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Master creative thinking in the AI age with practical tools that blend imagination and discipline for better innovation in this updated, award-winning business bestseller.
Now updated with 20 percent new content, this Porchlight Business Book of the Year returns with all-new case studies and a groundbreaking chapter on creative partnerships with AI and emerging technologies. Natalie Nixon demonstrates that humans are hardwired for creativity—a competency anyone can develop by balancing wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail).
Drawing on interviews with professionals across diverse industries—from farming to medicine to technology—Nixon reveals how inquiry, improvisation, and intuition enhance creative capacity in every kind of work. This second edition features fresh success stories from resourceful businesses that have mastered the delicate dance between human imagination and artificial intelligence in a rapidly changing world.
Combining practical creativity tools with illuminating stories of innovative people and organizations, this book serves as a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity within each of us. Nixon offers a dynamic approach to adaptation and innovation that allows the freedom to access our full human potential—even as technology continues to reshape how we work. This essential guide helps anyone cultivate the creative thinking needed to thrive in today's complex business landscape.
Now updated with 20 percent new content, this Porchlight Business Book of the Year returns with all-new case studies and a groundbreaking chapter on creative partnerships with AI and emerging technologies. Natalie Nixon demonstrates that humans are hardwired for creativity—a competency anyone can develop by balancing wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail).
Drawing on interviews with professionals across diverse industries—from farming to medicine to technology—Nixon reveals how inquiry, improvisation, and intuition enhance creative capacity in every kind of work. This second edition features fresh success stories from resourceful businesses that have mastered the delicate dance between human imagination and artificial intelligence in a rapidly changing world.
Combining practical creativity tools with illuminating stories of innovative people and organizations, this book serves as a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity within each of us. Nixon offers a dynamic approach to adaptation and innovation that allows the freedom to access our full human potential—even as technology continues to reshape how we work. This essential guide helps anyone cultivate the creative thinking needed to thrive in today's complex business landscape.
Management icon Henry Mintzberg dismantles twenty dangerous business myths in this essential guide for thoughtful leaders.
Henry Mintzberg, legendary management thinker and recipient of the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent decades challenging conventional wisdom about how organizations work. In this powerful distillation of his life's work, Mintzberg tackles the most persistent and damaging myths in business—from “if you can't measure it, you can't manage it” to the blind worship of “strategic planning.”
With characteristic wit and clarity, Mintzberg offers refreshing alternatives that will transform how you think about leadership, structure, and organizational effectiveness. He replaces tired maxims like “managing is controlling” with more nuanced approaches that embrace “controlled disorder” and suggests that “ordinary creativity” often matters more than exceptional genius.
Drawing from his extensive body of work across sixty years, Mintzberg provides a masterclass in critical thinking for anyone who leads teams or organizations. His irreverent style makes complex ideas accessible without sacrificing depth, making this book as intellectually stimulating as it is practically valuable.
Whether you're a seasoned executive, an aspiring manager, or a student of organizational behavior, this concise volume will challenge your assumptions and provide a clear-eyed framework for more effective, humane management.
Henry Mintzberg, legendary management thinker and recipient of the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent decades challenging conventional wisdom about how organizations work. In this powerful distillation of his life's work, Mintzberg tackles the most persistent and damaging myths in business—from “if you can't measure it, you can't manage it” to the blind worship of “strategic planning.”
With characteristic wit and clarity, Mintzberg offers refreshing alternatives that will transform how you think about leadership, structure, and organizational effectiveness. He replaces tired maxims like “managing is controlling” with more nuanced approaches that embrace “controlled disorder” and suggests that “ordinary creativity” often matters more than exceptional genius.
Drawing from his extensive body of work across sixty years, Mintzberg provides a masterclass in critical thinking for anyone who leads teams or organizations. His irreverent style makes complex ideas accessible without sacrificing depth, making this book as intellectually stimulating as it is practically valuable.
Whether you're a seasoned executive, an aspiring manager, or a student of organizational behavior, this concise volume will challenge your assumptions and provide a clear-eyed framework for more effective, humane management.
The pioneering book that exposed the intergenerational health impacts of systemic racism is back—with 50 percent new content to meet the demands of our post-2020 reality.
