Professional Development

Offering a revolution in Black business financing, this book centers the entrepreneur and responds to the systemic failures surrounding Black wealth building.

There is a huge wealth gap in America today. Owning a business is one of the best ways to build wealth-but entrepreneurs need capital. And investing in Black companies is obstructed by systemic racism and implicit biases that continue to create barriers to success.

Merging historical information and data with tactical examples and explanations, this practical guide shows us what needs to be done to change the way we support Black companies and how we think about wealth.

Norwood calls for investors to move away from extractive, individualistic, and exploitative approaches to capital and entrepreneurship. She asks us to move toward transformational, restorative, regenerative, and interdependent relationships to repair the impacts of systemic racism. Investors, large and small, need to say to Black business owners, “We believe in you.”

With an entrepreneur-centric approach, Believe-in-You Money challenges the systemic failure surrounding Black companies. This book is a guide on how Black entrepreneurs can be supported in sustainable ways and offers a shift in the way we think about who can be an investor while also aiming to change our personal relationships with money.

An Independent Press Awards Nonfiction Winner.

A compass for leaders lost in the paradoxical space between attention to people and attention to results-with Compassionate Accountability, you don't have to choose!

Sadly, compassion and accountability are too often in tension-leaders feel they have to pick one or the other. But solely prioritizing accountability can create toxic work environments that drive away good talent. On the other end of the spectrum, being too nice can compromise performance and productivity.

Finding harmony between compassion and accountability is the ultimate catalyst for improved results and a thriving workplace.

The solution is recognizing that compassion and accountability are not opposites. In fact, accountability is an element of compassion. Compassionate Accountability is the process of building connection while getting results. This book shows how this foundational mindset, philosophy, and way of living can lead to a thriving organizational culture. It covers such topics as these:

• Why you can't practice compassion without accountability
• How to turn on the three “switches” of the compassion mindset-and the predictable damaging consequences when they're turned off
• The key role Compassionate Accountability plays in a healthy leadership culture
• Six areas to focus on to start building your culture of Compassionate Accountability
• Five common barriers to compassion for leaders-and how to overcome them

Plus, readers will find real case examples of how organizations have adopted Compassionate Accountability, along with quizzes and self-assessments to help them learn and apply the concepts.

Leaders seeking a renewed sense of fulfillment in their roles and increased leadership impact will find inspiration, guidance, and a road map for cultural transformation.

A comprehensive new model for creating inclusive organizations, illuminating the vital role that inclusion plays in developing solutions to the critical social, environmental, and leadership challenges we face.

Most organizational DE&I efforts are focused on changing individual behaviors. But unless you change the organizational structures-the practices, processes, and systems that surround and support individual behaviors-your change efforts will not take root. Structural inclusion makes behavioral inclusion stick.

Andrés Tapia and Fayruz Kirtzman have found that five disciplines encompass the structures, mindsets, behaviors, and accountabilities required for creating inclusive organizations that will have transformational impact not only on their culture and people but also on society and the planet:

1: Manage the Risk: know how to deal with the legal, reputational, and cultural risks of either doing the wrong thing, or not doing the right thing.
2: Explode the Awareness: make sure leaders and employees are deeply informed about, and publicly committed to, the value of DE&I.
3: Maximize the Talent Systems: ensure that leaders and managers display inclusive behaviors when they manage and optimize talent.
4: Master the Logistics: integrate DE&I into operations in ways that lead to improved efficiencies.
5: See the Marketplace: expand to new consumer market segments, enhance cross culturally competent customer service, and form effective partnerships with overlooked communities.

The authors provide assessment tools and case studies of organizations that have implemented each discipline, highlighting what worked and what tripped them up. And they take a wider view, showing how inclusive organizations practicing the five disciplines can address what they call society's four vital tasks: diversify leadership, eradicate polarization, achieve justice, and save the planet. This is a complete guide to how to make your organization a systematic, process-oriented engineer of change for the full range of your stakeholders.

Stop complicating everything! Create simple messages that are more powerful, more memorable, and win people over.

Simply Put is a modern exploration of the simplicity principle for anybody who needs to sell stuff or persuade others. This book is a splash of cold water, designed to wake up entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, and marketing pros who have something they need to tell the world but just can't quite connect the dots. With this book, we're all better marketers.

So why does simple win? And how do we get simple? The award-winning marketing entrepreneur behind New York Times best-selling authors and notable campaigns such as I Love NY provides answers and tools to simplify messages in this practical guide.

