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One of the world's top experts on applying analytics to organizational performance provides a new, more comprehensive approach for using analytics to effectively guide business decisions.
There are tons of books on how to do strategy execution better, but they all operate from the premise that their one-size-fits-all solution works for what ails all companies. But each company's context and problems are unique. You need analytics to diagnose where improvements really need to be made, but existing approaches don't give you the full picture. Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations, Alec Levenson provides a roadmap for doing diagnostics that will lead to actionable insights and solutions.
Levenson's model, combines the enterprise (or organization-level) approach to analytics and the human capital (or job-level) approach. This solves two parallel problems in organizations today: senior leaders pay too little attention to the practical challenges of implementing the business strategy and setting goals for achieving it, and frontline managers and HR too often focus on narrow improvements to jobs and processes that appear to be useful yet have little strategic value. The book provides an in-depth critique of common measurement approaches and, through case studies and real-world examples, shows how to apply the model to increasing customer retention, spurring innovation, developing go-to-market strategies, making budgeting and investment decisions, and more.
There are tons of books on how to do strategy execution better, but they all operate from the premise that their one-size-fits-all solution works for what ails all companies. But each company's context and problems are unique. You need analytics to diagnose where improvements really need to be made, but existing approaches don't give you the full picture. Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations, Alec Levenson provides a roadmap for doing diagnostics that will lead to actionable insights and solutions.
Levenson's model, combines the enterprise (or organization-level) approach to analytics and the human capital (or job-level) approach. This solves two parallel problems in organizations today: senior leaders pay too little attention to the practical challenges of implementing the business strategy and setting goals for achieving it, and frontline managers and HR too often focus on narrow improvements to jobs and processes that appear to be useful yet have little strategic value. The book provides an in-depth critique of common measurement approaches and, through case studies and real-world examples, shows how to apply the model to increasing customer retention, spurring innovation, developing go-to-market strategies, making budgeting and investment decisions, and more.
Ron Wallace rose from driver to president of UPS International. Here he reveals the UPS secret sauce--culture--that allows it to outcompete younger companies that are not unionized, not sprawling, and not Brown.
The steady, long-term success of UPS is sometimes a mystery to business observers. Founded over a century ago, UPS has been moving up, not down the Fortune 500 list. Massive in size, UPS has cultivated a family environment where promotion is almost always from within, lifetime employment is the norm and even the executives are union members. In one of the most mature of mature industries, UPS is consistently seen as a strong investment on Wall Street.
What is the UPS secret sauce? In this groundbreaking book, Ron Wallace credits the unique “people culture” of UPS as the distinguishing factor. Ron credits this culture with giving him his start in management and helping him rise from driver to president of UPS International. Different from the typical business memoir that celebrates the leader as celebrity, Ron's book focuses on the people and simple principles that taught him the UPS way. He exhorts his fellow leaders to grow their people, not just their business plans. Ron's key takeaway comes straight from the UPS founder and Ron's inspiration, Jim Casey: “Treat your people well, and the company will flourish.” These simple principles can work in any company, whether or not brown is the wardrobe color.
The steady, long-term success of UPS is sometimes a mystery to business observers. Founded over a century ago, UPS has been moving up, not down the Fortune 500 list. Massive in size, UPS has cultivated a family environment where promotion is almost always from within, lifetime employment is the norm and even the executives are union members. In one of the most mature of mature industries, UPS is consistently seen as a strong investment on Wall Street.
What is the UPS secret sauce? In this groundbreaking book, Ron Wallace credits the unique “people culture” of UPS as the distinguishing factor. Ron credits this culture with giving him his start in management and helping him rise from driver to president of UPS International. Different from the typical business memoir that celebrates the leader as celebrity, Ron's book focuses on the people and simple principles that taught him the UPS way. He exhorts his fellow leaders to grow their people, not just their business plans. Ron's key takeaway comes straight from the UPS founder and Ron's inspiration, Jim Casey: “Treat your people well, and the company will flourish.” These simple principles can work in any company, whether or not brown is the wardrobe color.
These leadership lessons work for leaders at every level when everything goes wrong, from the doctor who saved lives after the 9/11 attacks, in war-torn Ukraine, and on the NFL sidelines.
Dr. Thom Mayer doesn’t just talk about leadership: he lives it in the world’s most high-stakes situations. From commanding the 9/11 Pentagon rescue operation to rushing onto NFL fields during medical emergencies to training doctors in war-torn Ukraine, Mayer has learned that leadership isn’t about titles or positions. It’s about action.
