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The Sustainability Scorecard: How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions
by Urvashi Bhatnagar Paul AnastasUsing a rigorous, straightforward scorecard as a guide, this book shows business leaders and innovators how to create breakthrough sustainable products and processes that are good for the planet, human health, and profits. Natural resource inputs to business operations are getting scarcer and more expensive, while climate-change-related economic shocks pose a risk to seamless operations and, more importantly, threaten business continuity. How can organizations integrate sustainable design in their overarching operations and align it with profitability and corporate strategy? Based on Paul Anastas's foundational Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry, the Sustainability Scorecard is the first scientifically rooted, data-driven methodology for creating inherently sustainable and profitable products and processes. By redesigning with sustainability as a key design element, firms open themselves to unexpected solutions, leapfrog innovations, and sources of value that simply don't occur when sustainability is leveraged purely as a risk-avoidance and compliance measure. Urvashi Bhatnagar and Anastas offer dozens of examples of how sustainable operations can yield benefits such as expanding market share, creating new service lines, and transforming supply-chain and sourcing models to drive the most consistent and highest long-term value. With this comprehensive framework, your firm will be able to identify truly innovative, inherently sustainable products as opposed to less bad products and processes that don't provide the exponential value that only breakthrough products can.
What Your Boss Really Wants from You: 15 Insights to Improve Your Relationship
by Steve ArnesonTake Charge of the Relationship That Matters Most to Your Career Your most important work relationship is with your boss. You need it to go well. But even the best bosses can be hard to read, and some seem downright inscrutable. Your boss isn&’t going to change for you—don&’t waste your time trying. The solution lies in figuring out what makes your boss tick and adapting your own work style to make the relationship better. But how do you do that? In this pragmatic and accessible guide, top executive coach Steve Arneson shows how to find the answers to fifteen essential questions that will help you understand your boss&’s leadership style, goals, motivations, work relationships, and how he or she sees you. Vivid real-world examples demonstrate Arneson&’s advice in action and show clearly how this process can be used to gain a more meaningful, productive, and enjoyable work life.
The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy
by Marjorie Kelly* Updated paperback edition includes a new chapter and a Reader's Guide * Explores the real causes of the Enron fiasco and other recent corporate scandals * Explodes the myth that the stock market is "democratizing" wealth * Gives practical guidance to help employees and communities change corporate governance and unfetter the genius of the free market Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms-the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders, no matter who pays the cost. In The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly argues that focusing on the interests of stockholders to the exclusion of everyone else's interests is a form of discrimination based on property or wealth. She shows how this bias is held by our institutional structures, much as they once held biases against blacks and women. The Divine Right of Capital exposes six aristocratic principles that corporations are built on, principles that we would never accept in our modern democratic society but which we accept unquestioningly in our economy. Wealth bias is a holdover from our pre-democratic past. It has enabled shareholders to become a kind of economic aristocracy. Kelly shows how to design more equitable alternatives-new property rights, new forms of corporate governance, new ways of looking at corporate performance-that build on both free-market and democratic principles. We think of shareholder primacy as the natural law of the free market, much as our forebears thought of monarchy as the most natural form of government. But in The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly brilliantly demonstrates that it is no more "natural" than any other human creation. People designed this system and people can change it. We need a change of mind as profound as that of the American Revolution. We must question the legitimacy of a system that gives the wealthy few-the ten percent of Americans who own ninety percent of all stock-a disproportionate power over the many. In so doing, we can fulfill the democratic principles of our nation not only in the political sphere, but in the economic sphere as well.
