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In today's world of rapid, disruptive change, strategy can't be separate from execution—it has to emerge from execution. You have to continually adjust your strategy to fit new realities. But if your organization isn't set up to be fast on its feet, you could easily go the way of Blockbuster or Borders.

Laura Stack shows you how to quickly drive strategic initiatives and get great results from your team. Her LEAD Formula outlines the Four Keys to Successful Execution: the ability to Leverage your talent and resources, design an Environment to support an agile culture, create Alignment between strategic priorities and operational activities, and Drive the organization forward quickly. She includes a leadership team assessment, group reading guides, and bonus self-development resources. Stack will equip you with the knowledge, skills, and inspiration to help you hit the ground running!

The era of the comfy, offsite strategy retreat is over-who has the time? Beset by rapid change, leaders have to build the strategy airplane while they fly it. Agile organizations use execution (i.e., performance) to drive strategy. Laura Stack, bestselling author of What to Do When There's Too Much to Do (25,000 copies sold), provides the tools leaders need to adapt.

The field of executive coaching is growing at an astonishing rate. Corporations are increasingly turning to coaching as an intervention, as it offers leaders and managers both on-the-job learning and built-in follow-up. But how can you make the best use of coaching within your organization?

Executive Coaching for Results helps this critical leadership development method come of age. This is not a “how-to-coach book”—there are already plenty of those—but rather a comprehensive guide on how to strategically use coaching to maximize development of talent and link the impact of coaching to bottom-line results. Underhill, McAnally, and Koriath draw on their rigorous original research (through Executive Development Associates) with Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies such as Disney, IBM, UBS, Unilever and many others,
and combine that with their years of industry experience to advance the state of the art.

Executive Coaching for Results includes topics such as:
Integrating coaching into your organization's overall leadership development strategy
Locating and screening coaches worldwide
Developing an internal coaching program
Deciding which coaching assessments and instruments are appropriate to your situation
Measuring the impact and ROI of coaching
Following up after coaching

Throughout, the authors provide numerous examples from major organizations such as Dell, Johnson and Johnson, Intel, and Wal-Mart. Offering practical learning, best practices, and illuminating case studies, this is the first definitive guide to the effective use of executive coaching in the corporate environment.

The field of executive coaching is growing at an astonishing rate. Corporations are increasingly turning to coaching as an intervention, as it offers leaders and managers both on-the-job learning and built-in follow-up. But how can you make the best use of coaching within your organization?

Executive Coaching for Results helps this critical leadership development method come of age. This is not a “how-to-coach book”—there are already plenty of those—but rather a comprehensive guide on how to strategically use coaching to maximize development of talent and link the impact of coaching to bottom-line results. Underhill, McAnally, and Koriath draw on their rigorous original research (through Executive Development Associates) with Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies such as Disney, IBM, UBS, Unilever and many others,
and combine that with their years of industry experience to advance the state of the art.

Executive Coaching for Results includes topics such as:
Integrating coaching into your organization's overall leadership development strategy
Locating and screening coaches worldwide
Developing an internal coaching program
Deciding which coaching assessments and instruments are appropriate to your situation
Measuring the impact and ROI of coaching
Following up after coaching

Throughout, the authors provide numerous examples from major organizations such as Dell, Johnson and Johnson, Intel, and Wal-Mart. Offering practical learning, best practices, and illuminating case studies, this is the first definitive guide to the effective use of executive coaching in the corporate environment.

Cutting through the confusion and disinformation about the fastest-growing corporate learning methodology, EXECUTIVE COACHING FOR RESULTS offers human resources and leadership development practitioners the definitive guide to making effective-and cost-effective-use of the crucial training tool of executive coaching in their corporations.

At the start of this thoughtful and revelatory book, Harrison Owen relates the story of how he was lunching with a senior official of the American Society for Training and Development, who observed that if what Owen had just told him about Open Space Technology (OST) was true, then "95% of what we are currently doing does not need to be done." OST is strategy for organizing meetings that is radical, revolutionary, and deceptively simple. Expanding Our Now is an exploration of what OST is, how it developed as a process for meeting management, and how and why it works all over the world, for groups of all sizes dealing with a vast range of issues. To be published simultaneously with Open Space Technology: A User's Guide, -- a companion volume which details methods for implementing an Open Space event -- Expanding Our Now provides historical background, with case studies and delves into the questions of why and how Open Space works. Owen makes a compelling case that OST can move organizations to higher levels of performance, without elaborate training or professional facilitators. By focusing on 'Now' -- this present moment -- perception is expanded so that, for example, AT&T was able to accomplish 10 months work in a matter of 2 days. 'Now' is the heart of the matter. When Now gets big, time and space open up for doing what is needed. In the experience of Owen and thousands of people around the world who have used this technology successfully, OST expands 'Now' . Here he offers numerous successful case studies from corporations (such as Boeing and AT&T), community service organizations, and even countries (Canada) to demonstrate the power of 'Now'. While Open Space violates many of the traditional principles of meeting (and organizational) management, it is remarkably effective. Owen challenges the idea that anyone can actually control a closed system, suggesting that in reality all systems are open, and OST simply acknowledges and takes full advantage of that reality.

