Bøger udgivet af Berrett-Koehler

We've all had those perfect moments when events that could never be predicted, let alone controlled, remarkably seem to guide us along our path. Carl Jung called this phenomena "synchronicity" - "a collaboration between persons and events that seems to enlist the cooperation of fate." In this book, Joseph Jaworski argues that the right state of mind will make you the kind of person who can enlist the cooperation of fate and take advantage of synchronicity, creating the conditions for "predictable miracles." If you are tired of being the victim of circumstances, this book will teach you to be the kind of person who creates your own circumstances. Jaworski shares the story of his own escape from an inauthentic life and his journey into a world filled with possibility. He maps out the inner path of leadership for those who feel the call to achieve their full potential, using his own life story to teach readers a greater truth. He examines the fundamental shifts of mind that free us to seek out the power of synchronicity. After reading this book, you will discover your own power to help those realities unfold. You will learn to "listen" to realities that want to emerge in this world and acquire the courage to help them be born.

The first edition introduced the newly emerging field called Positive Organizational Scholarship. Rather than focusing on organizational dysfunction, Positive Organizational Scholarship looks at organizations that are functioning at an unusually high level. Learning from such successful groups about what they did right forms the backbone of the strategy, because strategies that capitalize on the positive tend to produce life-giving, flourishing outcomes in organizations.The four strategies discussed in the first edition included the cultivation of positive climate, positive relationships, positive communication, and positive meaning. Each strategy is explained and illustrated. In this revised edition, the author will add the following materials:Chapter 1: Outlining three outcomes associated with positive leadership and one more example.Chapter 2: Adding some empirical findings linking attributes of climate with physiological benefits.Chapter 3: A brief discussion of temporary encounters with positive or negative outcomes.Chapter 4: Additional research on the results of the positive-to-negative-communication-ratio.Chapter 5: Elaboration on the issue of meaningfulness in work.Chapter 6: More ideas for implementation

Consulting in Complex and Changing Times Organizations face challenges today that are too messy and complicated for consultants to simply play doctor: run a few tests, offer a neat diagnosis of the “problem,” and recommend a solution. Edgar Schein argues that consultants have to jettison the old idea of professional distance and work with their clients in a more personal way, emphasizing authentic openness, curiosity, and humility. Schein draws deeply on his own decades of experience, offering over two dozen case studies that illuminate each stage of this humble consulting process. Just as he did with Process Consultation nearly fifty years ago, Schein has once again revolutionized the field, enabling consultants to be more genuinely helpful and vastly more effective.

Collaboration is increasingly difficult and increasingly necessary Often, to get something done that really matters to us, we need to work with people we don’t agree with or like or trust. Adam Kahane has faced this challenge many times, working on big issues like democracy and jobs and climate change and on everyday issues in organizations and families. He has learned that our conventional understanding of collaboration—that it requires a harmonious team that agrees on where it’s going, how it’s going to get there, and who needs to do what—is wrong. Instead, we need a new approach to collaboration that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation—which is exactly what Kahane provides in this groundbreaking and timely book.

Over the past several decades, there's been an explosion of investment strategies, products, services, and advisors. Yet, as longtime investment industry insiders show in this powerful exposé, almost all the popular investment strategies and products are based on confusion and deception and don't work, and almost all investment services and advisors cost far more than they are worth. The book first explains three simple rules of investing - and why Wall Street and most of the investment industry does not want you to know them. Then the authors examine each of the prevailing claims and recommendations espoused by investment industry professionals as well as journalists and explain, one by one, why each is wrong and not only costly to investors but also enormously enriching to investment firms and advisors. The result is the most powerful guide yet published for what investors should and should not do to protect and grow their investments.

Once you’ve discovered your strengths, you need to discover something else: your strengths can work against you. Many leaders know this on some intuitive level, and they see it in others. But they don’t see it as clearly in themselves. Mainly, they think of leadership development as working on their weaknesses. No wonder. The tools used to assess managers are not equipped to pick up on overplayed strengths—when more is not better. Nationally recognized leadership experts Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser have conducted thousands of assessments of senior executives designed to determine when their strengths serve them well—versus betray them. In this groundbreaking book, they draw on their data and practical experience to identify four fundamental leadership qualities, each positive in and of itself but each of which, if overemphasized, can seriously compromise your effectiveness. Most leaders, they’ve found, are “lopsided”—they favor certain qualities to the exclusion of others without realizing it. The trick is to keep all four in balance. Fear Your Strengths provides tools to help you become aware of your leadership leanings and excesses and provides insights for combatting the mindset that encourages them. It offers a practical psychology of leadership, a better way for leaders to calibrate their performance so that you can make sure your strengths don’t overpower you but rather move you—and your organization—forward.

