making Work Work focuses on inspiring current and future leaders to start a movement that will banish on-the-job bullying, put meaning back into work, and enhance coworkers' happiness and engagement.

Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business? Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now. In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea - that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.