In this practical guide, Mayer reveals eleven provocative principles that flip conventional leadership wisdom: “Leadership is worthless . . . but leading is priceless.” “Power is worthless . . . but influence is priceless.” “Success is worthless . . . but failure is priceless.” Through gripping stories from the Pentagon’s smoking corridors, NFL sidelines, and Ukrainian hospitals, he shows how real leaders emerge not from corner offices but from moments of crisis when someone must step up and act.
Whether readers are managing a team, raising a family, or facing a crossroads, Mayer’s hard-won insights will transform how readers think about influence, teamwork, and making decisions under pressure. This isn’t theoretical leadership. Mayer offers battle-tested wisdom from someone who has led when lives hung in the balance.
Dr. Thom Mayer doesn’t just talk about leadership: he lives it in the world’s most high-stakes situations. From commanding the 9/11 Pentagon rescue operation to rushing onto NFL fields during medical emergencies to training doctors in war-torn Ukraine, Mayer has learned that leadership isn’t about titles or positions. It’s about action.
In this practical guide, Mayer reveals eleven provocative principles that flip conventional leadership wisdom: “Leadership is worthless . . . but leading is priceless.” “Power is worthless . . . but influence is priceless.” “Success is worthless . . . but failure is priceless.” Through gripping stories from the Pentagon’s smoking corridors, NFL sidelines, and Ukrainian hospitals, he shows how real leaders emerge not from corner offices but from moments of crisis when someone must step up and act.
Whether readers are managing a team, raising a family, or facing a crossroads, Mayer’s hard-won insights will transform how readers think about influence, teamwork, and making decisions under pressure. This isn’t theoretical leadership. Mayer offers battle-tested wisdom from someone who has led when lives hung in the balance.
Smart Videoconferencing is the first book to show people how to participate effectively in videoconferences, rather than just how to set them up. The authors show that just like traditional meetings, mastering a few tricks and simple skills can mean the difference between a successful videoconference and an unsuccessful one.
Bestselling author Bill George (True North 150,000 copies sold) and longtime corporate executive Doug Baker have participated for decades in a unique small group of peers dedicated to personal growth and leadership development. In this book they provide the first practical guide - including detailed instructions, rules, and resources - for anyone to start and manage such a group on their own.
The updated edition of the Arbinger Institute's international bestseller—a practical guide to the one mindset shift that improves performance, strengthens relationships, and transforms organizational culture.
Most conflict and disengagement share a common root: an inward mindset. When people focus primarily on their own goals—often without realizing it—they see others as obstacles rather than as people with real needs. The Outward Mindset shows what becomes possible when that changes.
Drawing on real stories from corporations, law enforcement, military units, and families, the Arbinger Institute provides a clear framework and practical tools for making the shift—at the individual, team, and organizational level.
What's inside:
Most leadership books focus on behavior. The Outward Mindset works at the level beneath behavior—the way we see people—because that's the only change that lasts.
Widely used as a team read and leadership development text. Pairs with Arbinger's Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace but works as a complete standalone.
Most conflict and disengagement share a common root: an inward mindset. When people focus primarily on their own goals—often without realizing it—they see others as obstacles rather than as people with real needs. The Outward Mindset shows what becomes possible when that changes.
Drawing on real stories from corporations, law enforcement, military units, and families, the Arbinger Institute provides a clear framework and practical tools for making the shift—at the individual, team, and organizational level.
What's inside:
- A framework for diagnosing inward versus outward mindset in yourself and your team
- Real case studies from high-stakes environments
- Tools for making the shift durable, not just momentary
- A new preface, updated case studies, and Arbinger's latest research
Most leadership books focus on behavior. The Outward Mindset works at the level beneath behavior—the way we see people—because that's the only change that lasts.
Widely used as a team read and leadership development text. Pairs with Arbinger's Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace but works as a complete standalone.
Presenting to senior decision makers can be a terrifying "through the looking glass" moment. The stakes are high-one presentation can make or break a career-but the rules are utterly unclear. This book is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to thrive, not just survive, in a top-level meeting.
What if some of the most powerful words in your organization were “I'm not sure,” “I need help,” and “I have a new idea”? Imagine the potential for innovation, connection, and results if your employees felt courageous enough to say anything to you.
What if people could simply communicate what they are really thinking without fear of having a bad idea? When you are in a leadership position, your people should feel comfortable to learn from and brainstorm with you. It is your responsibility to create an authentic environment characterized by honesty and trust that encourages everyone to share ideas. When your people don't speak up, it's not their problem-it's yours.
Building a culture in which people are able to say anything opens up pathways to innovation that would otherwise not exist. Ultimately, this book is a letter to leaders-filled with experience, research, and practicality. Peering inside a vast array of organizations for the past decade, the authors have seen time and again that leaders are failing to draw out ideas from their introverts and, at the same time, shutting up their extroverts. Inhibitors in organizations make candid communication unsafe. As a leader, you must recognize and acknowledge these complex dynamics and then work tirelessly to inspire your team to speak freely.