From “Yes We Can” to “Just Do It”, regardless of if they're trying to get your dollars, your votes, or just your thoughts, effective messages share one thing – they're simple. Being able to tell your story clearly and effectively is the winning skill for the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders.

In developing the skills necessary to engage in Bold, Inclusive Conversations around polarizing topics, we can acknowledge that these subjects are complex, that there are no simple answers, and that it takes time and practice to learn how to do it well.

Politics, religion, race-we can't talk about topics like these at work, right? But in fact, these conversations are happening all the time, either in real life or virtually. And if they aren't handled effectively, they can become more polarizing and divisive, impacting productivity, engagement, retention, teamwork, and even employees' sense of safety in the workplace.

In this second edition of We Can't Talk about That at Work!, best-selling author Mary-Frances Winters and new coauthor Mareisha N. Reese of The Winters Group, Inc., provide fresh examples, updated research, and compelling insights. Featuring a new chapter on how two organizations have actualized the model for Bold, Inclusive Conversations as well as a discussion guide and updated glossary, this modern classic offers step-by-step guidance for conducting structured conversations around polarizing topics. Leaders and organizations can address sensitive subjects head on in a way that brings people together instead of driving them apart.

The iconic Henry Mintzberg provides a crystal-clear map to the forms and forces that shape all human organizations, synthesizing his fifty years of research.

We live in a world of organizations, from our birth in hospitals until our burial by funeral homes. In between, we are educated, employed, entertained, and exasperated by organizations. We had better understand how these strange beasts really work. But where can we go to find out?

Welcome to Understanding Organizations . . . Finally! For half a century, Mintzberg has been observing organizations, advising them, engaging them, and escaping them. Here he offers a masterful update and revision of his 1983 classic, Structure in Fives.

Believing there is one best way to structure organizations is the worst way to do so. A better place to start is by recognizing different species of organizations. Mintzberg identifies seven-personal enterprises, programmed machines, professional assemblies, project pioneers, and others. He explores these forms and the seven forces that drive them toward hybrids and across their life cycles.

You will find no better guide to the care and feeding of these extraordinarily varied and vital creatures than this book.

Four innovation experts from the startup world, large enterprises, nonprofits, and academia come together to reveal the secret of uncovering authentic demand to build successful innovations.

Books on innovation mostly focus on how to nurture innovative cultures and brainstorm ideas. The Heart of Innovation is the first popular book to concretely delve into what innovations really are and how to create them. Many attempts at innovation fail because customers turn out to be indifferent. The key to success is to uncover unmet authentic demand; what customers cannot be indifferent to. Through fresh case studies, ranging from how SoulCycle revolutionized the fitness industry, to how IBM built an $8 billion business on the Web, to a single mother ending abuse in a slum in Africa, The Heart of Innovation explores how authentic demand is often hidden or taken for granted.

The first half of the book explores cases where people accidentally found their way to meeting an unmet authentic demand-or failed to. The second half of the book provides a field guide to methodically identifying and building products, services, and businesses around authentic demand.

At Georgia Tech, IBM, and elsewhere, the authors have worked with scores of startups and large companies, developing a unique methodology that unpacks the “black box” of authentic demand and shows innovators how to search for it, recognize it, and create situations for their customers that catalyze it. They explore the differences, and different challenges, to the three types of innovation-incremental improvement, company transformation, and radical “formative” innovation.

Authors Chanoff, Furst, Sabbah, and Wegman take innovators and people who work with them on a new journey through innovation. Their fresh case studies, from IBM's entry to the Web, to a single mother in a slum in Kenya, make The Heart of Innovation as obsessively readable as it is informative.

If customers are already pulling your innovation from your hands, you don't need this book. Otherwise, reach for The Heart of Innovation.

Avoid inadvertently offending or alienating anyone by following six straightforward communication guidelines developed by a no-nonsense linguistic anthropologist and business consultant.

In today's fast-moving and combative culture, language can feel like a minefield. Terms around gender, disability, race, sexuality and more are constantly evolving. Words that used to be acceptable can now get you “cancelled.” People are afraid of making embarrassing mistakes. Or sounding outdated or out of touch. Or not being as respectful as they intended.