Maximizing Project Value: A Project Manager's Guide
by John Goodpasture PMPIncrease Project Value = Attain the GoalMaximizing project value is about optimizing the tradeoff between project value and business value, two values that are constantly in tension between the project manager and the project sponsor. In this book the author brings his wealth of experience in project management to demonstrate how to increase a project's value and ultimately contribute to the attainment of business goalsFrom exploring the nature of "value," as tangible resources and moral or ethical attributes, to how best to approach decision-making, the book offers thorough coverage of this essential aspect of project management. The tools and methods the author describes include:• Building the business case• Using a project balance sheet• Employing earned value• Introducing game theory for optimizing strategiesThis valuable reference should be on the desk of every project sponsor, business stakeholder, project manager, portfolio manager, project practitioner, and functional manager.
Performance Networks: Transforming Governance for the 21st Century
by Lynn S. Kahn PhDProblems cross boundaries and so must solutions. Multi-agency, cross-boundary coordination and partnerships are needed to solve today's problems. These networks coordinate, communicate, and leverage resources and best practices to deliver measurable results across traditional agency boundaries. Performance Networks: Transforming Governance for the 21st Century provides roadmaps and guidelines for executives, managers, and team leaders who are accountable for results in the new world of interagency networks that aim to deliver measurable results across traditional boundaries. The author presents ten "views" of performance networks, adapted from current, successful, multi-agency partnerships; these views provide specific guidance on transformational strategic planning to deliver better results.Working across government agencies and boundaries is difficult at any level of government, but it may be the only solution for today's problems. Performance Networks: Transforming Governance for the 21st Century offers the public manager a valuable new governance tool. This resource provides a practical approach to:• Understanding the history and workings of government-based networks• Establishing multi-agency, cross boundary partnerships and making them work• Improving citizen engagement
Going Horizontal: Creating a Non-Hierarchical Organization, One Practice at a Time
by Samantha SladeHierarchy in organizations is obsolete. There is a better way: one that increases the engagement of employees and managers alike, reduces micromanaging and other limiting approaches, and promotes organizational and individual success. In this book, self-management expert Samantha Slade presents seven concrete practices to help your organization flatten its existing hierarchy and develop a horizontal organization. The result will be enhanced creativity, greater growth, and a increased employee retention and productivity—and a better bottom line.These days, more than ever, successful organizations must respond quickly and nimbly to change—they need every employee's best thinking. A horizontal organization creates an environment of true collaboration, respect, and openness. It allows everyone more freedom to express unconventional ideas or to work through issues that are getting in the way of organizational goals. And it's a more human way to organize—after all, we function perfectly well in our day-to day lives without someone telling us what to do. But when an organization decides to go horizontal, it can be overwhelming for both managers and employees. Slade offers a practical, proven, incremental method to help organizations of all kinds and sizes ease in to a non-hierarchical model. She includes techniques for using your organization's purpose to stay focused and aligned, developing shared decision-making, creating a mutual feedback culture, nurturing autonomy, holding co-managed meetings, and maintaining an environment of collective learning. Going Horizontal will help organizations become more adaptive, collaborative and innovative, which is vital in today's highly competitive and constantly-evolving world.
Stand Up to Stigma: How We Reject Fear and Shame
by Pernessa C. SeeleNo More Hate! All Are Welcome!"Stigma" is a simple two-syllable word, yet it carries the weight of negative and often unfair beliefs that we hold about those who are different from us. Stigmas lock people into stereotyped boxes and deny us all the right to be our authentic and whole selves. Dr. Pernessa Seele, a longtime public health activist who started one of the first AIDS education programs in the 1980s, has crafted a proven method to address stigma. This powerful book confronts stereotype development, shows how to undo the processes and effects of stigma, and explains how we can radically change cultural thinking on the individual, interpersonal, and societal levels to put an end to stigmatization once and for all.