This updated edition delivers urgent tools for survival, including four new chapters, updated research, case studies, and real-world examples.
Black people are exhausted. The toll of living within systems designed to exclude them devastates minds, bodies, and spirits. Award-winning diversity, equity, and inclusion leader Mary-Frances Winters—now joined by Mareisha Winters Reese—addresses this ongoing crisis with an urgent update to her bestselling book.
Winters and Reese incorporate new data, fresh case studies, and expanded tools to reflect today’s realities. This edition, with 50 percent new content, includes the following:
With unflinching honesty and a practical lens, Winters and Reese document the enduring toll of “living while Black” while also equipping readers with strategies for personal healing and organizational transformation. The research is current, the case studies are real, and the tools are designed to create lasting systemic change.
This updated edition delivers urgent tools for survival, including four new chapters, updated research, case studies, and real-world examples.
Black people are exhausted. The toll of living within systems designed to exclude them devastates minds, bodies, and spirits. Award-winning diversity, equity, and inclusion leader Mary-Frances Winters—now joined by Mareisha Winters Reese—addresses this ongoing crisis with an urgent update to her bestselling book.
Winters and Reese incorporate new data, fresh case studies, and expanded tools to reflect today’s realities. This edition, with 50 percent new content, includes the following:
- Four new chapters on current challenges facing Black communities
- Updated research on racism’s health impacts in a post-COVID world
- New stories and case studies that illuminate lived experience
- Updated models reflecting today’s most relevant findings
With unflinching honesty and a practical lens, Winters and Reese document the enduring toll of “living while Black” while also equipping readers with strategies for personal healing and organizational transformation. The research is current, the case studies are real, and the tools are designed to create lasting systemic change.
Build organizations where employees feel truly safe to learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo.
The proven practical guide to psychological safety is now expanded with updated research and powerful new frameworks and tools.
Psychological safety—the belief that you can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation—is crucial for high-performing teams and innovative organizations. This revised and expanded edition of Timothy Clark's groundbreaking framework provides leaders with a research-backed roadmap through four distinct stages that enable individuals to feel safe, valued, and empowered.
The four stages build progressively:
Leaders will learn to banish fear, create performance-based accountability, and build environments where people thrive beyond expectations.
The proven practical guide to psychological safety is now expanded with updated research and powerful new frameworks and tools.
Psychological safety—the belief that you can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation—is crucial for high-performing teams and innovative organizations. This revised and expanded edition of Timothy Clark's groundbreaking framework provides leaders with a research-backed roadmap through four distinct stages that enable individuals to feel safe, valued, and empowered.
The four stages build progressively:
- Inclusion Safety (feeling included and accepted),
- Learner Safety (feeling safe to learn and ask questions),
- Contributor Safety (feeling safe to contribute and participate), and
- Challenger Safety (feeling safe to challenge the status quo and speak truth to power).
Leaders will learn to banish fear, create performance-based accountability, and build environments where people thrive beyond expectations.
Stop running toward someone else’s definition of success, and start intentionally shaping your own. This prequel to Aesop’s famous tortoise and hare fable shows exhausted professionals how to shift from chasing external validation to creating internal meaning and alignment.
Stop chasing visibility. Start creating meaning.
In today’s high-pressure workplace, professionals are depleted from constantly proving themselves to others—yet struggling to find genuine satisfaction in their work. What if the breakthrough isn’t working harder within the system but instead reimagining what success means to you?
Stop Chasing, Start Creating reveals the untold story of Tano the tortoise before his famous race with the hare. In this prequel to the beloved Aesop’s fable, we discover that Tano wasn’t always the steady, purposeful creature we know. He once chased visibility, approval, and validation just like the rest of us—until a moment of awakening changed everything.
Through Tano’s journey from external pressure to internal clarity, readers discover the crucial difference between chasing meaning and creating it. Grounded in motivation science, this framework shifts professionals from extrinsic motivation (external rewards, recognition, and belonging) to intrinsic motivation (purpose, contribution, and alignment).
Perfect for burned-out professionals in healthcare, education, nonprofit management, and other purpose-driven fields, this story-first approach offers the metaphor-rich reflection modern workers crave without feeling like another productivity manual.
Stop chasing visibility. Start creating meaning.
