No More Heroes: Grassroots Challenges to the Savior Mentality


Jordan Flaherty - 2016
    No More Heroes celebrates grassroots challenges to these saviors and highlights movements focused on real, systemic change from the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter.Praise for No More Heroes “In this marvelous, enormously instructive book, Jordan Flaherty explores how we too often allow the struggle for change to be undermined by would-be saviors—and how today’s grassroots social movements, led by communities on the frontlines of crisis, are charting a far more powerful path forward.” —Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything“Part memoir, part history, part political critique, No More Heroes exposes the savior complex for what it really is: imperialism camouflaged as a rescue operation. A perfect gift for the age of Trump.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams“In No More Heroes, Jordan Flaherty upends the world. You might think you understand the issues of sex workers, disaster victims, and the poor, but through this series of personal stories from the front lines of these fights, No More Heroes demonstrates that our best intended assumptions are often wrong. Read this book before your misguided good intentions do more harm to your pet causes than good.” —Lolis Eric Elie, Writer, HBO’s Treme“From left -wing vanguards, Teach-For-America, and charitable foundations, to the power of military interventions, Jordan Flaherty shows how rhetorics of commercial culture and corporate media re-appear as ‘moral’ arguments to justify domination. This is an original interrogation of destructive control masquerading as ‘help.’” —Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse“Jordan Flaherty is one of America’s most committed journalists writing from below and to the left. His work lifts up voices rarely heard in media as he focuses on the tireless, courageous work of marginalized communities building collective power. At a time when many movements are increasingly aligned with the dangerous neoliberal notion of individual saviors, Jordan reminds us there are no masters in the path to love and liberation.” —Harsha Walia, author of Undoing Border Imperialism“Compelling and accessible, this book may be challenging for folks with privilege—especially cisgendered straight white men—to read as it demands they ask searing questions that may indict them and their behavior, but Flaherty shows clearly that is exactly what privileged people have to do, because oppressed people stare these realities in the face every day—and when we blink, we die.” —Walidah Imarisha, author of Angels with Dirty Faces“Jordan Flaherty...has learned through personal experience and from listening to those who are marginalized just how dangerous it can be for would-be superheroes (even those with the best intentions) to take up the cause of justice, absent a real grounding in the solidarity and accountability necessary to bring true liberation. This is a unique and compelling contribution to movement literature, written with a humility that is as powerful as it is genuine.” —Tim Wise, author of White Like Me“No More Heroes gives us all another opportunity to do what it will actually take to create liberation in our lifetimes: trust them most impacted, come together across forms of oppression, and most importantly throw away the scarcity-based, fragile individuality that privilege teaches us to defend. Let it go, and embrace the humbling, collective work of getting free.” —Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Spill

Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs


Muhammad Yunus - 1997
    He demonstrates how social business transforms lives; offers practical guidance for those who want to create social businesses of their own; explains how public and corporate policies must adapt to make room for the social business model; and shows why social business holds the potential to redeem the failed promise of free-market enterprise.

So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools


Charles M. Payne - 2008
    At its heart is the argument that most education policy discussions are disconnected from the daily realities of urban schools, especially those in poor and beleaguered neighborhoods. Charles M. Payne argues that we have failed to account fully for the weakness of the social infrastructure and the often dysfunctional organizational environments of urban schools and school systems. The result is that liberals and conservatives alike have spent a great deal of time pursuing questions of limited practical value in the effort to improve city schools.Payne carefully delineates these stubborn and intertwined sources of failure in urban school reform efforts of the past two decades. Yet while his book is unsparing in its exploration of the troubled recent history of urban school reform, Payne also describes himself as guardedly optimistic. He describes how, in the last decade, we have developed real insights into the roots of school failure, and into how some individual schools manage to improve. He also examines recent progress in understanding how particular urban districts have established successful reforms on a larger scale.

The Travels of A T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade


Pietra Rivoli - 2005
    Over five years, business professor Pietra Rivoli traveled from a Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory to a used clothing market in Africa, to investigate compelling questions about the politics, economics, ethics, and history of modern business and globalization. Using the story of the t-shirt to illustrate the major issues of the globalization debate, this uniquely entertaining business book offers a surprising, enlightening, and balanced look at one of the major topics of our time. It has won the prize or award - Business Book of the Year 2005, Finalist; AAP Awards for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing, 2006.

The Five Dysfunctions of a team Summarized for Busy People


Patrick Lencioni - 2014
    This summary explores the fundamental causes of organizational politics and team failure.

Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off


Mark Kaplan - 2013
    Working effectively to combat unconscious bias across differences such as gender, culture, generational, race, and sexual orientation not only leads to a more productive, innovative corporate culture but also to a better engagement with customers and clients. The Inclusion Dividend provides a framework to tap the bottom-line impact that results from an inclusive culture. Most leaders have the intent to be inclusive, however translating that intent into a truly inclusive outcome with employees, customers, and other stakeholders requires a focused change effort. The authors explain that challenge and provide straightforward advice on how to achieve the kind of meritocracy that will result in a tangible dividend and move companies ahead of their competition.