The Project Management Coaching Workbook: Six Steps to Unleashing Your Potential
by Susanne MadsenTake These Six Steps to Reach Your Project Management and Leadership Goals!Starting with an insightful self-assessment, The Project Management Coaching Workbook: Six Steps to Unleashing Your Potential offers tools, questions, reviews, guiding practices, and exercises that will help you build your roadmap to project management and leadership success.Based on her experience as a coach and mentor, Susanne Madsen offers a proven six-step method designed to help you understand and articulate what you want to achieve—and then assist you in achieving those goals.This workbook will help project managers at any level overcome some of the most common challenges they face by:• Effectively managing a demanding workload• Leading and motivating a team• Building effective relationships with senior stakeholders• Managing risks, issues, and changes to scope• Delegating effectively
Navigating the Impossible: Build Extraordinary Teams and Shatter Expectations
by Jason CaldwellWorld-record endurance athlete and professional leadership coach Jason Caldwell draws on his amazing experiences to show how anyone can build and lead teams that accomplish incredible things. Thirty-five days, 14 hours, and 3 minutes. That's how long it took Jason Caldwell and the crew of the American Spirit to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean during the 2016 Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge—or, as it's known to those who attempt it, "The World's Toughest Row." They not only succeeded but set a world record. This was an extraordinary team effort. And that's what this book is about. Caldwell transfers the hard-won lessons of his transatlantic adventure out of the ocean and into your office, showing how to build and lead teams that do what others say cannot be done and sustain that level of performance. The thrilling details of Caldwell's quest to break the world's record deliver a "just-one-more-page" experience, during which you'll also learn lessons like • How to quit like a winner• Why results aren't the measure of a high-performance team• What four questions you should ask yourself before you set any goal• How to harness the power of emotion-first leadership• Why the best people aren't necessarily the right people for your teamThis book is a distillation of Caldwell's worldwide speaking programs delivered to packed crowds at Fortune 500 companies and universities worldwide. It is the answer to a question he is constantly asked: How were you and your teams able to accomplish such seemingly impossible goals? And it's also a guidebook that can teach anyone how to do the same.
The Connect Effect: Building Strong Personal, Professional, and Virtual Networks
by Michael DulworthNetworking is not mere socializing—it is a vital personal and professional development skill. An effective network can make you more knowledgeable, help you address critical issues, accelerate your career, and even improve your health and well-being. As a recent article in MIT’s Sloan Management Review reports, “What really distinguishes high performers from the rest of the pack is their ability to maintain and leverage their networks.” Networking is simply too important to be left to chance. In this book, Michael Dulworth shows how to take a conscious, systematic approach to networking. After a short quiz to measure your “networking quotient” (NQ), The Connect Effect identifies three distinct kinds of networks: personal, professional, and virtual. Dulworth examines their specific characteristics and offers strategies, tools, and resources for building up and making the best use of each one. Stories from Dulworth’s twenty years of experience running networks, as well as interviews with top executives, researchers, and thought leaders, provide insights and advice about how networks function in the real world. Few of us are born networkers, but anyone—introvert, extrovert, or in-between—can learn to master this important skill. And as you build your networks and the connections between members multiply, you’ll find that the benefits you gain grow exponentially. This extraordinary return on your networking investment is what Dulworth terms “The Connect Effect”—and in this book he shows how it can enrich every aspect of your life.
Your Happiness Was Hacked: Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain--and How to Fight Back
by Vivek Wadhwa Alex Salkever"Technology is a great servant but a terrible master. This is the most important book ever written about one of the most significant aspects of our lives—the consequences of our addiction to online technology and how we can liberate ourselves and our children from it."—Dean Ornish, M.D. Founder & President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF, Author, The SpectrumTechnology: your master, or your friend? Do you feel ruled by your smartphone and enslaved by your e-mail or social-network activities? Digital technology is making us miserable, say bestselling authors and former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. We've become a tribe of tech addicts—and it's not entirely our fault. Taking advantage of vulnerabilities in human brain function, tech companies entice us to overdose on technology interaction. This damages our lives, work, families, and friendships. Swipe-driven dating apps train us to evaluate people like products, diminishing our relationships. At work, we e-mail on average 77 times a day, ruining our concentration. At home, light from our screens is contributing to epidemic sleep deprivation. But we can reclaim our lives without dismissing technology. The authors explain how to avoid getting hooked on tech and how to define and control the roles that tech is playing and could play in our lives. And they provide a guide to technological and personal tools for regaining control. This readable book turns personal observation into a handy action guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.
