Accelerate your career with our comprehensive professional development library. These carefully curated titles provide actionable advice for advancing in your field, mastering new skills, and staying competitive in today's evolving workplace. Covering everything from negotiation tactics and networking strategies to time management and personal branding, our collection helps ambitious professionals at every career stage unlock their potential and achieve their goals.
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In this sequel to The Secret (over 350,000 copies sold), bestselling author Mark Miller again uses a simple, practical, parable format to teach millions of team leaders and team members how to elevate the success of any type of team in any organization.
This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world.
We face complex problems today that resist linear solutions. They involve a variety of actors, organizations, and sectors, each focused on their own piece of the puzzle. Addressing homelessness, for example, requires coordinated action from unhoused people, healthcare workers, educators, police, local governments, businesses, residents, religious institutions, and nonprofits. This book explains how to create impact networks, the structures that enable diverse groups of people and organizations to connect, coordinate, and collaborate to do more together than is possible alone. A network approach combines the strategic rigor and agility of modern organizations with the deep connection and shared purpose of communities. Drawing on his experience working with over fifty impact networks over the past decade, David Ehrlichman describes how to cultivate a network mentality. He then goes deeply into the five Cs of creating impact networks:
• clarify purpose and principles
• convene the people
• cultivate trust
• coordinate actions
• collaborate for systems change
Given the increasing urgency of the issues we face, impact networks have never been more essential.
We face complex problems today that resist linear solutions. They involve a variety of actors, organizations, and sectors, each focused on their own piece of the puzzle. Addressing homelessness, for example, requires coordinated action from unhoused people, healthcare workers, educators, police, local governments, businesses, residents, religious institutions, and nonprofits. This book explains how to create impact networks, the structures that enable diverse groups of people and organizations to connect, coordinate, and collaborate to do more together than is possible alone. A network approach combines the strategic rigor and agility of modern organizations with the deep connection and shared purpose of communities. Drawing on his experience working with over fifty impact networks over the past decade, David Ehrlichman describes how to cultivate a network mentality. He then goes deeply into the five Cs of creating impact networks:
• clarify purpose and principles
• convene the people
• cultivate trust
• coordinate actions
• collaborate for systems change
Given the increasing urgency of the issues we face, impact networks have never been more essential.
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.
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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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.
For creatives, entrepreneurs, job seekers, leaders, public figures, and speakers, Holley Murchison offers a proven six-step training process designed to help them craft and deliver comprehensive, compelling, and generally kick-ass introductions.
From artists to entrepreneurs, students looking for their first jobs to organizational leaders, public figures and speakers, Tell Me About Yourself helps bolster confidence and authentic communication in life's most vulnerable moments. Treading on a proven six-step process, founder and CEO of Oratory Glory, Holley Murchison, teaches you how to craft and deliver a comprehensive, compelling and generally kick-ass introduction.
• Step One: Revisit your introduction scenarios
• Step Two: Identify your audience
• Step Three: Clarify your response time and intent
• Step Four: Reframe the question
• Step Five: Decide what information you want to share
• Step Six: Build your story
When there's just one chance to make a first impression, the way we express who we are becomes the most important part of our conversations. Making a bad impression puts our potential for success on shaky ground, thereby stunting our growth and chance to make an impact in the world. Implementing the wisdom of this book and Murchison's methodology, even those of us who are shy can make a lasting first impression.
From artists to entrepreneurs, students looking for their first jobs to organizational leaders, public figures and speakers, Tell Me About Yourself helps bolster confidence and authentic communication in life's most vulnerable moments. Treading on a proven six-step process, founder and CEO of Oratory Glory, Holley Murchison, teaches you how to craft and deliver a comprehensive, compelling and generally kick-ass introduction.
• Step One: Revisit your introduction scenarios
• Step Two: Identify your audience
• Step Three: Clarify your response time and intent
• Step Four: Reframe the question
• Step Five: Decide what information you want to share
• Step Six: Build your story
When there's just one chance to make a first impression, the way we express who we are becomes the most important part of our conversations. Making a bad impression puts our potential for success on shaky ground, thereby stunting our growth and chance to make an impact in the world. Implementing the wisdom of this book and Murchison's methodology, even those of us who are shy can make a lasting first impression.
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.
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.
Scenario planning is, now more than ever, crucial to any organizational venture, but much of what has been previously published leans more on theory rather than practice. Thomas Chermack's academic credentials in tandem with his tenure in industrial scenario planning roles grants him the knowledge to support theory with the experience to outline process and practice.
This updated bestseller shows leaders how to transform fragmentation into authentic community with new workplace applications and proven strategies for today’s divided world.
With increasing violence, widening ideological divides, and growing economic inequality, a deeper sense of community is desperately needed. Yet typical ways of engaging people civically and organizationally remain unchanged. In Community, Peter Block explores how authentic community can emerge from fragmentation and offers practical steps to foster transformation.
