Leadership

Businesses worry about new technologies, but customers are the ultimate disruptors-Suman Sarkar offers bold strategies for making sure you understand your customers and keep up with their ever-changing needs.


Disruption-the brutal roiling of markets, the decline of long-established brands and products, and the rise of new upstarts-drives business failure and success. Most people think technology causes disruption, but technology merely enables it-changing customer needs cause disruptions and too many businesses get caught unaware. The irony is your customers are constantly telling you what they want-you just have to know how to listen. This book offers five proven strategies that will enable any business to stay radically close to its customers and give them what they want: (1) win with current customers before chasing after new ones; (2) personalization is not a luxury; (3) customers won't wait; (4) good enough is no longer good enough; and, in the spirit of disruption, (5) go beyond strategies one through four.

Winner of the Thinkers50 2023 Leadership Award

One of Thinkers50's Ten Best Management Books of 2023

“A timely, actionable book on the virtues that every great leader needs to learn.”
—ADAM GRANT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

Leadership is simply a series of moments, and this book gives you the tools to turn each moment into an opportunity to leave a positive legacy for those you lead.

In this ground-breaking book, award-winning leadership expert and business leader Kirstin Ferguson has written a much-needed practical guide for every modern leader. Whether you are the head of one of the largest companies in the world, supervising a small team, or guiding your family, it will be your ability to integrate your head and heart that will influence your success in leading others and navigating our complex world.

Combining studies from leading thinkers in the field with her own research, and more than three decades of personal experience, Kirstin explains the 8 key attributes of a head and heart leader and provides the tools to measure your own approach. Along the way, she shares her conversations with modern leaders from a broad range of backgrounds whose stories will surprise you, challenge your thinking and inspire you to be the type of leader the world needs.

More Honors for Head & Heart:
Royal Society of Arts Career Book Award
Next Big Idea Club “Must Read”
Shortlisted in the 2023 Porchlight Business Book Awards
Shortlisted in the 2023 Australian Business Book Awards
Named in HR Magazine Winter Reading list

DEI isn't just a box to check.

After being in corporate America for nearly a decade as a triple minority who passes for a straight white woman, Dannie Lynn Fountain knows that corporations' modern plague is the story of its DEI duality. Time and time again, she has witnessed companies pretend to care about DEI for public relations fodder and then discriminate against employees or ignore their identities.

Dannie's solution to this problem? Rage against the system by refusing to accept mediocre-at-best action.

This story isn't just about how messed up corporate DEI currently is; it also takes a hard look at what is necessary to get diversity right in three parts:

● The context of corporate DEI
● Why the change in perspective
● What's not working and how to change

Ending Checkbox Diversity gives readers an understanding of exactly how corporate America is failing underrepresented identities and offers a plan for what to do next, with clear examples and metrics for evaluating DEI in their own careers and aligning themselves with companies that are actually doing the work.

Your DEIJ efforts are stagnating because you continue to center whiteness. Creating a truly anti-racist organization requires learning how to identify and rectify the systemic, and often unconscious, centering of white culture and values in the workplace.

Corporate America continues to struggle with racial equity in a post-George Floyd world. As the United States becomes more diverse and the public consciousness continues to shift, successful racial equity efforts in the workplace are needed now more than ever.

Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace exposes the ways that white culture and expectations are centered in the modern American workplace and the fears within corporate spaces about talking candidly, openly, and honestly about whiteness, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness.

Readers will discover:
• A direct and straightforward analysis about what white-centering is
• An evaluation of the different ways that whiteness is centered in the workplace, such as bereavement and holiday policies and dress codes
• A guide on how to recognize and decenter whiteness within oneself and at work
• Solutions for people to contribute individually and systemically to anti-oppression

Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace provides a crucial guidebook with practical solutions for leaders, DEIJ practitioners, and anyone hoping to truly create an anti-racist workplace.

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


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

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

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

“This timely book reminds us that innovation is agnostic about where it's created.”
-Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft



Over and over, we see big legacy businesses getting beaten to the punch by energetic little start-ups. It seems like innovation can come from only the bottom up or from outside in. But tech experts Vivek Wadwha, Ismail Amla, and Alex Salkever are here to tell you that "big equals slow and stodgy" is a myth. Based on decades of experience working with the world's leading brands and start-ups, they explore the opportunity legacy companies have to create new markets, supercharge growth, and remake their businesses by combining the scrappy mind-set and tool belt of hypergrowth start-ups with the massive benefits of incumbency: boatloads of customer data, decades of brand equity, robust distribution channels, enormous financial asserts, and more. Equally important, they provide a playbook on how to use their insights in your own company, team, or career. This is a fast-paced, anecdote-rich story that rethinks modern innovation-a book every manager, executive, and ambitious employee will want to read.

Uncover the six blind spots that derail women's career paths and learn strategies to effectively overcome them for an impactful, sustainable career.

Professional women are subject to blind spots-obstacles that can minimize career potential, impact, or advancement. Some women end up drifting instead of driving through their careers, going it alone instead of building a posse, and leaving their “reputationality” (that special something we are known for) to chance.