In today’s high-pressure workplace, professionals are depleted from constantly proving themselves to others—yet struggling to find genuine satisfaction in their work. What if the breakthrough isn’t working harder within the system but instead reimagining what success means to you?
Stop Chasing, Start Creating reveals the untold story of Tano the tortoise before his famous race with the hare. In this prequel to the beloved Aesop’s fable, we discover that Tano wasn’t always the steady, purposeful creature we know. He once chased visibility, approval, and validation just like the rest of us—until a moment of awakening changed everything.
Through Tano’s journey from external pressure to internal clarity, readers discover the crucial difference between chasing meaning and creating it. Grounded in motivation science, this framework shifts professionals from extrinsic motivation (external rewards, recognition, and belonging) to intrinsic motivation (purpose, contribution, and alignment).
Perfect for burned-out professionals in healthcare, education, nonprofit management, and other purpose-driven fields, this story-first approach offers the metaphor-rich reflection modern workers crave without feeling like another productivity manual.
This manager's guide shows how to recognize and eliminate the leadership behaviors that kill morale, crush productivity, and drive top talent away.
The workplace is broken—and managers are the problem. Through coaching hundreds of frustrated employees, Tanya Uyigue has identified the toxic management patterns driving people to quit. Employees are exhausted by leaders who micromanage their every move, disappear for months without check-ins, or create environments where speaking up feels dangerous.
The truth is, your team isn't telling you what's actually wrong because they're afraid of being retaliated against, dismissed, or labeled as “difficult.” But their silence is costing you talent, productivity, and profitability.
What Your Team Won't Tell You exposes the seven destructive manager archetypes that poison workplace culture, and each chapter provides specific, actionable strategies to transform these toxic patterns into leadership strengths. When you create an environment where employees feel heard, valued, and empowered, retention soars, productivity increases, and engagement becomes authentic-not forced.
The workplace is broken—and managers are the problem. Through coaching hundreds of frustrated employees, Tanya Uyigue has identified the toxic management patterns driving people to quit. Employees are exhausted by leaders who micromanage their every move, disappear for months without check-ins, or create environments where speaking up feels dangerous.
The truth is, your team isn't telling you what's actually wrong because they're afraid of being retaliated against, dismissed, or labeled as “difficult.” But their silence is costing you talent, productivity, and profitability.
What Your Team Won't Tell You exposes the seven destructive manager archetypes that poison workplace culture, and each chapter provides specific, actionable strategies to transform these toxic patterns into leadership strengths. When you create an environment where employees feel heard, valued, and empowered, retention soars, productivity increases, and engagement becomes authentic-not forced.
This book, the first to treat workplace culture like a garden instead of a construction project, offers a proven framework that transforms toxic environments into thriving ecosystems where all talent flourishes.
Organizations fail when they treat culture like a construction project. They thrive when they treat it like a garden, cultivating conditions for growth rather than engineering behavior through rigid blueprints.
Award-winning consultant Abi Adamson introduces the SERN™ framework (Soil, Exposure, Roots, Nutrients) to guide sustainable cultural transformation. Drawing from her experience working with international clients, including Spotify, Sony Music, and Match Group, Abi shows how to do the following:
Unlike traditional culture initiatives, focused on compliance and conformity, this framework reveals why expensive transformation efforts keep failing and how to spot “nutrient vampires” draining your best people.
For C-suite leaders, executives, people managers, and anyone who has ever felt invisible at work, this guide offers a sustainable alternative: treating culture as a living ecosystem requiring ongoing cultivation, not a one-time fix.
Because as Abi says, “We bloom together or we wilt alone.”™
Organizations fail when they treat culture like a construction project. They thrive when they treat it like a garden, cultivating conditions for growth rather than engineering behavior through rigid blueprints.
Award-winning consultant Abi Adamson introduces the SERN™ framework (Soil, Exposure, Roots, Nutrients) to guide sustainable cultural transformation. Drawing from her experience working with international clients, including Spotify, Sony Music, and Match Group, Abi shows how to do the following:
- Identify and detoxify the soil poisoning organizational foundations
- Expose who's hoarding the light while others wither in shadows
- Strengthen the root networks where real culture actually lives
- Distribute the nutrients people actually need to thrive (hint: it's not pizza Fridays)
Unlike traditional culture initiatives, focused on compliance and conformity, this framework reveals why expensive transformation efforts keep failing and how to spot “nutrient vampires” draining your best people.
