For years, the lean startup has been revolutionizing both new and established businesses. In this eye-opening book, serial social entrepreneur Michel Gelobter shows how it can do the same for nonprofits.

Traditionally, whether creating a new business or a new program, entrepreneurs in all sectors develop a plan, find money to fund it, and pursue it to its conclusion. The problem is, over time conditions can change drastically—but you're locked into your plan. The lean startup is all about agility and flexibility. Its mantra is “build, measure, learn”: create small experimental initiatives, quickly get real-world feedback on them, and use that data to expand what works and discard what doesn't.

Using dozens of social sector examples, Gelobter walks you through the process. The standard approach wastes time and money. The lean startup will help your organization vastly increase the good it does.

The Lean Startup concept has revolutionized the way businesses are developed. Now Michel Gelobter applies this powerful concept to the social sector.

In business, the lean start-up movement is turning the traditional approach to innovation on its head. Rather than developing an elaborate plan, raising money to fund it, and then following it to its uncertain conclusion-a process that can take years-entrepreneurs in companies new and old are launching small inexpensive initiatives to test ideas, quickly learning from failures and successes, and using that data to further refine the ideas and test them again. Social entrepreneur Michel Gelobter says there's no reason the social sector can't do the same.

Gelobter goes through the lean startup process step by step, showing exactly how nonprofits and advocacy organizations can adapt it to increase their impact. He uses dozens of real-world examples: a homelessness group that discovered the one metric they needed to improve to get more people off the streets; a technology-based literacy startup that was able to reach two million children in two years, when it took a more traditionally-oriented program fifteen; and many others. From the glimmer of an idea to make the world a better place to deep reform in the heart of the world's largest government and non-profit bureaucracies, Michel Gelobter shows how the lean start-up can drive a revolution in policy and social change.

How did Gatorade revitalize itself in the wake of Red Bull and Starbucks? How did OpenTable come to be? What makes one company thrive while others languish in mediocrity? There’s no doubt hard work is involved, but Soren Kaplan shows you can’t do it by simply creating a big vision and implementing a set plan. In his trailblazing debut, Kaplan gives business leaders the tools to do exactly what they’re taught to avoid: embrace surprise—the new key to business breakthroughs. Instead of fighting against uncertainty, Kaplan reveals how to use it to break down limiting mindsets and barriers to change the game. By highlighting specific ways to transform both good and bad surprises into unique opportunities, Kaplan encourages leaders to compete by embracing counterintuitive ideas, managing paradoxes, and even welcoming failure. This is the key to “leapfrogging”—creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward. Leapfrogging connects new research, unconventional strategies, and practical tools for navigating the “messy” and elusive process of achieving business breakthroughs. Filled with real-world examples from innovators such as Gatorade, Intuit, Philips, Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive, OpenTable, and Etsy, Kaplan shows that any organization or business function can leapfrog. Using his LEAPS process (Listen, Explore, Act, Persist, and Seize), leaders learn to seek out, recognize, and respond to surprising experiences and events as a way to create solutions that leap beyond the current expectations of customers, partners, employees, the market, and the competition. Kaplan’s Leapfrogging is the new handbook for the modern leader.

How did Gatorade revitalize itself in the wake of Red Bull and Starbucks? How did OpenTable come to be? What makes one company thrive while others languish in mediocrity? There's no doubt hard work is involved, but Soren Kaplan shows you can't do it by simply creating a big vision and implementing a set plan. In his trailblazing debut, Kaplan gives business leaders the tools to do exactly what they're taught to avoid: embrace surprise—the new key to business breakthroughs.

Instead of fighting against uncertainty, Kaplan reveals how to use it to break down limiting mindsets and barriers to change the game. By highlighting specific ways to transform both good and bad surprises into unique opportunities, Kaplan encourages leaders to compete by embracing counterintuitive ideas, managing paradoxes, and even welcoming failure. This is the key to “leapfrogging”—creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward.

