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The Innovation Code
The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict

Harmony is sublime in music but deadly to innovation. The only way to create new, hybrid solutions is to clash. Innovation happens when we bring people with contrasting perspectives and complementary areas of expertise together in one room. We innovate best with people who challenge us, not people who agree with us.

It sounds like a recipe for chaos and confusion. But in The Innovation Code, Jeff DeGraff, dubbed the “Dean of Innovation,” and Staney DeGraff introduce a simple framework to explain the ways different kinds of thinkers and leaders can create constructive conflict in any organization. This positive tension produces ingenious solutions that go far beyond “the best of both worlds.”

Drawing on their work with nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies, the DeGraffs help you harness the creative energy that arises from opposing viewpoints. They identify four contrasting styles of innovator—the Artist, the Engineer, the Athlete, and the Sage—and include exercises and assessments for building, managing, and embracing the dynamic discord of a team that contains all four. You can also figure out where you fit on the continuum of innovator archetypes.

Using vivid examples, The Innovation Code offers four steps to normalize conflict and channel it to develop something completely new. By following these simple steps, you will get breakthrough innovations that are both good for you and your customers. This is a rigorous but highly accessible guide for achieving breakthrough solutions by utilizing the full—and seemingly contradictory—spectrum of innovative thinking.

Based on the bestseller Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, this workbook is a practical guide that helps readers ask the right questions for successful change.

In the bestselling classic, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, Dr. Marilee Adams introduces Question Thinking, which shows how you can change your questions and your mindset for the most successful outcomes. This workbook puts those original ideas into action and makes them easy to implement.

In this workbook you get to choose an area of your life that you want to improve and then apply the principles and practices of Question Thinking to experience the benefits of this system firsthand. At the center of this work is the Choice Map, which helps you recognize the likely impact of the questions you ask. This book provides tools, warm-up exercises, somatic practices, and learning scenarios that bring the practical applications of Question Thinking into your professional and personal life. Thoroughly engaging, it includes how the Question Thinking protocols can help you switch from a controlling Judger Mindset to a flexible Learner mindset and learn how to facilitate more effective meetings and conversations.

Although this workbook can serve as a companion to the bestselling book, it has been designed to stand on its own. In the book, the fable's hero undergoes a transformative journey by using Question Thinking, and this workbook helps readers undergo a similar transformation.

Seven practical habits for people ready to stop observing broken systems and start changing them, whether at the neighborhood level or the global stage.

Adam Kahane, bestselling author of Collaborating with the Enemy and a veteran facilitator who has worked with presidents, executives, and community organizers across dozens of countries, distills decades of real-world experience into a clear, actionable framework for everyday changemakers.

This book is built for people working on problems that feel too big or too entrenched to move, including climate advocates, healthcare reformers, nonprofit leaders, local activists, and organizational managers who want their work to have lasting impact.

Inside, you will find

• the 7 habits that help ordinary people become effective agents of systemic change,
• strategies for collaborating across deep political and organizational divides,
• methods for identifying leverage points that others overlook,
• real examples from peacebuilding and community transformation, and
• guidance for sustaining momentum through setbacks.

Rather than offering inspiration without instruction, Kahane gives readers concrete behaviors they can practice in their existing roles and communities.

If you work within systems that feel resistant to change, this is a grounded, experience-backed guide to making progress anyway.

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

• 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.

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.

This updated bestseller shows leaders how to transform fragmentation into authentic community with new workplace applications and proven strategies for today’s divided world.

With increasing violence, widening ideological divides, and growing economic inequality, a deeper sense of community is desperately needed. Yet typical ways of engaging people civically and organizationally remain unchanged. In Community, Peter Block explores how authentic community can emerge from fragmentation and offers practical steps to foster transformation.

