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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.
Former director of the Young Democrats of America, the California Democratic Party and HUD Special Counsel to the Clinton-Gore administration, Christine Pelosi updates her classic leadership guide for leaders and campaign managers to reflect the changes in the political and social climate that have taken place since the first edition was published in 2007.
A modern, feminist take on the classic choose-your-own-journey book, inspiring readers to embrace the fact that there is no singular right path-just your own!
So many women enter their adult lives believing that they should know where they are going and how to get there. This can make life decisions feel intimidating and overwhelming. While some choices that lie ahead are fairly predictable, such as those surrounding career, partnership, and motherhood, the effects of these choices can lead to more complicated and unexpected turns that are seldom discussed.
Rather than suggesting a rule book, Rebekah Bastian, vice president at Zillow and recognized thought leader, inspires you to Blaze Your Own Trail. “I have the benefit of being a living example of crooked paths, magnificent screw-ups, and shocking successes,” she writes. Through storylines and supportive data that explore workplace sexism, career changes, marriage, child-rearing, existential crises, and everything in between, you will learn to embrace and feel less alone in your own nonlinear journey. Even better, you can turn back decisions and make different ones. Blaze Your Own Trail includes nineteen possible outcomes and many routes to get there. You will find that you have the strength to make it through any of them.
So many women enter their adult lives believing that they should know where they are going and how to get there. This can make life decisions feel intimidating and overwhelming. While some choices that lie ahead are fairly predictable, such as those surrounding career, partnership, and motherhood, the effects of these choices can lead to more complicated and unexpected turns that are seldom discussed.
Rather than suggesting a rule book, Rebekah Bastian, vice president at Zillow and recognized thought leader, inspires you to Blaze Your Own Trail. “I have the benefit of being a living example of crooked paths, magnificent screw-ups, and shocking successes,” she writes. Through storylines and supportive data that explore workplace sexism, career changes, marriage, child-rearing, existential crises, and everything in between, you will learn to embrace and feel less alone in your own nonlinear journey. Even better, you can turn back decisions and make different ones. Blaze Your Own Trail includes nineteen possible outcomes and many routes to get there. You will find that you have the strength to make it through any of them.
Firms that restructure through downsizing are not more profitable than those that don't, and often end up hurting themselves in the long run. Responsible Restructuring draws on the results of an eighteen-year study of S&P 500 firms to prove that it makes good business sense to restructure responsibly-to avoid downsizing and instead regard employees as assets to be developed rather than costs to be cut.
Wayne Cascio explodes thirteen common myths about downsizing, detailing its negative impact on profitability, productivity, quality, and on the morale, commitment, and even health of survivors. He uses real-life examples to illustrate successful approaches to responsible restructuring used by companies such as Charles Schwab, Compaq, Cisco, Motorola, Reflexite, and Southwest Airlines. And he offers specific, step-by-step advice on what to do-and what not to do-when developing and implementing a restructuring strategy that, unlike layoffs, leaves the organization stronger and better able to face the challenges ahead.
Wayne Cascio explodes thirteen common myths about downsizing, detailing its negative impact on profitability, productivity, quality, and on the morale, commitment, and even health of survivors. He uses real-life examples to illustrate successful approaches to responsible restructuring used by companies such as Charles Schwab, Compaq, Cisco, Motorola, Reflexite, and Southwest Airlines. And he offers specific, step-by-step advice on what to do-and what not to do-when developing and implementing a restructuring strategy that, unlike layoffs, leaves the organization stronger and better able to face the challenges ahead.
The toughest challenges for entrepreneurs have never been addressed. Until now. Mission-driven business veterans Margot Fraser and Lisa Lorimer present a valuable resource for social entrepreneurs facing the challenges of staying true to their core values while still trying to turn a profit.
Bill Torbert and associates illustrate how individuals and organizations can progress through more and more sophisticated "action-logics" -- strategies for analyzing the world and reacting to it -- until they will eventually be able to practice action inquiry continually. Offering action inquiry exercises at the end of the chapters, the book moves from junior managers beginning to practice action inquiry through CEO's transforming whole companies, to world leaders transforming whole countries, as exemplified by Czech president Vaclav Havel. Through short stories of leadership and organizational transformations, this groundbreaking book illustrates how action inquiry increases personal integrity, relational mutuality, company profitability, and long-term organizational and environmental sustainability.
In this amazing account, Daniel Seddiqui tells of working fifty different jobs in fifty states in fifty weeks. Working as everything from a cheesemaker in Wisconsin to a border patrol agent in Arizona, he details his journey across the industries and cultures of the United States and offers lessons he learned along the way about perseverance, risk taking, adaptability, networking, and endurance.
Extensively revised and expanded, Future Search, which is the classic, definitive, bestselling book on one of most powerful methods for changing and improving all types of organizations and communities, includes a host of new tools, and three new chapters. If you want to do strategic planning, product innovation, quality improvement, organizational restructuring, or any other major change in a participative, whole system way, this book is your guide. Over 30,000 of the original edition sold.
Leaders have countless resources and books aimed at helping them discover their strengths–which is fantastic–but none of them address what happens when these strengths are inevitably overplayed and start to do more damage than good, or what to do to rectify that dilemma. Until now.
From one of America's most popular motivational speakers, comes a set of new and powerful rules for personal transformation that help you break through the invisible beliefs that are holding you back.
We all have times in our lives when the results of our behavior don't seem to be meeting our needs. These shortfalls may result in depression, anger, frustration, and relationship struggles, among a host of possible symptoms. It often seems difficult to see a clear path out of the problems.
