Workplace Behavior

The Human Element is for anyone who wants to introduce a new idea or innovation into the world. Most marketers, innovators, executives, and activists operate on a deep assumption. It is the belief that the best way to convince people to embrace a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself.

Human connection affects much more than the bottom line. Organizations thrive when employees feel valued, the environment is energized, and high productivity and innovation are the norm. This requires a new kind of leader who fosters a culture of connection within the organization. An update to the popular first edition, Michael Stallard’s Connection Culture (Second Edition) provides a fresh way of thinking about leadership and offers recommendations for how to tap into the power of human connection.

The book aims to demystify Lean methodologies and provide you with clear, actionable steps to foster a lean culture within your organization. I believe that by simplifying these concepts, Lean Made Simple can open minds to the transformative possibilities of Lean. I look forward to opening your eyes to the potential of Lean and how it can revolutionize the way we work.

Unfortunately, far too many people don’t like where they work. Some organizations are unhealthy and full of disrespectful behavior. Other workplaces are simply uninspiring. For various reasons, countless people feel trapped, indifferent, or bored at work. The authors of this book believe that people should be able to like where they work. When employees like the places they work, it’s not only good for their mental health and well-being, it’s also good for their organizations - both financially and otherwise.

In the groundbreaking new book Accelerate (XLR8), leadership, change-management expert, and best-selling author John Kotter provides a fascinating answer - and a powerful new framework for competing and winning in a world of constant turbulence and disruption. Accelerate (XLR8) vividly illustrates the five core principles underlying the new network system, the eight accelerators that drive it, and how leaders must create urgency in others through role modeling.

In The Small Big, three heavyweights from the world of persuasion science and practice describe how, in today's information overloaded and stimulation saturated world, increasingly it is the small changes that you make that lead to the biggest differences. In the last few years, more research-from fields such as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and behavioral economics-has helped to uncover an even greater understanding of how influence, persuasion, and behavior change happens.

You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It's a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams. How good are you at knowing the minds of others?

In Beyond the Leader, renowned organizational behaviorist and author Dr. Tony Bridwell delivers a startlingly insightful new take on leadership and followership. The author explains how the interplay of these two dynamics can optimize team performance. In the book, Bridwell introduces seven disciplines that elevate teams from mere efficacy to a state of continuous learning and improvement, innovation, and long-term success.

As we struggle to keep up in a knowledge economy that never sleeps, we arm ourselves with life hacks, to-do lists, and an inbox-zero mentality, grasping at anything that will help us work faster, push harder, and produce more. There’s just one problem: most of these solutions are making things worse. Creativity isn’t produced on an assembly line, and endless hustle is ruining our mental and physical health while subtracting from our creative performance.

Today, every business is talking about digital transformation. With the acceleration of new technologies, every organization knows it must adapt to survive. But by their own admission, 70 percent of businesses are failing to transform. How can businesses break through to drive real change? The Digital Transformation Roadmap provides a practical blueprint for organizational change, illustrated with real-world case studies and step-by-step planning tools. Rogers shows every leader how to think beyond the churn of new technologies and rebuild their organization for a world of constant change.

We've all read about the experts: the artists, the scientists, the engineers - that special group of people known as Imagineers for The Walt Disney Company. But who are they? How did they join the team? What is it like to spend a day in their shoes?

Sarvesh's latest book focuses on grooming students and professionals to become aware and imbibe global business etiquette. This book guides you through the grooming and corporate etiquette nuances to develop and enhance your image and personality.

Kotter and co-author Dan S. Cohen delve deeper into the subject of change to get to the heart of how change actually happens. Through compelling, real-life stories from people in the trenches, in all kinds of organizations, the authors attack the fundamental problem that underlies every major transformation: How do you go beyond simply getting your message across to truly changing people's behavior?

Finally, in the first productivity book by a woman in a decade, Erin Falconer will show you how to do less - a lot less. In fact, How to Get Sh*t Done will teach you how to zero in on the three areas of your life where you want to excel, and then it will show you how to offload, outsource, or just stop giving a damn about the rest. In How to Get Sh*t Done she shows how even the most perfectionistic among us can tap in to our inner free spirit and learn to feel like badasses rather than drudges.

Bring Joy Back to Leadership—And Watch Your Team Thrive. Burnout is rampant. Employee disengagement is at an all-time high. Leaders are stuck between driving productivity and maintaining well-being—but what if the missing ingredient is joy? In Joyosity, leadership expert Jenn Whitmer presents a groundbreaking approach to workplace culture that prioritizes joy as a strategic advantage.

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.

Carol Fleming wants to show you that small talk is not as “small” as you might think. It’s the foundation of every relationship, professional and personal. It is the sound of people reaching out to each other, searching for similarities, shared interests, goodwill, connections, and friendship. And it’s something we all do every day with people we know. It’s just the one little bit about strangers that throws some people off. Graceful social conversation can be learned, even by those requiring the smallest of baby steps.

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.

Researchers have found that the accelerated pace of modern office life is taking its toll on productivity, employee engagement, creativity and wellbeing. Faced with a relentless flood of information and distractions, our brains try to process everything at once, increasing our stress, decreasing our effectiveness and negatively impacting our performance.

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.