This updated third edition draws on decades of implementing Block’s ideas and includes the following:

• New stories and examples demonstrating community building as a more powerful approach to social problems than traditional policies and programs
• Expanded resources and a discussion guide designed for classroom and training program use
• A new closing chapter covering broader implications of the book’s ideas for organizational transformation
• Fresh content exploring the creative economy’s relationship to belonging and social capital’s role in authentic engagement
• Updated examples showing how community principles apply to today’s workplace and virtual world challenges

From neighborhood councils transforming local engagement to organizations shifting from competitive to cooperative cultures, Block demonstrates how simple positive change can be once we decide it’s essential. Whether readers are community leaders, organizational consultants, or concerned citizens, this book provides the framework and tools to move from fragmentation to connection, from isolation to belonging.

At last - the first comprehensive and practical guide to the work breakdown structure (WBS) in 45 years! This book offers vital new perspectives on how to apply the WBS to today's different types of projects that produce products, services or results. You'll learn how to use WBS throughout the project lifecycle to plan, control and communicate. Your new insights into the WBS principles, plus checklists and proven action steps, will improve the planning of new projects and help you launch projects more efficiently and effectively.

This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world.

The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect.

By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe. 

David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.

Over the next decade, today's connected world will be explosively more connected. Anything that can be distributed will be distributed: workforces, organizations, supply webs, and more. The tired practices of centralized organizations will become brittle in a future where authority is radically decentralized. Rigid hierarchies will give way to liquid structures. Most leaders—and most organizations—aren't ready for this future. Are you?

It's too late to catch up, but it's a great time to leapfrog. Noted futurist Bob Johansen goes beyond skills and competencies to propose five new leadership literacies—combinations of disciplines, practices, and worldviews—that will be needed to thrive in a VUCA world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This book shows how to (1) forecast likely futures so you can “look back” and make sure you're prepared now for the changes to come, (2) use low-risk gaming spaces to work through your concerns about the future and hone your leadership skills, (3) lead shape-shifting organizations where you can't just tell people what to do, (4) be a dynamic presence even when you're not there in person, and (5) keep your personal energy high and transmit that energy throughout your organization.

This visionary book provides a vivid description of the ideal talent profile for future leaders. It is written for current, rising star, and aspiring leaders; talent scouts searching for leaders; and executive coaches seeking a fresh view of how leaders will need to prepare. To get ready for this future, we will all need new leadership literacies.

A half century ago Peter Drucker put management on the map. Leadership has since pushed it off. Henry Mintzberg aims to restore management to its proper place: front and center. “We should be seeing managers as leaders.” Mintzberg writes, “and leadership as management practiced well.”

This landmark book draws on Mintzberg's observations of twenty-nine managers, in business, government, health care, and the social sector, working in settings ranging from a refugee camp to a symphony orchestra. What he saw—the pressures, the action, the nuances, the blending—compelled him to describe managing as a practice, not a science or a profession, learned primarily through experience and rooted in context.
But context cannot be seen in the usual way. Factors such as national culture and level in hierarchy, even personal style, turn out to have less influence than we have traditionally thought. Mintzberg looks at how to deal with some of the inescapable conundrums of managing, such as, How can you get in deep when there is so much pressure to get things done? How can you manage it when you can't reliably measure it?

This book is vintage Mintzberg: iconoclastic, irreverent, carefully researched, myth-breaking. Managing may be the most revealing book yet written about what managers do, how they do it, and how they can do it better.

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.

Despite booms and busts, technology advances, talent wars, layoffs, and even a global pandemic, people want what they've always wanted. Employees want—and now expect—meaningful work, supportive bosses, regular recognition, and a chance to learn and grow. And managers want their amazing people to stay—for at least a little while longer. For two decades, this Wall Street Journal bestseller—over 800,000 sold—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 authors have gone over every word of the previous edition, revising, updating, and streamlining. This 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 to take that into consideration when a treasured employee asks for extended leave to care for a grandparent. And a new section called “Conversations That Count” offers discussion questions for sparking deeper 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.

Drawing on 30 years of helping families, this profound fable by the Anasazi Foundation illustrates the true anguish of conflict and explains how we can end war within ourselves, within our families, and even between nations.

