This book has a simple message for business leaders: you help yourselves by helping the poor. If the poor can gain a stake in the economy they can buy your products and put money in the banks. Increasing poor people's financial literacy will help them move into the middle class and enrich everyone, rich and poor alike.

When we talk about how to save our struggling economy, Operation HOPE founder and successful businessman John Hope Bryant says that for far too long, we've been having the wrong conversation. Fully 70% of the American economy is generated by consumer spending. If we want capitalism to work, we have to make it work for the poor.

“We must make financial literacy – teaching each and every one of our children the language of money – the new civil rights issue for the twenty-first century America,” Bryant writes. In the book, Bryant exposes the historical roots of poverty, explains why the solutions tried so far have held the poor back from getting “the memo” about financial literacy, and offers a way forward. He lays out what he calls a Marshall Plan for our times, a series of straightforward, actionable steps to build financial literacy and expand opportunity so that the poor can join the middle class.
Praised by Dr. Bernice A. King of the King Center and former President Bill Clinton, John Hope Bryant's book aspires to create a thriving economy that works not just for the 1% or even the 99%, but for the 100%.

Peter Georgescu explains how his American Dream journey-from refugee to the CEO of Young & Rubicam-is no longer possible, and the underlying culprit is shareholder primacy. The income gap is growing larger and larger, and Georgescu argues that only a return to a true form of capitalism will begin to decrease that gap.


Peter Georgescu is scared, as are some of his more farsighted fellow millionaires and billionaires-not “of Al Qaeda or the vicious Islamic State or some other evolving radical group . . . We are afraid of where income inequality will lead.”

So begins both his 2015 op-ed piece in the New York Times, which generated over 1,000 comments, and this book. Georgescu believes the capitalism that allowed a penniless refugee like him to rise to the top no longer exists. He vividly depicts the damage income inequality is doing and examines the trends and developments that have led to our current crisis. He argues to his fellow capitalists that they are the ones best positioned to fix this problem because they can directly address it. They need to look beyond a single-minded focus on maximizing the short-term profits their shareholders demand and serve the interests of all their stakeholders-employees, customers, society, and the environment. This book offers solutions, which are deep, rich, and compelling.

In a world of persistent and often overwhelming chaos, this book makes one simple promise: If you close the gaps in the three areas of your life, you will achieve fulfillment, success, and inner peace.

We all ask ourselves the question, “Has my life made a difference?” We want our lives to have meaning. We want to live balanced, productive lives in which we contribute through our work, our relationships, and our example to others. And we search for inner peace to deal with all of the chaos that exists in the world today.

In this new book, Franklin Covey cofounder Hyrum Smith shows that the key to achieving a meaningful, fulfilling, and peaceful life is closing three gaps that we all struggle with. The first is the BELIEF GAP: the gap between what we believe to be true and what is actually true. The second is the TIME GAP: the gap between what we plan to do-our goals and dreams-and what we actually get done. The third is the VALUES GAP: the gap between what we value-what matters most to us-and what we actually do.

Using inspiring true stories of people who have overcome difficult challenges, the author tells how to close each of these three gaps in our personal and work lives. Smith provides new understanding and tools to move from the life we currently have to the life we really want.

A new edition of the bestselling book (75,000 copies sold) that shows how the teachings of Jesus can bring a new angle to your leadership style. No matter what your religious background, this book will help you map out the high road to your personal and professional goals.

Bestselling authors and renowned diversity consultants Fred Miller and Judith Katz bring their long-awaited new book that shows any manager or member of a team how to create safe environments for everyone in their company.


Do you feel safe enough at work to share your ideas, thoughts, and experiences? Raise tough issues? Deal with conflicts? Do your best work?