In his trailblazing book Theory U, Otto Scharmer described a powerful process for sensing the future that is emerging so we can align ourselves with it and help it to come into being. Now he shows that this same U process is the key to finally resolving the multiple crises we face today. One of the key insights of Theory U is that form follows awareness: the quality of the results in any kind of system is a function of the awareness that people in the system are operating from. Even though our world is interconnected in ways unimaginable even a decade ago, in many cases our awareness-whether as individuals, organizations or nations-is still limited and local. To use an analogy from biology, even though our actions affect the larger ecosystem of which we are a part-in fact the multiple interacting economic, social, political and environmental ecosystems-we sill behave as though our actions are narrow in scope and impact. We see ourselves as part of a far smaller, more isolated ego-system.Scharmer and Kaufer explain why actions based on this "ego-system" awareness not only result in recurring crises, but doom any attempt to resolve them-we are trying to meet new challenges with an obsolete mindset. To show the shape of the emerging future they bring this ecosystem awareness to bear on areas such as labor, capital, production, technology, leadership, ownership and many others, offering a blueprint for a new society based on a profound understanding of how the actions of each affects the many. This book's journey is about a path and a method of dropping the baggage of old habits of thought and then crossing through the gate to an economy that operates more consciously, inclusively, and collectively.

People who are trying to solve tough economic, social, or environmental problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They cannot solve their problems in their current context; the larger system within which they are operating is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They cannot transform this system on their own, or by working only with their friends or colleagues; the system is too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And other actors whose cooperation would be necessary to transform the system don't understand or agree with or trust one another enough to work together.This book describes a powerful new methodology for dealing with these challenges. Transformative scenario planning is a powerful way for actors from across a whole system to work together to transform that system. It is a way for them to get unstuck and to move forward on solving their tough problems.Transformative scenario planning goes far beyond conventional, adaptive scenario planning, Often people find themselves in systems that are complex, conflictual, not working, and stuck. In such systems, people need a methodology not simply for adapting to the system but also for creating new, better futures. Transformative scenario planning is a way that people can work together with others to transform themselves and their relationships with one another, and thereby to transform their systems. In this simple and practical book, Adam Kahane explains this methodology and how to use it.

Martin Davidson makes the bold claim that millions, maybe billions, of dollars in diversity training are being wasted. Attrition statistics show a revolving door for women and minorities, but companies are still recruiting and promoting employees as they've always done. As Chief Diversity Officer at the Darden School of Business (University of Virginia) and as a consultant with top Fortune 100 firms like AT&T and Merrill Lynch, Martin Davidson has found a better way: stop forcing diversity on people as a goal in and of itself, a matter of percentages and head counts, and instead use it strategically, creating business improvement strategies that draw on employees' different strengths. Make cultivating difference a core competency and enjoy the improvements in innovation, marketing, and business execution that are the natural result. Stop focusing on a narrow band of superficially diverse groups, and welcome deeper differences in lifestyles, economic backgrounds, and viewpoints.Davidson calls this new way "Leveraging Difference," which sees diversity NOT as a problem to be solved, but as an opportunity to make better business strategies. Net result: diversity that really moves the organization forward, not just another training program that changes little.

A Guide to Going beyond Success Plenty of research has been done on why companies go terribly wrong, but what makes companies go spectacularly right? That’s the question that Kim Cameron asked over a decade ago. Since then, Cameron and his colleagues have uncovered the principles and practices that set extraordinarily effective organizations apart from the merely successful. In his previous book Positive Leadership, Cameron identified four strategies that enable these organizations, and the individuals within them, to flourish: creating a positive climate, positive relationships, positive communication, and positive meaning. Here he lays out specific tactics for implementing them. These are not feel-good nostrums—study after study (some cited in this book) have proven positive leadership delivers breakthrough bottom-line results. Thanks to Cameron’s concise how-to guide, now any organization can be “positively deviant,” achieving outcomes that far surpass the norm.