Open Space Technology (OST) is an effective, economical, fast, and easily repeatable strategy for organizing meetings of between 5 and 1,000 participants. First developed in 1984, it has now been used around the world with all types of organizations including corporations, community groups, government agencies, schools, and churches.

OST produces better meetings and helps groups achieve such organizational goals as self-managed work groups, distributed leadership, and utilizing diversity quickly and without training.

In Expanding Our Now, OST creator Harrison Owen offers numerous examples to illustrate the evolution of OST and explores what it is, how it developed as a process for meeting management, and how and why it works all over the world, for groups of all sizes dealing with a vast range of issues. Owen shows how OST can move organizations to higher levels of performance, without elaborate training or professional facilitators.

Low Cost, High Impact!

Public relations is a make-or-break factor for all organizations, especially those that are small or mission driven. While it can be tempting to think that PR is a luxury only larger organizations can afford, PR expert Jennifer R. Farmer shows how her CCRR framework—being credible, creative, responsive, and relentless—is the silver bullet for even cash-strapped organizations.

Farmer emphasizes that effective public relations is in fact an essential component of organizational development—people need to know about you for your organization to have maximum impact. Her CCRR framework leverages tools everyone has access to, from social media to brand transparency, and requires attentiveness more than money. Farmer shows you that, no matter how modest your budget, you can build a cost-effective communications strategy that will help you break through the noise in an information-overloaded world.

Low Cost, High Impact!

Public relations is a make-or-break factor for all organizations, especially those that are small or mission driven. While it can be tempting to think that PR is a luxury only larger organizations can afford, PR expert Jennifer R. Farmer shows how her CCRR framework—being credible, creative, responsive, and relentless—is the silver bullet for even cash-strapped organizations.

Farmer emphasizes that effective public relations is in fact an essential component of organizational development—people need to know about you for your organization to have maximum impact. Her CCRR framework leverages tools everyone has access to, from social media to brand transparency, and requires attentiveness more than money. Farmer shows you that, no matter how modest your budget, you can build a cost-effective communications strategy that will help you break through the noise in an information-overloaded world.

For many small organizations and businesses, it can be tempting to think that traditional PR is too expensive. Media relations and PR expert Jennifer R. Farmer shows that you don't need a big budget to make a big impact.


The success of an organization, whether it is a nonprofit or an entrepreneurial venture, depends on a proactive and robust public relations arm. According to author Jennifer R. Farmer, the key to breaking through in the media is to follow the CCRR framework: be credible, be creative, be responsive, and be relentless.

For small organizations, public relations may feel like a luxury to be indulged in at some point in the distant future. This book argues that you don't need a multimillion-dollar budget to have a powerful and influential public relations program. Instead, organizations as a whole should be as committed to public relations as they are to the work they are spearheading. Farmer offers sharp insights to better design and implement low- or no-cost PR strategies that can help any organization garner continual media attention and therefore support.

Extraordinary PR, Ordinary Budget makes the convincing case that small and mission-based organizations, in both the public and private sectors, must have a strategic PR apparatus that is central to their work. Effective PR is more than getting media hits and paid placement-it's a critical component of organizational development based on relationship building.

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement.

It is becoming less straightforward for people to move forward together. They face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people from across more divides. In such situations, the most common ways of advancing—some people telling others what to do, or everyone just doing what they think they need to—aren't adequate.

One better way is through facilitating. But the most common approaches to facilitating—bossy vertical directing from above or collegial horizontal accompanying from alongside—aren't adequate. They often leave the participants frustrated and yearning for breakthrough.

This book describes a new approach: transformative facilitation. It doesn't choose either the bossy vertical or the collegial horizontal approach: it cycles back and forth between them. Rather than forcing or cajoling, the facilitator removes the obstacles that stand in the way of people contributing and connecting equitably. It enables people to bring their whole selves to the process.

