Books

Life coach, inspirational speaker, and leadership trainer John Schuster offers a systematic guide to leveraging the biggest, most accessible, and most under-utilized resource for self-improvement: your past.

The risk of investing in the stock market has increased remarkably over the last decade. In this period we've seen tremendous volatility in stock prices, a market bubble and its subsequent pop, a parade of corporate scandals, the demise of a leading accounting firm and proven deception by many so-called investment analysts employed by major brokerage firms. In addition, the realities of ever-increasing geopolitical risks contribute to an uncertain economic future.
Blind Faith offers a cleverly simple yet revolutionary approach for managing investments in this perpetual high-risk environment. Corporate America and the investment industry have little to gain and lots to lose when investors decide to stop playing the traditional game that can -and has - destroyed trillions of dollars of individual wealth overnight. Readers will be equipped with both the strategy and the tools for success in virtually any economic environment while ending their participation in a system that has taken full advantage of their blind faith and misplaced trust.

Sales has always been a high burnout profession. These days, with the intense focus on quarterly earnings reports, there is more pressure on sales professionals than ever before. The relentless push for immediate results can leave salespeople exhausted, frustrated, and wondering why they ever got themselves into this business. And it can leave sales organizations with a serious turnover problem.

SPROUT! was written by two long-time sales veterans to help their fellow professionals rediscover enthusiasm for their chosen profession and to help sales organizations retain top talent. Vengel and Wright use a page-turning story to outline a new strategy for sales, one that will make salespeople better able to cope with the inevitable ups and downs and take a more effective, long-term approach.

As the book begins, Marsha Molloy has had it. Once a top pharmaceutical sales representative so crackerjack her nickname was Marsha Money, she's been laid low by a tough economy and just plain exhaustion. The once-hungry top producer has seemingly lost her touch and grown indifferent to a sales culture that appears to value faxes, emails, and cell phone chats instead of the relationship building that had been her forte. An avid gardener on a visit to her local nursery, Marsha runs into Bob Rawlings, the store's new owner and an ex-sales professional himself. They begin to chat, and Marsha mentions her career frustrations. Bob replies that he'd had the same problem, but found that the more he began treating his business like his garden, the better his business grew - and a happier, more relaxed salesman appeared. Marsha is intrigued but puzzled - how could sales be like gardening? Bob takes Marsha under his wing and, with the assistance of several other salespeople he's mentored, teaches her the secrets of his sales garden.

By using the authors' sales garden metaphor to change their whole way of thinking about sales, and by adhering to the easy, practical steps outlined in SPROUT! salespeople can beat the career blues, increase their sales, and sustain themselves for the long term.

Leadership is difficult--in our quest to teach leaders the secrets of success, we've somehow lost sight of this truth. Steven Snyder teaches leaders that leadership is a marathon, not a sprint; his book offers key strategies for navigating challenges.

Our future will be radically decentralized, digitized, and disrupted. Leaders will need more than just skills to survive. Veteran futurist Bob Johansen offers five literacies-combinations of discipline, practices, and perspective-for thriving in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.


A rapid and massively disruptive shift from centralized to distributed organizations has already begun. But current leadership practices were designed for large, centralized organizations, making them increasingly obsolete. Bob Johansen, who has been projecting future trends from Silicon Valley since 1968, outlines five literacies leaders need to develop to cope with this brave new world.

Johansen says leaders need the literacy of projecting themselves into the future and “looking backwards” to make sure they are preparing for potential new developments. They have to cultivate the literacy of voluntarily engaging with their fear in a safe way, using simulations and gaming, so they can immerse themselves in the things they're worried about and deal with them. Distributed leadership is a third vital literacy-leaders need to know how to guide organizations that have no center, grow from the edges, and can't be controlled. In a globalized world they must master multimedia leadership-the literacy of having presence and influence even when they're not physically present. And finally, to stay on top of all this, they need the literacy of creating positive energy: leaders have to be extremely fit, physically and mentally, to keep their own energy and that of their organizations high to cope with this era of extreme disruption. Johansen presents dramatic and mind-expanding examples of how forward-looking organizations are developing these literacies and offers readers sage advice on how to cultivate them.

