Workplace Management

Drawing on their groundbreaking data-driven research, as well as in-depth case studies and extensive interviews with managers and employees at companies like IBM, Accenture, and eBay, the authors show what behaviors define a connector manager, and why they are able to build powerhouse teams. They also show why other types of managers fail to be equally effective, and how they can incorporate behaviors of connector managers in order to be more effective at building teams.

Are your organization's ideas growing stale? Do your employees need to refresh their thinking? We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the 10 most important ones to help you instill creativity across your organization.

For decades Tom Peters has been preaching the gospel of putting people first, and in today's rapidly changing business environment, this message is more important than ever. With his unparalleled expertise and inimitable charisma, Peters provides a roadmap for you and your organization to thrive amidst the tech tsunami, and he has a lot of fun doing it. The Excellence Dividend is an important new book from one of today’s greatest business thinkers.

A humorous yet practical five-step guide to ridding ourselves - and our companies - of the bureaucratic bottlenecks and red tape that plague every office.

Mastering Executive Transitions: The Definitive Guide, by Navid Nazemian, explores the intersection between executive leaders and their career transitions, the research of transitions versus the reality of it, and the increased complexity and demands from executives coupled with shorter tenure and executive overwhelm. This book demonstrates how the biggest transition mistakes can be avoided and provides a proven framework to transition most successfully.

Ethical challenges ranging from designing a diversity and inclusion strategy to creating a process for handling harassment allegations or establishing an employee discipline or termination process can overwhelm even senior leaders. This quick-guide walks you through these and many more critical ethical challenges you’ll face when managing a team and workplace.

What should our post-COVID work world look like? In Connected Capitalism, David Weitzner shows us how to draw from the classic teachings of Judaism in order to positively transform our workplaces and our working lives. He outlines a philosophy that will empower the disenchanted to build a stable future in a world of crony capitalism, global pandemics, racial injustice, and social disconnect. Weitzner, a professor of management who chooses to look beyond management and mindfulness, envisions a workplace based on the ancient Jewish practices of mitzvah.

Preeminent leadership scholar Linda Hill, along with former Pixar tech wizard Greg Brandeau, MIT researcher Emily Truelove, and Being the Boss coauthor Kent Lineback, found among leaders a widely shared, and mistaken, assumption: that a "good" leader in all other respects would also be an effective leader of innovation. The truth is, leading innovation takes a distinctive kind of leadership, one that unleashes and harnesses the "collective genius" of the people in the organization.

From the pioneers of the management strategy that's transforming businesses worldwide, Making Work Human shows how to implement a culture of performance and gratitude in the workplace—and seize a competitive edge, increase profitability, and drive business momentum.

A groundbreaking and paradigm-shifting book, The Speed of Trust challenges our age-old assumption that trust is merely a soft, social virtue and instead demonstrates that trust is a hard-edged, economic driver -- a learnable and measurable skill that makes organizations more profitable, people more promotable, and relationships more energizing.

Entrepreneur, bestselling author, and business coach Jadah Sellner knows what it’s like to be burned out, in debt, and just barely holding on to a new business. In the process of launching and building multiple companies, she realized today’s aggressive 24/7 hustle culture wasn’t working for her—or for her clients. In She Builds, Sellner shares a new entrepreneurial model for women, centered on sustainable leadership—a practical framework they can use to create a business on their own terms, prioritize their well-being, and break free from the toxic culture that leads to burnout.

In Applied Empathy, Michael Ventura, CEO and founder of Sub Rosa, a design firm that finds creative solutions for iconic brands and institutions such as GE, Nike, Citibank, Nikon, and Warby Parker and also West Point and the White House, offers entrepreneurs and executives a radical new business book and way forward. Applied Empathy presents real strategies, based on Sub Rosa’s design work as well as the popular class Ventura and his team have taught at Princeton University, on how to make lasting connections and evolve your business internally (your employees, culture, and product/services) as well as externally (your brand, consumers, and value).

The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick W. Taylor introduces the concept of applying scientific methods to manage labor and operations within industries. Taylor, known as the father of scientific management, argues for efficiency and productivity through the optimization of work processes and a scientific approach to labor management. His work laid the foundation for modern organizational theory and management practices, emphasizing task standardization, time management, and worker training to increase productivity and economic efficiency.

We all know that IQ, education, knowledge, and technical skills are essential for professionals, but they alone are insufficient for effective leadership. Who you are as a person - your personality and character - drives leadership performance and determines who thrives and who fails. In Personality at Work, psychologist Ron Warren lays out the key personality traits that drive high performance - and the common traits that derail it.

Why were the American POWs imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton so resilient in captivity and so successful in their subsequent careers? This book presents six principles practiced within the POW organizational culture that can be used to develop high-performance teams everywhere. The authors offer examples from both the POWs’ time in captivity and their later professional lives that identify, in real-life situations, the characteristics necessary for sustainable, high-performance teamwork.

Develop and expand your innate leadership abilities through daily exercises and challenges designed to help you grow into the leader you want to be and prepare you for the job you were made to have. A recent Harvard Business Review article outlining a study of over 17,000 leaders found that although, on average, people begin to supervise others at age 30, most do not start to receive formal leadership training until their forties.

What can you learn from the most successful companies in the world? The Spanx Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled entrepreneur Sara Blakely to dominate the shapewear industry and become a billionaire.

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."

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.

The hardest part of a manager’s job isn’t staying organized, meeting deliverable dates, or staying on budget. It’s dealing with people who are too comfortable doing things the way they’ve always been done and too afraid to do things differently. Treasurer, a courage-building pioneer, proposes a bold antidote: courage. With more courage, workers gain the confidence to take on harder projects, embrace company changes with more enthusiasm, and extend themselves in ways that will benefit their careers and their company.