Helping is a fundamental human relationship. From a mother feeding her infant to a friend or spouse helping to make something happen, to a group member playing his or her role to help the group to succeed, to a therapist helping a patient, to an organizational consultant or coach helping to improve individual, group or organizational functioning, helping is the basic relationship that moves things forward. Yet, paradoxically, we know relatively little about the social and psychological dynamics of that relationship.In this seminal book on the topic, corporate culture and organizational development guru Ed Schein analyzes the dynamics of helping relationships, explains why help is often not helpful, and shows what any would-be-helper must do to insure that help is actually provided.Many different words are used for helping assisting, aiding, advising, coaching, consulting, counseling, guiding, mentoring, supporting, teaching, and many more but they all have common dynamics and processes. Schein exposes and shows how to resolve the inequities and role ambiguities of helping relationships, describes the different roles that helpers can take once the relationship is balanced, and explains how to build a balanced relationship and how to intervene as that relationship develops, In this short but profound book Schein examines the social dynamics that are at play in helping relationships in order to better understand why offers of help are sometimes refused or resented, and how to make help more useful and effective.

While there are several books that cover portions of the topic of scenario planning, none of them cover it in its entirety. The key weaknesses shown in most competitive titles in publication:None address the complexity (practical and theoretical) of the scenario planning process. Recent books are edited volumes that do not incorporate a unified perspective and are rather disjointed collections of chapters unconnected from each other. None of the books currently available provide any mention of evaluative techniques. Thus, there are multiple gaps in the literature that remain unaddressed.This book will add important new knowledge and fill in the information gaps by providing a comprehensive view of scenario planning within the larger organizational and national contexts. The work will address scenario planning as a system itself, its role and connection to organizational strategy, and will provide discussion of the importance of theory and provide a theory of the system. The goal is a book that will discuss theory in a way that is useful to practitioners, describe research studies that bring academic rigor, and yet, also inform practice in that they demonstrate the effectiveness of scenario planning. Evaluating scenarios and scenario planning projects will also be discussed, as well as a phased process for conducting, managing, and framing scenario work. The key contribution of the proposed text is that it will genuinely bridge theory and practice, research and implementation, and generally serve as a text suitable for graduate courses, and thoughtful practitioners seeking understanding beyond a "how-to" manual.

As David Korten showed in the first edition of this hard-hitting book, the steps taken to address the financial meltdown - including pouring trillions of dollars into bailouts for the Wall Street institutions that created the mess - did nothing to deal with the reality of a failed economic system. Korten identified the deeper sources of the failure in Wall Street institutions that have perfected the art of creating money out of nothing, without producing anything of real value in return. Its major players engaged in speculative trading, bought into asset bubbles, stripped corporate assets, created debt pyramids, and engaged in predatory lending in the mortgage and credit card markets. In this revised second edition, Korten evaluates how far we have come in the year since the first edition's release and traces both the progress made as well as the ongoing setbacks. Korten also explores the transition to Main street and the momentum towards real wealth and how such a movement is manifesting itself across the nation. In a new chapter, Korten examines how the Obama administration has yet to address the root causes of the system failures to avoid ongoing economic, social, and environmental crises.

From one of the founding executives of FedEx comes the first full inside story of how Fed Ex came to be one of the world's most successful, innovative, and admired companiesFrock reveals the details of how the company was conceived, launched, kept afloat despite incredible obstacles.The story contains examples likepilots using their personal credit cards to gas up the planesemployees deferring cashing their paychecksand Fred Smith gambling with FedEx last 40,000 Vegas to win a week's worth of operational expenses

Knowing how to work effectively in and through groups may be the single most important skill anyone can develop in today's collaborative, team-based workplace. Unfortunately, all of the resources available on teamwork put the emphasis on group process and ignore the role of-and benefits to-the individual. But effective teamwork isn't only a group skill set; it's an individual skill set as well. Teamwork Is an Individual Skill shows readers how to develop the skills to thrive on any team, under any circumstances. No longer will readers find themselves complaining, "I got assigned to a bad team." Instead, they'll know what to do to make any team work for them. Drawing on over twenty years of experience successfully developing professional teams in product development, R&D, and high-tech environments, Christopher Avery and his coauthors use brief thought-provoking essays, personal and teambuilding exercises, case studies, and insights from business leaders to teach readers how to build responsible and productive relationships at work. The authors show how and why your ability to assume personal responsibility-for your own work on a team and for the team's collective work-is the most important factor in ensuring a productive team experience. Teambuilding, the authors point out, is essentially a series of conversations between people who share responsibility to get something done. Teamwork Is an Individual Skill describes the way these conversations typically progress, and shows the reader how to predict and direct these conversations so that they can maximize the benefits to both themselves and to their team. Designed for easy access and for use by both individuals and groups, Teamwork Is an Individual Skill will equip readers with the mental skills and behaviors that will help them achieve personal goals while contributing to their team's success.