This is the first book on influencing others aimed squarely at introverts, who make up half of the U.S. population. Jennifer Kahnweiler, bestselling author of The Introverted Leader (20,000 copies sold) demonstrates precisely how introverts can be highly effective influencers when, instead of trying to act like extroverts, they make the most of their natural strengths.

Bestselling author Fritjof Capra partners with distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei to reveal that our legal system must catch up with the current scientific under-standing of the world if it is to contribute to solving the great crises of our times.

At the root of many of the environmental, economic, and social crises we face today is a legal system based on an outdated and ultimately destructive worldview. In this groundbreaking book, bestselling author, physicist, and systems theorist Fritjof Capra and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show how, by incorporating concepts from modern science, the law can be updated to reflect a more accurate view of how the world works and become a progressive force.

Capra and Mattei trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science to show how the two disciplines have always influenced each other-until recently. Science now sees the world as being made up of interconnected networks. But law is stuck in a mechanistic, 17th century paradigm that views the world as discrete individual parts. This has led to a disregard for the health of the whole-for example, elevating the rights of individual property owners over the good of the community. But Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on this planet.

In this inspiring and beautifully illustrated book, bestselling author Margaret Wheatley offers guidance to people everywhere for how to persevere through challenges in their personal lives, families, workplaces, communities, and causes. She provides hope, wisdom, and perspective for learning the discipline of perseverance.

Every society is governed by stories-overarching cultural frameworks that determine what people value and how they understand and relate to the world and each other. Bestselling author David Korten argues that our current political, economic, and environmental crisis can be traced to fatal flaws in our current stories, and offers a new one that promises a better future.

In a world of unprecedented disruption, mastering the art of change isn't just an advantage-it's essential for survival.

Drawing from decades of work with global organizations, military commanders, and NASA leaders, Jeff and Staney DeGraff reveal how true transformation emerges not from avoiding contradictions, but from embracing them.

This groundbreaking book, the third installation in their comprehensive innovation series, introduces a revolutionary framework for understanding and leveraging paradox. Through rich storytelling and battle-tested strategies, the DeGraffs unpack seven fundamental contradictions that define transformative growth:

How do we achieve more by doing less? Why does certainty often lead to failure, while embracing uncertainty paves the path to breakthrough? When does resistance become the catalyst for change? The Art of Change demonstrates how these seeming contradictions hold the key to profound transformation-both personally and professionally.

This isn't just another business book-it's a practical philosophy for navigating complexity in dynamic environments. Whether you're leading a Fortune 500 company, steering a non-profit through turbulent times, or seeking personal growth, you'll discover:

• A proven framework for turning obstacles into opportunities
• Practical tools for making better decisions in ambiguous situations
• Strategies for building resilience through embracing paradox
• Methods for driving innovation by challenging conventional wisdom
• Techniques for leading transformational change in any environment

The Art of Change completes a pioneering trilogy that establishes a comprehensive school of thought around innovation and transformation. Building on the foundations laid in their previous works, the DeGraffs provide their most sophisticated and nuanced exploration yet of how to drive meaningful change in complex systems.

Don't just manage change-master it. Learn how to transform paradoxes into breakthroughs and turn uncertainty into your greatest advantage. The Art of Change is your essential guide to navigating the contradictions that define our era and achieving lasting transformation in an increasingly fluid world.

“I believe we can change the world if we start talking to one another again.” With this simple declaration, Margaret Wheatley proposes that people band together with their colleagues and friends to create the solutions for real social change, both locally and globally, that are so badly needed.

Such change will not come from governments or corporations, she argues, but from the ageless process of thinking together in conversation. Turning to One Another encourages this process.