In this new book Hyrum Smith does two things that are invaluable to people who wish to make their lives less painful. First, he reveals, through a clear and simple model, how we get to the place where our behaviors cause these kinds of problems. Then, with a simplicity that is impressive in itself, he describes the steps we must take to identify and rectify the beliefs leading to our painful behavior.
Through the use of the “Reality Model” and the concept of the “Belief Window,” illustrated through humorous anecdotes and a powerful experience at a high school, Hyrum not only lays out the intellectual framework of this model, he draws you in emotionally as well. When you are done, you will agree with him that the solution to our problems is simple. It's not easy, but it is simple.
The result is a powerful process for transforming your habits, relationships, and personal and career success.
We all have times in our lives when the results of our behavior don't seem to be meeting our needs. These shortfalls may result in depression, anger, frustration, and relationship struggles, among a host of possible symptoms. It often seems difficult to see a clear path out of the problems.
In this new book Hyrum Smith does two things that are invaluable to people who wish to make their lives less painful. First, he reveals, through a clear and simple model, how we get to the place where our behaviors cause these kinds of problems. Then, with a simplicity that is impressive in itself, he describes the steps we must take to identify and rectify the beliefs leading to our painful behavior.
Through the use of the “Reality Model” and the concept of the “Belief Window,” illustrated through humorous anecdotes and a powerful experience at a high school, Hyrum not only lays out the intellectual framework of this model, he draws you in emotionally as well. When you are done, you will agree with him that the solution to our problems is simple. It's not easy, but it is simple.
The result is a powerful process for transforming your habits, relationships, and personal and career success.
Instead of being boring and time-wasting, meetings can be places where participants and leaders can get their work done productively, efficiently, and happily. It is not an impossible dream. This book shows how.
In this impassioned critique of America's growing disengagement from civic life and ideals, Drum Major Institute Executive Director Andrea Batista Schlesinger dissects the forcible erosion of our youngest generation's capacity for inquiry and provides recommendations for restoring the social, educational and political infrastructures that are prerequisites for a healthy democracy.
Journalist and business leader Barnes offers new understanding of why our middle class is withering and a powerful new solution for how to restore the middle class, reduce inequality, and make our economy more fair, prosperous, and sustainable.
A concise guide to simple actions that can help any person have more frequent and timely insights to make better decisions, solve problems, and produce fresh thinking anything.
Bestselling author Margaret Wheatley is a highly-respected though leader about how life, organizations, leadership, and our world work in a time of growing complexity, uncertainty, and confusion. This new book brings together Wheatley's powerful new observations and insights to help people everywhere understand and navigate today's challenging world.
Speaker, corporate trainer, film-maker, coach, and producer of the popular training video "Seeing Red Cars," Laura Goodrich explains how great change can come from focusing more on the things you DO want--and less on those you don't.
In this no-holds-barred nonfiction narrative, activist, organizer, and immigration expert Rinku Sen reveals the racial and cultural conflicts embedded in the current immigration debate and explodes the myth that those living in both sending and receiving countries can enjoy the economic benefits of immigration while keeping their cultures static.
Constant, continuing, and cataclysmic change is causing a major crisis within business organizations today. Faced with constantly advancing technology, unpredictable market shifts, intense global competition, and an increasingly independent "free agent" workforce, the only way for an organization to adapt and succeed is to build a "culture of inclusion" that nurtures and draws on the talents of a diverse workforce.
Easy to say but hard to do; most organizations are mired in industrial revolution, static-world business models administered by monocultural, bordering-on-oppressive, "command and control" hierarchies. Organizations at risk include Fortune 500 giants, entrepreneurial start-ups, manufacturing and retail operations, government agencies, not-for-profits, educational institutions, and others.
Most organizational change efforts-whether labeled as diversity efforts, re-engineering, right-sizing, or total-quality-management-are a waste of time, money, and human effort. Most produce more cynicism than results, and they can poison the waters for future change efforts. The Inclusion Breakthrough cuts a path through this potential minefield, offering a proven methodology for strategic organizational change, including models for diagnosing, planning, and implementing inclusion-focused, culture-change strategies tailored to each organization's individual needs. It also describes the key competencies for leading and sustaining a culture of inclusion.
Offering real-world results of "before and after" surveys, including anecdotal and statistical reports of organizational change achieved using the methodologies described, The Inclusion Breakthrough presents an overview of current workplace conditions, attitudes, and policies based on interviews, surveys, and focus groups encompassing thousands of people in major organizations. The Inclusion Breakthrough demonstrates why the bottom line must be the central focus of any change strategy-and more importantly, how to carry that strategy out successfully.
Easy to say but hard to do; most organizations are mired in industrial revolution, static-world business models administered by monocultural, bordering-on-oppressive, "command and control" hierarchies. Organizations at risk include Fortune 500 giants, entrepreneurial start-ups, manufacturing and retail operations, government agencies, not-for-profits, educational institutions, and others.
Most organizational change efforts-whether labeled as diversity efforts, re-engineering, right-sizing, or total-quality-management-are a waste of time, money, and human effort. Most produce more cynicism than results, and they can poison the waters for future change efforts. The Inclusion Breakthrough cuts a path through this potential minefield, offering a proven methodology for strategic organizational change, including models for diagnosing, planning, and implementing inclusion-focused, culture-change strategies tailored to each organization's individual needs. It also describes the key competencies for leading and sustaining a culture of inclusion.
Offering real-world results of "before and after" surveys, including anecdotal and statistical reports of organizational change achieved using the methodologies described, The Inclusion Breakthrough presents an overview of current workplace conditions, attitudes, and policies based on interviews, surveys, and focus groups encompassing thousands of people in major organizations. The Inclusion Breakthrough demonstrates why the bottom line must be the central focus of any change strategy-and more importantly, how to carry that strategy out successfully.