For C-suite leaders, executives, people managers, and anyone who has ever felt invisible at work, this guide offers a sustainable alternative: treating culture as a living ecosystem requiring ongoing cultivation, not a one-time fix.
Because as Abi says, “We bloom together or we wilt alone.”™
Can't afford housing or healthcare? One 1886 Supreme Court fraud gave corporations constitutional rights over you—discover how billionaire oligarchs stole your future and the constitutional amendment to take it back.
You work harder than your parents did, yet you can’t afford a home. Billionaires are richer than ever. You know the system is rigged—but no one’s told you how it happened or who rigged it.
Here’s what they don’t teach in law school: In 1886, the Supreme Court never ruled that corporations have constitutional rights. That “precedent” came from a single fraudulent sentence inserted by a court reporter working with a corrupt justice. One headnote. One lie. The greatest legal heist in American history.
That fraud did the following and more:
That’s why your paycheck doesn’t stretch. That’s why corporations have more rights than you do. That’s why democracy is eroding. For 140 years, they’ve distracted Americans by blaming immigrants, “welfare queens,” and each other—while billionaires rewrote the rules. Now people are pushing back: passing local ordinances, organizing for a constitutional amendment, and reclaiming power for We the People.
The rebellion has begun. Stop blaming your neighbors. Start demanding accountability. Learn how the system was stolen—and how to take it back.
You work harder than your parents did, yet you can’t afford a home. Billionaires are richer than ever. You know the system is rigged—but no one’s told you how it happened or who rigged it.
Here’s what they don’t teach in law school: In 1886, the Supreme Court never ruled that corporations have constitutional rights. That “precedent” came from a single fraudulent sentence inserted by a court reporter working with a corrupt justice. One headnote. One lie. The greatest legal heist in American history.
That fraud did the following and more:
- Crushed unions and shipped jobs overseas
- Slashed taxes for the wealthy and gave corporations the power to buy elections
- Transferred trillions from working families to billionaire oligarchs
That’s why your paycheck doesn’t stretch. That’s why corporations have more rights than you do. That’s why democracy is eroding. For 140 years, they’ve distracted Americans by blaming immigrants, “welfare queens,” and each other—while billionaires rewrote the rules. Now people are pushing back: passing local ordinances, organizing for a constitutional amendment, and reclaiming power for We the People.
The rebellion has begun. Stop blaming your neighbors. Start demanding accountability. Learn how the system was stolen—and how to take it back.
Daily healing practices for Black Americans combating systemic racism—transform exhaustion into renewal, resistance, and lasting joy!
Black Americans are exhausted. The relentless burden of navigating racism—at work, in healthcare, in daily life—takes a devastating toll. You're tired of being strong, tired of code-switching, tired of carrying emotional weight that isn't yours to bear. The question isn't whether Black fatigue is real. The question is: what do you do about it?
This book provides the answer. Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N. Winters Reese offer over fifty culturally grounded practices designed specifically for Black healing. It's a practical roadmap covering body, mind, and spirit renewal:
This guide includes daily breathwork, somatic practices for release, boundary-setting frameworks, relationship mapping tools, workplace microaggression trackers, and thirty-day joy challenges. Each practice is rooted in Black cultural traditions and designed to fit into your real life. Whether you need immediate relief or long-term transformation, this book meets you where you are.
Your healing begins here.
Black Americans are exhausted. The relentless burden of navigating racism—at work, in healthcare, in daily life—takes a devastating toll. You're tired of being strong, tired of code-switching, tired of carrying emotional weight that isn't yours to bear. The question isn't whether Black fatigue is real. The question is: what do you do about it?
This book provides the answer. Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N. Winters Reese offer over fifty culturally grounded practices designed specifically for Black healing. It's a practical roadmap covering body, mind, and spirit renewal:
- Reclaim boundaries without guilt
- Build your healing village
- Navigate toxic workplaces while protecting your peace
- Transform pain into powerful action
This guide includes daily breathwork, somatic practices for release, boundary-setting frameworks, relationship mapping tools, workplace microaggression trackers, and thirty-day joy challenges. Each practice is rooted in Black cultural traditions and designed to fit into your real life. Whether you need immediate relief or long-term transformation, this book meets you where you are.