Created in 1988 by renowned wilderness pioneers Larry D. Olsen and Ezekiel C. Sanchez (a Totonac Indian whose native name is Good Buffalo Eagle), the Anasazi Foundation invites young people, through a primitive living experience, to effect a change of heart. For over thirty years, their teachings have helped families begin anew and walk in harmony in the wilderness of the world.

Inspired by their wisdom, this book tells the story of two brothers whose warring hearts threaten to destroy their lives and their community. Trapped in a canyon, the two brothers are rescued by a mysterious old man who perceives their need for peace. He offers to guide them home—inviting them to open their hearts toward a New Beginning. When they agree, he teaches them the five legends of peace. And as they walk forward, they learn that we are free to create peace in our own lives—and how to do it. This discovery saves not only the brothers but ultimately their people. This poetic narrative offers us all a hopeful way out of the canyons of war, leaving behind the warring within.

The updated edition of the Arbinger Institute's international bestseller—a practical guide to the one mindset shift that improves performance, strengthens relationships, and transforms organizational culture.

Most conflict and disengagement share a common root: an inward mindset. When people focus primarily on their own goals—often without realizing it—they see others as obstacles rather than as people with real needs. The Outward Mindset shows what becomes possible when that changes.

Drawing on real stories from corporations, law enforcement, military units, and families, the Arbinger Institute provides a clear framework and practical tools for making the shift—at the individual, team, and organizational level.

What's inside:

• A framework for diagnosing inward versus outward mindset in yourself and your team
• Real case studies from high-stakes environments
• Tools for making the shift durable, not just momentary
• A new preface, updated case studies, and Arbinger's latest research

Most leadership books focus on behavior. The Outward Mindset works at the level beneath behavior—the way we see people—because that's the only change that lasts.

Widely used as a team read and leadership development text. Pairs with Arbinger's Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace but works as a complete standalone.

This updated classic offers clear and concise explanations of the basic legal concepts of government contract law for professionals at any stage of their career. Written in straightforward language for contracting officers, contract administrators, contractors, subcontractors, and others in the procurement field, this new edition has been updated with new cases and regulations.

The book breaks down the complex arena of government contract law into its three most basic parts: the contracting parties, the contract itself, and legal challenges. It begins by examining key aspects of the contracting officer's job and provides guidance for navigating its different and often conflicting demands. The government contractor's responsibilities and challenges are also outlined.

Government contracts come in a lot more varieties than the typical commercial contract, and they also tend to be long and confusing. The second part of the book introduces the different types of legal agreements the government uses to buy the goods and services it needs—and addresses the challenges of writing a perfectly clear contract and guidelines for interpreting an ambiguous one. The book concludes with an overview of the government contract litigation process.

This is an essential text for students preparing to do the work of government contracts, an indispensable guide for those new to the work, and a valuable reference for contracting personnel who seek solutions to specific issues they face in their day-to-day work.

Burnout rising. Systems cracking. Talent leaving.

The solution: design for human dignity and full-person diversity—with this award-winning guide.

The Canary Code reorganizes work for thriving—starting with those first impacted by faulty systems, like canaries first sensing toxic air in coal mines. Neurodivergent talent (members of ADHD, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, and learning-differences communities, and others who think and experience life differently) offer unique skills and exceptional work ethics, yet face employment barriers. Their unique abilities and perspectives are excluded, and their canary warnings about bullying, broken workflows, or ethical drift are ignored.

This practical guide helps CEOs, managers, HR leaders, and changemakers improve work for all. Drawing on science and lived experience, 2025 Thinkers50 Talent Award winner and internationally renowned management expert Ludmila Praslova shows how embracing neurodiversity creates healthier, more innovative systems. A neurodivergent organizational psychologist with over twenty-five years of global practice and research on inclusive organizations, she offers the following:

• A holistic framework of human differences (social, cognitive, emotional, physical)
• An intersectional, whole-person approach to neuroinclusion
• Dignity-based talent practices, from hiring to leadership development
• Global perspectives celebrating diverse neurodivergent voices
• Actionable strategies for change at any organizational level

Blending lived experience, academic rigor, and accessible writing, this groundbreaking work exemplifies neuroinclusion. It clearly indicates academic, applied, and personal content, supporting an individualized reader experience.