Unlikely as it may seem, sprinters who relax run faster. In fact, simultaneously feeling both aggressive and relaxed is essential to their peak performance. Similar, seemingly contradictory patterns abound: Bill Gates's success is built on both his vision and his practicality; former New York governor Mario Cuomo is both passionate and intellectual, action-oriented and reflective. After more than fifteen years of studying thousands of detailed examples of people performing at their best, Fletcher and Olwyler have found that individuals are always paradoxical when performing optimally and that each person has a particular combination of contradictory and paradoxical qualities that work together to produce that person's best work. In Paradoxical Thinking they provide a 5-step process to help you identify your own core personal contradictions, and harness them to achieve outstanding results at work and in your personal life. You can probably recall a difficult situation in which you performed surprisingly well-and being mystified after the fact as to exactly how you achieved such a high level of performance. Paradoxical Thinking takes the mystery and unpredictability out of performing at your peak by providing an easy-to-learn method of understanding and maximizing your personal success. Based on years of real-world road testing with individuals and corporate leaders, the authors' five-step "Paradoxical Thinking" method helps you consciously bring together the paradoxical sides of yourself to achieve outstanding results individually, on teams, and in organizations. Using an important problem or goal you are currently facing, Paradoxical Thinking will help you: o Identify your own core personal paradox o Redefine your problem or goal so that it can be approached paradoxically o Monitor how well you are utilizing your personal paradox o Take positive action steps to overcome roadblocks and banish cycles of ineffectiveness of your paradoxical qualities and tools for using-instead of fighting-them, you can realize your potential, maximize your inherent strengths, and consistently achieve the results you seek in every aspect of your personal and professional life.

Reveals how to immediately improve profits with over 100 innovative profit building ideas 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.

Recognizing that "managing" diversity has become a critical skill in organizations all over the world, Developing Competency to Manage Diversity shows how the dynamics of diversity affect people on all levels of society and in all kinds of organizations-from individual relationships to community interactions, from city and national governments to work teams and product markets. Defining diversity as "a mix of people in one social system who have distinctly different, socially relevant, group identities," this volume responds to the increasing need to function effectively in workplace contexts that are culturally, socially, economically, and racially diverse. To this end, it provides managers with tools they need to successfully manage a diverse workforce. Chapters provide specific tasks and activities to: o Increase awareness of coworkers' cultural backgrounds o Create a "pro-diversity" organizational climate o Develop an operational definition of diversity o Explore how group identity applies to each group member o Investigate differences of cognitive style o Customize team-building strategies for diverse groups Organized in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format, a set of twenty-three readings, six case studies, and thirty-one activities takes readers through a three-stage learning process. The first stage creates awareness of a diversity-related issue, the second stage develops knowledge and understanding of effective ways to handle that issue, and the final stage outlines practical actions to respond to the issue. The high costs of failing to recognize and manage diversity-absenteeism, dissatisfaction, barriers to contribution, harassment, discrimination suits, reduced efficiency, and lack of communication-as well as the potential to leverage diversity as an organizational resource-should motivate organizations and groups to make full use of Developing Competency to Manage Diversity.

When women first moved into positions of authority in business, many found that they had to be "more male" than their male counterparts in order to succeed-but is that really success? This book tells how women can bring their whole selves, including their more feminine sides, to their careers and prosper in the business world. Women possess many of the qualities sought by today's business environment with its need for greater flexibility and connection; yet the same business community often makes it difficult for those who possess these skills to achieve success. Nancy Bancroft describes the clear differences most women perceive between themselves and their male colleagues and offers practical advice for moving toward greater self-alignment and authenticity-a strategy critical to both success and fulfillment. The Feminine Quest for Success provides a unique picture of five different Success Strategies women use to be successful in the business world. Bancroft gives numerous personal examples and shows how women have come to use these techniques on the road to personal fulfillment and professional success. Five Success Strategies o The Emulator assesses her business opportunities and concludes that modeling aggressive male behavior is the most likely route to success o The Trooper focuses on competency, works hard, and is always well-prepared oThe Balancer seeks a balance between work and home, and between feminine and masculine traits o The Seeker tries to find a way to be who she is naturally, often by backing off from the business world for a period of time o The Integrator has aligned herself with her true nature; she is clear and unapologetic about who she is The Feminine Quest for Success provides an uplifting and compelling vision of living in tune with yourself while enmeshed in the world of business. Nancy Bancroft's practical advice and numerous positive examples will teach readers how they can move toward self-alignment to achieve a powerful clarity and greater sense of fulfillment.