Part I explores the power of conversation and the conditions—simplicity, personal courage, real listening, and diversity—that support it.

Part II contains quotes and images to encourage the reader to pause and reflect, and to prepare for the work ahead, convening truly meaningful conversations.

Part III provides ten “conversation starters”—questions that, in Wheatley's experience, have led people to share their deepest beliefs, fears, and hopes.

There is too much to do in too little time. But bestselling author Devora Zack says multitasking is a phony solution. It's stressful, inefficient, unnatural, and even dangerous. Through this book-which is the answer to many people's prayers-she shows how you can singletask your way to success and tranquility.

We have become a nation-one of many-addicted to the popular, enticing, and dangerously misleading drug of multitasking. Author Devora Zack was hooked once herself. We hope by doing several tasks at once we can accomplish more-but Zack marshals a host of neuroscientific research to show that the opposite is true. The fact is, your brain is simply not built to multitask. In any situation we're most efficient focusing on one task at a time. But with all the information and interruptions that bombard us, how is that possible?

Singletasking explains exactly how to clear and calm your mind, arrange your schedule and environment, and gently but firmly manage the expectations of people around you so that you can accomplish a succession of tasks, one at a time-and be infinitely more productive and effective. This book flies in the face of long-standing rhetoric glorifying multitasking. Elegantly simple methods are presented on how to tackle an insurmountable list of to-dos with less effort and greater ease. Only clowns should juggle. Singletasking is the key to success and sanity.

As President of the Giraffe Heroes Project, which since 1982 has been recognizing people who "stick their necks out for the common good," John Graham has seen what hundreds of average citizens around the world have done to bring about constructive change. He's drawn on their experiences, his own as a veteran environmental activist, and that of a hand-picked group of seasoned activists to produce an accessible, eminently practical, inspiring guide on how to work effectively for change in any environment.
Stick Your Neck Out covers every aspect of working for change, from choosing an issue to mapping out a strategy, getting a team together, building alliances, working with the media, and more. Each chapter contains a series of practical tips as well as inspiring examples of real people--artists, truck drivers, doctors, waitresses, and others--who have made a difference on issues like poverty, racism, gang violence, environmental pollution, and many more. Everything in this book has been honed and practiced; nothing is untested theory.
This is a comprehensive guide to the skills, qualities, and strategies you need to make a difference on any issue. But it's also about becoming fully alive--about the meaning and passion you can add to your own life by getting involved. Active citizenship and personal growth are linked. The information in this book can change your world--and it can change your life.

Most approaches to conflict resolution and negotiation result in just temporary settlement, compromise, or capitulation. This book offers new principles and new tools to show how to get to real, lasting resolution of any kind of personal, business, organizational, or community conflict

From the author of New York Times bestseller Making a Life, Making a Living and the man BusinessWeek calls the "Savior of Business School Souls" comes the MBA student's guide to redefining risk and reward--helping readers identify and formulate what a meaningful life looks like for them.

Bestselling author and motivational speaker John Izzo posits that happiness is not something to be sought but something we have natural access to-but sometimes have to fight to keep.


From bestselling author John Izzo comes this practical and inspirational guide to happiness-not finding happiness but protecting the innate sense of well-being that resides within each of us at every moment.

Dr. Izzo says that happiness and contentment are our natural states-and cites ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience to back up his claim. On a sabbatical he took to find out why he lacked a sense of joy in his life, despite being a successful consultant, speaker, and author, he realized what the cause of much of our unhappiness is. Reflecting as he walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain and spent time in the deserts of Morocco and in the Andes of Peru, he saw that specific mental activities and attitudes take our happiness from us. He calls them the five thieves of happiness: the thief of control, the thief of conceit, the thief of coveting, the thief of consumption, and the thief of comfort. This is a thoughtful exploration of why we let these thieves in, how they steal our happiness from us, and what attitudes we can adopt and actions we can take to effectively lock them out.