Books

This practical, comprehensive guide to designing and running more effective meetings will result in less time wasted, more collaborative decision-making, and measurably improved business outcomes.

This valuable resource lays out a structured method for designing and leading better meetings. Its facilitative approach marks a transition from the leader as “the expert with the answers” to a new world where the leader's job is to ask the right questions and manage context. To ask the right questions, facilitators need access to a wide range of tools and expertise to match the tool with the situation. With facilitative tools properly applied, leaders can build consensus around important questions, creating buy-in among team members and stakeholders, which will make their work so much more effective. At the end of every meeting, the participants, not the presenter, will own the content, which is key. Used correctly, these resources can help build a culture of engagement and motivation. This book is an easy-to-navigate catalog of tools collected and tested by the MG Rush Facilitation consultancy to provide evidence-based results.

What Would It Be Like to Restore Sanity? What would it be like to work together again in creative and generous ways? What would it be like to be curious about who you're with rather than judging or fearing them? What would it be like to engage together in exploring possibilities rather than withdrawing in conflict or disagreement? What would it be like to be working well together?

From 50 years working with leaders globally, I state with full confidence that leadership has never been more difficult. And it's not our fault. We've been good and caring leaders, we've led people in empowering, engaging ways to create meaningful, productive work. But now we face external conditions far beyond our control to change, dynamics intensifying at shocking speed.

The perfect storm is here, created by the coalescence of climate and human-created catastrophes. As leaders dedicated to serving the causes and people we treasure, confronted by this unrelenting tsunami, what are we to do? I state my answer to this also with full confidence:

We need to restore sanity by awakening the human spirit. We can achieve this only if we undertake the most challenging and meaningful work of our leader lives: Creating Islands of Sanity.

An Island of Sanity is a gift of possibility and refuge created by people's commitment to form healthy community to do meaningful work. It requires sane leaders with unshakable faith in people's innate generosity, creativity, and kindness. It sets itself apart as an island to protect itself from the life-destroying dynamics, policies, and behaviors that oppress and deny the human spirit. No matter what is happening around us, we can discover practices that enliven our human spirits and produce meaningful contributions for this time.

Take ownership of your work and unleash the power of agency in your organization!

To help give employees the power, influence, and voice necessary to truly excel in their workplace, organizational development experts Miller and Katz reveal the importance of agency and offer practical advice on how to achieve it.

With more knowledge workers entering the workplace, many are being stifled by traditional employee-manager relationships that hamper their ability to fully contribute and feel engaged at work. And in a constantly changing and competitive world of work, organizations must evolve to keep up with worker satisfaction or else face a decrease in performance and loss in talent.

The solution? Enabling your employees to exercise their individual agency in the workplace. Through an actionable roadmap that highlights common pitfalls and practical steps necessary for establishing a culture of greater agency, this book will provide individuals, teams, managers, and leaders with concrete ways to clarify their current level of agency and identifies specific actions they can take to exercise greater agency.

This sixth edition of the number one bestselling employee retention book in the world (over 800,000 copies sold) puts a new emphasis on diversity and inclusion but keeps the same appealing format: twenty-six simple strategies from A to Z.


Retention and engagement are perennial concerns for every business in any economy. For two decades, this Wall Street Journal bestseller has offered twenty-six simple strategies-from A to Z-that managers can use to address their employees' real concerns and keep them engaged.

The revised and updated sixth edition includes a timely focus on diversity and inclusion in every chapter. For example, chapter 6 focuses on family. Different cultures view family responsibilities differently, so the authors address how a manager might take that into consideration when a treasured employee asks for extended leave to care for a grandparent. A new section called Conversation Starters offers discussion questions and ideas for how to spark more conversation around the topics in the book.

This new edition will ensure that Love 'Em or Lose 'Em will continue to help managers all over the world create a supportive workplace culture so they can fight burnout and keep the people they can least afford to lose.

A timely sequel with breakthrough strategies from Jane Hyun, the author of Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, to help Asian Americans build their leadership and influence skills by embracing their cultural strengths and mapping an achievable career path.

How can Asian Americans lead and influence in a way that feels culturally authentic?

19 years after her groundbreaking book, global leadership strategist Jane Hyun unveils Leadership Toolkit for Asians – a guide for Asian Americans to build their capacity to lead and influence with a blueprint that is achievable and culturally relevant.

