Stan Davis is author of the bestselling books BLUR (more than 250,000 copies sold), 2020 Vision (more than 100,000 copies sold), and Future Perfect (more than 100,000 copies sold) Shows how bringing an artistic sensibility to business can improve business performance and increase personal work satisfaction Includes detailed, practical advice for implementing the ideas in the book, as well as a wealth of real-world examples The arts are important to many people in their personal lives, but they don't see any way of incorporating art into their work and business. In this groundbreaking book, visionary business authors Stan Davis and David McIntosh argue that not only is this possible, but that applying an artistic sensibility to business will actually improve business performance. Traditionally, business focuses only on the economic flow of inputs (resources, raw materials), outputs (products and services) and processes that help get you from one to the other (research and development, production, distribution). Davis and McIntosh show that there's an artistic flow that operates the same way, but with different particulars. Inputs here include things like emotion, imagination and intuition; and outputs include things like beauty, meaning, excitement and enjoyment. To bridge these aesthetic inputs and outputs, the authors show how to apply creative processes from the arts to business, and how to connect with customers the way great performers connect with audiences. Through real-world examples and practical advice, The Art of Business shows how applying this concept of artistic flow enables you to come up with more creative solutions to problems, develop better new products, and provide your customers with the kinds of emotionally and aesthetically satisfying experiences they've come to expect in this high contact, mulimedia age. It gives you an additional--rather than alternative--approach to the established economic model of how things get done. And it will make your own work experience infinitely more satisfying.

• Stan Davis is author of the bestselling books BLUR (more than 250,000 copies sold), 2020 Vision (more than 100,000 copies sold), and Future Perfect (more than 100,000 copies sold)
• Shows how bringing an artistic sensibility to business can improve business performance and increase personal work satisfaction
• Includes detailed, practical advice for implementing the ideas in the book, as well as a wealth of real-world examples

We live in the midst of one of the greatest technological revolutions in history, an era of deep-seated transformation-a macroshift in civilization, says preeminent scholar and futurist Ervin Laszlo. Its signs and manifestations are all around us, from the deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping Africa and the dangerous fire-trap sweatshops routinely killing workers in Bangladesh, to the environmental havoc created by genetic engineering, power plant pollution and mechanized agriculture. The application of new technologies has turned into a double-edged sword. The world is growing together in some respects, but is coming apart in others. Worldwide economic globalization, another sign of the macroshift, all too often benefits the few rather than the many. Hundreds of millions live at a higher material standard of living, but thousands of millions are pressed into abject poverty. The richest 20% earn ninety times the income of the poorest 20%, consume eleven times as much energy, and eat eleven times as much meat. There have been other macroshifts in human history, but they spanned centuries, allowing cultural values, beliefs, and change to occur gradually. Today, technology has reduced our time to adapt; the entire critical period of change is compressed into the lifetime of a generation. Today's macroshift, explains Laszlo, harbors great promise, as well as grave danger. He outlines two possible scenarios: "The Breakdown," where we choose to drift without a change in our current direction toward chaos, anarchy, and destruction, or "The Breakthrough," where we collectively transform our thinking and behavior to produce creative, sustainable solutions to dangerous global problems. And he shows what each of us can do-politically, professionally, and privately-to bring about the Breakthrough and shape a humane and sustainable global future. While technology is what drives the unprecedented speed of this macroshift, it is our vision, values, and actions now that will ultimately determine the outcome. The choice is up to us-the power is in our hands.

• Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke
• The critical crossroad we face at the threshold of the millennium revealed by one of the world's preeminent futurists
• Comments on today's global crisis and the challenge of change from Thomas Berry, Gary Zukav, Riane Eisler, Edgar Mitchell, and others
• Draws on the author's profound understanding of systems theory to provide practical guidance for shaping and directing our future