What if people could simply communicate what they are really thinking without fear of having a bad idea? When you are in a leadership position, your people should feel comfortable to learn from and brainstorm with you. It is your responsibility to create an authentic environment characterized by honesty and trust that encourages everyone to share ideas. When your people don't speak up, it's not their problem-it's yours.
Building a culture in which people are able to say anything opens up pathways to innovation that would otherwise not exist. Ultimately, this book is a letter to leaders-filled with experience, research, and practicality. Peering inside a vast array of organizations for the past decade, the authors have seen time and again that leaders are failing to draw out ideas from their introverts and, at the same time, shutting up their extroverts. Inhibitors in organizations make candid communication unsafe. As a leader, you must recognize and acknowledge these complex dynamics and then work tirelessly to inspire your team to speak freely.
As Ken Blanchard, John Carlos, and Alan Randolph clearly demonstrated in their previous bestseller, Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute, empowerment is not a goal that can be achieved in a minute. Empowerment is a process that requires ongoing effort, awareness, and commitment to transforming the hierarchy. This essential guide offers managers detailed, hands-on answers to their real-life questions about how, exactly, they can navigate the journey to empowerment.
Written in an easily accessible Q&A format, the book closely examines and expands on the three keys to empowerment originally presented in Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute-sharing information, creating autonomy through boundaries, and replacing the hierarchy with teams. It clearly outlines the promises and challenges of each stage of the journey, providing managers with thought-provoking questions, clear advice, effective activities, and action tools that will help them create a culture of empowerment. Wherever they are in the journey, managers will find a clear roadmap in this user-friendly action guide.
Written in an easily accessible Q&A format, the book closely examines and expands on the three keys to empowerment originally presented in Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute-sharing information, creating autonomy through boundaries, and replacing the hierarchy with teams. It clearly outlines the promises and challenges of each stage of the journey, providing managers with thought-provoking questions, clear advice, effective activities, and action tools that will help them create a culture of empowerment. Wherever they are in the journey, managers will find a clear roadmap in this user-friendly action guide.
In this inspiring and practical guide for achieving better decision-making and management, Linda Tarr-Whelan shows how having women account for at least 30% of representation at decision-making tables marks the tipping point for positive organizational and societal change, and she offers readers concrete tools and resources for reaching that target.
In this fable of organizational transformation, bestselling authors of The Serving Leader John Stahl-Wert and Ken Jennings providzqe a clear and actionable model for addressing one of the most pressing challenges every leader faces: how to move employees from compliance to engagement.
For leaders, facilitators, social change agents, and anyone charged with convening groups, Baldwin and Linnea offer a foundational guide to circle process, the simple yet profound practice through which people sit within a negotiated social frame that fosters clear speaking, compassionate listening, and the making of well-grounded decisions.
What if better questions could change everything?
The questions you ask yourself shape every decision, relationship, and result. This international bestseller—over 500,000 copies sold—gives leaders, coaches, and professionals a proven system called Question Thinking to shift from reactive, stuck thinking to curiosity, clarity, and breakthrough outcomes.
Through an engaging business fable, Dr. Marilee Adams shows exactly how—and why—it works.
The landmark fifth edition includes the following:
Used by Fortune 500 leaders, executive coaches, educators, and therapists worldwide.
With a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author and world's #1 executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith.
The questions you ask yourself shape every decision, relationship, and result. This international bestseller—over 500,000 copies sold—gives leaders, coaches, and professionals a proven system called Question Thinking to shift from reactive, stuck thinking to curiosity, clarity, and breakthrough outcomes.
Through an engaging business fable, Dr. Marilee Adams shows exactly how—and why—it works.
The landmark fifth edition includes the following:
- 14 Question Thinking tools, including 2 brand-new tools built from reader feedback
- The Choice Map, a visual framework for recognizing where your thinking is headed
- Q-Storming, a collaborative approach that generates better questions, not just answers
- New chapter on thriving through AI and technological change
- Step-by-step practices for leadership, coaching, team development, and personal growth
Used by Fortune 500 leaders, executive coaches, educators, and therapists worldwide.
With a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author and world's #1 executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith.
“Chad Ford reminds us that humanity lies within all of us, and although conflict is everywhere in today's world, we have the tools we need to overcome obstacles and to thrive. This is a fantastic, timely book that I highly recommend."
-Steve Kerr, Head Coach, Golden State Warriors
Knowing how to transform conflict is critical in both our personal and professional lives. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. The reason, says longtime mediator Chad Ford, is fear. When conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight.