But it's not as complicated as it might seem. Linguistic anthropologist Suzanne Wertheim offers six easy-to-understand principles to guide any communication-written or spoken-with anyone:

• Reflect reality
• Show respect
• Draw people in
• Incorporate other perspectives
• Prevent erasure
• Recognize pain points

This guide clarifies the challenges-and the solutions-to using "they/them," and demonstrates why "you guys" isn't as inclusive as many people think. If you follow the principles, you'll know not to ask a female coworker with a wedding ring about her husband-because she might be married to a woman. And you'll avoid writing things like "America was discovered in 1492," because that's just when Europeans found it.

Filled with real-world examples, high-impact word substitutions, and exercises that boost new skills, this book builds a foundational toolkit so people can evaluate what is and isn't inclusive language on their own.

Utilizing Dr. Martin Luther King's Beloved Community framework, activists will be empowered to create change and equity through fierce yet compassionate dialogue against racism and systematic white supremacy.

Can a person be both fierce and compassionate at once? Directly challenge racist speech or actions without seeking to humiliate the other person? Interrupt hateful or habitual forms of discrimination in new ways that foster deeper change? Dr. Roxy Manning believes it's possible-and you can learn how.

In this book, Dr. Manning provides a new way to conceive of antiracist conversations, along with the practical tools and frameworks that make them possible. Her work is grounded in the idea of Beloved Community, as articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a goal to aspire to and even experience now, in the present, when we refuse to give up on the possibility of human connection within ourselves, with potential allies, and with those whose words and actions create harm. This book fuels courage and provides tools to confront everyday forms of racism. It walks the reader through an effective, efficient model of dialogue that utilizes concepts of nonviolent communication and helps normalize talking about racism instead of treating it like a "third rail," strictly avoided or touched at one's peril.

Readers will
• Be empowered to identify what kind of antiracist conversation they want to have-for example, do they only want to be heard, or do they want to negotiate a change in policy?
• Learn how to engage in antiracist conversations whether they are the Actor (person who says or does something racist), the Receiver (the target of racism), or the Bystander.
• Learn how to notice the underlying needs and values that motivate all human actions and how those values can open up pathways to transformation.

Examples of antiracist conversations highlight different ways to initiate dialogue, raise awareness, speak one's truth, and make clear, doable requests or demands for change.

Drawing on her experience as a clinical psychologist, a nonviolent communication practitioner, and an Afro-Caribbean immigrant, Dr. Manning provides a model of antiracist dialogue with practical applications for individuals and organizations.

Find out how bold actions by visionary leaders can inspire powerful stories that drive culture change.

Data indicates that most strategic efforts to change a company's culture fail. So how do companies succeed in this endeavor?

A top strategy professor and two highly successful CEOs found that, in companies that had successfully changed their culture, leaders had taken dramatic actions that embodied the new cultural values. These actions inspired stories that became company legends, repeated in every department and handed on to new employees.

Through compiling and analyzing 150 stories from business leaders who have achieved change, they identified 6 attributes that every successful culture change story has in common:

1. The actions are authentic
2. They revolve around the CEO
3. They signal a clean break with the past, and a clear path to the future
4. They appeal to employee heads and hearts
5. They're often theatrical or dramatic
6. They're told, and re-told, throughout the organization

With extensive and inspiring examples of stories containing these attributes, the authors illustrate how readers can harness the power of stories within their company in order to change or create a winning culture to align with any strategy.

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.

Leadership legend and bestselling author Ken Blanchard returns with trust expert and thought leader Randy Conley to present a structured playbook based on the bestselling Simple Truths of Leadership.

The companion playbook to Simple Truths of Leadership expands on the book's 52 essential principles of servant leadership and trust building. This structured playbook provides weekly prompts and exercises to help you track your progress toward your leadership goals. It focuses on one Simple Truth per week and includes:

• A summary of each Simple Truth
• A game plan for using each truth in your workplace, including thought-provoking questions and exercises to challenge your thinking and cause you to consider new ideas about leadership
• A Call to Action to “Try It This Week”

With so much of today's workforce feeling disengaged from the work they do, it's critical for leaders to move away from self-serving methods and embrace servant leadership to put their followers' needs before their own. And by journaling alongside servant leadership principles, you will be able to turn the common sense behind these simple truths into common practice for you and your organization.

Avoid the speed trap! Discover how changemakers can find lasting solutions to urgent social problems through a proven 5-step process for listening thoughtfully, building broad support, and exploring unconventional options.


