Böcker utgivna av Berrett-Koehler

Navigating life's challenges on your own isn't just lonely, it is also counterproductive to personal growth and development. Whether you are looking to develop your leadership skills or to grow as a person, you need long-term feedback, support, and encouragement. For the past thirty-five years Bill George and Doug Baker have found this in what they call a True North Group, a small, diverse collection of individuals who meet on a regular basis to explore their lives and develop their self-awareness, self-compassion, authenticity, and EQ. Unlike a typical affinity group such as a book club or prayer group, the purpose of True North groups is to help its members succeed in their work and in their lives by providing a consistent environment in which personal development is not just possible, but the aim. In this desperately needed new book George and Baker have uncovered a new secret to success in work and life. They demonstrate why these small groups are the vital link to both leadership and personal development, and adapting an established five-stage team-building format, show exactly how to form a new group or transform an existing group into a True North Group. They provide a wealth of practical resources, including advice on selecting members, suggested topics for the first twelve meetings, techniques to evaluate group satisfaction, and much more. For the millions of people who are searching for greater meaning and intimacy in their lives, this book will help them to grow as leaders and as human beings and to stay on course to their True North.

Many people assume prosperity only means wealth or luxury, but true prosperity is something more. It's about defining your own version of success not your parents' or your boss's or your friend's or the media's one that works specifically for you. It's about striking the right, sustainable balance between work, wealth, and lifestyle.Ethan Willis and Randy Garn, founders of Prosper, the largest provider of individual coaching for personal finance and entrepreneurship in the US. explain how to achieve true prosperity through three steps. First, they help you define it in detail: what does your happy life look, feel, smell, sound and taste like? Arm yourself with your own personal vision of success that paints a clear picture of the life you want to lead. Then, they show you how to find it. How much money do you need to live your version of a truly happy life? They show how to begin by focusing on what you have, not on what you do not, you'll be surprised what you find. Discover how to leverage your passions, experience, and expertise to generate the income you require. And then you have to live it: stay true to that picture and sustain it. Don't get distracted by the lure of accumulating wealth if it means sacrificing your true vision of prosperity. Once you have achieved this balance you will have found your Prosperity Zone.

In an era of economic stress, rapid change, and social networking, customers are distracted, disgruntled, and harder to please than ever. Picky, Fickle, Vocal, Wired, and Vain - they have very little tolerance for error and are ready to spread the word quickly over the internet when things go wrong. If a company's customer service doesn't adapt to these new conditions, they will get burned by bloggers and viral videos that can severely damage their reputation. This book describes exactly what today's customers expect and how to give it to them. In Wired and Dangerous, Bell and Patterson provide a tested formula for restoring balance to the customer relationship by establishing what they call "Service Calm". The three steps to Service Calm sound simple, but they draw on sophisticated psychological principles and are profound in application: 1) Deal with Self, 2) Deal with Customer, 3) Deal with Context.

There are lots of books that address how we should take care of ourselves, find calm, and enjoy happiness in a hectic work world. But few of those books apply the lessons of Buddhist thinking as resolution and guidance tools. These questions, though found in the modern day, are actually the core of all Buddha's teachings - impermanence, suffering, and the quest for happiness (freedom from suffering). This makes Buddha the kind of consultant or coach we need today in our workplaces.Following in the tradition of the authors' first bestseller, this work goes on to explore and answer 101 dilemmas that we encounter at work, with topics ranging from time management, goal-setting, conflict to job dissatisfaction, unemployment, and even workplace trysts. The authors emphasize practical learning and coping, not esoteric insights or metaphysics, applying concrete solutions from Buddhist teachings to real problems in easily digestible chunks.

China succeeded Japan as the world's second largest economy in 2010 many predict it will grow to be larger than the United States by 2020. Three decades ago, China was a rural economy with barely any exports. The rise of China presents the United States with a "Sputnik Moment," in the words of President Obama. Will we rise to the challenge as we did during the space race, or will we rationalize and scapegoat our way to explaining why we can't compete?Ann Lee provides an unvarnished assessment of China's political economy and governance structure, analyzing the sources of China's success and identifying lessons that can be applied by other governments regardless of ideology. As a Chinese-American who emigrated to the U.S. from Hong Kong at the age of seven, Lee is uniquely situated to help Americans understand how China sees its own society and how to adapt some Chinese practices to benefit the U. S. For example, the Chinese economy is designed to make the kind of unproductive and unrestrained financial speculation that has devastated much of the West impossible. Aspiring Chinese politicians have to pass tests to prove their competency to govern. The Chinese homicide rate is a fifth of what it is in the U.S. While not blind to China's shortcomings, Lee argues that rather than demonizing China, a more productive use of time and resources is to learn from this rising power in order to maximize the talent of millions of people.