Your healing begins here.
The bestselling guide to aging with purpose is now updated with urgent wisdom on staying engaged, countering tyranny, and making peace with mortality.
Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying category.
Getting older isn't about withdrawal—it's about diving deeper into life, work, relationships, and meaning. But how do you stay engaged when facing loss, political chaos, and mortality?
In this revised and expanded edition, beloved teacher and bestselling author Parker J. Palmer returns with eight more years of hard-won wisdom. Drawing on nine decades of life, Palmer explores the urgent questions aging raises:
Through meditations blending prose and poetry, Palmer shows that old is just another word for nothing left to lose—a time to speak truth, reach out, reach in, and fully inhabit the life you have. Laced with humor and gravitas, this book does not tell you how to age. It invites you to turn the prism on your own unfolding life, refracting new light at every turn.
Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying category.
Getting older isn't about withdrawal—it's about diving deeper into life, work, relationships, and meaning. But how do you stay engaged when facing loss, political chaos, and mortality?
In this revised and expanded edition, beloved teacher and bestselling author Parker J. Palmer returns with eight more years of hard-won wisdom. Drawing on nine decades of life, Palmer explores the urgent questions aging raises:
- How do we counter authoritarianism when democracy itself is threatened?
- How do we stay connected across generational divides?
- How do we make peace with endings while staying meaningfully engaged until the last breath?
Through meditations blending prose and poetry, Palmer shows that old is just another word for nothing left to lose—a time to speak truth, reach out, reach in, and fully inhabit the life you have. Laced with humor and gravitas, this book does not tell you how to age. It invites you to turn the prism on your own unfolding life, refracting new light at every turn.
Navigate your toughest challenges with timeless wisdom and practical guidance for persevering through life's struggles—now updated with new insights for facing today's unprecedented pressures.
When you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or ready to give up—you need practical wisdom that addresses what you're actually experiencing, not hollow motivational slogans. This beautifully illustrated second edition of Margaret Wheatley's bestselling guide gives you practical tools to persevere through challenges at work, at home, in your community, and within yourself—with a new introduction for using this book individually or in groups.
Through concise, compassionate essays, Wheatley addresses the moments when you feel lost, betrayed, or exhausted—and helps you recognize the rewarding times when you've made a small difference. She names the behaviors and dynamics—fearlessness, guilt, joy, jealousy—that either support or impede your efforts, putting each in a broader human and timeless perspective. The self-contained essays let you thumb through and find what speaks to you right now.
Complemented by poems and quotations from traditions and cultures throughout history, this book grounds you spiritually while providing practical perspective. As the Hopi elders remind us: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
When you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or ready to give up—you need practical wisdom that addresses what you're actually experiencing, not hollow motivational slogans. This beautifully illustrated second edition of Margaret Wheatley's bestselling guide gives you practical tools to persevere through challenges at work, at home, in your community, and within yourself—with a new introduction for using this book individually or in groups.
Through concise, compassionate essays, Wheatley addresses the moments when you feel lost, betrayed, or exhausted—and helps you recognize the rewarding times when you've made a small difference. She names the behaviors and dynamics—fearlessness, guilt, joy, jealousy—that either support or impede your efforts, putting each in a broader human and timeless perspective. The self-contained essays let you thumb through and find what speaks to you right now.
Complemented by poems and quotations from traditions and cultures throughout history, this book grounds you spiritually while providing practical perspective. As the Hopi elders remind us: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
The extractive economy is failing. The regenerative economy is being built. This is the definitive field manual for entrepreneurs, investors, and changemakers ready to stop tinkering with a broken system—and start building what replaces it.
When Laurie Lane-Zucker coined the term impact entrepreneur in 2011, he named an emerging movement. Fifteen years later, that movement has reached a breakthrough. The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough maps how to join it.
Part manifesto and part operating manual, this book shows how enterprises, ownership, capital, markets, security, and culture must transform together—and provides practical tools to begin immediately. Drawing on three decades at the forefront of impact investing and regenerative economics, Lane-Zucker introduces powerful new frameworks, including the Five Pillars of Real Security, the Prevention Dividend, and Defense as a Service—reimagining protection as shared resilience rather than fortified isolation.
