Bøger udgivet af Berrett-Koehler

Hispanics make up the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States. Organizations that don’t know how to make them feel comfortable, recognized, and rewarded risk losing access to this important source of talent and innovation. Drawing on his own ethnic background and years of experience as director of the organization Hispanic Economics, Louis Nevaer identifies elements unique to the Hispanic worldview that often result in behaviors, beliefs, and expectations very different from, and sometimes seemingly at odds with, those of non-Hispanics. He also describes differences within the Hispanic community—such as between U.S.-born and immigrant Hispanics, and between people from different parts of the Hispanic world—that have a huge, and often unrecognized, impact on how workers interact with each other as well as with non-Hispanics. Through a wealth of examples, Nevaer shows how to develop Hispanic-friendly approaches to every aspect of the modern workplace, from recruitment, retention, and evaluation to training, mentoring, and labor relations.

Does life have you feeling stressed out, anxious, or filled with conflict? Three Deep Breaths will help you achieve calm in the midst of chaos and transform all that stress into positive energy. You’ll find a relatable hero in Angus, a harried worker struggling to achieve that ever-elusive work/life balance, whose story illustrates this deceptively simple, extraordinarily effective technique in action. This technique takes just minutes and can be practiced just about anywhere—while you’re driving to an appointment, commuting to work, walking to a meeting, or sitting at your desk—but it will have a profound effect on every aspect of your life. It will help you transform even the toughest situations from stressful to energizing, from anxious to centering, and from worrying to inspiring. Practice it regularly and you’ll achieve the calmness and presence of an aligned, centered state of being.

The great problems of our time such as poverty, inequality, war, terrorism, and environmental degradation are due in part to our flawed economic models that set the wrong priorities and misallocate resources. Conventional economic measures, policies, and practices fail to give visibility and value to the most essential human work the work of caring and caregiving. We can't expect more caring policies and more life-affirming practices as long as our underlying system of values and social institutions devalue caring and caregiving. That is the argument in this provocative new book by eminent social scientist and bestselling author Riane Eisler. This powerful book proposes that we need a radical reformulation of economics, one that supports caring and care giving at the individual, organizational, societal, and environmental levels. This "caring economics" takes into account the full spectrum of economic activities from the life-sustaining activities of the household, to the life-enriching activities of caregivers and communities of all types, to the life-supporting processes of nature. Eisler exposes the economic double standard that devalues anything stereotypically associated with women and femininity and how this distorts our values and our lives. She reveals how the current economics are based on a deep-seated culture of domination and shows how human needs would be better met if economics were based on caring. And she provides practical proposals for new economic inventions new measures, policies, rules, and practices to bring about a caring economics that meets human needs.

Millions of working Americans talk, act, and vote as if their economic interests match those of the megawealthy, the multinational corporations, and the politicians who do their bidding. How did this happen? According to Air America radio host Thom Hartmann, the apologists of the Right have become masters of the subtle and largely subconscious aspects of political communication. It’s not an escalation in Iraq, it’s a surge; it’s not the inheritance tax, it’s the death tax; it’s not drilling for oil, it’s exploring for energy. Conservatives didn’t intuit the path to persuasive messaging—they learned these techniques. There is no reason why progressives can’t learn them too. In Cracking the Code, Hartmann shows you how. Drawing on his background as a psychotherapist and advertising executive as well as a national radio host, he breaks down the science and technology of effective communication so you can apply it to your own efforts to counter right-wing disinformation. It’s both an art and a science—as Hartmann explains, political persuasion is as much about biology as ideology, about knowing how the brain processes information and how that influences the way people perceive messages, make decisions, and form a worldview. Throughout the book, Hartmann shows you precisely how to master this technology, providing examples dating back to the time of the Founding Fathers. As you read deeply in this book, you’ll see things you hadn’t realized were there—in everything from advertising to political rants—and discover abilities you didn’t know you had. Whether you’re a politician, an activist, a volunteer, or a concerned citizen, you’ll develop a strong sense for how to reach into that part of the collective human psyche where we truly do have the power to create a new world.