Belva Davis recounts her remarkable journey from Monroe, Louisiana, up through the black radio industry in Oakland to become an award-winning news anchor known as the Walter Cronkite of the Bay Area.Never in My Wildest Dreams is a memoir with a message. Raised in a dysfunctional family in Louisiana and the San Francisco Bay area, Belva Davis rose through the black radio industry, became the first black female reporter west of the Mississippi with her hiring at KPIX, and eventually anchored KQED's "Evening Edition," the station's nightly news show. Overcoming personal and career obstacles, Davis reported on some of the era's most explosive stories, including the rise and fall of the Black Panthers, the Jonestown massacre, and the Moscone/Milk murders. The book also recounts Davis's interviews with world leaders, including Fidel Castro and three U.S. presidents.

Built to Love is a practical how-to guide for companies, detailing steps to create products that illicit emotions that provide value to customers, regardless of whether the products are physical products, services, technologies, software, systems, or brands.Using a combination of industry-based research and laboratory experiments, the authors demonstrate that customers will richly pay for products that authentically provide emotional fulfillment. They uncover the science behind successful products that create an avid and loyal following, and they present evidence that product emotions increase a product's success in the marketplace as well as a firm's success in the stock market (even when the economy is down!). Then, using analytical and practical tools, the authors show how to analyze customers' emotional needs and translate those needs into features that galvanize those customers. Throughout, the book uses revealing case studies that show how to energize customers in both consumer and business-to-business worlds.

While there are the major situations that have been getting mass media attention such as Maddoff's vast Ponzi scheme, the gutting of America's retirement funds, massive job layoffs, extensive home foreclosures and the whole Wall Street financial meltdown, it is the minor ways in which trust is broken each and every day that can be more insidious, because they are unintentional, accumulative, and often go unaddressed. In fact, the current ecomonic collapse, when looked at more closesly, is a result of many accumulative minor betrayals. When added up there was a major melt down impacting our entire country and the world. This is a powerful example of the impact of accumulative betrayal and confirms the authors' over 17 years of research and practice: Minor unintentional forms of betrayal are the most pervasive in eroding working relationships, and ultimately, society.Betrayal is a natural element of relationships and human nature. It is going to occur. We are going to experience it. The book gives the reader permission to be human. It identifies betrayal as an opportunity for renewal instead of just a cause for destruction, and guides the reader through four core ideas: Trust is built and broken daily, When trust breaks down, relationships do not have to be history. Renewal is a function of taking responsibility. Courage and compassion are partners in the process of healing and renewal.When let down or even betrayed, people naturally respond with judgment, criticism and blame. This reflects the natural tendency to pull back, contract and to protect oneself. Responsibility is replaced with apathy and the cycle of distrust is fed. Courage and compassion are partners in the healing process because we need both in order to renew. It takes courage to not be overrun by our fear and compassion to give ourselves and others the benefit of the doubt. This new work acknowledges the critical need for rebuilding trust and provides practical guidance on rebuilding trust, healing and renewal.

There's nothing easy about apology. The news is filled with examples of leaders apologizing, needing to apologize, or failing miserably at the attempt. And certainly we all have occasion to apologize ourselves maybe more often than we realize. But we don't need more apologies, says John Kador we need better ones. Too many people just go through the motions, missing out on the power of apology to restore strained relationships, create possibilities for growth, and generate better outcomes for all. Effective Apology challenges you to think about the fundamental value and importance of apology as it delivers detailed advice for making an apology that truly heals and renews. Kador explores the Five Rs of apology: Recognize the wrong and the person harmed, accept moral Responsibility for your actions, express Remorse, provide meaningful Restitution, and offer assurance that the offense will not be Repeated. Making apology work in the real world when and how to apologize, in what medium, and how to make it stick is made clear through over seventy examples of good and bad apologies drawn from the news, popular culture, and the experiences of Kador, his clients, and his friends. The willingness to apologize signals strength, character, and integrity. Effective leadership is impossible without effective apology. John Kador shows how to craft and deliver a confident apology that will defuse resentment, reduce litigation, create goodwill, and transform a relationship ruptured by mistrust and disappointment into something stronger and more durable than it ever was before.