In this amazing account, Daniel Seddiqui tells of working fifty different jobs in fifty states in fifty weeks. Working as everything from a cheesemaker in Wisconsin to a border patrol agent in Arizona, he details his journey across the industries and cultures of the United States and offers lessons he learned along the way about perseverance, risk taking, adaptability, networking, and endurance.Like lots of college grads, Daniel Seddiqui was having a hard time finding a job. But despite more than forty rejections, he knew opportunities had to exist. So he set out on an extraordinary quest: fifty jobs in fifty states in fifty weeks. And not just any jobs—he chose professions that reflected the culture and economy of each state. Working as everything from a cheesemaker in Wisconsin, a border patrol agent in Arizona, and a meatpacker in Kansas to a lobsterman in Maine, a surfing instructor in Hawaii, and a football coach in Alabama, Daniel chronicles how he adapted to the wildly differing people, cultures, and environments. From one week to the next he had no idea exactly what his duties would be, where he’d be sleeping, what he’d be eating, or how he’d be received. He became a roving news item, appearing on CNN, Fox News, World News Tonight, MSNBC, and the Today show—which was good preparation for his stint as a television weatherman. Tackling challenge after challenge—overcoming anxiety about working four miles underground in a West Virginia coal mine, learning to walk on six-foot stilts (in a full Egyptian king costume) at a Florida amusement park, racing the clock as a pit-crew member at an Indiana racetrack—Daniel completed his journey a changed man. In this book he shares stories about the people he met, reveals the lessons he learned, and explains the five principles that kept him going.

We all want to be in control-of our jobs, our relationships, our lives. However, the autocratic behaviors stemming from our desire for control are proving less and less effective in today's more participative organizational cultures.

In Memoirs of a Recovering Autocrat, Richard Hallstein speaks to all of us. Through revealing anecdotes and personal examples, he helps us see the many ways in which we manifest our constant struggle for control and thereby make our work and our lives more difficult for ourselves and those around us. And he offers practical help for learning more participative styles of managing and living a more joyous and satisfying life, both personal and professional.

Written with an intimacy rare in business books, the twenty-one vignettes in this enlightening and entertaining confession evoke twinges of recognition in all of us. Through Richard Hallstein's experiences, we recognize our own autocratic behaviors-encouraging competition instead of collaboration; demanding perfection from ourselves and others; hanging on to power instead of sharing it; even surrounding ourselves with people just like ourselves in order to avoid conflict. His prescription for overcoming the autocrat within us not only creates new possibilities for getting a job done, but releases us from having to know everything, do everything, and control everything.

• An easy-to-read, how-to guide for executives, managers, business professionals, entrepreneurs, and change leaders who are seeking profit improvement strategies that fit their organizations
• By a working executive who has put these ideas into action and seen them work
• Provides a cost-reduction alternative to employee layoffs that also helps managers motivate employees to generate creative ideas
• Reveals how to immediately improve profits with over 100 innovative profit building ideas

THE WAYS WE GO about changing organizations usually don't work, asserts Geoff Bellman. Our underlying assumptions predetermine the results and preclude the broad success we so desperately seek. Change efforts often end up off-track because of small expectations. What is needed are grand expectations, so big that they cannot be realized in many lifetimes. It is only when people awaken to and work toward these immense purposes that they have the chance of finding fulfillment. Organizations are the perfect place to do this-these "beasts" which we create and curse, love and hate, that are so essential to our lives. In The Beauty of the Beast, Bellman shows how we can explore our huge potential and shift our daily organizational focus to one of long life and fulfillment-and in the process redesign our organizations for tomorrow. Bellman examines why we keep creating these creatures that fall so far short of our dreams for them. He reveals how to recognize the beast in ourselves, showing how organizational control and hierarchy multiply our natural and less constructive inclinations many times over. He points out that the problem is not the existence of organizations but in the ways we imagine them. Bellman asks us to consider what we want to pass on to future generations, helps us imagine the organizations we would be proud to create, and challenges us to take action from where we are today. He offers twenty renewal assertions to help us in redesigning organizations for tomorrow. These solid guides (with related questions for work groups) open the organization to new possibilities, helping us to embrace the organizational world as it really is while working hard to change it. In the process we will also change ourselves, as we ultimately feel less distant from-and more responsible for-creating those troubling structures we love to vent about. The Beauty of the Beast. will help people see their daily work in a new and larger perspective. It will help them embrace the real organizational world while they work at renewing it. And it will help people to recognize the choices available to them-and to exercise those choices for positive results.THE WAYS WE GO about changing organizations usually don't work, asserts Geoff Bellman. Our underlying assumptions predetermine the results and preclude the broad success we so desperately seek. Change efforts often end up off-track because of small expectations. What is needed are grand expectations, so big that they cannot be realized in many lifetimes. It is only when people awaken to and work toward these immense purposes that they have the chance of finding fulfillment. Organizations are the perfect place to do this-these "beasts" which we create and curse, love and hate, that are so essential to our lives. In The Beauty of the Beast, Bellman shows how we can explore our huge potential and shift our daily organizational focus to one of long life and fulfillment-and in the process redesign our organizations for tomorrow. Bellman examines why we keep creating these creatures that fall so far short of our dreams for them. He reveals how to recognize the beast in ourselves, showing how organizational control and hierarchy multiply our natural and less constructive inclinations many times over. He points out that the problem is not the existence of organizations but in the ways we imagine them. Bellman asks us to consider what we want to pass on to future generations, helps us imagine the organizations we would be proud to create, and challenges us to take action from where we are today. He offers twenty renewal assertions to help us in redesigning organizations for tomorrow. These solid guides (with related questions for work groups) open the organization to new possibilities, helping us to embrace the organizational world as it really is while working hard to change it. In the process we will also change ourselves, as we ultimately feel less distant from-and more responsible for-creating those troubling structures we love to vent about. The Beauty of the Beast. will help people see their daily work in a new and larger perspective. It will help them embrace the real organizational world while they work at renewing it. And it will help people to recognize the choices available to them-and to exercise those choices for positive results.

