Professional Development

PepsiCo's award-winning chief design officer reveals the secret to creating life-changing innovations: putting human needs at the center of any design process.

In every industry, new technologies have lowered the barrier to entry like never before. Either you design exceptional products, brands and experiences, or somebody will beat you to it. And Mauro Porcini - PepsiCo's and 3M's first ever chief design officer - says, the key to real, world-changing innovation is to put people first.
 
Putting people first requires what Porcini calls unicorns: people who are in love with people and who have a genuine fire in them to create meaningful solutions for actual human beings. In this book, he describes them, celebrates them, and details their superpowers so you can find them, hire them, grow them, and retain them. Some have qualities you might expect-the ability to dream and an attention to detail-but when was the last time you heard an executive ask prospective hires if they were kind or humble?
 
Porcini uses his journey across startups and multinational corporations, through successes and failures, to create a handbook for modern innovators. This book is written by a celebrated designer, high-level corporate executive, and a decent human being.

A longtime broadcast journalist, ABC News correspondent, and business communication strategist shows how you can craft an honest and authentic response to any scandal, rather than try to deny it, and ultimately bolster your brand.


In two decades as a television reporter, T. J. Winick covered many scandals. The biggest mistake he saw brands make was to try to “make it go away” by refusing to apologize, declining to comment, or going on the attack-anything to deflect attention. Often that kind of response becomes a scandal of its own.

In his book, Winick argues instead for transparency, honesty, authenticity, and empathy. Handled correctly, the way you address an egregious violation of your standards can increase your reputation capital. It can remind people of what those standards are and how strongly you believe in them.

Drawing on his intimate insider knowledge of the media, Winick addresses every conceivable aspect of how to respond to a scandal. He includes his Ten Crisis Commandments-universal dos and don'ts-and the seven qualities for an effective response. Using dozens of examples, he covers critical issues such as choosing when and how to apologize and when not to, creating a crisis communication plan and forming a response team, making the press your ally; choosing the right social media channel to deliver your message, navigating controversial social issues, and much more.

Winick's experience covering brands in crisis and then defending them makes this book an invaluable resource. “I have been both the hunter and the hunted,” he writes. If you've built your reputation capital through years of living the ideals you espouse, this book will help you protect and defend it when that inevitable crisis strikes.

This no-nonsense guide to social intelligence for project managers gives you a step-by-step process for building a bulletproof project team-no matter what gaps exist in personality, geography, culture, or communication style.

High-performing teams don't happen by magic. You need processes that are designed in a socially intelligent way if your team is going to overcome the modern world's tough challenges with coordination. To be a star project manager, you have to communicate with people in their individual learning styles, provide accountability in ways that won't be demotivating, and run meetings and minutes that people won't tune out. Your processes must be constructed in ways that respect the complex realities of social dynamics step by step.

You have to know your team before you can motivate them, and you have to motivate them before you can manage them. In this book are foolproof techniques to make sure your team connects with you, each other, and everyone they need to get the job done. After all, a team should be more than the sum of its parts-and it's up to the project manager to provide the glue that holds it all together.

All humans have bias, and as a result, so do the institutions we build. Internationally sought after diversity consultant Tiffany Jana offers concrete ways for anyone to work against institutional bias no matter what their position is in an organization.



While it is easy to identify intentionally built systems of oppression like Jim Crow or the paralysis caused by the glass ceiling for women in the workplace, confronting systems that perpetuate subtle, unconscious bias is much harder. Erasing Institutional Bias will help people tackle structural bias regardless of their positional power. Eliminating systemic bias can seem an insurmountable task from the vantage point of an ordinary individual, yet Jana and Mejias empower readers to recognize that each of us has the ability to affect systemic bias through a deliberate, coordinated effort. Institutional bias afflicts all industries -including business, education, health care, government, tech, the arts, nonprofits, and finance and banking. Among the types of institutional bias addressed are hiring bias, gender bias, racial bias, occupational bias, and customer bias. Jana and Mejias focus their attention on bias in the workplace and give readers practices and activities to create organizational trust to challenge these implicit biases. Erasing Institutional Bias will help people recognize that each of us has the power to affect systemic bias. Each of us can evaluate our own current role in perpetuating systemic bias and define our new role in breaking down systemic bias.