Defenders of massive multinational chains like Wal-Mart and Fortune 500 big business argue that, like it or not, there is no alternative. Their huge scale and international reach, they claim, make them more efficient and profitable, better able to deliver value, and an uncontested boon for the job market. According to the big boys, locally owned small businesses are simply quaint remnants of the past, unable to compete in the global economy. But in The Small-Mart Revolution, Michael Shuman shows that the benefits these mega-stores and huge corporations supposedly deliver to communities are illusory. Crunch the numbers and you'll find that locally owned businesses turn out to be much more reliable generators of good jobs, economic growth, tax dollars, community wealth, charitable contributions, social stability, and political participation. Unlike their global competitors, they do this without massive tax breaks and subsidies that often put local economies in a permanent hole. Plus, contrary to popular belief, local businesses are competitive with the multinationals--and gaining ground every day. Shuman highlights numerous trends that are making the old "bigger is better" economies of scale argument obsolete, and he describes a variety of innovative strategies these businesses are using to successfully compete with their over-sized competitors. He also shows how consumers, investors, and policymakers can support their own communities by "going local." The Small-Mart Revolution offers a robust alternative to "go-go" globalization, one that nurtures the creative capacities of local businesses and enables communities everywhere to thrive.

The world is drifting without a clear plan for its economic development. Communism is dead, but in the wake of Enron and similar scandals, many see capitalism as amoral and too easily abused. A blueprint for progress is needed and Moral Capitalism provides one. Moral Capitalism is based on principles developed by the Caux Round Table, an extraordinary international network of top business executives who believe that business can--and must--weigh both profit and principle. Caux Round Table's global chair, Stephen Young, argues that the ethical standards inherent in capitalism have been compromised by cultural values inimical to capitalism's essentially egalitarian, rational spirit, and distorted by the short-sighted dog-eat-dog doctrines of social Darwinism into what he calls brute capitalism. He demonstrates how the Caux Round Table's Seven General Principles for Business can serve as a blueprint for a new moral capitalism, and explores in detail how, if guided by these principles, capitalism is really the only system with the potential to reduce global poverty and tyranny and address the needs and aspirations of individuals, societies, and nations.

In this era of rapid globalization, human resource development professionals in every type of organization face the problem of managing training and development across many different, often widely dispersed, sites. Training Across Multiple Locations offers a comprehensive, proven model for designing, building and assessing every aspect of a multiple location training and development (T&D) system. Stephen Krempl and R. Wayne Pace detail how to integrate training from multiple locations into a comprehensive organizational strategy, and how corporate training can align those multiple locations with a single corporate vision. Training Across Multiple Locations draws from numerous real-life examples to show how distance learning technology-including intra-nets, web-based training, and computer-based training-is being used to manage multi-point training at companies like Motorola, Ford, Boeing, Kinko's, Hewlett-Packard, and others. With technology, the authors reveal, training organizations are able to extend their reach and distribute training over a far wider audience in ways that may make current approaches to training less relevant and even obsolete. And perhaps most importantly, they provide a model for calculating return on investment (ROI) for these technology-based programs. Krempl and Pace present a detailed review process for evaluating the effectiveness of multiple location training and development systems and provide specific advice on how to conduct the review and how to share data to enhance unit effectiveness. They also include a unique questionnaire that helps teams assess how well they are carrying out their T&D responsibilities and how well they are integrating their activities into the corporate business plan. Training and development functions survive by maintaining relationships with critical decision-makers at all levels in the organization. This process is often described in terms of politics and power-but Training Across Multiple Locations treats the issue simply in terms of how to get the job done. The unique process described in this book will encourage better preparation and more informed discussions and decisions, allowing managers to better anticipate problems and stay on top of key issues.

As the pace of change in the workplace continues to accelerate, individuals are under more pressure to learn new things than ever before. While most people realize they have more to learn, many have trouble translating that anxious need into purposeful action. Managing Your Own Learning demonstrates how to analyze previous learning, design an action plan for future learning, expand opportunities for learning, and use libraries and the Internet effectively to become a lifelong learner. James and Adelaide Davis detail seven major ways of learning: learning new skills, learning from presentations, learning to think, learning to solve problems and make decisions, learning in groups, learning through virtual realities, and learning from experience. They also provide useful guidelines for maximizing results by becoming an effective, active participant in learning. They explain, for example, how learning in a group can be enhanced by knowing how a group works and considering factors such as group size, cohesion, task and process behavior, and participant roles, as well as the things that can go wrong in groups, such as conflict and apathy. For each of the seven ways of learning, the authors tell what is unique about it, how learning actually takes place, and how it can be augmented in each situation. They reveal how the theory behind each way of learning originated, what researchers have learned about it, and what the individual's role is as a participant. And at the end of each chapter, they include a list of ten things that anyone can do to get the most from that particular type of learning. No matter what our previous experiences with learning may have been, we all must become self-directed learners if we are to succeed in this new era. Managing Your Own Learning provides step-by-step, proven advice on how to succeed in the 21st century workplace by becoming a proactive, goal-directed, perpetual learner.