You'll learn to
Each chapter moves from analysis to action, with real-world applications from practitioners already building the Impact Economy. The breakthrough is happening now. The question is whether you'll participate.
When Laurie Lane-Zucker coined the term impact entrepreneur in 2011, he named an emerging movement. Fifteen years later, that movement has reached a breakthrough. The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough maps how to join it.
Part manifesto and part operating manual, this book shows how enterprises, ownership, capital, markets, security, and culture must transform together—and provides practical tools to begin immediately. Drawing on three decades at the forefront of impact investing and regenerative economics, Lane-Zucker introduces powerful new frameworks, including the Five Pillars of Real Security, the Prevention Dividend, and Defense as a Service—reimagining protection as shared resilience rather than fortified isolation.
You'll learn to
- design enterprises that heal communities and ecosystems;
- structure ownership so mission survives growth and succession;
- deploy capital for long-term resilience;
- rethink risk through prevention and collaboration; and
- translate regenerative values into concrete strategies and decisions.
Each chapter moves from analysis to action, with real-world applications from practitioners already building the Impact Economy. The breakthrough is happening now. The question is whether you'll participate.
Since World War II, US presidents of both parties have relied on an economic hit man strategy.
They have used the four pillars of that strategy (fear, debt, anxiety over insufficiency, and divide and conquer) to control other nations and enrich a growing oligarchy.
In the groundbreaking Confessions of an Economic Hit Man trilogy, John Perkins exposed the complex, expansive, and clandestine global network that serves the interests of powerful corporate, financial, and political entities. In The Art of the Steal, he reveals its most dangerous evolution.
Donald Trump represents a historic shift. He is the first US president to turn the economic hit man strategy into a personal brand and governing style. He has ascended the four pillars, brought the playbook home, and reversed the march toward the American ideal of liberty, equality, justice, democracy, opportunity, and an individualism that supports family and community. At the same time, he has forced what was hidden into the open.
This book explains
Both warning and blueprint, it offers a pathway to renewing the American ideal—and using it to model a new global ideal.
They have used the four pillars of that strategy (fear, debt, anxiety over insufficiency, and divide and conquer) to control other nations and enrich a growing oligarchy.
In the groundbreaking Confessions of an Economic Hit Man trilogy, John Perkins exposed the complex, expansive, and clandestine global network that serves the interests of powerful corporate, financial, and political entities. In The Art of the Steal, he reveals its most dangerous evolution.
Donald Trump represents a historic shift. He is the first US president to turn the economic hit man strategy into a personal brand and governing style. He has ascended the four pillars, brought the playbook home, and reversed the march toward the American ideal of liberty, equality, justice, democracy, opportunity, and an individualism that supports family and community. At the same time, he has forced what was hidden into the open.
This book explains
- how this happened,
- why it matters, and
- what each of us can do to turn things around.
Both warning and blueprint, it offers a pathway to renewing the American ideal—and using it to model a new global ideal.
Great leaders create teams and companies that don't need great leaders.
That idea might stop you cold. Good.
Exhausted. Overwhelmed. You're the hero of your organization . . . and its biggest bottleneck. Every decision waits for your approval. Every problem lands on your desk. The harder you work, the more your team needs you. The behaviors that made you successful—solving problems fast, always being available, leading from the front—have become your organization's ceiling. Your competence becomes your captivity.
This is the hero trap. Most high-performing leaders don't recognize the pattern until they're burning out inside it.
Bill Flynn spent thirty years leading startups through IPOs and acquisitions before coaching hundreds of executives out of exactly this pattern. What he discovered is that the shift isn't about working differently. It's about becoming someone different—moving from the smartest person in the room to the leader who makes every room smarter than any one person.
The Hero Trap gives you the proven path. Through the story of CEO Alex Chen and Flynn's controller-builder-architect framework, you'll get
With a foreword by Marshall Goldsmith, whose own work on leadership transformation inspired this book, The Hero Trap does what other leadership books rarely manage: It moves you from shepherding the present to designing the future.
That idea might stop you cold. Good.