This updated third edition draws on decades of implementing Block’s ideas and includes the following:
From neighborhood councils transforming local engagement to organizations shifting from competitive to cooperative cultures, Block demonstrates how simple positive change can be once we decide it’s essential. Whether readers are community leaders, organizational consultants, or concerned citizens, this book provides the framework and tools to move from fragmentation to connection, from isolation to belonging.
With increasing violence, widening ideological divides, and growing economic inequality, a deeper sense of community is desperately needed. Yet typical ways of engaging people civically and organizationally remain unchanged. In Community, Peter Block explores how authentic community can emerge from fragmentation and offers practical steps to foster transformation.
This updated third edition draws on decades of implementing Block’s ideas and includes the following:
- New stories and examples demonstrating community building as a more powerful approach to social problems than traditional policies and programs
- Expanded resources and a discussion guide designed for classroom and training program use
- A new closing chapter covering broader implications of the book’s ideas for organizational transformation
- Fresh content exploring the creative economy’s relationship to belonging and social capital’s role in authentic engagement
- Updated examples showing how community principles apply to today’s workplace and virtual world challenges
From neighborhood councils transforming local engagement to organizations shifting from competitive to cooperative cultures, Block demonstrates how simple positive change can be once we decide it’s essential. Whether readers are community leaders, organizational consultants, or concerned citizens, this book provides the framework and tools to move from fragmentation to connection, from isolation to belonging.
WINNER OF THE 2025 BEST BOOK AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY
This candid business biography reveals how bestselling author, speaker, and business consultant Ken Blanchard revolutionized management by leading with love and service.
Ken Blanchard transformed modern leadership theory through unlikely means-by catching people doing things right. Written like a novel with warmth and humor, this authorized biography reveals how a mediocre student who was told he "couldn't write" became a bestselling author and a globally renowned management expert.
Through extensive access to personal papers, letters, and interviews spanning six decades, Martha Lawrence paints an intimate portrait of the man behind The One Minute Manager and dozens of other influential books. From his early days coaching Cub Scouts to building a worldwide training organization, Blanchard demonstrated that nice guys can finish first by focusing on serving rather than being served.
During pivotal moments-his sister's tragic death, losing his home to wildfire, economic downturns threatening his company-Blanchard's optimistic leadership philosophy was tested. Yet his unwavering commitment to bringing out the best in others while leading with love created a lasting legacy that continues to influence organizations globally.
More than just a business biography, this book shows an American success story of someone who achieved greatness not through ruthless ambition but by genuinely caring about people and helping them reach their full potential. Blanchard's story offers an inspiring road map for anyone seeking to lead with both results and relationships in mind.
This candid business biography reveals how bestselling author, speaker, and business consultant Ken Blanchard revolutionized management by leading with love and service.
Ken Blanchard transformed modern leadership theory through unlikely means-by catching people doing things right. Written like a novel with warmth and humor, this authorized biography reveals how a mediocre student who was told he "couldn't write" became a bestselling author and a globally renowned management expert.
Through extensive access to personal papers, letters, and interviews spanning six decades, Martha Lawrence paints an intimate portrait of the man behind The One Minute Manager and dozens of other influential books. From his early days coaching Cub Scouts to building a worldwide training organization, Blanchard demonstrated that nice guys can finish first by focusing on serving rather than being served.
During pivotal moments-his sister's tragic death, losing his home to wildfire, economic downturns threatening his company-Blanchard's optimistic leadership philosophy was tested. Yet his unwavering commitment to bringing out the best in others while leading with love created a lasting legacy that continues to influence organizations globally.
More than just a business biography, this book shows an American success story of someone who achieved greatness not through ruthless ambition but by genuinely caring about people and helping them reach their full potential. Blanchard's story offers an inspiring road map for anyone seeking to lead with both results and relationships in mind.
Everything that we've been told about women succeeding in the workplace-from leaning in to throwing out the idea of being “nice girls”-misses the true key that puts women ahead: influence. Leadership experts Kathryn Heath, Jill Flynn, Mary Davis Holt, and Diana Faison create an airtight case for the importance of the influence effect.
It's pure myth that women need to be more aggressive to succeed. Since the time when Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In was first published in 2013, one thing has become strikingly clear: leaning in simply isn't enough to turn the tide. To the contrary, studies show that imitating male behavior doesn't translate to professional advancement for women. The distinctive missing link is influence.
In every industry, from private equity investing to network television, women are underrepresented at the top and underpaid across the board and throughout their careers. The gap in the literature about what puts women ahead is influence-the capacity to have an impact on agendas and outcomes. Influence is more important to the women we work with than power itself.
The Influence Effect focuses on building influence that will enable women to gain traction in their careers and to achieve the advancement they deserve. The tools in this book are geared to help women rise above the politics of business and succeed on their own terms by achieving greater influence. Women have goals they want to achieve and ideas they can champion through change, and influence is the currency they need to make that happen.
It's pure myth that women need to be more aggressive to succeed. Since the time when Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In was first published in 2013, one thing has become strikingly clear: leaning in simply isn't enough to turn the tide. To the contrary, studies show that imitating male behavior doesn't translate to professional advancement for women. The distinctive missing link is influence.