So many of us are beset by anxiety, depression, loneliness, and spiritual malaise, tense and unhappy despite our gadgets and goodies. Michael Schuler, leader of the nation's largest Unitarian Universalist congregation, says it's because, urged on by an aggressively materialist culture, we too often opt for short-term gratification and long-term denial. In this thoughtful and deeply honest book, he helps us find a life path that leads to treasures of perennial value: a beautiful and healthy earth home, enduring relationships, strong communities, work that contributes to the common good, and play that restores our bodies and lifts our souls. Deconstructing the assumption that consumption, stimulation, and constant motion comprise the good life, Schuler urges the wholesale embrace of sustainability as both an operational principle and a life-sustaining core value. His book presents sustainability as a coherent frame of reference that can ground us spiritually, heal us internally, and deepen our relationships. Schuler identifies four behavioral principles for living sustainably Pay Attention, Stay Put, Exercise Patience, and Practice Prudence and shows how to apply them in our daily lives. He uses stories from his own life to illuminate the rewards and challenges of sustainable living and shares insights from environmentalists, social commentators, writers, poets, businesspeople, and spiritual leaders.

The lessons of Full Steam Ahead! are revealed through the inspirational story of two people who were able to create a vision for the place they worked and for their own lives. Jim Carpenter, president of a mid-sized insurance agency, didn't get the "vision thing." The agency was doing well, but Jim had a strong sense that things could be much better. Ellie Atkins offered a fresh perspective. Together they discover the three elements of a compelling vision: a significant purpose, clear values, and a picture of the future.They also discover how to ensure that the vision comes alive through understanding the principles of: how it is created, how it is communicated and how it is lived and demonstrate that vision is not only necessary, but also possible and achievable.

Most of us don't use our yesterdays very well. With our cultural obsession with "living in the moment," we neglect to engage in creative reflection on our personal histories. In The Power Of Your Past, John Schuster systematically demonstrates that our pasts are the biggest, most accessible, and most under-utilized of resources for anyone wanting to make positive changes. In contrast to other more technical, spiritual, or therapeutic guides that address working with one's past, he offers a balanced, practical and accessible approach through an actionable three-phase model: Recalling, Reclaiming, and Recasting. He provides exercises that link past events to achieving sounder interpretations and illustrates the process with inspiring histories of those who have experienced transformative results through embracing their own professional and personal pasts.Schuster provides insight, encouragement, and steps for essential professional and personal development. Readers who follow this model will make progress in careers short on heart and meaning, overcome obstacles that other methods can't address, and make decisions based on their truth, not the "versions" of truth they have inherited and not fully examined. They will enjoy the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that all they need to grow insight, courage and persistence are the ingredients is already within.

We all want to live a life without regrets, but few of us succeed. Marc Muchnick, bestselling coauthor of The Leadership Pill, outlines thirty simple yet potentially life-changing actions that anyone can take to avoid regret and thereby live a happier, more meaningful life.   Whenever we do something we wish we hadn''t—or don''t do something we wish we had—we vow it won''t happen again. But do we ask ourselves why it happened in the first place?   Because we become prisoners of habit and circumstance, we take people in our lives for granted and fail to be true to ourselves. We stop growing and learning, become self-absorbed and judgmental, and lose touch with our innate goodness. Inspired by his final conversation with a dying friend, Marc Muchnick’s No More Regrets! is specifically designed to help you avoid these pitfalls.   Just one or two of the thirty ways to greater happiness and meaning outlined here could potentially change your life. Muchnick’s suggestions are straightforward, thoughtful, and easy to implement—often just a matter of shifting perspective and seeing the world differently. No More Regrets! will show you how to live in a way that allows you to confidently move forward rather than constantly look back.

Ever-expanding landfills, ocean gyres filled with floating plastic mush, endangered wildlife. Our garbage has become a massive and exponentially growing problem in modern society. Eco-entrepreneur Tom Szaky explores why this crisis exists and explains how can we solve it by eliminating the very idea of garbage. To outsmart waste, he says, we first have to understand it, then change how we create it, and finally rethink what we do with it. By mimicking nature and focusing on the value inherent in our by-products, we can transform the waste we can’t avoid creating from useless trash to a useful resource. Szaky demonstrates that there is value in every kind of garbage, from used chewing gum to juice pouches to cigarette butts. After reading this mind-expanding book, you will never think about garbage the same way again.