• A new perspective on organizations from Geoff Bellman, bestselling author of Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge (over 80,000 copies sold) and The Consultant's Calling (over 40,000 copies sold)
• Helps us identify what we love and hate about organizations-and how this affects our success
• Offers eight aspirations and twenty assertions that guide our discovery of new work alternatives for individuals, work groups, and organizations

What We Learned in the Rainforest presents a surprising new business principle: by applying strategies and practices gleaned from nature-by emulating what it once sought to conquer-business can adapt rapidly to changing market conditions and attain greater and more sustainable profits. With clear, direct language and dozens of real-world examples, Kiuchi and Shireman show how a company can become a complex living system that doesn't merely balance competing interests but truly integrates them.What We Learned in the Rainforest presents a surprising new business principle: by applying strategies and practices gleaned from nature-by emulating what it once sought to conquer-business can adapt rapidly to changing market conditions and attain greater and more sustainable profits. With clear, direct language and dozens of real-world examples, Kiuchi and Shireman show how a company can become a complex living system that doesn't merely balance competing interests but truly integrates them. Examples from leading companies include: How Coca-Cola CEO Doug Daft uses diversity to drive sales How Intel founder Gordon Moore creates profit by design How Bill Coors builds businesses on the theory that "all waste is lost profit" How Shell profits as an industrial ecosystem What Weyerhaeuser and activists learned from each other How Dow earns 300% returns, and Dupont builds market share with eco-effectiveness, and more This book shows that the old model of business-the machine model that pitted business against nature-is growing obsolete. In the emerging economy, businesses excel when they emulate what they once sought to conquer. They maximize performance as they become like nature, like a complex living system. By moving beyond the industrial machine model, and applying the dynamic principles of the rainforest instead, business can learn how to create more profit than ever, and to do so more sustainably. Written by two would-be "arch enemies"-a hard-nosed CEO of a major corporation and a dedicated environmentalist-this book doesn't just balance competing interests, it integrates them into a truly revolutionary new paradigm. Kiuchi and Shireman present numerous real-world examples from leading companies-business strategies and management practices that maximize business performance by all measures: economic, social, and environmental. They illustrate the powerful business model provided by nature for driving innovation, increasing profit, spurring growth, and ensuring sustainability.

• Demonstrates that nature provides a powerful business model for driving innovation, increasing profit, spurring growth, and ensuring sustainability
• Includes real-life examples from such leading companies as Coca-Cola, Intel, Coors, Nike, Ford, DuPont, 3M, and more
• Written by two would-be "arch enemies": a hard-nosed CEO of a major corporation and a dedicated environmentalist
• Doesn't just balance competing interests-it integrates them in a new paradigm