Organizational Leadership

In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, corporate executive, and consultant, for the last 16 years August Turak worked alongside the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey, watching firsthand as they undertook new enterprises and sustained an incredibly successful business practice. Service and selflessness are at the heart of this 1,500-year-old monastic tradition’s remarkable business success, an ancient though immensely relevant economic model that preserves what is positive and productive about capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions.

The companion to the blockbuster bestseller, Getting Things Done. Since its publication in 2001, Getting Things Done has become, as Time magazine put it, "the defining self-help business book" of the decade. Having inspired millions of readers around the world, it clearly spoke to an urgent need...

You want maximum business performance? Look under the hood, and you'll find your employee culture: It is the power that drives the enterprise engine. To harness that rumbling power, you've got to solve the mystery of what an employee culture actually is, how it operates, and how to move it forward. These are the keys that this audiobook will put right in your hands.

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.

Mission Design by Aaron Abramson is a timely guide for ministry leaders navigating the challenges of a volatile and rapidly changing world. With technological growth, societal shifts, and economic instability reshaping the landscape, traditional five-year plans feel out of touch. Yet, even amidst uncertainty, opportunities for meaningful kingdom impact abound.

Leadership isn't something you're born with or gifted as a reward for an abundance of charisma; true leadership stems from core skills that can be learned. Get more of the leadership ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership (Vol. 2). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you maximize your own and your organization's performance.

This. It’s insightful, useful, funny, and incredibly easy to relate to. The audience is distanced in the intro and then pulled into the fold in a unique and engaging way. I love the “tough-love” approach; this audiobook takes a hard, honest look at what people can do to change, what best practices and methods are, and what a toxic work environment looks like. Importantly, it refuses to let the listener bypass recognizing their own flaws and weak points, but it also doesn’t make the listener feel alienated or judged for not being perfect.

Cynthia Shapiro is a former human resources executive who's pulling back the curtain on the way that companies really work. In Corporate Confidential, she unmasks startling truths and what you can do about them. Shapiro pulls no punches, giving listeners an inside look at a secret world of hidden agendas they would never normally see: a world of insider information and insights that can save a career.

One of the best-recognized and admired brands in the world, Starbucks singlehandedly transformed the ordinary delivery of coffee into a cultural phenomenon - a result of the company’s exemplary leadership practices. Joseph Michelli explains that the international success of Starbucks begins with a promise: To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.

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.

Joy, Inc. offers an inside look at how Sheridan and Menlo created a joyful culture, and shows how any organization can follow their methods for a more passionate team and sustainable, profitable results. Sheridan also shows how to run smarter meetings and build cultural training into your hiring process. Joy, Inc. offers an inspirational blueprint for listeners in any field who want a committed, energizing atmosphere at work - leading to sustainable business results.

Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval have moved to the top of the advertising industry by following a simple but powerful philosophy: it pays to be nice. While so many companies encourage a dog-eat-dog mentality, The Kaplan Thaler Group has succeeded through chocolate and flowers.

This is the go-to guide on working with anyone in your office - from the difficult or negative to the toxic and destructive - whether they are your manager, a team member, or someone who’s just waiting out the clock. Chock-full of useful advice that will make your workday happier and more productive.

Mark Schwartz, author of leadership classics A Seat at the Table and The Art of Business Value, reveals a new (empowering) model for the often soul-shattering, frustrating, Kafkaesque nightmare we call bureaucracy. Through humor, a healthy dose of history and philosophy, and real-life examples from his days as a government bureaucrat, Schwartz shows IT leaders (and the whole of business) how to master the ways of the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler to create a lean, learning, and enabling bureaucracy.

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 Leading Through, the dynamic struggle between two competing paradigms of leadership is compellingly illustrated: an old paradigm that involves control and power over people versus a new one that enables and inspires power through people. With rich examples and stories, the authors show how deeply ingrained the legacy model of leadership remains and how destructive it is, causing waste and loss of human potential, stifling innovation, and ultimately resulting in what the authors call "organizational darkness."

Every organization from any sector can benefit from becoming trauma-informed. Trauma-informed workplaces understand and recognize the presence of trauma, acknowledge the role trauma can play in a person’s life, and promote work environments that support the individual and collective well-being of all staff and clients. They create a sense of belonging, connection, and safety through their attitudes, policies, and practices. As a result of these practices, organizations that are trauma-informed are more resilient and better equipped to achieve their missions.

Most business leaders understand the power of a dynamic, positive culture - but almost every effort to change culture fails. Why? The approach is often all wrong. Rather than attempt to "transform" a new culture from the ground up, leaders need to instead spearhead a culture renovation. In Culture Renovation, Kevin Oakes provides tangible, tactical insights drawn from a robust data set and informed by CEOs and HR leaders at many of the world's top companies.

We’ve all had those perfect moments when events that could never be predicted, let alone controlled, remarkably seem to guide us along our path. Carl Jung called this phenomena “synchronicity” - “a collaboration between persons and events that seems to enlist the cooperation of fate.” In this book, Joseph Jaworski argues that the right state of mind will make you the kind of person who can enlist the cooperation of fate and take advantage of synchronicity, creating the conditions for “predictable miracles.”

The Talent War explores how US Special Operations Forces assess, select, and develop their world-class talent. You'll learn how to adopt a talent mindset, the single greatest weapon you can possess in the war for talent. When your organization reflects this mindset, you will hire, train, and develop the right people and put them in the best positions to make decisions that allow you to retake the advantage and win the war.