The third edition of this classic is a must-have text for the human resource development (HRD) profession. It has with brand-new material on the impact of technology, globalization, and emerging business trends on HRD practice.

Human resource development (HRD) is a large field of practice but a relatively young academic discipline. For the last two decades, Foundations of Human Resource Development has fulfilled the field's need for a complete and thoughtful foundational text. This essential text provides an up-to-date overview of the HRD profession, along with the terminology and processes required for sound HRD research and practice. Readers will gain a basic understanding of

• HRD models and theories that support best practice
• The history and philosophical foundations of the field
• HRD's role in learning, performance, and change in organizations

This new edition has been updated throughout and contains new chapters on assessment, technology, globalization, and future challenges. Examples of best practices are included, along with variations in core thinking, processes, interventions, tools, and much more. This must-have reference will help both practitioners and academics add clarity to their professional journeys.

“The perfect book for the times in which we live . . . page after page of engaging stories, profound insights, and practical tips on how you can stand up and take responsibility for making something meaningful happen.”
-Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge

Stepping Up argues that almost every problem, from personal difficulties and business challenges to social issues, can be solved if all of us look to ourselves to create change rather than looking to others. And with the research to prove it, John Izzo shows that by seeing ourselves as the locus rather than the victims of change, we are happier, less stressed, and more powerful.

Izzo offers seven compelling principles that enable anyone to effectively bring about positive change. This book is filled with stories that illustrate the incredible power of stepping up: a middle-aged Italian shopkeeper who fought back against the Mafia, two teenagers who ignited an antibullying movement, an executive who turned a dying division into a profit center, and many more. This second edition includes a new chapter on the Stepping Up Continuum, a model that looks at six ways to know if you are stepping up or stepping back, as well as fresh stories and a self-assessment tool for helping leaders create a culture for stepping up in their organizations.

The first practical guide to implementing positive leadership, which helps leaders in all types of organizations reach beyond ordinary success to achieve extraordinary effectiveness, spectacular results, and positively deviant performance.

Now in its third edition, this project management classic has been updated with an array of field-tested tools to help upper management ensure the success of projects within organizations.


For twenty years, Creating an Environment for Successful Projects has been a staple for upper managers who want to help projects succeed. This new edition includes case studies from companies that have successfully applied the approach, along with practical tools such as templates, surveys, and benchmark reports for savvy leaders who want to ensure project success throughout their organizations. The insights in this book will help management speed projects along instead of getting in their way. All too often, well-intentioned managers put roadblocks in the team's way instead of empowering them with the tools they need to succeed. This approach to project environments, grounded in decades of research and practice, will help you make your organization the most project-friendly it's ever been.

In a time of increasing disconnection and uncertainty, Leading with Joy shows how leaders can reclaim their purpose and embrace joy in service of social transformation.


Leadership that connects people and centers compassion and trust instead of competition and disconnection is needed more than ever before. There are plenty of manuals that show people how to manage organizations, but what is really needed in this moment is a book that shows us how to include kindness and inspiration within leadership. Leading with Joy promotes a courageous and compassionate approach to leadership that can sustain purposeful action and social change.

This book takes the form of a series of vignettes about the authors' insights and stories, with reflection questions at the end of each one. Through these stories-which address topics such as workplace triumphs and lessons, family relationships, and even near-death experiences- Akaya Windwood and Rajasvini Bhansali illuminate different aspects of leadership, such as humility, forgiveness, and kindness, and invite leaders to respond to the current moment.

The book draws on the authors' lived experiences as leaders, including their encounters with oppression, and their wisdom in principled leadership. They demonstrate how leaders can create conditions of abundance and well-being, which are necessary for long-term social transformation.