Asian Americans are the least likely demographic to be promoted or to have a mentor or sponsor– they make up 13% of the professional workforce, but less than 3% of executive positions. This dynamic hurts everyone, and the solution calls us to embrace our unique perspectives while organizations create a more fertile environment for growing Asian talent.

This toolkit-based on Hyun's work with thousands of leaders-is filled with self-assessments, checklists, quizzes, and stories of Asian American leaders to help you put ideas into action. It will show you how to leverage your life experiences to craft a bespoke leadership journey.

• Assess: Identify your goals, cultural values and assets
• Equip: Navigate effectively with people who are different from you, push back against stereotypes, strengthen your networks, apply a developmental model to help you get there
• Transform: Create your own model and engage advocates as you put it into practice

From Great Place to Work, which produces the popular FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For ranking, comes a new definition of what it takes to make an organization great FOR ALL--for the business, for people and for the world.


For 20 years Great Place to Work has published their gold-standard list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. But their latest research shows that what was good enough to be a "great" workplace 10 or 20 years ago is not good enough now. Even at the best workplaces, leaders can--and must--do better. CEO Michael C. Bush and his team connect the dots to show how the emerging economy is about developing every ounce of human potential. Today's business climate is defined by speed, social technologies and people expecting "values" besides value. As a result, leaders have to create an outstanding culture for everyone, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization. They have to build a Great Place to Work For All.

The authors share new research on how Great Places to Work For All outperform in the stock market and grow revenue 3x faster than less-inclusive rivals. Bush and his team tell surprising, inspiring stories about how closing gaps in the work experience between groups of employees pays off for everyone. They document the ways Great Places to Work For All benefit the individuals working there and contribute to a better global society. And they introduce a new leadership framework, showing the advantages of what the authors define as Level 5 "For All" leaders. In effect, the times demand executives who not only are business-savvy but also are devoted to fairness, have deep faith in people, and empower all individuals to reach their full human potential. This is a call to lead so that organizations bring out the best in everyone.

This powerful guide draws on strategies from Black resistance movements and merges historical wisdom with modern technology to combat the DEI backlash and build sustainable workplace equity in today’s hostile climate.

As the unprecedented backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion intensifies—with corporations dismantling initiatives, lawmakers passing anti-DEI legislation, and post–George Floyd promises abandoned—this tactical handbook arms advocates with revolutionary resistance strategies drawn from Black historical movements.

Dr. Janice Gassam Asare transforms centuries of Black resistance wisdom—from Underground Railroad networks to civil rights organizing tactics—into modern resistance plans, wielding ethical AI as a force multiplier to create sustainable change that outlasts corporate whims and political cycles.

Each chapter grounds modern workplace tactics in revolutionary approaches of more than twenty prominent Black historical figures, including the following:

• Ida B. Wells—Documentation techniques for workplace injustice inspired by her work
• Ella Baker and Fred Hampton—Coalition-building methods from the American civil rights movement
• Toni Morrison and Angela Davis—Narrative control strategies drawn from their celebrated writing

Whether you’re a DEI practitioner navigating corporate pushback, an employee experiencing equity rollbacks, or a leader committed to sustainable inclusion, this handbook provides battle-tested strategies for preserving workplace equity—even in hostile environments.

This isn’t just about surviving the backlash. It’s about reimagining workplaces where everyone thrives.

Written by an emerging star in the field of corporate social responsibility, Kellie McElhaney's Just Good Business identifies the need for integrating corporate responsibility into a corporation's identity, effectively changing the companies branding in the process, and shows how this process leads to higher profits, more engaged employees, (retained at higher numbers) and a loyal customer base.

A celebrated professor and practitioner of entrepreneurship provides the definitive handbook on entrepreneurial strategy. Based on more than 150 case studies of successful business that started from the ground up.

We all want to do the right thing. But determining the right thing to do isn't always easy. Everytime we pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV, someone tells us how we ought to behave. Rarely, however, do we get much assistance in deciding what to do for ourselves. Meanwhile, technological developments and rapid social changes make the right decisions-especially about the BIG issues-life, death, sex, justice, and so on-harder and harder to identify.
Choosing the Right Thing to Do responds to the growing need that people of all ages have for moral guidance-without moralizing. It contains a rich palette of principles and strategies, stories and examples, ideas and insights that offer real-world help for intelligently addressing the often quite troubling choices we face every day in our personal relationships, jobs, and lifestyles.

