Professional Development

Frustrated that change efforts you're leading take too long, are too difficult, or are too often ineffective? Discover eight powerful ways to make any change work faster, easier, and better-whether done by C-suite leaders or frontline workers.



In a recent Fast Company article, nine CEOs said the biggest challenges their companies face are all related to change. Change is a constant need and a constant challenge for every organization-large or small, for-profit, nonprofit, or governmental. Is there a way to make it easier?

If you're trying to lift something heavy, it helps to have a lever. In this book, Jake Jacobs provides eight levers that can transform the typical change process into something far smoother and more efficient-he calls the new process Leverage Change. Jacobs offers proven advice and real-life examples that will accelerate every step of the change process, including designing your own customized change process, figuring out where the real energy for change is in your organization, striking the right balance between explicit direction and creative collaboration, making change work as part of people's regular routines, and more. Archimedes said with the right lever, he could move the world-with Jacobs' eight levers, you can change your world.

Majora Carter shows how brain drain cripples low-status communities and maps out a development strategy focused on talent retention to help them break out of economic stagnation.

"My musical, In the Heights, explores issues of community, gentrification, identity and home, and the question: Are happy endings only ones that involve getting out of your neighborhood to achieve your dreams? In her refreshing new book, Majora Carter writes about these issues with great insight and clarity, asking us to re-examine our notions of what community development is and how we invest in the futures of our hometowns. This is an exciting conversation worth joining.”
-Lin-Manuel Miranda

How can we make the promise of America more accessible and equitable for everyone? What is a path toward wealth creation, quality of life, and happiness in low-status communities, whether in the inner city, in Rust Belt towns, Native American reservations, or other “marginalized” places?

There is an alternative to programs that simply ameliorate poverty without building wealth or counteracting the effects of displacement and cultural erasure through gentrification. What Majora Carter proposes in this inspiring and eye-opening book is a talent retention community development strategy.

Low-status communities have never had a shortage of successful people emerging from them. What they have had is a shortage of successful people staying. Carter focuses on retaining homegrown talent to create a robust, economically diverse ecosystem. She advocates

• helping property owners resist selling to speculators
• assembling available resources to build local businesses
• creating vibrant third spaces where personal and professional connections can grow
• and much more

Throughout the book, Carter shares key lessons from her personal and professional journey. The result is a powerful, heartfelt rethinking of poverty, inequality, economic development, and individual and family success.

“Ed Hess's Hyper-Learning is uniquely practical and is the essential starting point for charting new ways of thinking, living, working, leading, and being fulfilled in our new world.”
-Gary Roughead, Admiral, US Navy (retired) former Chief of Naval Operations

How will you pursue a meaningful life when smart technology takes over most of the jobs that humans currently do? Darden School of Business Professor Edward Hess says the answer is hyper-learning: developing our uniquely human qualities as agile, adaptive, iterative learners without fear or ego inhibiting that learning.

In the digital age, humans will succeed by doing what technology can't do well: being creative, imaginative, and innovative; engaging in higher-level critical thinking; making decisions in environments where there is a lot of uncertainty and little data; and connecting and collaborating with fellow humans. Hyper-learning is vital for optimizing every one of these tasks. Hess describes the core mindsets and behaviors that enable hyper-learning for individuals and teams and includes case studies of four business leaders who created personal hyper-learning development plans. This book is about harnessing the power of human emotions, choices, and behaviors to enable the highest levels of human cognitive, emotional, and behavioral performance.

This is the first book to describe in detail the principles of Outward Bound, told through the stories of former instructors and graduates who show how to apply them to create healthier, more effective teams, organizations, and communities.


Outward Bound has helped develop millions of leaders by stressing that every team needs leaders at all levels and that the nominal team leader must learn alongside the team, never from a position of superiority. Based on the foundational ideas of educator Kurt Hahn, Outward Bound teaches that leaders lead best when they have taught self-reliance and mutual responsibility and can fade into the background. Countless companies and organizations have used Outward Bound lessons (and you do not need to climb a mountain to use them) to strengthen their teams. Noted Outward Bound leader and educator Mark Brown shares these unique lessons with readers:

1. Leaders are learners.
2. Leaders create a safe environment to take risks.
3. Leaders develop other leaders at all levels.
4. Leaders understand the journey is the destination.
5. Leaders always watch for teachable moments.
6. Leaders are always ready to serve a greater good.
7. Leaders facilitate a Graduated Level of Responsibility for all those in their care.