Exhausted. Overwhelmed. You're the hero of your organization . . . and its biggest bottleneck. Every decision waits for your approval. Every problem lands on your desk. The harder you work, the more your team needs you. The behaviors that made you successful—solving problems fast, always being available, leading from the front—have become your organization's ceiling. Your competence becomes your captivity.
This is the hero trap. Most high-performing leaders don't recognize the pattern until they're burning out inside it.
Bill Flynn spent thirty years leading startups through IPOs and acquisitions before coaching hundreds of executives out of exactly this pattern. What he discovered is that the shift isn't about working differently. It's about becoming someone different—moving from the smartest person in the room to the leader who makes every room smarter than any one person.
The Hero Trap gives you the proven path. Through the story of CEO Alex Chen and Flynn's controller-builder-architect framework, you'll get
- specific diagnostics to find where you're stuck;
- frameworks to delegate authority—not just tasks;
- the tools to know when to lead from the front and when to get out of the way; and
- a system for building self-sustaining teams that scale without you.
With a foreword by Marshall Goldsmith, whose own work on leadership transformation inspired this book, The Hero Trap does what other leadership books rarely manage: It moves you from shepherding the present to designing the future.
Five daily habits that reduce burnout, build engagement, and create a stronger organization, with no complex programs or HR mandates required.
Burnout is at record levels, and most leadership advice isn't solving it, because it's too complicated, it lands on HR teams who can't change daily culture, or it simply doesn't stick. This book offers something more useful: 5 simple, repeatable practices that managers, executives, and CEOs can weave into their existing routines right now, across in-person, hybrid, and AI-supported teams.
The 5 practices:
These are daily actions grounded in research and built for how work actually happens today, including distributed teams and AI-integrated workflows. Leaders who adopt them create cultures of support that sustain themselves without top-down mandates or expensive rollouts.
This book is for managers frustrated that engagement programs don't stick and for executives who want tools they can use today, not initiatives that take months.
Supporting your people isn't just the right thing to do; it builds more profitable, resilient organizations. Start here.
Burnout is at record levels, and most leadership advice isn't solving it, because it's too complicated, it lands on HR teams who can't change daily culture, or it simply doesn't stick. This book offers something more useful: 5 simple, repeatable practices that managers, executives, and CEOs can weave into their existing routines right now, across in-person, hybrid, and AI-supported teams.
The 5 practices:
- Celebrate Someone
- Go, See, and Help
- Be Interested
- Cocreate
- Do It First
These are daily actions grounded in research and built for how work actually happens today, including distributed teams and AI-integrated workflows. Leaders who adopt them create cultures of support that sustain themselves without top-down mandates or expensive rollouts.
This book is for managers frustrated that engagement programs don't stick and for executives who want tools they can use today, not initiatives that take months.
Supporting your people isn't just the right thing to do; it builds more profitable, resilient organizations. Start here.
Stop feeling stuck in traditional leadership approaches—master 7 heart-led actions that transform how you lead, connect authentically with your team, and drive business growth.
Leading with only technical skills isn't enough anymore. You need people to build a successful business—and today's workforce demands leaders who see beyond the bottom line. If you're feeling stuck or sensing that traditional leadership advice isn't connecting, this is your roadmap to the modern leadership approach that actually works.
Through 7 practical, heart-led actions, you'll learn to connect authentically with your team, drive engagement, and achieve measurable business results. Being vulnerable takes courage, but when you lead with generosity, you unlock profound benefits:
This proven framework includes the following:
Through unforgettable stories from the author and CEOs of well-recognized companies, you'll see exactly how generous leadership transformed their organizations and careers. Winner of the NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite and Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award finalist, this is the trusted reference for leaders ready to master modern leadership.
Leading with only technical skills isn't enough anymore. You need people to build a successful business—and today's workforce demands leaders who see beyond the bottom line. If you're feeling stuck or sensing that traditional leadership advice isn't connecting, this is your roadmap to the modern leadership approach that actually works.