Peter Georgescu arrived in this country as a penniless Romanian refugee and rose to become the CEO of Young & Rubicam. This is why he's so heartsick that with flat wages, disappearing jobs, and a shrinking middle class, his kind of rags-to-riches story doesn't seem possible now. But he has a message for his fellow CEOs: we're the ones who must take the lead in fixing the economy.

Marshaling deeply sobering statistics, Georgescu depicts the stark reality of America today: a nation with greater wealth inequality and lower social mobility than just about any other country in the developed world. But the problem isn't that free-market capitalism no longer works—it's that it's been hijacked by shareholder primacy. Where once our business leaders looked to the needs and interests of a variety of stakeholders—employees, community members, the business itself—now they're myopically focused on maximizing their shareholders' quarterly returns.

Capitalists, Arise! shows how the short-term thinking spawned by shareholder primacy lies at the root of our current economic malaise and social breakdown. But Georgescu offers concrete actions that capitalists themselves can take to create a better future. The irony is that if businesses do this, shareholders will do even better. In the long run, businesses can thrive only when society is healthy and strong. This book is a manifesto calling on capitalists to heal the nation that has given them so much.

This book is a comprehensive guide to an exciting new approach that managers at any level can use to transform their corners of government.

Whether people want more government or less, everyone wants an efficient government. Traditional thinking is that this requires a government to be run more like a business. But a government is not a business, and this approach merely replaces old problems with new ones.

In their six-year, five-country study of seventy-seven government organizations-ranging from small departments to entire states-Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder found that the predominant private-sector approaches to improvement don't work well in the public sector, while practices that are rare in the private sector prove highly effective. The highest performers they studied had attained levels of efficiency that rivaled the best private-sector companies.

Rather than management making the improvements, as is the norm in the private sector, these high-performers focused on front-line-driven improvement, where most of the change activity was led by supervisors and low-level managers who unleashed the creativity and ideas of their employees to improve their operations bit by bit every day.

You'll discover how Denver's Department of Excise and Licenses reduced wait times from an hour and forty minutes to just seven minutes; how the Washington State Patrol garage tripled its productivity and became a national benchmark; how a K8 school in New Brunswick, Canada, boosted the percentage of students reading at the appropriate age level from 22 percent to 78 percent; and much more.

Deliver razor-sharp points in all of your work communications! This updated classic enables you to captivate any audience, create meaningful impact, and make your words matter.

Every time you communicate, you're trying to move someone to feel, think, and act. You're trying to make a point. But very few communicators-regardless of their purpose or position-know their points, have true points, or even understand what a point is, rendering themselves pointless.

In this expanded second edition of the bestselling Get to the Point!, Joel Schwartzberg draws on his decades of experience as a strategic communications executive and public speaking coach to deliver a masterclass in high-impact communications for the digital age.

The new edition features a substantial amount of new content, including surprising research, real-world insight, and actionable tips that meet the modern needs of professionals up and down the organizational chart.

Using his trademark encouraging and often humorous voice, Schwartzberg helps you:

•Understand the Power of Points: Learn how points outperform topics, themes, and observations.
•Identify and Elevate Your Key Points: Create impactful speeches and slide presentations, emails and work chats, and Zoom and in-person meeting communications
•Distill Complex Ideas: Transform complicated concepts into crystal-clear messages.
•Boost Leadership Perceptions: Enhance impressions of competence and confidnce.
•Hook Audiences: Start and finish with compelling openings and closings.
•Tell Impactful Stories: Use stories, examples, and data in a way that highlights your points, not distract from them.
•Conquer Public Speaking Jitters: Use proven techniques to stay calm and in control
•Leverage AI Tools: Use artificial intelligence to support-not replace-effective communication
•Avoid Common Pitfalls: Sidestep the landmines that derail most communicators.

Whether you're a C-suite executive, salesperson, scientist, or student, Get to the Point! is a blueprint for evolving your written and spoken communications from informing to inspiring and pointless to powerful.

Don't just share ideas and make an impression. Champion your points and make a difference!