“Chip Bell's unique perspective, lively illustrations, and practical advice result in one terrific resource for anyone eager to tap a customer's ingenuity for creating breakthrough results.” -Jeanne Bliss, founder and CEO, CustomerBliss; and cofounder, Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA)



Every organization aspires to be customer-centric, but the current approach is shallow and transactional: organizations ask customers what they want and then try to give it to them. But often customers can't articulate precisely what they want. To really stay ahead of the competition, organizations have to have such a deep relationship with their customers that they can surprise them and create innovations that match their hopes and aspirations, not just their needs and expectations.

This book lays out a strategy for getting customers fully integrated into the creation process. Bell offers five secrets for what he calls Co-creative Partnerships: Curiosity-develop a deep connection with customers that bonds, affirms, and supports; Grounding-find the juncture between the customer's needs and hopes and the organization's mission and values; Discovery-turn tryouts into bold, risk-taking learning adventures; Trust-honor candor, respect clear work agreements, and plan for the inevitable hiccups; and Passion-offer signs of admiration and actions of caring that help keep the alliance fresh and spirited.

Using a proven three-part framework, this book shows how anyone-from a CEO to frontline employee-can play a pivotal role in creating a diverse and welcoming workplace.

Creating a diverse workplace needs to be an ongoing effort, not just the subject of occasional training. As Celeste Warren says, needed change won't take place unless all employees feel that they have a role to play in creating the culture they would like to see in their organization.

Regardless of what position you hold, you have the ability to impact change and create a more inclusive environment. Anyone can commit to becoming an unofficial Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador in his or her organization. Warren offers a straightforward three-stage model:

Become aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and conscious and unconscious biases.Take an inventory of your surroundings: what is getting in the way of there being an inclusive environment in your organization? Develop a personal action plan.
Depending on your position, the actions you take can be as simple as consistently raising DEI-related issues in staff meetings or as far-reaching as leading an Employee Resource Group or developing a new hiring policy. In separate chapters, Warren offers specific advice for chief diversity and inclusion officers, C-suite leaders, first-line managers, human resources practitioners, and individual contributors. This book features examples, exercises, and practical tools that show you how to assess where your organization is at and develop a purpose and strategy that can make diversity a workplace reality.

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 efficient government. But most innovation efforts try to change the very nature of government-such as dismantling bureaucracy or privatizing services-and thus they usually fail.

Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder accept government on its own terms and simply ask how some existing organizations are dramatically improving their performance. What they found is that the best innovations come not from the top down but from the bottom up.

Drawing on their study of seventy government organizations and interviews with nearly 1,000 people in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden, they found that the most innovative agencies and offices solicited and implemented ideas from frontline workers, the people who directly serve the public.

These often modest, pragmatic improvements can have a huge cumulative effect. For example, the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses was able to cut its average wait time from an hour and forty minutes to just seven minutes. Robinson and Schroeder offer a comprehensive guide for systematically collecting, evaluating, and implementing game-changing frontline ideas.

Reading group discussion guide available in book.

Relentless speed and unconstrained activity are not necessary for growth-you need only look to companies like Enron, Pets.com, and Groupon to see that “fast” does not always mean “good.” Leading growth consultant Alison Eyring provides a different view on growth, preaching restraint, not rushing in.


“It's a marathon, not a sprint.” We hear this truism all the time, but in business there's constant pressure to go all out and never let up. Leaders are driven to set stretch targets, relentlessly reduce costs, launch new initiatives, expand into new markets, hire more people, develop more capabilities, and execute flawlessly. It all sounds great-until the company overextends itself and collapses like a badly trained racehorse in the home stretch.

So what is the right pace for steady, sustainable growth? How do you know when to push yourself and when to back off? Growth consultant Alison Eyring (who also happens to be a distance runner) says the answer is what she calls Intelligent Restraint. Eyring shows precisely how you can evaluate your company's current capacity for growth so you can restrain yourself from exceeding it, no matter how tempting the supposed opportunities seem. Then she offers a set of practices for gradually building that capacity so you can grow steadily but sensibly in a way that strengthens your company instead of stretching it to the breaking point.

Conversations about social change devolve quickly into conflict when participants don't agree. Experienced practitioners Jason Jay and Gabriel Grant offer advocates and aspiring change agents six easy steps for opening the lines of communication when conversations get stuck.

The tough problems in the world are made harder when we can't even talk about them. We try to address issues that matter, but conversations break down because they become emotionally charged and we lose sight of our common goals. Scarred from these breakdowns with coworkers, family, and friends, we find it easier and safer to stick with people who already agree with us.