This book is for anyone who helps people work together to transform their situation, be it a professional facilitator, manager, consultant, coach, chairperson, organizer, mediator, stakeholder, or friend. It offers a broad and bold vision of the contribution that facilitation can make to helping people collaborate to make progress.

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement.

It is becoming less straightforward for people to move forward together. They face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people from across more divides. In such situations, the most common ways of advancing—some people telling others what to do, or everyone just doing what they think they need to—aren't adequate.

One better way is through facilitating. But the most common approaches to facilitating—bossy vertical directing from above or collegial horizontal accompanying from alongside—aren't adequate. They often leave the participants frustrated and yearning for breakthrough.

This book describes a new approach: transformative facilitation. It doesn't choose either the bossy vertical or the collegial horizontal approach: it cycles back and forth between them. Rather than forcing or cajoling, the facilitator removes the obstacles that stand in the way of people contributing and connecting equitably. It enables people to bring their whole selves to the process.

This book is for anyone who helps people work together to transform their situation, be it a professional facilitator, manager, consultant, coach, chairperson, organizer, mediator, stakeholder, or friend. It offers a broad and bold vision of the contribution that facilitation can make to helping people collaborate to make progress.

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement.


People today face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people across more divides. But the traditional ways of advancing-subsuming individual interests to the good of the whole, or providing total autonomy for all stakeholders to work out their own solution-aren't adequate to resolving these difficult situations.

Drawing on his experiences working with Black people and white people in post-apartheid in South Africa, First Nations people and the government in Canada, multiple stakeholders in war-torn Columbia, and many more, Kahane describes what he calls transformative facilitation. It combines the two approaches, cycling back and forth between them. The facilitator pays careful attention to what is going on in the group and decides which approach will work best at any given moment.

Adam Kahane describes precisely what the facilitator needs to watch for and how to manage the delicate balance between a focus on the collective and a focus on specific stakeholder needs. This book is for anyone who helps people collaborate in any setting. Not only does it offer a way to facilitate breakthroughs, it is a breakthrough in itself.

Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research recounts the strategies used by the country’s top economic policymakers to conceal their failure to recognize the housing bubble or take steps to rein it in before it grew to unprecedented levels, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, homes, and the life savings of tens of millions of people. He quashes dire warnings of looming rampant inflation and spiraling debt with solid historic evidence to the contrary—evidence that supports more stimulus, not less. With a dose of optimism, Baker outlines a thoughtful progressive program for rebuilding the economy and reshaping the financial system, including new financial transaction taxes that will reduce or eliminate economic waste while providing stimulus and incentives where and when they are most needed.

Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research recounts the strategies used by the country's top economic policymakers to conceal their failure to recognize the housing bubble or take steps to rein it in before it grew to unprecedented levels, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, homes, and the life savings of tens of millions of people. He quashes dire warnings of looming rampant inflation and spiraling debt with solid historic evidence to the contrary—evidence that supports more stimulus, not less. He reveals the evolving role of the U.S. dollar in today's global economy and lays down cogent arguments about why the dollar will fall in value. With a dose of optimism, Baker outlines a thoughtful progressive program for rebuilding the economy and reshaping the financial system, including new financial transaction taxes that will reduce or eliminate economic waste while providing stimulus and incentives where and when they are most needed.

Despite reports that the recession may be ending, the unemployment rate is sky high and home foreclosures are at record levels. It's no secret that the U.S. economy is in shambles because of the recent housing bubble. However, according to Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the people who looked the other way as the eight trillion dollar housing bubble grew unchecked are trying to rewrite history by downplaying the impact of the bubble. In False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, he recounts the strategies used by the country's top economic policymakers to keep the American public unaware of their failure to recognize the housing bubble and to take steps to rein it in before it grew to unprecedented levels, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, homes, and the life savings for tens of millions of people.

We live in a world that needs radical transformation if our children and grandchildren are to live healthy, peace-filled lives. But where to start? Activist Roberto Vargas says the answer lies surprisingly close: at home, with our family and friends. We can apply the practice of family activism to foster what he calls familia—warm, loving connections with our relatives and with those we choose to call family—and develop the skills and attitudes we need to tackle broader problems in our community, our nation, and the world. In Family Activism, Vargas draws from his own life to show how to apply tools such as copowering communication, family councils, and unity circles to create family and community cultures that empower all of us to become more committed and skillful agents of positive change.