Many people feel unsafe in work interactions. They hold back, hesitate, and make themselves smaller out of fear of ridicule or retribution. The lack of safety is why new ideas and new people often have such a hard time succeeding in today's organizations, and directly contribute to why stress levels are so high. Many people have the skills they need to do their best work and the ideas to solve problems but lack the safety to apply them. This book describes what constitutes a safe environment and the actions-by both leaders and team members-necessary to create collaborative, inclusive workplaces in which people feel safe enough to be their best selves. Written in plain, everyday language, Safe Enough to Soar identifies the default mindsets and behaviors that create hostile work environments and block collaboration, engagement, partnership, and the acceptance of new ideas and new people. Expert authors Fred Miller and Judith Katz chart a simple, step-by-step process that will enable organization's individuals, work-groups, and teams to skip past the dysfunctional mire of defensiveness, micro-aggressions, cover-your-ass compromises, and judging, and launch them into the innovation-inspiring, collaboration-fostering zone of organizational bravery. When people feel safe enough to act and interact, they step up, speak up, and fully engage…and they and their organizations spread their wings and soar.

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.

Ira Chaleff's bestseller (over 40,000 copies sold across two editions) becomes even more relevant today as failures in leadership grow astronomically requiring greater vigilance and oversight on the part of the citizenry.

Change has become constant, complex, multifaceted, and overwhelming. To meet this challenge, Bill Pasmore presents four keys to help leaders decide where and how to most effectively focus their change initiatives.

It's not news that globalization and ever-faster technological innovation have increased the pace of change exponentially. Existing change models were devised to deal with individual changes, one by one, but that's not a luxury leaders have any more. Bill Pasmore, senior vice president at the Center for Creative Leadership and a professor at Columbia University, offers a four-part model that will allow leaders to deal with multiple changes simultaneously without drowning in the churn.

First, Pasmore urges leaders to think fewer. He shows you how to “back away from the buffet table”-sort through the dizzying array of potential change efforts you could undertake and identify a few focused “healthy” choices that will most benefit your organization. Next, Pasmore says, think scarcer-be realistic about the resources you actually have at your disposal, including how many people in your organization are willing and able to lead change efforts. Then, having narrowed your choices, allocated your resources, and found your change agents, you need to think faster. Pasmore offers advice for streamlining change processes, getting buy-in throughout the organization, and increasing the pace of change. And finally, he says, think smarter: build in processes to learn from change initiatives while they're happening and apply that learning to new and ongoing change initiatives.

Change is not the problem - thinking about change in old-fashioned narrow and prescribed terms is. Recognizing it for the complex machine that it is and accurately taking stock of your resources and speed is what works.

What makes for a truly exceptional leader? Certainly, leaders need people skills, execution skills, a deep knowledge of industry trends, the ability to articulate a vision, and more-they must be competent-but that's just the tip of the iceberg. What's below the waterline? What's deep inside the best leaders that makes them different?




The Spanish language edition of the bestselling title The Heart of Leadership is ready to help you answer the question-Are you the type of leader people want to follow? You can be--but first, you've got to understand what sets great leaders apart from all the rest.

Certainly, leaders need people skills, execution skills, a deep knowledge of industry trends, the ability to articulate a vision, and more--they must be competent--but that's just the tip of the iceberg. What's below the waterline? What's deep inside the best leaders that makes them different?

Mark Miller contends it is their leadership character. In his latest enlightening and entertaining business fable, he describes the five unique character traits exhibited by exceptional leaders and how to cultivate them.

The Heart of Leadership begins with young and ambitious Blake Brown being passed over for a desperately wanted promotion, despite an outstanding individual performance. Confused and frustrated, he turns to his former mentor, Debbie Brewster. Rather than attempting to solve Blake's problem for him, she sends him on a quest to meet with five of his late father's colleagues, each of whom holds a piece of the puzzle he's trying to solve.

As Blake puts the pieces together, he discovers that in the final analysis, a lack of skills isn't what holds most leaders back; skills are too easy to learn. Without demonstrated leadership character, however, a skill set will never be enough. Most often, when leaders fail to reach their full potential, it is an issue of the heart. This is Blake's ultimate revelation.