To transform conflict, Ford says we need to turn toward the people we are in conflict with, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love them with the kind of love that leads us to treat others as fellow human beings, not as objects in our way. We have to open ourselves up with no guarantee that anyone on the other side will do the same. While this can feel even more dangerous than conflict itself, it allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter to us as much as our own.
Ford shows dangerous love in action through examples ranging from his work in the Middle East to a deeply moving story about reconciling with his father. He explains why we disconnect from people at the very time we need to be most connected and the predictable patterns of justification and escalation that ensue. Most importantly, he gives us a path to practice dangerous love in the conflicts that matter most to us.
-Steve Kerr, Head Coach, Golden State Warriors
Knowing how to transform conflict is critical in both our personal and professional lives. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. The reason, says longtime mediator Chad Ford, is fear. When conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight.
To transform conflict, Ford says we need to turn toward the people we are in conflict with, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love them with the kind of love that leads us to treat others as fellow human beings, not as objects in our way. We have to open ourselves up with no guarantee that anyone on the other side will do the same. While this can feel even more dangerous than conflict itself, it allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter to us as much as our own.
Ford shows dangerous love in action through examples ranging from his work in the Middle East to a deeply moving story about reconciling with his father. He explains why we disconnect from people at the very time we need to be most connected and the predictable patterns of justification and escalation that ensue. Most importantly, he gives us a path to practice dangerous love in the conflicts that matter most to us.
From a top scholar and corporate executive comes a new vision for leadership; the days of top-down management are numbered, but the potential for peer-to-peer leadership is limitless.
Two distinguished scholars offer eight steps to help organizations discover and embrace an authentic higher purpose-something that will dramatically improve every aspect of any enterprise, including the bottom line.
Managers are taught that employees are self-interested and work resistant, so they create systems of control to combat these expectations. The result? These gloomy assumptions become self-fulfilling prophecies, workforces tend to underperform and resist control, and managers undermine their own effectiveness in a vicious cycle.
But when an authentic higher purpose permeates business strategy and decision-making, the cycle is broken. Employers and employees fully engage, become proactive contributors to purpose, and exceed expectations. Long-term economic benefits follow.
Robert E. Quinn and Anjan J. Thakor offer a new logic that builds on the assumptions of economics and opens a new path to clearly identifying an organization's higher purpose and integrating it with the organization's strategy. They offer a practical and counterintuitive eight-step approach to articulating higher purpose and show how to weave it into the fabric of the organization.
Managers are taught that employees are self-interested and work resistant, so they create systems of control to combat these expectations. The result? These gloomy assumptions become self-fulfilling prophecies, workforces tend to underperform and resist control, and managers undermine their own effectiveness in a vicious cycle.
But when an authentic higher purpose permeates business strategy and decision-making, the cycle is broken. Employers and employees fully engage, become proactive contributors to purpose, and exceed expectations. Long-term economic benefits follow.
Robert E. Quinn and Anjan J. Thakor offer a new logic that builds on the assumptions of economics and opens a new path to clearly identifying an organization's higher purpose and integrating it with the organization's strategy. They offer a practical and counterintuitive eight-step approach to articulating higher purpose and show how to weave it into the fabric of the organization.
Every organization dreams of having enough leaders, and yet so few do; bestselling author Mark Miller shows how any organization can build its leadership capacity from the ground up to the C-suite.
The most important attribute high-performing organizations have in common is that they are well led. Every organization dreams of having enough leaders. Yet too many organizations take a haphazard or inconsistent approach to leadership development. The result is a dearth of leaders and a failure to leverage the full capacity of the enterprise.
Leadership guru and Chick-fil-A executive Mark Miller describes how any organization can create a culture in which leaders are routinely and systematically developed, resulting in a surplus of leaders. Miller details how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks. He provides a game plan for organizations to create a deep leadership bench.
To help bring the ideas to life, Miller uses the story of Charles, a new executive, as he and his team discover best practices from around the world to ensure a continuous supply of capable leaders. Charles and his team then translate their findings into a practical plan that any organization can use to create a leadership culture that will assure a sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success.
The most important attribute high-performing organizations have in common is that they are well led. Every organization dreams of having enough leaders. Yet too many organizations take a haphazard or inconsistent approach to leadership development. The result is a dearth of leaders and a failure to leverage the full capacity of the enterprise.
Leadership guru and Chick-fil-A executive Mark Miller describes how any organization can create a culture in which leaders are routinely and systematically developed, resulting in a surplus of leaders. Miller details how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks. He provides a game plan for organizations to create a deep leadership bench.
To help bring the ideas to life, Miller uses the story of Charles, a new executive, as he and his team discover best practices from around the world to ensure a continuous supply of capable leaders. Charles and his team then translate their findings into a practical plan that any organization can use to create a leadership culture that will assure a sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success.