Authors and executive coaches Brenda Wensil and Kathryn Heath have spent decades coaching more than 800 women and working with women executives, middle managers, and professionals across industries and age groups. In this book, they outline six challenges women commonly face on their professional journeys and map a way to accelerate through them for higher-impact careers. Readers will learn how to

· Set a vision, strategy, and plan for their careers
· Learn who they are, what they offer, and how to tell their stories
· Seek and act on feedback to guide their paths
· Prepare and practice for the best outcomes
· Enlist help and support from others

Effective women leaders inspire innovation, sustain profitability, manage risk, and create environments for inclusion and diversity to increase. Chock full of strategies, stories, and practical skills, this book will hasten a woman's progress and impact as a professional woman and liberate her to excel in her career on her own terms.

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

In FLIGHT PLAN, bestselling author Brian Tracy (author of Eat That Frog, over half a million copies sold) explains the real secret to success in business and personal life. Using the metaphor of an airplane trip from coast to coast, Tracy reveals the key ingredients that go into accomplishing any long-term, meaningful success.

Improve communication, engagement, and culture with active listening.

When employees, colleagues, and customers are not being heard, organizational culture, employee happiness, and overall organizational success will suffer. How well do you listen?

Active listening is the doorway to increased belonging, loyalty, profitability, innovation, and so much more. It is the difference between thinking we understand what people want and knowing what they want. Want to build stronger relationships, avoid misunderstandings, and anticipate problems before they surface at work?

All you have to do is listen.

The Art of Active Listening introduces a 5-step framework that shows you how to listen successfully and act upon what you are hearing. Readers will discover how to:

1. Recognize the unsaid
2. Seek to understand
3. Decode
4. Act
5. Close the loop

Backed by her personal review of over 30,000 employee and customer surveys and facilitation of 100's of focus groups, Younger discovered one universal truth: We all want to be heard. We want our voices to matter. We want the work we do to matter.

When we get this right - when we listen to our employees and customers and care about them not just for what they can do but for who they ARE - they can and will move mountains.

Using the tools provided in this book, you can implement active listening, regardless of whether you're in-person or virtual, that benefits all team members and customers, strengthens overall engagement, improves organizational culture and creates a space for everyone to have a voice.

When those at work feel heard, they will do whatever it takes to achieve outcomes that serve your relationship and your organization.

"This important book offers organizations the keys to introvert inclusion."
-Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet Influence

The first guide to creating a welcoming culture that maximizes the powerful contributions introverts bring to the workplace.


As the diversity, equity, and inclusion wave widens and deepens its reach, introversion is becoming a natural part of that movement. After all, about half the population identify as introverts, but many organizations are stuck in traditional extrovert-centric workplace cultures that reward people for speaking up publicly, expect them to log face time, and employ hiring and promotion practices rooted in the past. This ultimately discourages introverts from contributing and reaching their full talent potential, which could have a major impact on the bottom line.

"Champion for introverts" Jennifer Kahnweiler offers a road map for everyone in the workplace-including leaders, human resource managers, and team members-to create inclusive, introvert-friendly cultures. Kahnweiler provides an assessment to determine how introvert friendly your organization is and looks at every aspect of organizational life-hiring, training, leading, communicating, meeting, designing workplaces, and more-through an inclusive lens. You'll discover how to make open-space offices introvert friendly, what the best practices are for encouraging introverts to participate on teams, which training techniques work best for introverts, and how to make remote positions work. Kahnweiler gives you the tools to build a culture that embraces all your employees and maximizes the strengths introverts bring to your organization.

Author of the bestselling DEI Deconstructed returns with a companion workbook filled with practical and actionable techniques for changemakers at all stages of their DEI journey.

The next step in your DEI journey starts here. Building on the knowledge base of DEI Deconstructed, Lily Zheng offers a workbook with 40 original exercises, worksheets, and other tools to help guide you and your organization toward more substantive and lasting DEI outcomes. Whether you're a new or veteran DEI practitioner looking to improve your practice, a leader looking to grow your leadership skills, or an advocate looking to play more powerful roles in movements, this book will give you the practical tools to do just that.

From self-work to organizational change, this workbook will upskill you with the core competencies required for impactful DEI work, such as – diagnosing inequity, working with constituents, building movements, creating psychological safety, stewarding inclusive cultures, resolving conflict and harm, and achieving systems change. Most importantly, it will give you valuable experience putting these skills into action. Each activity can stand on its own and is designed to stimulate valuable reflection and practice. Included are recommendations for targeted exercise roadmaps to supplement your learning journey. Taken all together, these exercises are a complete masterclass in any practitioner's DEI education.

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

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

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

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

Drawing on the accumulated expertise of one of the world's top leadership development organizations, this is a comprehensive and accessible guide to effective leadership practice, written in fifty-two short, to-the-point chapters.

A disciplined leader is someone who identifies and focuses in on what author John Manning calls “the vital few”-that 20 percent of activities that will deliver 80 percent of the results. Manning should know. He is the President of Management Action Programs, Inc., a general management consulting firm that's helped tens of thousands of leaders accelerate their leadership and management performance. In this book he draws on MAP's fifty years of expertise to present a comprehensive guide to effective leadership practice in short, quick-read chapters-the format best suited to busy executives.

The Disciplined Leader offers fifty-two succinct lessons to help you hone in on your own vital few in three critical areas: mastering yourself, sharpening your leadership capabilities, and strengthening critical relationships with employees and customers. Each lesson comes with recommended tactics and practical “Now Get Going!” tips for implementing it, so there are literally hundreds of pieces of must-know, time-tested advice here. In each of the three critical areas, Manning emphasizes the vital role of professional and personal discipline, the essential ingredient in making each lesson work. This is a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts guide to leadership practice that's built to inspire action, drive change, and achieve results.