This short, easy-to-read fable reveals the five habits that underlie leadership character and that determine leaders' success - and teaches leaders how to develop these habits.Like Mark Miller's previous books, this one follows the life, learning, and influence of Debbie Bruster. Here she finds herself mentoring Blake Brown, the son of her former mentor. Rather than answer Blake's questions about leadership directly, Debbie introduces him to other leaders, each of whom shares a unique perspective on what really makes a leader successful. As Blake puts the pieces together, he discovers his problem is not one of skills but of character, that leadership is more about the heart of the leader than the head or hands. In fact, Miller summarized these traits with the acronym HEART: Hunger for Wisdom, Expect the Best, Accept Responsibility, Respond with Courage, and Think Others First. With the help of his new friends and mentors, Blake is able to build a plan to transform his heart. The good news for all of us: leadership is not just the purview of the few - it is within reach for millions of aspiring leaders around the world. This book is the road map they need to get their lives and careers on track.

We are plagued today by a decline in ethical behavior. Scandals come so thick and fast that any attempt to list them is out of date in weeks if not days. But ethics isn’t just a matter of headlines; it’s a part of everyone’s life. We’re called on to make ethical decisions, large and small, all the time. This can be particularly tricky in the workplace, where our decisions can affect not just ourselves but coworkers, clients, customers, and even the entire company. Existing ethics books are of limited use. They generally feature one author’s opinions on very specific situations, which may well have nothing to do with the problems we’re facing. And anyway, we don’t need expert advice. Mark Pastin insists every one of us is qualified to resolve even the thorniest dilemmas ourselves, and in this profoundly practical book he gives us the tools to do just that. Pastin argues that we all have an innate ethical –he calls it “the ethics eye.” The problem is, we’re not aware we have it or how to develop it. Here he provides practical tools we can use to open up our ethics eye so that we can consistently see what is right and do it. Make an Ethical Difference shows how to apply these tools using actual ethical dilemmas drawn from Pastin’s decades of experience as an advisor to governments, corporations, and NGOs. The point is not to try to wedge your situation into one of the examples—it’s to show how a tool that can be applied to any situation is used in one particular instance. And once you’ve reached a decision, Pastin offers strategies for building consensus with those who might disagree with you. People often feel hopeless and skeptical that there is anything they as individuals can do to raise society’s ethical level or resolve long-standing impasses. By using the unique tools in this book, we will gain confidence in our innate ethical sense and take actions that will elevate the ethical level of the groups and organizations we belong to and society as a whole.

Theory matters in applied disciplines—fields that apply scholarly research to professional practice, such as management, social work, health care, human resource development, education, and many others. Because these disciplines deal with human beings in the real world, a flawed theory can result in actual harm to people and institutions. When faced with a professional problem, practitioners resort to the latest fad or simply throw everything and anything at it because of the lack of sound theory. Scholars deal with problems by slicing them into small segments to study them but fail to address the practical implications. What’s needed is a way to unite research and practice to create robust theory. This is exactly what Richard Swanson and Thomas Chermack offer here: a complete, five-step method for developing sound, field-tested theory in applied disciplines. Unlike many existing methods, which cover only the initial conceptualization of a theory, the authors offer a complete approach, from conceptualizing a theory to creating relevant assessment criteria, establishing a research agenda to test the theory’s validity, applying the theoretical concepts in the real world, and using that experience to further refine and improve the theory. The method is not restricted to any single discipline, nor is it beholden to any research ideology. Swanson and Chermack provide a set of tools for each phase of the process, making this book accessible and applicable to a wide audience. And in addition to examples in each chapter, they offer two extended case examples of complete theory building. With flawed theories impeding the development of many applied disciplines, this book is desperately needed.

The health of business is inextricably linked with the health of humanity and nature. But our current approaches to leadership treat business as entirely separate—and the result has been recurring economic, environmental, and human crises. In this extraordinary book, Ram Nidumolu uses evocative parables and stories from the ancient Indian wisdom texts, the Upanishads, to introduce Being-centered leadership. This new kind of leadership is anchored in the concept of Being, the fundamental reality that underlies all phenomena. Being-centered leaders are guided by an innate sense of interconnection—the good of the whole becomes an integral part of their decisions and actions. Using the experiences of over twenty trailblazing CEOs, as well as those from his own life, Nidumolu describes a four-stage road map every aspiring leader can use to reconnect business to the wider world—to the benefit of all.

