Books built for the classroom. This collection brings together BK titles well suited for undergraduate and graduate coursework in business, management, organizational behavior, and social change.
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Many family firms fail because the entrepreneurial spirit that drove the first generation isn't nurtured and developed in the generations that follow. Sharma and Cohen show how any family firm can create a "company of founders."
Companies that are owned and run by families need to develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills just like any other company, but family firms face obstacles that "hire and fire" companies don't. Family dynamics rarely perfectly mirror the best practices in the latest Harvard Business Review.
So what factors in the family and work environments enable the creation of leaders who share the entrepreneurial fire of the founders? Is there a specific education, training and experiential pathway that tips the odds of entrepreneurial success across generations? How do some firms manage to bypass family conflicts, disparate visions of the future, sibling rivalries, generational transition traps, death and divorces, that seem to mark the demise of so many family businesses?
Cohen and Sharma draw on their deep and extensive research on family businesses to reveal the secrets of enterprising families, using examples of both firms that flourished and those that failed. While this book is written with top leadership in mind, it's especially focused on the needs of the second and third generations. Cohen and Sharma emphasize that the most important skill of all is thinking like an entrepreneur--something that succeeding generations in family firms often miss.
Companies that are owned and run by families need to develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills just like any other company, but family firms face obstacles that "hire and fire" companies don't. Family dynamics rarely perfectly mirror the best practices in the latest Harvard Business Review.
So what factors in the family and work environments enable the creation of leaders who share the entrepreneurial fire of the founders? Is there a specific education, training and experiential pathway that tips the odds of entrepreneurial success across generations? How do some firms manage to bypass family conflicts, disparate visions of the future, sibling rivalries, generational transition traps, death and divorces, that seem to mark the demise of so many family businesses?
Cohen and Sharma draw on their deep and extensive research on family businesses to reveal the secrets of enterprising families, using examples of both firms that flourished and those that failed. While this book is written with top leadership in mind, it's especially focused on the needs of the second and third generations. Cohen and Sharma emphasize that the most important skill of all is thinking like an entrepreneur--something that succeeding generations in family firms often miss.
Bestselling author (Communicate with Confidence!, over 160,000 copies sold) Dianna Booher takes the mystery out of creating the “Personal Presence” that is central to everyone's success in leading, persuading, and selling to others. She gives specific and practical guidance for learning to look, talk, think, and act with presence.
Craig and Patricia Neal share, for the first time, the processes, tools, and techniques that they have developed in hundreds of “Thought Leader Gatherings” and other events to make any type of meeting or gathering be more meaningful and rewarding for participants and more transformational in action outcomes.
Former Procter & Gamble Vice President for IT and Shared Services, Tony Saldanha gives you the keys to a successful digital transformation: a proven five-stage model and a disciplined process for executing it.
Digital transformation is more imperative than ever. Enterprises must fully transform their entire business model to digital, not just parts of the business. But 70 percent of digital transformations fail. Why? Not because of a lack of technological capability, executive awareness, or CEO support, but because of a lack of direction and discipline.
Tony Saldanha says your goal should be to arrive at a state of perpetual digital transformation, where your organization doesn't just disrupt its competitors but continuously disrupts itself (think Netflix, Amazon, or Google). To get there he outlines a three-phase execution process for digital transformations based on the famous airplane takeoff checklist, which has reduced crashes to one in every 1.2 million flights-a 0.00008 percent failure rate. Using this model, Saldanha shows companies how to get Ready, prepare a solid foundation for your change effort; Accelerate, learn from your experiences and continue to refine your approach; and Sustain the pace of technological innovation over the long haul.
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Digital transformation is more imperative than ever. Enterprises must fully transform their entire business model to digital, not just parts of the business. But 70 percent of digital transformations fail. Why? Not because of a lack of technological capability, executive awareness, or CEO support, but because of a lack of direction and discipline.
Tony Saldanha says your goal should be to arrive at a state of perpetual digital transformation, where your organization doesn't just disrupt its competitors but continuously disrupts itself (think Netflix, Amazon, or Google). To get there he outlines a three-phase execution process for digital transformations based on the famous airplane takeoff checklist, which has reduced crashes to one in every 1.2 million flights-a 0.00008 percent failure rate. Using this model, Saldanha shows companies how to get Ready, prepare a solid foundation for your change effort; Accelerate, learn from your experiences and continue to refine your approach; and Sustain the pace of technological innovation over the long haul.