Torture in Abu Ghraib prison. Corporate fraud. Falsified records at Veterans Administration hospitals. Teachers pressured to feed test answers to students. These scandals could have been prevented if, early on, people had said no to their higher-ups. In this timely new book, Ira Chaleff goes deeply into when and how to disobey inappropriate orders, reduce unacceptable risk, and find better ways to achieve legitimate goals.The inspiration for the book, and its title, came from a concept used in guide dog training. Guide dogs must be able to recognize a command that would put their human and themselves at risk, effectively resist the command, and identify safer options for achieving the goal. This is precisely what Chaleff shows humans how to do. He delves into the psychological dynamics of obedience, drawing in particular on what Stanley Milgram's seminal Yale experiments - in which volunteers were induced to administer shocks to innocent people - teach us about how to reduce compliance with harmful orders. Using dozens of vivid examples of historical events and everyday situations, Chaleff offers advice on judging whether intelligent disobedience is called for, how to effectively express opposition, and how to create a culture where, rather than "just following orders," citizens are educated and encouraged to think about whether those orders make sense.

Dialogic Organization Development is a compelling alternative to the classical action research approach to planned change. Organizations are seen as fluid, socially constructed realities that are continuously created through conversations and images - change happens when those conversations and images change. Leaders and consultants can help foster, support, or accelerate the emergence of transformational possibilities by encouraging disruptions to taken-for-granted ways of thinking and acting and the use of generative images to stimulate new organizational conversations and narratives. Dialogic OD is a different mindset, but it's also the previously unrecognized underpinning of a diverse array of change methods, such as Appreciative Inquiry, the Art of Convening, Open Space Technology, and many more.

As organizations grow, the demands on leadership change. The same old moves won't cut it any more. In Chess Not Checkers, Miller tells the story of Blake Brown, newly appointed CEO of a company troubled by poor performance and low morale. Nothing Blake learned from his previous job seems to help him deal with the issues he now faces. The problem, his new mentor points out, is Blake is playing checkers - he needs to play chess or he's going to lose. The early days of an organization are like checkers: a quick game with mostly interchangeable pieces. Everybody does a little bit of everything, the leader included, and things are so frantic you just have to react as fast as you can. But as the organization expands, you can't just keep jumping from activity to activity. You have to think strategically, look ahead, leverage every employee's specific talents. That's chess. And this approach creates unprecedented levels of performance. Adapting four strategies from the game of chess, Miller reveals four moves high-performance organizations make. They bet on leadership, act as one, win the heart, and excel at execution. Chess Not Checkers is an accessible and easily applied guide to help leaders elevate their own leadership and the performance of their entire team.

Good employees are hard to find, and they can be easy to lose. But there's a simple tool every manager can use to ensure that star performers and solid contributors alike will feel energized, engaged, and excited - and that they will give you fair warning if they're unhappy. It's called the stay interview, and this book is the manager's definitive guide, written by the women who created the concept. The idea is simple: ask people how they like their jobs and what would keep them there. Worried that your talented people will want things you can't deliver, like more money or a big promotion? Kaye and Jordan-Evans have a simple four-step process for dealing with that. Feel just plain awkward about doing stay interviews? They explain how to create an atmosphere that will make the interview more comfortable and provide dozens of suggested questions and icebreakers, as well as tips for easing any performance anxiety you might feel. Think you don't have time? They offer all kinds of options for where, when, and how you can do stay interviews, from folding them into other business processes to doing them casually, like on a walk to get a cup of coffee. Stay interviews prevent exit interviews. They cost nothing, and the price of not doing them - in lost talent and time - can be huge. Now that you have the most practical, authoritative, soup-to-nuts guide available, you have no excuse. Just ask!

What do the best leaders have in common? As president of MAP, John Manning should know. MAP has helped tens of thousands of top executives accelerate their leadership and management performance. Manning says the answer is one word: discipline. But for Manning, discipline has a very specific meaning. All leaders have scores of things they could do. But a disciplined leader is one who identifies and focuses on the Vital Few: the 20 percent of activities that will drive 80 percent of the results. And the results that are most important are those tied to the organization's most precious asset: its people.The Disciplined Leader offers fifty-two succinct lessons to help you home in on your own Vital Few in three critical areas: leading yourself, leading your team, and leading your organization. Each lesson comes with recommended tactics and practical "Take Action!" tips for implementing it, so there are literally hundreds of pieces of must-know, time-tested advice here. The chapters are self-contained, so you can read them in any order and come back to the ones that resonate with you - your own Vital Few! This is a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts guide to leadership practice that's built to inspire action, drive change, and achieve results.