Getting unstuck requires the courage to confront our own inner contradictions and then to re-engage with people in a newly authentic way. This book invites readers to join in a spirit of serious play, laughing at ourselves as we take on the important work of self-reflection and renewing our conversations. Breaking through Gridlock includes six steps and a series of proven exercises to help readers along the way. We encourage readers to invite a friend to join them on the journey.

This new edition of a classic, bestselling book has been revised and updated throughout and includes a new chapter on “Forgiveness in the Workplace”

Discover eight powerful mindset shifts that enable leaders and seekers of all ages to thrive in a time of unprecedented change and uncertainty.


Being adaptable and flexible have always been hallmarks of effective leadership, but recent events have seriously stress tested this idea. How do you find calm in the midst of all this chaos?

You need a new mindset, one that treats constant change and uncertainty as a feature, not a bug. Flux helps you develop eight "flux superpowers" that take conventional ideas and turn them on their heads. They'll enable you to see change in new ways, develop new responses, and ultimately reshape your relationship to change. The eight flux superpowers are:

1. Run slower
2. See what's invisible
3. Get lost
4. Start with trust
5. Know your "enough"
6. Create your portfolio career
7. Be all the more human (and serve other humans)
8. Let go of the future

The world is in constant flux, but we can learn to navigate change gracefully and confidently. Whether you're sizing up your career or reassessing your values, designing a product or building an organization, trying to inspire your colleagues or simply show up more fully in the world, activating your flux superpowers will keep you grounded even when the ground is constantly shifting beneath you.

This book will include a discussion guide.

This newly updated and revised edition of the classic (60,000 copies sold) celebrates the global growth of the THEORY U phenomenon and its evolution in multiple industries worldwide.


With the release of THEORY U almost ten years ago, Otto Scharmer set in motion a revolution in thought. Scharmer explained that what we pay attention to and how we pay attention is key to what we create. What prevents us from attending to situations more effectively is that we aren't fully aware of and in touch with the inner place from which attention and intention originate. This is what Scharmer calls our blind spot. By moving through Scharmer's U process, we consciously access the blind spot and learn to connect to our authentic Self-the deepest source of knowledge and inspiration-in the realm of “presencing,” a term coined by Scharmer that combines the concepts of presence and sensing.

Now, ten years later, Scharmer revisits the phenomenon THEORY U has become and updates and reports on the progress and evolution since initial release. He includes new materials, updates studies and examples, and includes eight pages of rich new graphics and charts in full color to better visually convey the book's premise.

Design and cultivate remote work teams that actually work.

From the experts who brought you The Long-Distance Leader and The Long-Distance Teammate comes the proven and practical guide for leaders to consciously design teams, define and create their desired culture, and encourage and nurture employee engagement-all from a distance.

Team design and culture are often presented as separate concepts when they are in fact intertwined in the remote work setting. Using the 3C model of communication, collaboration, and cohesion, leaders will be given the tools to overcome challenges, such as proximity bias and deteriorating social connections, to create an environment where everyone can contribute and add value equally, regardless of location.

The 3Cs are

• Communication-While communication is a fundamental part of being human, it is also a critical foundation of successful work. Without it, teams break down.

• Collaboration-Remote leaders face the misguided belief that physical presence is required to have a collaborative team. The truth is that proximity has nothing to do with successful collaboration.

• Cohesion-This dimension includes decidedly nonstructural aspects, such as relationships, trust, and accountability. While difficult to measure, a team's cohesion is critical to its success.

Using this framework, leaders of all levels will learn to assess, design, and develop their communication channels, methods for remote collaboration, and ability to foster cohesion to build successful long-distance teams. While a hybrid culture will be different, it can, when done right, be better than what existed before.

Offering a new lens on leadership and living, this research-based guide shows how to design experiences that can touch hearts, provoke minds, and change lives in powerful ways.

Transformative experiences are life events that change our sense of self in important ways. How do they work? What elements do they require? How can we learn to design them intentionally?

By embracing the research-based approach of ELVIS (the Experiential Learning Variables and Indicators System), this book details how to recast yourself as an Experience Design Leader, one that can provide those in your organization with the opportunities needed to reflect and grow as individuals.

Beginning with the ELVIS Framework, you will gain deep foundational insight into how transformative experiences work. And then with the ELVIS Toolkit, which includes seven practical design elements, you will have the key to unlocking these powerful experiences for yourself and others.

Whether you are new to the idea of designing experiences for others or are a seasoned veteran, ELVIS shows you how to tap into the psychology operating behind the most powerful and important experiences of our lives-those that shape who we are.