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We often feel leaders must be detached and aloof, but Sasha Chanoff explains how he became a better leader--and saved lives--when he chose empathy and altruism. Through his extraordinary story and the stories of other brave leaders, Sasha inspires all leaders to be guided by their deepest moral values.
We may never know when or where our calling as leaders will be revealed and put to the test. The decisions we make when faced with a crisis may shape our purpose for the rest of our lives. Sasha Chanoff here expands on his own story, first recounted on The Moth podcast as "An Impossible Choice." Charged with evacuating a specific number of refugees, Sasha and his colleague find a group of widows and orphans not on the rescue list. Leaving them behind will mean their death. But attempting to take them will jeopardize the lives of all those on the list.
Sasha and David have gathered other stories of crisis and decision, and have drawn out six principles for confronting critical decisions. They reveal the opportunities present in the hardest decisions. From Crisis to Calling is about recognizing your moral center, acting on it, and using it to shape and guide your life and the life of your organization. It's about how preparing for hard decisions can transform you into an inspiring, trusted and ethical leader. It celebrates the power of altruism, which is too often unappreciated in the leadership toolkit.
We may never know when or where our calling as leaders will be revealed and put to the test. The decisions we make when faced with a crisis may shape our purpose for the rest of our lives. Sasha Chanoff here expands on his own story, first recounted on The Moth podcast as "An Impossible Choice." Charged with evacuating a specific number of refugees, Sasha and his colleague find a group of widows and orphans not on the rescue list. Leaving them behind will mean their death. But attempting to take them will jeopardize the lives of all those on the list.
Sasha and David have gathered other stories of crisis and decision, and have drawn out six principles for confronting critical decisions. They reveal the opportunities present in the hardest decisions. From Crisis to Calling is about recognizing your moral center, acting on it, and using it to shape and guide your life and the life of your organization. It's about how preparing for hard decisions can transform you into an inspiring, trusted and ethical leader. It celebrates the power of altruism, which is too often unappreciated in the leadership toolkit.
Boatwright and Cagan show how a firm can create products that electrify the market with excitement, products that go beyond functional performance to provide emotional fulfillment. There is a hum in the marketplace about these products, because they are the topic of conversations, media discussions, and social media posts. Built to Love reveals how to understand, design and deliver products that engage and excite their customers through emotions evoked by the product itself, not just through advertising slogans and campaigns.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All countries signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This book is part of an ambitious project to make the fundamental human rights in the Universal Declaration enforceable in the courts of all countries by 2048, the 100th anniversary of the Declaration's signing.
“We are the 99%” is the rallying cry of millions of people involved in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. This is the first book to pull together in once place detailed information about the 1% and the 99% in all realms of society, the causes and consequences of this deep inequality, and what can be done about it.
Nine science-backed leadership capacities, drawn from over fifteen thousand studies, that help any leader model, inspire, and empower others to perform at their best.
Two Thinkers50 Award–winning experts in neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and organizational behavior distill decades of research into a practical, progressive framework built around 9 capacities organized across 3 levels: self-oriented, other-oriented, and system-oriented.
Each capacity is grounded in real stories, science summaries, and hands-on practices and includes guidance on avoiding the pitfalls of overuse.
Inside this book:
What readers gain: Greater ease in leading, reduced ego-driven friction, stronger team outcomes, and a sense of fulfillment that grows alongside impact.
Ideal for leaders who want research-backed development, not generic advice.
Two Thinkers50 Award–winning experts in neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and organizational behavior distill decades of research into a practical, progressive framework built around 9 capacities organized across 3 levels: self-oriented, other-oriented, and system-oriented.
Each capacity is grounded in real stories, science summaries, and hands-on practices and includes guidance on avoiding the pitfalls of overuse.
