Creative Leadership

Adam Braun began working summers at hedge funds when he was just 16 years old, sprinting down the path to a successful Wall Street career. But while traveling as a college student, he met a young boy begging on the streets of India. When Braun asked the boy what he wanted most in the world, he simply answered, "A pencil." This small request became the inspiration for Pencils of Promise, the organization Braun would leave a prestigious job at Bain & Company to start with just $25 at the age of 24.

Building a fully engaged, energized workforce is the key to business success. The Power of Thanks reveals how leading companies like Intuit, JetBlue Airways, IHG, Symantec, ConAgra Foods, and The Hershey Company empower employees through social recognition, in which the practice of mutual appreciation and trust directs and rewards higher performance. Eric Mosley and Derek Irvine, executives at the world-renowned employee recognition firm Globoforce, explain why social recognition is so powerful and how you can apply it in your company.

This book will help you become a better product leader. Benefitting from Roman Pichler’s extensive experience, you’ll learn how to align stakeholders and guide development teams even in challenging circumstances, avoid common leadership mistakes, and grow as a leader. Written in an engaging and easily accessible style, How to Lead in Product Management offers a wealth of practical tips and strategies. Through helpful examples, the book illustrates how you can directly apply the techniques to your work.

Discover profound peace of mind and unlock striking success in just 30 days, even if the incessant chatter of your mind has always been your constant companion. Tired of getting lost in the labyrinth of your thoughts? Ever wondered if the reins to a healthier, happier, and more successful self were within you all along? Have you been searching for a truly life-changing guide who understands your struggles and helps you navigate the complexities of mind programming? You have come to the right place. Mastering the mind does not have to feel like you’re trying to solve a Rubik’s cube ...

Scott Wozniak leverages his decades of brand-building experience within some of America’s most-loved companies to show you how to create world-class customer experience. After years of battle-tested work, Scott realized that there was a set of systems that all the great brands used to create raving fans. He captured these practices in an engine diagram, a simple tool to help leaders become legends. If you use this approach, you can build a Customer Experience Engine that will create those same kinds of raving fans that always seem to dominate dinner-party conversations and water-cooler chats.

A year's worth of management wisdom, all in one place. We've reviewed the ideas, insights, and best practices from the past year of Harvard Business Review to keep you up to date on the most cutting-edge, influential thinking driving business today. With authors from Ginni Rometty to Robert I. Sutton and company examples from Maersk to Nvidia, this volume brings the most current and important management conversations right to your fingertips.

Above the Line: How to Create a Company Culture That Engages Employees, Delights Customers, and Delivers Results offers all leaders a handbook for leveraging an organization's culture to engage staff, increase customer satisfaction, and streamline business performance. A groundbreaking work, this book reveals what it takes to achieve optimum results from your organizational culture without employing the use of external consultants. This organic, in-house approach to company culture transformation saves both time and money.

Extraordinary organizations have extraordinary cultures. Fully engaged team members find personal meaning in their jobs—and in the company. Driven by a sense of purpose, they feel responsible, and accountable, for results. Personal development becomes the primary driver of organizational growth, leading to significant improvements in retention, quality, and profitability. In the wake of the Great Resignation, it’s more apparent than ever that an engaging culture is the ultimate competitive advantage.

In Applied Empathy, Michael Ventura, CEO and founder of Sub Rosa, a design firm that finds creative solutions for iconic brands and institutions such as GE, Nike, Citibank, Nikon, and Warby Parker and also West Point and the White House, offers entrepreneurs and executives a radical new business book and way forward. Applied Empathy presents real strategies, based on Sub Rosa’s design work as well as the popular class Ventura and his team have taught at Princeton University, on how to make lasting connections and evolve your business internally (your employees, culture, and product/services) as well as externally (your brand, consumers, and value).

Think of your to-do list at work. Chances are the most important tasks require you to work with others - and the success of those endeavors depends on the effectiveness of your collaboration. According to management expert Leigh Thompson, collaboration that is conscious, planned, and focused on generating new ideas builds excitement and produces what she calls a "creative conspiracy". Teams that conspire to organize themselves, motivate one another, and combine their talents to meet creative challenges are the hallmark of the most successful organizations.

Bob Johansen lays out the core concepts of full-spectrum thinking and reveals the role that digital media - including gameful engagement, big-data analytics, visualization, blockchain, and machine learning - will play in facilitating and enhancing it. He offers examples of broader spectrums and new applications in a wide range of areas that will become possible first, then mandatory. This visionary book provides powerful ways to make sense of new opportunities and see the world as it really is.

All projects are inherently risky, and complex ones can potentially be the downfall for even the most experienced project manager. From technical challenges and resource issues to unrealistic deadlines and problems with your subcontractors, any number of things can go wrong. Fully updated, consistent with PMI® standards, and addressing “VUCA” (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), this book remains the definitive resource for project managers seeking to be proactive in their efforts to guard against failure and minimize unwanted surprises.

Much has changed in the world since the original publication of Leading Out Loud, Terry Pearce's book on authentic leadership communication. Now, more than ever, the development of a leader's message is as crucial to success as the delivery of that message. In the third edition of his classic book, Terry Pearce shows leaders in all sectors how to communicate their values and vision to inspire commitment. In this important resource, Pearce continues to broaden the application of core principles, putting the spotlight on everyday, spontaneous communication.

Managing Priorities is your guide to prioritizing anything-anytime and anywhere. Harry Max digs into the best practices for prioritization at Apple, DreamWorks, NASA, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and beyond, and brings them together in a single, practical method that you can apply step by step.

No pre-pandemic strategy is effective anymore. Alan Weiss has developed an original, new approach to strategy which thus far has certified over 100 people globally, delivering this approach to scores of firms of all types in four countries.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Company of One by Paul Jarvis, read by Sam Woolf. What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale up a new business but rather to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better - and smarter - solution is simply to remain small? Company of One is a refreshing new approach centred on staying small and avoiding growth for any size business.

Plenty of research has been done on why companies go terribly wrong, but what makes companies go spectacularly right? That's the question Kim Cameron asked more than 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.

Though technology has evolved at hyper-speed over the past 100 years, management styles have mostly stayed the same. The higher-ups make the decisions, and the employees grind it out, often without knowing the endgame. In 1983, Jack Stack created a new game: the great game of business. Get in the Game further explains the rules of this game: To win, you must get everyone, at all levels of the business, as informed, involved, and engaged as the owner.

What qualities come to mind when you think about a good leader? Good listener, empathetic, good communication skills, humble, and clear expectations. Whether you're leading a small or large team, How to Be a Leader by former Honeywell CEO David Cote is a resource that will help you become the leader everyone respects and follows.

Have you ever arrived on the scene of a house fire to find a frantic woman in the driveway? As a firefighter, you know instinctively what this means: there is a child inside. You immediately enter "the zone" because you know what to do. This is based on your training and experience. The feeling of being "in the zone", is referred to in the field of positive psychology as "the flow".