Leapfrogging connects new research, unconventional strategies, and practical tools for navigating the “messy” and elusive process of achieving business breakthroughs. Filled with real-world examples from innovators such as Gatorade, Intuit, Philips, Kimberly-Clark, Colgate-Palmolive, OpenTable, and Etsy, Kaplan shows that any organization or business function can leapfrog. Using his LEAPS process (Listen, Explore, Act, Persist, and Seize), leaders learn to seek out, recognize, and respond to surprising experiences and events as a way to create solutions that leap beyond the current expectations of customers, partners, employees, the market, and the competition. Kaplan's Leapfrogging is the new handbook for the modern leader.

Today's business environment demands leapfroggers--those who create rapid, disruptive innovation, not small improvements. A leading innovation pioneer shows that businesses often ignore the very thing that could lead them to game-changing products--the power of surprise.

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, scientist, engineer, mathematician, architect, inventor, and even musician—the archetypal Renaissance man. But he was also a profoundly modern man.

Not only did Leonardo invent the empirical scientific method over a century before Galileo and Francis Bacon, but Capra's decade-long study of Leonardo's fabled notebooks reveals that he was a systems thinker centuries before the term was coined. At the very core of Leonardo's science, Capra argues, lies his persistent quest for understanding the nature of life. His science is a science of living forms, of qualities and patterns, radically different from the mechanistic science that emerged 200 years later.

Because he saw the world as an integrated whole, Leonardo always applied concepts from one area to illuminate problems in another. His studies of the movement of water informed his ideas about how landscapes are shaped, how sap rises in plants, how air moves over a bird's wing, and how blood flows in the human body. His observations of nature enhanced his art, his drawings were integral to his scientific studies, and he brought art, science, and technology together in his beautiful and elegant mechanical and architectural designs.

Capra describes seven defining characteristics of Leonardo da Vinci's genius and includes a list of over forty discoveries he made that weren't rediscovered until centuries later. Capra follows the organizational scheme Leonardo himself intended to use if he ever published his notebooks. So in a sense, this is Leonardo's science as he himself would have presented it.

Obviously, we can't all be geniuses on the scale of Leonardo da Vinci. But his persistent endeavor to put life at the very center of his art, science, and design and his recognition that all natural phenomena are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent are important lessons we can learn from. By exploring the mind of the preeminent Renaissance genius, we can gain profound insights into how to address the complex challenges of the 21st century.

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, scientist, engineer, mathematician, architect, inventor, writer, and even musician—the archetypal Renaissance man. But he was also, Fritjof Capra argues, a profoundly modern man. Not only did Leonardo invent the empirical scientific method over a century before Galileo and Francis Bacon, but Capra’s decade-long study of Leonardo’s fabled notebooks reveal him as a systems thinker centuries before the term was coined. He believed the key to truly understanding the world was in perceiving the connections between phenomena and the larger patterns formed by those relationships. This is precisely the kind of holistic approach the complex problems we face today demand. Capra describes seven defining characteristics of Leonardo da Vinci’s genius and includes a list of over forty discoveries Leonardo made that weren’t rediscovered until centuries later. Leonardo pioneered entire fields—fluid dynamics, theoretical botany, aerodynamics, embryology. Capra’s overview of Leonardo’s thought follows the organizational scheme Leonardo himself intended to use if he ever published his notebooks. So in a sense, this is Leonardo’s science as he himself would have presented it. Leonardo da Vinci saw the world as a dynamic, integrated whole, so he always applied concepts from one area to illuminate problems in another. For example, his studies of the movement of water informed his ideas about how landscapes are shaped, how sap rises in plants, how air moves over a bird’s wing, and how blood flows in the human body. His observations of nature enhanced his art, his drawings were integral to his scientific studies, and he brought art and science together in his extraordinarily beautiful and elegant mechanical and architectural designs. Obviously, we can’t all be geniuses on the scale of Leonardo da Vinci. But by exploring the mind of the preeminent Renaissance genius, we can gain profound insights into how best to address the challenges of the 21st century.

Bestselling and world-renowned author Fritjof Capra presents the first in-depth and full description of Leonardo da Vinci's amazing scientific work and discoveries in geology, anatomy, flight, mechanics, botany, and fluid dynamics. And Capra reveals what readers can learn for their own lives and work from ten characteristics of Leonardo's genius.