Inside this book:
- A 9-capacity framework built on over fifteen thousand studies in human performance
- Tools for becoming more conscious, authentic, relational, compassionate, and transformational as a leader
- Practices applicable at every level, from emerging managers to C-suite executives and professional coaches
- Real-world stories that make complex behavioral science immediately actionable
What readers gain: Greater ease in leading, reduced ego-driven friction, stronger team outcomes, and a sense of fulfillment that grows alongside impact.
Ideal for leaders who want research-backed development, not generic advice.
The corporation has become the core institution of the modern world. Designed to seek profit and power, it has pursued both with endless tenacity, steadily bending the framework of law and even challenging the sovereign status of the state. Where did the corporation come from? How did it get so much power? What is its ultimate trajectory?
After he sold his successful computer book publishing business to a large corporation, Ted Nace felt increasingly driven to find answers to these questions. In Gangs of America he details the rise of corporate power in America through a series of fascinating stories, each organized around a different facet of the central question: "How did corporations get more rights than people?" Beginning with the origin of the corporation in medieval Great Britain, Nace traces both the events that shaped the evolution of corporate power and the colorful personalities who played major roles. Gangs of America is a uniquely accessible synthesis of the latest scholarly research, a compelling historical narrative, and a distinctive personal voice.
After he sold his successful computer book publishing business to a large corporation, Ted Nace felt increasingly driven to find answers to these questions. In Gangs of America he details the rise of corporate power in America through a series of fascinating stories, each organized around a different facet of the central question: "How did corporations get more rights than people?" Beginning with the origin of the corporation in medieval Great Britain, Nace traces both the events that shaped the evolution of corporate power and the colorful personalities who played major roles. Gangs of America is a uniquely accessible synthesis of the latest scholarly research, a compelling historical narrative, and a distinctive personal voice.
Perpetual economic growth has "worked" for human civilization for centuries, but we've finally hit the wall, economically, socially, and environmentally. Advocates for growth can't deny one thing--the resources of the planet are finite, and running out fast, causing poverty, financial meltdowns, and wealth inequality. The authors show that cultivating a culture of "enough" can turn things around, and actually make us richer and happier.
People in all areas of society hunger for community. Tamarack director Paul Born shows how people can move from no community, shallow community, or bogus community (“community of fear”) to deep community in their relationships with others.
Most companies put values statements on their websites and in their annual reports, but as recent scandals and financial crises have shown, the practice of values is dying in organizations. Edward Freeman and Ellen Auster argue that the problem is values are imposed from the top down and offer a process for involving employees in values creation through ruthlessly honest organization-wide conversations.
Studies have consistently shown that employees are deeply cynical about corporate values statements. (Enron had a great one.) The reason, argue top scholars and consultants Edward Freeman and Ellen Auster, is that most companies' values are handed down from on high with no employee input. This practically invites disconnects between intention and reality-and the results are disengagement, lower productivity, less innovation, and even outright corruption.
Freeman and Auster here offer a process, Values through Conversation, that makes values living, dynamic, and evolving, not just static words nobody really believes in. Based on scrupulous research and experience, VTC gives employees a safe space to speak honestly and freely about what's happening in the organization, what is important to them, and what values would have real meaning and impact. The book focuses on four core values areas: introspective (who we are), historical (what we've stood for), connectedness (how we lead and work together), and aspirational (why we do what we do), offering questions, exercises, and examples for developing values in each area. VTC allows companies to explore and create values authentically, not impose them from without.
Studies have consistently shown that employees are deeply cynical about corporate values statements. (Enron had a great one.) The reason, argue top scholars and consultants Edward Freeman and Ellen Auster, is that most companies' values are handed down from on high with no employee input. This practically invites disconnects between intention and reality-and the results are disengagement, lower productivity, less innovation, and even outright corruption.
Freeman and Auster here offer a process, Values through Conversation, that makes values living, dynamic, and evolving, not just static words nobody really believes in. Based on scrupulous research and experience, VTC gives employees a safe space to speak honestly and freely about what's happening in the organization, what is important to them, and what values would have real meaning and impact. The book focuses on four core values areas: introspective (who we are), historical (what we've stood for), connectedness (how we lead and work together), and aspirational (why we do what we do), offering questions, exercises, and examples for developing values in each area. VTC allows companies to explore and create values authentically, not impose them from without.