Books like StrengthsFinder 2.0 have helped leaders discover their strengths - but they stop there. The Sindells argue that focusing only on your best abilities neglects a vital development opportunity. They show how to identify hidden strengths that can be quickly elevated into full strengths with attention and focus. Working mainly on your strengths can ultimately make you weaker, they argue - you need to continually add new skills, not rely on what you're already good at. And while most people assume that means they should try to turn their weaknesses into usable skills, the Sindells say that it takes too much time and effort - the ROI just isn't there. It's in the neglected middle skills, neither strengths nor weaknesses, that the most potent development opportunities lie. They're close enough to being strengths that putting your energy there can offer a powerful payoff. Using assessments, exercises, and case studies, the Sindells help you identify your most promising middle skills and create a plan to turn them into strengths. In today's work environment, not growing and stretching yourself translates into lack of innovation, stagnation, and obsolescence. Relying upon strengths is like relying upon training wheels - at a certain point you need to take them off in order to improve and grow.

In America, organizations spend $175 billion in training initiatives and more than $500 billion in human resource solutions every year yet often have little to show for it. One reason is that people "jump to solutions" before they identify the causes of the problem. Performance consultants are effective because they partner with clients to clarify business goals and determine root causes for gaps between desired and current results. Only then are specific solutions agreed upon and implemented. This third edition of the classic book that introduced performance consulting adds a wealth of new material. There are new case examples throughout and four new chapters providing detailed steps for measuring results from performance consulting initiatives on five different levels, including ROI. The book includes a never-before-published Alignment and Measurement Model, allowing you to connect organizational needs and performance consulting initiatives designed to address those needs with the appropriate level of measurement. This remains a profoundly practical book, featuring tools, models, and checklists. It will enable you to make a difference in your organization that is valued, measurable, and sustainable.

When Aspen Baker had an abortion at the age of 24 she felt caught between the warring pro-life and pro-choice factions, with no safe space to share her conflicted feelings. In this hopeful and moving book, Baker describes how she and Exhale, the organization she cofounded, developed their "pro-voice" philosophy and a set of tools that enable anyone to have respectful, compassionate exchanges about even the most contentious topics. Initially distrusted by both sides, Exhale now receives post abortion referrals from pro-life and pro-choice organizations. Baker examines the history of the abortion debate, identifying the mistakes and misunderstandings that have led us to the current painful divide. She shares how Exhale discovered creative ways to help women and men share their feelings about abortion, such as starting a post abortion telephone service and piloting a nationwide story-sharing tour led by women who'd had abortions. Thanks to Aspen Baker's innovative ideas and the trendsetting work of Exhale, the culture around abortion is changing.Pro-voice can be adopted by anyone interested in dialogue rather than dogma. Peace, in this perspective, isn't a world without fighting or conflict but one where conflict can be engaged in - fiercely and directly - without dehumanizing ourselves or our opponents. Our world is full of gray areas. It's vital we learn practices like pro-voice to help us move from paralysis to progress.

Business has a values problem. It's not just spectacular public scandals like Enron (which, incidentally, had a great corporate values statement). Many companies fail to live up to the standards they set for themselves, alienating the public and leaving employees cynical and disengaged - resulting in lower productivity, less innovation, and sometimes outright corruption. The reason, argue top scholars and consultants Edward Freeman and Ellen Auster, is that most companies' values are handed down from on high, with no employee input or discussion. This practically invites disconnects between intention and reality. To bridge this values gap, Freeman and Auster provide a process, Values through Conversation, that focuses on four key types of values: introspective (reflecting on who we are and how we do things), historical (understanding our past and how it influences us), relational (asking how we can best work together), and aspirational (articulating our hopes and dreams). By developing values through discussions - casual or formal, one-on-one or in groups - VTC ensures that they are dynamic and evolving, not static words on a wall or a website. Freeman and Auster offer advice, real-world examples, and sample questions to help you create values that are authentic and embraced because they are rooted in the lived experience of the organization.

What's holding you back? Seth Allen Smith says look in the mirror. It's who, not what. All of us feel trapped, stuck, or unable to move forward in life at some point. But ultimately, the greatest obstacle to achieving your full potential is you. But the good news is you can find the solution in the mirror too.This book combats a destructive mindset that we all sometimes fall into : I can't change. I am the victim of my circumstances and confined by my personal limitations. This philosophy, intangible though it is, destroys more dreams and limits more lives than any actual, physical obstacle. It is a philosophy of stagnation and damnation.Drawing on literature, history, and his personal experiences with chronic depression, as well as on encounters with remarkable "ordinary" people who've beaten the odds, Smith inspires us to see that no matter how dire our circumstances there is always some positive step you can take, however small it might be. He doesn't sugarcoat the difficulties or offer promises of overnight success. But he does promise that if you continue to see yourself as a victim you'll remain frozen and fearful. Nobody wants that. We may not be able to control what happens to us, but we can always control how we react. We all have the power to lift ourselves out of the abyss and into the light.