Ugh—meetings. They’re where productivity goes to die, right? There has to be a better way. According to leading consultants Dick and Emily Axelrod, there is. Using the same principles that make video games so engaging and that transformed the numbing assembly line into the dynamic shop floor, the Axelrods outline a flexible and adaptable system used to run truly productive meetings in all kinds of organizations—meetings where people create concrete plans, accomplish tasks, build connections, and move projects forward. They show how to design every aspect of a meeting—from the way you greet people at the beginning to how you sum up at the end—so that real work actually gets done. Those who have adopted this system will never go back. Neither will you.

Ugh—meetings. They're where productivity goes to die, right? There has to be a better way. According to leading consultants Dick and Emily Axelrod, there is.

Using the same principles that make video games so engaging and that transformed the numbing assembly line into the dynamic shop floor, the Axelrods outline a flexible and adaptable system used to run truly productive meetings in all kinds of organizations—meetings where people create concrete plans, accomplish tasks, build connections, and move projects forward. They show how to design every aspect of a meeting—from the way you greet people at the beginning to how you sum up at the end—so that real work actually gets done. Those who have adopted this system will never go back. Neither will you.

Instead of being boring and time-wasting, meetings can be places where participants and leaders can get their work done productively, efficiently, and happily. It is not an impossible dream. This book shows how.

Frustrated that change efforts you're leading take too long, are too difficult, or are too often ineffective? Discover eight powerful ways to make any change work faster, easier, and better—whether done by C-suite leaders or frontline workers.

Organizations suffer from change fatigue. People are impatient and exhausted. They feel like too many initiatives are imposed from above or outside. They don't have time for more change and often don't even see the point in it. Wouldn't it be great if there were a systematic way to achieve your desired results in less time with fewer problems and more success? There is. It's called Leverage Change.

These problems and more are resolved by what change expert Robert “Jake” Jacobs calls Levers: smart, strategic actions that create huge leverage and impact. Whether you have an existing change effort that could be turbocharged or you're launching one that's new, the Levers can help. Apply a Lever—even without a formal program—and your organization will experience positive changes. These powerful Levers, which can be used alone or in any combination that works for you, are straightforward and easy to apply:

• Pay Attention to Continuity • Think and Act As If the Future Were Now! • Design It Yourself • Create a Common Database • Start with Impact, Follow the Energy • Develop a Future People Want to Call Their Own • Find Opportunities for People to Make a Meaningful Difference • Make Change-Work Part of Daily-Work

Drawing on thirty-five years of experience, Jacobs includes dozens of stories of the Levers in action with all kinds of organizations, teams, and individuals. He also provides specific directions on how you can apply them to your change work. Use the Levers, and improve your change work more than you ever imagined possible.

Frustrated that change efforts you're leading take too long, are too difficult, or are too often ineffective? Discover eight powerful ways to make any change work faster, easier, and better—whether done by C-suite leaders or frontline workers.

Organizations suffer from change fatigue. People are impatient and exhausted. They feel like too many initiatives are imposed from above or outside. They don't have time for more change and often don't even see the point in it. Wouldn't it be great if there were a systematic way to achieve your desired results in less time with fewer problems and more success? There is. It's called Leverage Change.

These problems and more are resolved by what change expert Robert “Jake” Jacobs calls Levers: smart, strategic actions that create huge leverage and impact. Whether you have an existing change effort that could be turbocharged or you're launching one that's new, the Levers can help. Apply a Lever—even without a formal program—and your organization will experience positive changes. These powerful Levers, which can be used alone or in any combination that works for you, are straightforward and easy to apply:

• Pay Attention to Continuity • Think and Act As If the Future Were Now! • Design It Yourself • Create a Common Database • Start with Impact, Follow the Energy • Develop a Future People Want to Call Their Own • Find Opportunities for People to Make a Meaningful Difference • Make Change-Work Part of Daily-Work

Drawing on thirty-five years of experience, Jacobs includes dozens of stories of the Levers in action with all kinds of organizations, teams, and individuals. He also provides specific directions on how you can apply them to your change work. Use the Levers, and improve your change work more than you ever imagined possible.