Diversity initiatives are falling short. This book shows leaders how to develop the skills needed to build sustainably inclusive organizations using a tested, research-based model developed by the global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry.


Workplaces are increasingly diverse, yet the top of the house continues to look the same. This is diversity without inclusion. And without inclusion at all levels, organizations miss out on greater innovation, talent optimization, access to diverse marketplaces, and the ability to successfully navigate disruption. More effective leadership is needed to drive this transformation.
Andrés Tapia and Alina Polonskaia, senior client partners at international consulting powerhouse Korn Ferry, draw on Korn Ferry's extensive research and the actual experiences and perspectives of inclusive leaders to identify five disciplines of inclusive leadership:
• Build interpersonal trust
• Integrate diverse perspectives
• Optimize talent
• Apply an adaptive mindset
• Achieve transformation
They outline the competencies behind each discipline, describe individual and organizational exemplars of inclusive leadership, and show how the five disciplines enable leaders to tackle tough diversity challenges. This book will help leaders build the skills to meet the demands of the present and leverage opportunities in uncharted territories that will take their organizations to the next level.

In forty-two succinct, surprising essays, legendary scholar Henry Mintzberg brings management down from the clouds and onto solid ground.


"Enough of heroic leadership, it's time for engaging management!" is the rallying cry from management and leadership giant Henry Mintzberg. He establishes this theme in the first story in the book, about the CEO of a failing airline who always flew comfortably in first class, blithely unaware of the terrible things happening with his customers in coach (in this case, being served famously inedible scrambled eggs). Managing can't be about sitting where you have become accustomed, insulating yourself--it has to be about eating the scrambled eggs.
So Mintzberg urges leaders to call their own call centers, work with their workers, expect extraordinary ideas from ordinary people. Be a keynote listener, not a keynote speaker. Don't say "top management" if you won't say "bottom management." In this best-of collection from his popular, entertaining and irreverent blog, Mintzberg writes that he captures "a lifetime of learning about managing and organizing and strategizing, while getting out many of the ideas that I buried in obscure publications... If some strike you as outrageous, please understand that my most outrageous ideas tend to be my truest." This is Mintzberg at his most playful, but always with serious intent.

By the winners of the Association for Talent Development's 2022 Thought Leader award!

Prove your effectiveness to anyone-and achieve professional success-by adopting the same ROI methods and metrics that leading companies use.

In an era of evidence-based inquiry, people need to be able to measure their success. In their new book, Patricia Phillips and Jack Phillips aim to help readers see the value of their work and then share it with others.

The Show the Value process involves connecting projects with a business measure, collecting and analyzing data to track progress, and presenting the results to the right audiences. Readers will learn how to keep their work relevant, their careers on track, and their organizations healthy. The book includes extensive examples, diagnostic tools, and implementable practices that show how to measure and improve the success of any type of project. It will also help readers avoid disappointing results by designing for the desired results.

Written for specialists, professionals, managers, and independent contractors who want to achieve success in their work, this book is a step-by-step guide on how to show the value of their initiatives, offering a simplified version of the ROI Methodology.

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement.


People today face increasing complexity and decreasing control. They need to work with more people across more divides. But the traditional ways of advancing-subsuming individual interests to the good of the whole, or providing total autonomy for all stakeholders to work out their own solution-aren't adequate to resolving these difficult situations.

Drawing on his experiences working with Black people and white people in post-apartheid in South Africa, First Nations people and the government in Canada, multiple stakeholders in war-torn Columbia, and many more, Kahane describes what he calls transformative facilitation. It combines the two approaches, cycling back and forth between them. The facilitator pays careful attention to what is going on in the group and decides which approach will work best at any given moment.

Adam Kahane describes precisely what the facilitator needs to watch for and how to manage the delicate balance between a focus on the collective and a focus on specific stakeholder needs. This book is for anyone who helps people collaborate in any setting. Not only does it offer a way to facilitate breakthroughs, it is a breakthrough in itself.