The way you spend your time, your energy, and your purchasing dollars are investments just as much as any brokerage account is, and they deserve the same kind of attention. The Resilient Investor shows you how to expand the concept of investing beyond stocks and bonds, wake up from dangerous old investing patterns, open your eyes to new opportunities, and build a better world.The book's centerpiece is the Resilient Investment Map, which first lays out three classes of assets: personal (your time), tangible (the things you own or have access to), and financial (traditional investment funds). Then it offers three different strategies for those assets. You can invest them in ways that strengthen yourself, your family, and your community; in ways that encourage the continued growth of a sustainable global economy; or in more visionary efforts that will help create a better future. You'll learn how to diversify your investment eggs into many more baskets than those offered by Wall Street.The goal is to make yourself more resilient: able to anticipate and prepare for disturbance, rebuild as necessary, and adapt and evolve when possible. For example, investing in food and energy self-sufficiency will help if the financial system takes another tumble. But, as the authors persuasively argue, the choices that ultimately make you the most resilient also enhance our communities, our economy, and the planet - paying true dividends to everyone.

We weigh every significant decision based on how it will affect our future. But when it comes to figuring that out, we mostly make the process up as we go along. While financial professional Peter Neuwirth can't help you actually predict the future, he can offer a simple, systematic way to make much better guesses about it - and so make better decisions.Neuwirth offers an accessible, step-by-step guide to using the powerful concept of Present Value - which allows you to determine the value today of something that might happen in the future - to evaluate all of the outcomes that might arise from choosing one path as opposed to another. Using examples that anyone can relate to, Neuwirth walks you through the process. Your old refrigerator doesn't work as well as it used to - should you buy a new one right away or muddle through for a while? You're offered a great discount on a service you don't need at the moment but eventually will - buy the service now or wait? With just a little math and some common sense, you can compare future costs and benefits with present costs and benefits and make "apples to apples" comparisons. This book will be indispensable for anyone who has ever had to figure out whether to stick with an awful job or follow his or her bliss, fix that old car or buy a new one, increase 401(k) contributions or keep the same take-home pay, and a thousand other decisions.

Stories have power. They move people in a way that facts and figures can't. Many leaders use stories as a tool, but leadership development expert Tim Tobin says most have no idea what tale their own leadership is telling. He shows how, by thinking of your career as a narrative - with a plot, characters, and an arc - you can increase your awareness of yourself as a leader and become more effective, insightful, and inspiring. Using story as both a metaphor and a process for self-development, Tobin offers activities and questions that help you better understand your own leadership and how others perceive it. What is the plot of your leadership story - your overall goals and purpose? Who are the main characters and what roles do they play? How have the settings of your story influenced it? What are the conflicts that you need to resolve to move towards the ending you intend? Once you have a thorough grasp of your leadership story, Tobin gives detailed advice on communicating it - when, where, and how. Taking control of your leadership story enables you to more consciously shape the impact you have in the world. You'll be better equipped to make decisions, choose actions that tell the story you want to tell, and ensure that you become the kind of leader you want to be.

"We humans live by stories", says David Korten, and the stories that now govern our society set us on a path to certain self-destruction. In this profound new book, Korten shares the results of his search for a story that reflects the fullness of human knowledge and understanding and provides a guide to action adequate to the needs of our time.Korten calls our current story Sacred Money and Markets. Money, it tells us, is the measure of all worth and the source of all happiness. Earth is simply a source of raw materials. Inequality and environmental destruction are unfortunate but unavoidable. Although many recognize that this story promotes bad ethics, bad science, and bad economics, it will remain our guiding story until replaced by one that aligns with our deepest understanding of the universe and our relationship to it.To guide our path to a viable human future, Korten offers a Sacred Life and Living Earth story grounded in a cosmology that affirms we are living beings born of a living Earth itself born of a living universe. Our health and well-being depend on an economy that works in partnership with the processes by which Earth's community of life maintains the conditions of its own existence - and ours. Offering a hopeful vision, Korten lays out the transformative impact adopting this story will have on every aspect of human life and society.