The Making of a Democratic Economy: Building Prosperity For the Many, Not Just the Few
by Marjorie Kelly Ted HowardOur economy is designed by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent. This book offers a compelling vision of an equitable, ecologically sustainable alternative that meets the essential needs of all people.We live in a world where twenty-six billionaires own as much wealth as half the planet's population. The extractive economy we live with now enables the financial elite to squeeze out maximum gain for themselves, heedless of damage to people or planet. But Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard show that there is a new economy emerging focused on helping everyone thrive while respecting planetary boundaries. At a time when competing political visions are at stake the world over, this book urges a move beyond tinkering at the margins to address the systemic crisis of our economy. Kelly and Howard outline seven principles of what they call a Democratic Economy: community, inclusion, place (keeping wealth local), good work (putting labor before capital), democratized ownership, ethical finance, and sustainability. Each principle is paired with a place putting it into practice: Pine Ridge, Preston, Portland, Cleveland, and more.This book tells stories not just of activists and grassroots leaders but of the unexpected accomplices of the Democratic Economy. Seeds of a future beyond corporate capitalism and state socialism are being planted in hospital procurement departments, pension fund offices, and even company boardrooms. The road to a system grounded in community, democracy, and justice remains uncertain. Kelly and Howard help us understand we make this road as we walk it by taking a first step together beyond isolation and despair.
Radical Listening: The Art of True Connection
by Robert Biswas-Diener Christian van NieuwerburghUnlock the transformative power of Radical Listening—a profound practice that moves beyond simply hearing words to actively co-creating meaning.Leading experts in Positive Psychology coaching outline six unique competencies that go beyond "active listening skills" to create deep understanding and connection.In our distracted, divisive world, the transformative power of true listening has never been more essential. Radical Listening is a revolutionary guide to mastering this vital skill from renowned experts Christian van Nieuwerburgh and Robert Biswas-Diener. Moving beyond simply hearing words, their groundbreaking framework teaches you to actively co-create meaning and connection. Though we spend nearly three hours a day on the receiving end of communication, listening is frequently neglected. We're bombarded by data, digital distractions, and a culture that celebrates talkers over listeners. Radical Listening provides the antidote, equipping you with six core competencies:•Noticing•Quieting•Accepting•Acknowledging•Questioning•InterjectingWhether you're seeking to improve your leadership, foster more collaborative teamwork, or simply connect more meaningfully with others, Radical Listening offers a powerful remedy. Allow this book to reshape how you experience the world and those around you through the revelatory act of listening fully.
Kiss That Frog!: 12 Great Ways to Turn Negatives into Positives in Your Life and Work
by Brian Tracy Christina SteinJust like the lonely princess in the fairy tale who was reluctant to lock lips with a warty frog and transform him into a handsome prince, something stops many of us short of attaining our dreams. Our negative thoughts, emotions, and attitudes can threaten to keep us from achieving all that we’re capable of. Here bestselling author and speaker Brian Tracy and his daughter, therapist Christina Tracy Stein, provide a set of practical, proven strategies anyone can use to turn those negative frogs into positive princes. Tracy and Stein present a step-by-step plan that addresses the root causes of negativity, helps you uncover blocks that have become mental obstacles, and shows how you can transform them into stepping-stones to achieve your fullest potential. The book distills, in an accessible and immediately useful form, what Tracy has presented in more than 5,000 talks and seminars with more than five million people in fifty-eight countries and what Stein has learned through thousands of hours of counseling people from all walks of life. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” the authors quote Shakespeare. The many powerful techniques and exercises in this book will help you change your mindset so that you discover something worthwhile in every person and experience, however difficult and challenging they might seem at first. You’ll learn how to develop unshakable self-confidence, become your best self, and begin living an extraordinary life.