In every industry, from private equity investing to network television, women are underrepresented at the top and underpaid across the board and throughout their careers. The gap in the literature about what puts women ahead is influence-the capacity to have an impact on agendas and outcomes. Influence is more important to the women we work with than power itself.
The Influence Effect focuses on building influence that will enable women to gain traction in their careers and to achieve the advancement they deserve. The tools in this book are geared to help women rise above the politics of business and succeed on their own terms by achieving greater influence. Women have goals they want to achieve and ideas they can champion through change, and influence is the currency they need to make that happen.
The workplace is a "blink" world-studies confirm that people form opinions of one another within the first seven seconds of meeting. To help business readers both re-master the lost skills of in-person communication and prepare for the coming visual tech revolution, Carol Kinsey Goman shows how to accurately decode the body language of others, and how to use your own body language in the workplace to help build trust and credibility with customers, colleagues and clients.
This book presents a new approach to risk management that enables executives to think systematically and strategically about future risks and deal proactively with threats to their competitive advantages in an ever more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
Organizations typically manage risks through traditional tools such as insurance and risk mitigation; some employ enterprise risk management, which looks at risk holistically throughout the organization. But these tools tend to focus organizational attention on past actions and compliance. Executives need to tackle risk head-on as an integral part of their strategic planning process, not by looking in the rearview mirror.
Strategic Risk Management (SRM) is a forward-looking approach that helps teams anticipate events or exposures that fundamentally threaten or enhance a firm's position. The authors, experts in both business strategy and risk management, define strategic risks and show how they differ from operational risks. They offer a road map that describes architectural elements of SRM (knowledge, principles, structures, and tools) to show how leaders can integrate them to effectively design and implement a future-facing SRM program. SRM gives organizations a competitive advantage over those stuck in outdated risk management practices. For the first time, it enables them to look squarely out the front windshield.
Organizations typically manage risks through traditional tools such as insurance and risk mitigation; some employ enterprise risk management, which looks at risk holistically throughout the organization. But these tools tend to focus organizational attention on past actions and compliance. Executives need to tackle risk head-on as an integral part of their strategic planning process, not by looking in the rearview mirror.
Strategic Risk Management (SRM) is a forward-looking approach that helps teams anticipate events or exposures that fundamentally threaten or enhance a firm's position. The authors, experts in both business strategy and risk management, define strategic risks and show how they differ from operational risks. They offer a road map that describes architectural elements of SRM (knowledge, principles, structures, and tools) to show how leaders can integrate them to effectively design and implement a future-facing SRM program. SRM gives organizations a competitive advantage over those stuck in outdated risk management practices. For the first time, it enables them to look squarely out the front windshield.
Why are some people more successful in business? Why do some businesses flourish where others fail? Renowned business speaker and author, Brian Tracy, tackles these puzzling questions through a set of principles or “universal laws” one needs to follow to become successful in the world of business.
In The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Tracy draws on his thirty years of experience and knowledge to present a set of principles or "universal laws" that lie behind the success of business people everywhere, in every kind of enterprise, large and small. These are natural laws, he says, and they work everywhere and for everyone, virtually without exception. Every year, thousands of companies underperform or even fail and millions of individuals underachieve, frustrated by thwarted ambition and dreams-all because they either attempted to violate or did not know these universal laws. But ignorance of the law is no excuse!
Tracy breaks the 100 laws down into nine major categories: Life, Success, Business, Leadership, Money, Economics, Selling, Negotiating, and Time Management. Drawing on a lifetime of observation, investigation, and experience, Tracy not only identifies and defines each law, he also reveals its source and foundation, whether in science, nature, philosophy, experience, or common sense. He illustrates how it functions in the world using real-life anecdotes and examples shows how to apply it to your life and work through specific questions and practical steps and exercises that everyone can use-sometimes in just minutes-to begin the journey toward greater business success.
In The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Tracy draws on his thirty years of experience and knowledge to present a set of principles or "universal laws" that lie behind the success of business people everywhere, in every kind of enterprise, large and small. These are natural laws, he says, and they work everywhere and for everyone, virtually without exception. Every year, thousands of companies underperform or even fail and millions of individuals underachieve, frustrated by thwarted ambition and dreams-all because they either attempted to violate or did not know these universal laws. But ignorance of the law is no excuse!
Tracy breaks the 100 laws down into nine major categories: Life, Success, Business, Leadership, Money, Economics, Selling, Negotiating, and Time Management. Drawing on a lifetime of observation, investigation, and experience, Tracy not only identifies and defines each law, he also reveals its source and foundation, whether in science, nature, philosophy, experience, or common sense. He illustrates how it functions in the world using real-life anecdotes and examples shows how to apply it to your life and work through specific questions and practical steps and exercises that everyone can use-sometimes in just minutes-to begin the journey toward greater business success.
Bestselling author Kim Cameron delivers both a riveting story and a thoroughly researched case study that delves into the spectacularly impossible success of the shutdown and clean-up of Rocky Flats, one of the most notorious nuclear weapons plants in the United States.