Right now the number of people living on $2 a day or less is more than the entire population of the world in 1950. These 2.7 billion people are not just the world’s greatest challenge—they represent an extraordinary market opportunity. By learning how to serve them ethically and effectively, businesses can earn handsome profits while helping to solve one of the world’s most intractable problems. The key is what Paul Polak and Mal Warwick call Zero-Based Design: starting from scratch to create innovative products and services tailored for the very poor, armed with a thorough understanding of what they really want and need and driven by what they call “the ruthless pursuit of affordability.”Polak has been doing this work for years, and Warwick has extensive experience in both business and philanthropy. Together, they show how their design principles and vision can enable unapologetic capitalists to supply the very poor with clean drinking water, electricity, irrigation, housing, education, healthcare, and other necessities at a fraction of the usual cost and at profit margins attractive to investors. Promising governmental and philanthropic efforts to end poverty have not reached scale because they lack the incentives of the market to attract massive resources. This book opens an extraordinary opportunity for nimble entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate executives that will result not only in vibrant, growing businesses but also a better life for the world’s poorest people.

EMPLOYEES TODAY are actively searching for more meaning in the workplace, for work that resonates with their being. How does one dare yearn for something more, when so many workplaces seem aligned solely with financial survival and profit making? How do we get work done amidst the demands and tugs on our soul? Bringing Your Soul to Work addresses these troubling questions in a way that provides a pathway for readers who want to bridge the gap between their spiritual and work lives. It honors readers' unique experiences and challenges them to think differently, aligning their actions with their hearts. Engaging, inspiring, and poetic, yet grounded in real life, this book is written by consultants who see the contradictions of the workplace firsthand. Using case examples, personal stories, inspirational quotes, visual images, reflective questions, and specific applications, it shows readers how to use their own experience to grapple with the gritty realities of the workplace. Throughout the book, readers are invited to consider the book's concepts in relation to their own unique situations and, in the case of the applications, to record their responses in writing. They then learn to construct meaning from their own experience, drawing on imagination and practice, as well as the specific circumstances of their work lives. Addressing what many feel but cannot say out loud, Bringing Your Soul to Work links ideas about soul to the realities of work in a unique way. For all those looking to increase their effectiveness at work and bring more feeling, imagination, and heart into their efforts with others, it will serve as a guide for creating something new and lasting.

This booklet gives an overview of the Search Conference, a change strategy which uses open systems principles in strategic planning, thereby creating a well-articulated, achievable future with identifiable goals, a timetable, and action plans for realizing that future. Here, in their own inspiring words, over 100 CEOs, board chairs, and company presidents share their insights in one-page letters focusing on the qualities necessary for effective leadership and career success. The men and women featured in Pathways to Success come from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Their companies range from small entrepreneurial firms to large corporations. Organized by topic, these letters provide practical and encouraging insights on: o Hard work o Imagination o Tolerance o Honesty o Self-knowledge o Team-building, and more Each letter is self-contained and to-the-point, capturing the personal experience and positive convictions of these distinguished business leaders. A biographical sketch accompanies each letter, describing the career path of the contributor as well as the major challenges and obstacles that person has overcome to achieve success. The book also contains thought-provoking exercises for individual use or group discussion. Written for young people who aspire to successful business careers and leadership roles, this book will also be valuable for executives and managers, entrepreneurs, academics, consultants, and those who work with young people-counselors, teachers, mentors, and parents.

You already know why your company should go green. This comprehensive guide tells you how to do it profitably. It details every step of the process—from getting employee buy-in and conducting a current sustainability audit to developing a plan of action and measuring progress. Nuts-and-bolts guidance helps you make continuous, cost-effective improvements and shift the prevailing business culture by infusing green practices into your organization’s very DNA. Through illustrative examples from a wide variety of industries, this book shows how to • Design sustainable products • Green your facilities • Find green vendors • Use renewable energy • Reduce harmful emissions • Recycle waste products, and more The emphasis is on practicality—stand-alone chapters you can read when you need them and tools you can use to implement change in any area of your organization.