Through 7 practical, heart-led actions, you'll learn to connect authentically with your team, drive engagement, and achieve measurable business results. Being vulnerable takes courage, but when you lead with generosity, you unlock profound benefits:
- deeper team connections
- stronger organizational performance
- accelerated career growth
- broader societal impact
This proven framework includes the following:
- Generous communication to build trust
- Generous listening to understand perspectives
- Generous inclusion to invite collaboration
- Becoming an ally to create opportunities
- Generous development to validate and expand potential
- Generous moments to acknowledge what matters
- Showing up authentically without masks
Through unforgettable stories from the author and CEOs of well-recognized companies, you'll see exactly how generous leadership transformed their organizations and careers. Winner of the NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite and Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award finalist, this is the trusted reference for leaders ready to master modern leadership.
Master persuasion as a leadership practice to spark change that sticks, turn resistance into collaboration, and move teams from compliance to lasting commitment.
Most change efforts fail not because of poor strategy but because leaders struggle to win genuine commitment. Between 60 and 70 percent of major organizational change initiatives fall short or fail outright. The missing ingredient? Constructive persuasion.
Drawing on over two decades of research and coaching thousands of executives worldwide, Dr. Jay Conger shatters outdated myths about persuasion as manipulation or performance. Instead, he reveals persuasion as the essential leadership practice that transforms resistance into collaboration, ideas into action, and plans into sustained progress.
Readers will learn to do the following:
Each chapter delivers field-tested frameworks, readiness checklists, and real-world cases from banking, healthcare, technology, and beyond. The result is a transformative playbook that elevates persuasion from soft skill to the decisive force behind leadership success in the 21st century.
Most change efforts fail not because of poor strategy but because leaders struggle to win genuine commitment. Between 60 and 70 percent of major organizational change initiatives fall short or fail outright. The missing ingredient? Constructive persuasion.
Drawing on over two decades of research and coaching thousands of executives worldwide, Dr. Jay Conger shatters outdated myths about persuasion as manipulation or performance. Instead, he reveals persuasion as the essential leadership practice that transforms resistance into collaboration, ideas into action, and plans into sustained progress.
Readers will learn to do the following:
- Map influence networks and identify key decision-makers who can tip organizational support
- Build credibility through humility, transparency, and demonstrated expertise rather than positional authority
- Frame problems that invite collaboration instead of triggering defensiveness
- Craft compelling evidence that combines data with emotional resonance
- Orchestrate the emotional arc that moves teams from uncertainty to confidence and commitment
- Remain open to being influenced themselves—the mark of truly persuasive leaders
Each chapter delivers field-tested frameworks, readiness checklists, and real-world cases from banking, healthcare, technology, and beyond. The result is a transformative playbook that elevates persuasion from soft skill to the decisive force behind leadership success in the 21st century.
Stop money problems from destroying your family with 5 proven trust principles that prevent conflicts, repair financial damage, and keep relationships strong across generations.
Money touches every family relationship, and trust is what determines whether it brings people closer or drives them apart. This book is about relational trust, the honesty, reliability, and mutual care between family members, not financial trust instruments. It gives you a practical framework for navigating money decisions together, from everyday expenses to major life transitions.
This book is for
The authors introduce four components of trust—care, sincerity, reliability, and competence—and show how each one plays out when families deal with money. Drawing on stories from their own lives and the families they've served over a combined sixty years, they offer a shared language that replaces blame and assumptions with clarity and connection.
Whether you're writing a will, helping a teenager budget, or repairing a financial betrayal, this book helps you protect both your money and your relationships.
Money touches every family relationship, and trust is what determines whether it brings people closer or drives them apart. This book is about relational trust, the honesty, reliability, and mutual care between family members, not financial trust instruments. It gives you a practical framework for navigating money decisions together, from everyday expenses to major life transitions.
This book is for
- couples building a financial life together;
- parents teaching kids about money at every age;
- adult children navigating inheritance or aging parents' finances;
- blended families working through competing loyalties and values;
- siblings managing unequal support, caregiving costs, or estate decisions; and
- any family recovering from financial conflict, broken promises, or betrayal.
The authors introduce four components of trust—care, sincerity, reliability, and competence—and show how each one plays out when families deal with money. Drawing on stories from their own lives and the families they've served over a combined sixty years, they offer a shared language that replaces blame and assumptions with clarity and connection.
Whether you're writing a will, helping a teenager budget, or repairing a financial betrayal, this book helps you protect both your money and your relationships.