Organizational Leadership

Agile transformations are supposed to make organizations modern, competitive, and relevant. But in the well-intentioned effort to move into the future, change leaders find themselves frustrated by pushback, limited impact, poor practices, and unfair criticism. What’s going on? Jesse Fewell's book cuts through the “quick-fix” hype of agile theory and explains a recurring transformational pattern that unpacks what holds organizations back.

Many factors shape the success or failure of a new business, whether it's a stand-alone start-up or a venture inside a larger corporation. But the most important and least understood of these factors is the personality of the entrepreneur - the particular combination of beliefs and preferences that drives his or her motivation, decision making, and leadership style. And your builder personality is the one resource you can directly control in growing a business that wins. Simply put, who you are shapes how you build for growth.

Throughout the history of business, employees had to adapt to managers and managers had to adapt to organizations. In the future, this is reversed with managers and organizations adapting to employees. This means that in order to succeed and thrive, organizations must rethink and challenge everything they know about work. The demographics of employees are changing and so are employee expectations, values, attitudes, and styles of working.

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.

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.

Avec Work & Fun: bâtir des équipes qui déchirent, Alain Samson propose une nouvelle manière de collaborer. Un modèle moderne, inspirant et ludique, qui transforme le travail en une expérience collective stimulante.

We humans crave security. Yet, continual change and adaptation are the lifeblood of a company. Keeping an organization competitive and relevant means regular change, thus shattering the sense of security people have with their jobs and their livelihoods. It’s no wonder people resist change. No matter a global corporation or small business, change is often "done" to a voiceless workforce.

Through detailed case studies, interviews with industry leaders and findings from respected academic research, and drawing on her own experience working with extraordinary brands across a broad range of sectors, Denise shows how great companies achieve the brand-culture fusion that creates extraordinary results and growth.

Managers want great teams, but most build them around decades-old ideas and practices made popular by companies that have lost their edge. Extreme Teams looks at the new generation of teams driving growth in today's most innovative firms. They do this by doing things differently: hiring the right person instead of the best person; focusing on one priority while leaving room to explore new ideas; creating an environment where people are comfortable dealing with the uncomfortable.

In today’s age of Zoom calls and hybrid workplaces, how can leaders foster relationships that allow everyone to succeed? A trio of best friends and leadership consultants at SkyeTeam have the surprising answer: workplace success starts by being a friend. Meet the Ally Mindset, a model for proactive, thoughtful work relationships. As you heal adversarial relationships and strengthen weaker ties, you’ll find that when you have best friends at work—colleagues who have your back—you thrive.

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.

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.

When it comes to running a business, the most important decisions a leader makes are not about products or locations - they're about people. For the past 33 years, Dee Ann Turner has been recruiting, training, and retaining some of the best employees in the restaurant business. Now she's ready to share her secrets on how to build, sustain, and grow an organizational culture that attracts world-class talent and consistently delights customers, no matter what your industry.

Without trust, people and businesses fail. Trusted Leader provides a framework for building trust so that you and your organizations can perform at your best. “A lack of trust is your biggest expense", says Wall Street Journal best-selling author David Horsager. Without trust, transactions cannot occur. Without trust, influence is destroyed. Without trust, leaders lose their people. Horsager introduces listeners to his eight pillars of trust through the journey of a senior leader who thought success was certain.

Decades before the business world discovered the power of authentic staff engagement, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters cofounder Bob Stiller was busy creating a company with a mission to build an engaged workforce focused on innovation. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters went public, moved to selling wholesale exclusively, invested in Keurig, and became one of the few coffee companies to ever reach $1 billion in sales. In Better and Better, Stiller explains how he did it.

Based on 15 years of research, To Be Honest explains how four factors (Clear Identity, Accountability, Governance and Cross-Functional Relationships) affect honesty, justice, and purpose within a company. When these factors are absent or ineffective, the organizational conditions compel employees to choose dishonesty and self-interest. But when done well, the organization is 16 times more likely to have people tell the truth, behave fairly and serve a greater good.

Leadership demands courage. You have to make good decisions while balancing inevitable tensions and knowing when to take risks. And that's where The Courage Way comes in. It's a guide to leadership that shows how to access and draw upon courage in all that you do. It has its roots in the work of Parker J. Palmer, who in 50 years of teaching, speaking, and writing has explored the human spirit - what he has called "the inner landscape" - and its role in life and leadership.

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.

Nolan Bushnell founded the groundbreaking gaming company Atari, the restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese's, and two dozen other companies. He also launched Steve Jobs' career, along with those of many other brilliant creatives over the course of his five decades in business. In his eagerly awaited first book, Bushnell explains how to find, hire, and nurture the people who could turn your company into the next Atari or the next Apple.

In Ego vs EQ, Jen Shirkani shares strategies for using emotional intelligence (EQ) as a primary prevention tool to avoid career derailment. The executive leadership failure rate is high: two in five CEO’s fail in the first 18 months on the job and two thirds of business’ will disappear just a decade after founding. This book teaches you how to identify the most common reasons for leadership ineffectiveness, including the cascading consequences they create, and learn tools to prevent them.