This book shows us that leadership needn't be the purview of the few--it is within reach for millions around the world. The Heart of Leadership is a road map for every person who desires to make a difference in the lives of others and become a leader people want to follow.

International consultant Adam Kahane teaches us how to work with people whom we might not like or trust. He explains how flexibility and improvisation can lead to what he calls “stretch collaboration.” He outlines the five misunderstandings that keep people from effectively collaborating with “those people” and shows readers how they can successfully engage with positive results instead.


As our societies have become more complex and globalized and our organizations flatter and less hierarchical, more of us need to collaborate across more organizations, geographies, and cultures than ever before. But this increases the chances that we're going to get stuck having to collaborate with people we don't agree with or like or trust. But we've got no choice. We have to learn to work with people we might actually have come to think of as “the enemy.”

International consultant Adam Kahane, who has worked in some very fraught contexts in his career (South Africa after apartheid, Guatemala after a civil war), has found that in these low-control, high-conflict situations, everything we think we know about what makes collaboration work is wrong. The neat black-and-white thinking that underlies conventional collaboration-us/them, harmony/conflict, problem/solution-won't work. You need to be more flexible, accept a level of uncertainty and improvisation, and practice what Kahane calls “stretch collaboration.” In this very timely book he takes on five misunderstandings that keep us from effectively collaborating with “those people” and tells us what we should do instead.

Time has become a precious commodity, so business leaders who can save their customers' time more effectively than competitors do will win their loyalty. This book shows how it's done.


Traditionally, corporate efforts to improve have focused on making internal processes run faster. But customers value their personal time far more than a company's time. Real-time companies beat the competition by being faster and more responsive in meeting customer needs.

For example, one company profiled in this book allows customers to customize their products online to the exact shape, size, color, and graphic label they wish. Through lean manufacturing, just-in-time inventory, and digital technologies, customers receive their finished products in days.

The book describes how to apply this real-time message across all areas of products and services: (1) development, (2) functioning (how the product or service actually works), (3) production and delivery, and (4) usage (servicing, maintaining, repairing, and enhancing products and services). Numerous examples describe how companies and organizations of all types and sizes are transforming their products and services to real time in many different ways.

Entrepreneurs in developing countries who assume they will have the same legal, governmental, and institutional protections as their counterparts in the West will fail. To succeed, they need to build trust within the existing structures--and this book shows how it's done.


Western countries have created layers of laws, regulations and other kinds of structural protections to enable entrepreneurs to build businesses. These don't necessarily exist, or aren't consistently enforced, in developing countries. But there is a solution and that solution is trust. This book, by an eminent business scholar and developing world entrepreneur, shows how to build trust in three crucial ways:
1. Change Your Mindset: Let go of your expectations and realize that you have to understand and trust the rules of the society you're operating in, not fight against or go around them.
2. Work with the Pre-existing Social Fabric: You can't change customs and practices that have been in place for hundreds, even thousands of years. Work with what already exists and build on top of it (while communicating and acting transparently every step of the way).
3. Partner with and work with existing governmental structures: You can only scale your venture with their help--find change agents within the government and ally with them.

On the fortieth anniversary of its groundbreaking publication, this new edition of Dan Sisson's historical masterpiece shows that misunderstandings about the nature of revolution, political parties, and electoral history have created the wrong popular narrative about Thomas Jefferson's election in 1800-misunderstandings that have ramifications for our democracy today.

DEMOS Senior Fellow and self proclaimed “Tiger Mother of the U.S. economy” Ann Lee has a message for her fellow Americans: stop whining about China and start learning from them instead. She focuses on what Chinese success can teach us in several broad areas: education policy, economic policy and financial markets, foreign policy, strategic planning, and the benefits of a meritocratic political system.

The Hamster Revolution is a timely solution to both the widespread problem of email overload as well as most people's inefficient (or nonexistent) systems for categorizing and storing email messages. This book provides the practical steps needed to deal with these problems and become more efficient in our work.