The Capitalist and the Activist: Corporate Social Activism and the New Business of Change
by Tom C. Lin2023 Axiom Business Books Award Silver Medalist (Business Commentary)2023 Nautilus Book Award Silver Medalist (Social Change & Social Justice)This is the first in-depth examination of the important ongoing fusion of activism, capitalism, and social change masterfully told through a compelling narrative filled with vivid stories and striking studies.Corporations and their executives are at the forefront of some of the most contentious and important social issues of our time. Through pronouncements, policies, boycotts, sponsorships, lobbying, and fundraising, corporations are actively engaged in issues like immigration reform, gun regulation, racial justice, gender equality, and religious freedom. Despite corporate social activism being everywhere these days-witness how quickly companies and progressives united to oppose North Carolina's bathroom bill or support the Black Lives Matter movement-there has been no in-depth examination of the far-reaching consequences of this movement. What first principles should guide businesses' approaches? How should activists engage with businesses in a way that is most beneficial to their causes? What are potential pitfalls and risks associated with corporate social activism for activists, businesses, and society at large? Weaving studies and stories, Temple University professor of law, Tom C. W. Lin offers a road map for how we got here and a compass for where we are going as a nation of capitalists and activists seeking profit and progress.
Leading Beyond Change: A Practical Guide to Evolving Business Agility
by Michael Sahota Audree Tara SahotaThis guide shows readers how to transform a traditional organization into an evolutionary one with a framework and mindset that offer a new way of leading and approaching change. Now more than ever, society is demanding change, and organizations are being asked to shift into more conscious and agile business practices. Yet, most of what people believe about leadership, effective workplaces, and how to create lasting change is either incomplete or outright incorrect. And even if the desire to change is there, understanding of how to achieve it is elusive. This book holds the key. It introduces the Shift Evolutionary Leadership Framework (SELF), which helps leaders create the understanding and application needed to evolve high performance. At the core of the book are dozens of business patterns that cut across seven dimensions of organizational functioning. The traps of traditional organizations are contrasted with the high-performance practices of evolutionary organizations. Authors Michael Sahota and Audree Tata Sahota explain the steps of leading beyond change—evolving beyond servant leadership to make the inner shift needed to unlock the practical skills and techniques.Whether readers call this shift business agility, Teal Agility, evolutionary, or the future of work, it is possible to create high-performing organizations filled with energized people who are able to surf the waves of change.
The Socially Intelligent Project Manager: Soft Skills That Prevent Hard Days
by Kim WassonThis 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.
Covert Processes at Work: Managing the Five Hidden Dimensions of Organizational Change
by Robert J. MarshakOrganizational change initiatives often fail because they focus exclusively on the rational, overt aspects of change, overlooking the powerful role played by concealed or irrational factors. It's well known that these covert processes--such as hidden agendas, blind spots, office politics, tacit assumptions, secret hopes, wishes and fears--frequently sabotage change efforts, but up until now nobody has offered a rigorous, consistent way of identifying and dealing with them. Drawing on over thirty years of experience as an organizational change consultant to global corporations and government agencies, Robert J. Marshak shows precisely how to bring these hidden processes to light and deal with their negative impact. Marshak identifies five different dimensions of covert processes, presents an integrated model to explain the ultimate source of all of them, and shows how to diagnose whether any covert processes might be at work in your organization. He then offers specific tools and techniques for engaging and managing these "under-the-table" processes and for creating the kind of organizational environment in which such hidden dynamics are unable to flourish. Covert Processes at Work is a comprehensive and practical guide that managers, leaders, and consultants can use to deal with the hidden dynamics that are often at the root of many organizational problems.
Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change
by Bob SeidenstickerEveryone knows that today's rate of technological change is unprecedented. With technological breakthroughs from the Internet to cell phones to digital music and pictures, everyone knows that the social impact of technology has never been as profound. Future Hype surveys the past few hundred years to show that many of the technologies we now take for granted transformed society in far more dramatic ways than recent developments so often touted as unparalleled and historic. Seidensticker exposes the hidden costs of technology and will help both consumers and businesses take a shrewder position when the next 'essential' innovation is trotted out.
The Rise of the American Corporate Security State: Six Reasons to Be Afraid
by Beatrice EdwardsIn the United States today we have good reasons to be afraid. Our Bill of Rights is no more. It has been rendered pointless by heavy surveillance of average citizens, political persecution of dissenters, and the potential of indefinite detention now codified into law. Our democracy and freedoms are impaired daily by government control of information, systemic financial corruption, unfettered corporate influence in our elections, and by corporate-controlled international institutions. The Constitution of The United States that has shielded us for more than 200 years from the tentacles of oppressive government and the stranglehold of private wealth becomes more meaningless with each new act of corporate-ocracy. Behind a thinning veneer of democracy, the Corporate Security State is tipping the balance between the self-interest of a governing corporate elite and the rights of the people to freedom, safety and fairness. The consequences of these trends and conditions are devastating. We are submerged in endless war, and the wealth produced by and in the United States skews upward in greater concentrations every year. The middle class is under financial attack, as Washington prepares to loot Social Security and Medicare to finance the insatiable war-making and profit-taking. Repression descends on a people slowly at first, but then crushes quickly, silencing dissent. According to the author of Rise of The American Corporate Security State, Beatrice Edwards, our task now is to recognize the real reasons to be afraid in 21st century America, and address them. Our early steps in the right direction may be small ones, but they are important. They are based on the principle that we, as Americans, have a right to know what our government is doing and to speak openly about it. Creeping censorship, secret courts, clandestine corporate control are all anathema to democratic practices and must be corrected now, before this last chance to redeem our rights is lost.
21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change
by William Burckart Steven LydenbergTwo experienced and visionary authors show how institutions and individuals can go beyond conventional and sustainable investing to address complex problems such as income inequality and climate change on a deep, systemic level.It's time for a new way to think about investing, one that can contend with the complex challenges we face in the 21st century. Investment today has evolved from the basic, conventional approach of the 1950s. Investors have since recognized the importance of sustainable investment and have begun considering environmental and social factors. Yet the complexity of the times forces us to recognize and transition to a third stage of investment practice: system-level investing.In this paradigm-shifting book, William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg show how system-level investors support and enhance the health and stability of the social, financial, and environmental systems on which they depend for long-term returns. They preserve and strengthen these fundamental systems while still generating competitive or otherwise acceptable performance.This book is for those investors who believe in that transition. They may be institutions, large or small, concerned about the long-term stability of the environment and society. They may be individual investors who want their children and grandchildren to inherit a just and sustainable world. Whoever they may be, Burckart and Lydenberg show them the what, why, and how of system-level investment in this book: what it means to manage system-level risks and rewards, why it is imperative to do so now, and how to integrate this new way of thinking into their current practice.
Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy
by Peter G. Brown Geoff GarverOur current economic system—which assumes endless growth and limitless potential wealth—flies in the face of the fact that the earth’s resources are finite. The result is increasing destruction of the natural world and growing, sometimes lethal, tension between rich and poor, global north and south. Trying to fix problems piecemeal is not the solution. We need a comprehensive new vision of an economy that can serve people and all of life’s commonwealth. Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver use the core Quaker principle of “right relationship”—interacting in a way that is respectful to all and that aids the common good—as the foundation for a new economic model. Right Relationship poses five basic questions: What is an economy for? How does it work? How big is too big? What’s fair? And how can it best be governed? Brown and Garver expose the antiquated, shortsighted, and downright dangerous assumptions that underlie our current answers to these questions, as well as the shortcomings of many current reform efforts. They propose new answers that combine an acute awareness of ecological limits with a fundamental focus on fairness and a concern with the spiritual, as well as material, well-being of the human race. Brown and Garver describe new forms of global governance that will be needed to get and keep the economy in right relationship. Individual citizens can and must play a part in bringing this relationship with life and the world into being. Ultimately the economy, as indeed life itself, is a series of interconnected relationships. An economy based on the idea of “right relationship” offers not only the promise of a bountiful future but also an opportunity to touch the fullness of human meaning and, some would say, the presence of the Divine.