Society celebrates leaders who promise fast, easy solutions to the world's problems-but quick fixes are just mirages that fade, leaving us with the same broken systems. The truth is, effective social change happens through slow, intentional actions. The author, a globally acclaimed social entrepreneur, offers a 5-step process for taking the slow lane to change-the lane that gets you to the right place faster:

• Listening-Listen to build trust, which can change hearts and minds and allow for something new to emerge.
• Holding the urgency-Accept that even in moments of crisis you can move only at the speed of trust instead of rushing into action.
• Sharing the agency-Create an inclusive environment where everyone can lead.
• Healing democracy-Build bridges that allow marginalized people to participate.
• Maintaining curiosity-Be inspired by nontraditional sources.

Using dozens of examples-prison reform in England, urban development in Venezuela, healthcare in the Navajo Nation, early childhood education in New York, and many more-The Slow Lane shows how, by following the principles taught in this book, readers can create lasting change.

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.

The Antiracist Heart delivers a unique path to antiracist activism and introspection by applying neuroscience exercises, questionnaires, and journaling prompts based on the book How to Have Antiracist Conversations.

Have you wanted to stand up for the values you believe in, yet found yourself inexplicably held back? Do you long for a way to hold people accountable that doesn't simultaneously demean them? The Antiracist Heart combines cutting-edge neuroscience with ways to build Martin Luther King Jr's vision of Beloved Community, delivering practical tools for the internal and interpersonal work of antiracism. This book prepares the reader to have a new kind of conversation when racist harms occur – one that doesn't shy away from hard truths yet doesn't demonize anyone.

Based on the framework of How to Have Antiracist Conversations, the activities in this handbook empower readers to disrupt the ways racism plays out in daily life. In each chapter, Manning, a clinical psychologist and antiracist activist, and Peyton, a neuroscience expert and educator, both trainers in Nonviolent Communication, unpack key concepts like bias and trauma using brain science alongside practices for self-connection and dialogue.

The exercises are:
• Flexible
• Designed to work for individuals or groups
• For people of the Global Majority (BIPOC) or white people
• For those with or without experience in addressing the effects of racism

By better understanding the neuroscience of how brains develop in response to culture, readers gain skills to interrupt implicit biases and racist constructs deep within the brain. The activities invite introspection and a radical form of self-compassion that make antiracist dialogues and actions possible, thus creating real change.

Experience the power of inclusion, community, and taking action! An updated, expanded edition.

By 2045 Latinos will make up 1 in 4 Americans. They are projected to be 78% of the new entries into the labor force in the next ten years. By sheer numbers alone, Latinos will shape the 21st Century. What does it take to lead such a varied and vibrant people who hail from twenty-six countries and are a blend of different races? And what can leaders of all cultures and ethnicities learn from how Latinos lead?

Juana Bordas takes us on a journey to the very heart and soul of Latino leadership. She offers 10 principles that richly illustrate the inclusive, people-centered, socially responsible, and life-affirming ways Latinos have led their community. This model is uniquely suited to this century's multicultural, global age.

This new and expanded edition includes a chapter on intergenerational leadership that recognizes vast generational shifts are occurring: ten thousand Baby Boomers retire every day and Millennials and Zs are the largest generations in history. Six out of 10 Latinos are millennials. This new chapter can guide us in preparing the next generations to take the helm of leadership.

This unprecedented and wide-ranging book shows that Latino leadership is indeed powerful and distinctive and has lessons that can inform leaders of every background.

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

The new edition of this internationally acclaimed guide to remote and hybrid leadership comes with an updated and enriched framework for the modern workplace. It introduces new principles and retains proven strategies for effective leadership across distances.

When The Long-Distance Leader was first published, it was pre-pandemic and remote work was in its infancy with 30% of managers leading at a distance-now that number is well over 50%.

As more organizations adopt a remote workforce, the challenges of leading at a distance become more urgent than ever. The cofounders of the Remote Leadership Institute, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel, show leaders how to guide their teams by recalling the foundational principles of leadership whether their teams are remote, hybrid, co-working, or something entirely new!

The authors' "Three-O" Model refocuses leaders to think about outcomes, others, and ourselves-elements of leadership that remain unchanged, whether employees are down the hall or halfway around the world. By pairing it with the Remote Leadership Model, which emphasizes using technology as a tool and not a distraction, leaders can navigate the terrain of managing teams wherever they are.

This second edition features updated exercises that ensure projects stay on track, keep productivity and morale high, and build lasting relationships, along with a new chapter on hybrid workplaces.