Frustrated that change efforts you're leading take too long, are too difficult, or are too often ineffective? Discover eight powerful ways to make any change work faster, easier, and better-whether done by C-suite leaders or frontline workers.



In a recent Fast Company article, nine CEOs said the biggest challenges their companies face are all related to change. Change is a constant need and a constant challenge for every organization-large or small, for-profit, nonprofit, or governmental. Is there a way to make it easier?

If you're trying to lift something heavy, it helps to have a lever. In this book, Jake Jacobs provides eight levers that can transform the typical change process into something far smoother and more efficient-he calls the new process Leverage Change. Jacobs offers proven advice and real-life examples that will accelerate every step of the change process, including designing your own customized change process, figuring out where the real energy for change is in your organization, striking the right balance between explicit direction and creative collaboration, making change work as part of people's regular routines, and more. Archimedes said with the right lever, he could move the world-with Jacobs' eight levers, you can change your world.

From the Center for Creative Leadership, this essential guide is updated with new insights, tips, and tools to help organizations get the most out of 360-degree feedback.

This hands-on guide from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) shows how to implement effective 360-degree feedback systems as part of leadership development initiatives in organizations. Written for professionals who work inside organizations and external consultants working with clients, the book draws on over twenty years of research and practice in organizations both large and small. Expert authors from CCL provide step-by-step guidelines for successful 360-degree feedback as well as best practices observed and tested with CCL's broad base of clients.

The second edition is updated with advances in the field over the past ten years and features new chapters on what affects validity, why the process can fail, and the future of leadership. The book includes worksheets, checklists, and other tools to use or adapt with a 360-degree feedback process in any organization.

From the Center for Creative Leadership, this essential guide is updated with new insights, tips, and tools to help organizations get the most out of 360-degree feedback.

This hands-on guide from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) shows how to implement effective 360-degree feedback systems as part of leadership development initiatives in organizations. Written for professionals who work inside organizations and external consultants working with clients, the book draws on over twenty years of research and practice in organizations both large and small. Expert authors from CCL provide step-by-step guidelines for successful 360-degree feedback as well as best practices observed and tested with CCL's broad base of clients.

The second edition is updated with advances in the field over the past ten years and features new chapters on what affects validity, why the process can fail, and the future of leadership. The book includes worksheets, checklists, and other tools to use or adapt with a 360-degree feedback process in any organization.

From the Center for Creative Leadership, this essential guide is updated with new insights, tips, and tools to help organizations get the most out of 360-degree feedback.

This is a hands-on guide for implementing effective 360-degree feedback systems as part of leadership development initiatives in organizations. Written for professionals who work inside organizations and external consultants working with clients, the book draws on over twenty years of research and practice by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). The book provides step-by-step guidelines for successful 360-degree feedback as well as best practices observed and tested with CCL's broad base of clients.

The second edition is updated with advances in the field over the past ten years and features new chapters on ensuring validity, why the process can fail, and the future of leadership development. The book includes worksheets, checklists, and other tools to use or adapt with a 360-degree process in any organization.

Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is a top-ranked, global provider of programs that develop better leaders through its exclusive focus on leadership education and research.

Winner of the 2014 Silver Nautilus Award

Are You Ready for Your Life Reimagined Moment?

Are you at a point in your life where you're asking, “What's next?” You've finished one chapter and you have yet to write the next one. Many of us face these transitions at midlife, but they can happen at any point. It's a time full of enormous potential, and it defines a whole new phase of life. It's called Life Reimagined.

Here is your map to guide you in this new life phase. You can use the powerful practices and insights—enhanced with online tools and exercises at AARP's LifeReimagined.org website—to help you uncover your own special gifts, connect with people who can support you, and explore new directions.

You'll be inspired by meeting ordinary people who have reimagined their lives in extraordinary ways. You'll also read the stories of pioneers of the Life Reimagined movement such as Jane Pauley, James Brown, and Emilio Estefan. They show us that this journey of discovery can help us find fulfillment in surprising new places.

One of the profound truths that underlies this book is the liberating notion that each of us is “an experiment of one,” free to find our own path in this new phase of our lives. No old rules, no outdated societal norms, no boundaries of convention or expectation. Let Life Reimagined help you discover your new life possibilities!