7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results
by Esther DerbyChange is difficult but essential—Esther Derby offers seven guidelines for change by attraction, an approach that draws people into the process so that instead of resisting change, they embrace it. Even if you don't have change management in your job description, your job involves change. Change is a given as modern organizations respond to market and technology advances, make improvements, and evolve practices to meet new challenges. This is not a simple process on any level. Often, there is no indisputable right answer, and responding requires trial and error, learning and unlearning. Whatever you choose to do, it will interact with existing policies and structures in unpredictable ways. And there is, quite simply, a natural human resistance to being told to change. Rather than creating more rigorous preconceived plans or imposing change by decree, agile software developer turned organizational change expert Esther Derby offers change by attraction, an approach that is adaptive and responsive and engages people in learning, evolving, and owning the new way. She presents a set of seven heuristics—guides to problem-solving—that empower people to achieve outcomes within broad constraints using their personal ingenuity and creativity. When you work by attraction, you give space and support for people to feel the loss that comes with change and help them see what is valuable about the future you propose. Resistance fades because people feel there is nothing to push against—only something they want to move toward. Derby's approach clears the fog to provide a new way forward that honors people and creates safety for change.
From PMO to VMO: Managing for Value Delivery
by Sanjiv Augustine Roland Cuellar Audrey Scheere"By the end of this book, you will understand what is valuable, how to measure value, and how to optimize the flow of valuefrom idea to your customer." Evan Leybourn, co-founder and CEO, Business Agility Institute Agile methods have brought about dramatic changes in how organizations manage and deliver not only IT services, but their entire product and service value streams. As legacy organizations transition to newer, end-to-end agile operating models, the Project Management Office (PMO) needs to redesign its mission and operation to be more in line with these modern ways of working. That requires being more customer-focused and value-adding, and less hidebound, bureaucratic and tied to antiquated processes and mindsets. Visionary leaders are transitioning into enablers of this change, and maximizing value through the entire organization. Middle management, including program and project managers (PMs), are racing to maximize their professional relevancy in this new world. This book defines the role of the agile value management office (VMO), using case studies and a clear road map to help PMs visualize and implement a new path where middle management and the VMO are valued leaders in the age of business agility.
The Real-Time Revolution: Transforming Your Organization to Value Customer Time
by Jerry Power Thomas FerrattTime has become a precious commodity, so business leaders who can save their customers' time more effectively than competitors do will win their loyalty. This book shows how it's done. Business survival requires valuing what customers value—and in our overworked and distraction-rich era, customers value their time above all else. Real-time companies beat their rivals by being faster and more responsive in meeting customer needs. To become a real-time company, as top scholars Jerry Power and Tom Ferratt explain, you need a real-time monitoring and response system. They offer detailed advice on how to put procedures in place that will collect data on how well products or services are saving customer time; identify strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities; and specify innovations needed to save even more customer time. Where should leaders look to innovate? Powers and Ferratt say to search every step in the life of a product or service, from development to production to usage. And for each step, they identify four possible levers for innovation: the design of the products or services themselves, the process used to produce them, the data that can be gathered on their use, and the people who make or provide the product or service. The book features dozens of examples of companies that are getting it right and the innovations they used to help their customers save time, all while helping themselves to a hefty slice of market share. This is a comprehensive, authoritative guide to thriving in a revolution that is sweeping every industry and sector.