Bestselling author Lynda Gratton-a world-renowned authority on business strategy-takes an extensive look at Hot Spots-places and times where cooperation flourishes, resulting in productivity and excitement. Now, these previously unexplained flares of ideas and innovation are thoroughly examined, as Gratton shows how to develop of Hot Spots within ones own environment.

In this thoroughly updated and expanded edition of the bestselling guide (over 20,000 of the 1st edition sold) to employee recognition, author Cindy Ventrice explores how managers need to adapt their recognition strategies to deal with global, virtual, and generational realities. Additions include chapters on workplace culture, fairness, and remote communication.

Yoga practitioners fight work stress with stretching and breathing exercises–but does yoga stop when you step off the mat? In this surprising book, the authors show why poses–asanas–are just one part of yoga practice. There are seven other "limbs" of yoga that are often neglected, especially during the workday.

Everybody hates meetings. And why shouldn't they? Most meetings are poorly led, counter-productive, and time-wasting. Based on decades of practice and research, bestselling authors Weisbord and Janoff have come to the conclusion that most people lead meetings incorrectly. They, instead, propose ten contrarian principles that actually get things done.

This new expanded second edition is an international bestseller with over 200,000 copies sold and translated into 15 languages that shows you-no matter your age or skill, your job or training-how to come up with more ideas, faster and easier.

Solving complex problems is very difficult and usually can't be done by simply brainstorming. Readers will learn how to successfully apply nine behaviors in a systematic and methodical way to solve any problem.


Most problems are fairly easy: they have a few likely potential root causes. The most important problems often have hundreds or thousands of potential root causes within very complex systems. Such problems are hard problems and are highly resistant to guessing, brainstorming, or problem-solving methodologies that require conjuring a list of possible causes. Great problem solvers are armed with a set of behaviors that allows them to avoid guessing. They consistently solve hard problems in a way that can seem magical to most people.

In Stop Guessing, you will learn nine behaviors that are critical to success and how to adopt them from Nat Greene, who has twenty years of experience leading great problem solvers. Developing strength in these behaviors will help you
¥ Have confidence to solve the hard problems you face
¥ Easily build alignment to implement the right solution
¥ Identify more important and valuable opportunities that are being ignored
¥ Help others become better problem solvers
¥ Stop wasting time and money and trying your patience

Each of the nine behaviors comes with stories of great problem solving in action, including a best-in-class chemical processor that had hundreds of millions of dollars of upside hidden behind a hard problem, a losing baseball team without the budget for star players, and the scourge of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

Innovation comes from creative tension, not harmonious interaction, says “Dean of Innovation” Jeff DeGraff. He identifies four basic approaches to innovation and shows how leaders can manage the inevitable conflicts between them to create brilliant, unexpected hybrid solutions.


From years of research and practical experience as a consultant, Jeff DeGraff has learned that when it comes to any innovation initiative, disharmony is crucial. We innovate when we disrupt, and we first have to disrupt each other.

DeGraff identifies four contrasting types of innovators. There's the wild experimentation of the Artist, the pragmatic caution of the Engineer, the urgent competitiveness of the Athlete, and the patient community building of the Sage. He includes exercises so readers can find where they fit into this framework and shows how to build, manage, and embrace the dynamic discord of a team that contains all four types. When you combine the visionary thinking of the Artist and the practical thinking of the Engineer, you get innovation that's both revolutionary and manageable, highly ambitious without high risk. When you combine the results-oriented attitude of the Athlete with the values-oriented attitude of the Sage, you get innovation that's both a good investment and good for the world. This is a profound but highly accessible guide for achieving breakthrough solutions by utilizing the full-and seemingly contradictory-spectrum of innovative thinking.

Written by bestselling author and renowned ROI guru Jack Phillips, this book presents a model for accurately measuring, monitoring, and anticipating one's return on investment for any organizational program or project. Show Me the Money solves the challenges of measuring the hard-to-measure, and placing monetary value on the hard-to-value.