The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy


Lisa Dodson - 2009
    Based on author Lisa Dodson’s eight years of research and conversations with hundreds of Americans about the need to create ethical alternatives to rules that ignore the humanity of working parents and put their children at risk, The Moral Underground features stories of middle class managers and professionals who refuse to be complicit in an economy that puts a decent life beyond the reach of the working poor.Whether it’s a nurse choosing to treat an uninsured child, a supervisor padding a paycheck, or a restaurant manager sneaking food to a worker’s children, these unsung heroes reach across the economic fault line to restore a sense of justice to the working world.Write-up by author: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/...

Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace


Christine Porath - 2016
    Slights, insensitivities, and rude behaviors can cut deeply. Moreover, incivility hijacks focus. Even if people want to perform well, they can't. Customers too are less likely to buy from a company with an employee who is perceived as rude. Ultimately, incivility cuts the bottom line. In Mastering Civility, Christine Porath shows how people can enhance their influence and effectiveness with civility. Combining scientific research with fascinating evidence from popular culture and fields such as neuroscience, medicine, and psychology, this book provides managers and employers with a much-needed wake-up call, while also reminding them of what they can do right now to improve the quality of their workplaces.

Turning Stones: My Days and Nights with Children at Risk


Marc Parent - 1996
    Why does an infant die of malnutrition? Why does an eight-year-old hold a knife to his brother's throat? Or a mother push her cherished daughter twenty-three floors to her death? Marc Parent, a city caseworker, searched the streets--and his heart--for the answers, and shares them in this powerful, vivid, beautifully written book.WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR

With Charity for All: The Terrible Truth of Charitable Failure


Ken Stern - 2013
    economy. Counterintuitive, provocative, compulsively readable, With Charity for All creates a new paradigm that will transform every American's relationship to their end-of-year giving. During his years running a major nonprofit, Kenneth Stern became aware that working for a nonprofit was like entering a looking-glass world where the marketplace incentives were utterly perverse. Far from wanting to grow and adapt its business to changing times, his board seemed most concerned with catering to eccentric donors and maintaining the status quo. The experience set him on a journey to explore the vast and unaccountable world of U.S. charities. From water charities that serve Africa to the policemen who provide drug education in public schools, from the Metropolitan Opera to college bowl games, he discovers a huge, mostly well-meaning charitable sector that is nonetheless hobbled by deep structural flaws. Unlike private corporations, which respond to market signals and adjust strategies and even go out of business when they fail, nonprofit organizations have a very low barrier to entry (the IRS approves 99.5% of applications) and once begun basically never die. Even groups that rate charities use deeply flawed measures, such as the percentage spent on overhead costs, a measure that actually deters charities from making much-needed investments. The stories of charities that spend millions despite never even cracking the problems they set out to solve (most water charities, sad to say) are devastating. But it's not all bad news. Stern also explores a growing movement toward nonprofit accountability and effectiveness and offers a prescription for individual giving and for wholesale reform.

It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street


Nomi Prins - 2009
    We all watched as Wall Street heavyweights fought tooth and nail to declaw financial reform and won.Former Wall Streeter Nomi Prins has been watching, too, and she is not going to let them get away with it. More than just an angry populist, commentator stuck on the sidelines, Prins understand Big Finance and big money and big schemes-and in this book she exposes the fundamental follies of our economic system and the schemes of the bigwigs who have no intention of letting it change.Remarkably combines detail, clarity, and narrative momentum, revealing all the ways in banks gamed the system to get the most money with the least oversight. Exposes the power-bankers who bagged more than $5 billion in compensation before and after their companies grabbed more than a trillion dollars in federal bailout subsidies-and how the government's indignation at this didn't lead to change. Shows how the most egregious pillagers work at the Fed and Treasury department, detailing how Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner siphoned off $10.7 trillion from the public's future for Big Finance's present, all the while telling us it was for our own good. Slams a financial system that will not change, if our government doesn't force it to change, no matter what happens in the so-called free market and why the 'sweeping' financial reform bill passed after Wall Street reconsolidated its power, is anything but sweeping or reformative. Written by a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, now a senior fellow at Demos, who writes regularly on corruption in Washington and Wall Street for news outlets ranging from Fortune to Mother Jones. If you're still enraged and frustrated with how the bank bailout went bust for the American people, or how Wall Street continues to operate as if the rest of the world doesn't matter, or how the banks are once again rolling in outsized profits and obscene bonuses while average Americans continue to struggle through a bleak landscape of foreclosures and job loss, It Takes a Pillage gives voice to your outrage, and provides a deeper insight into what we really have to be angry about and how we can fight for some real change.

Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that Can Solve Problems and Change the World


Michael Jacoby Brown - 2006
    In addition to addressing common problems that are often encountered, the book also discusses how to run engaging meetings, recruit and motivate community members, raise necessary funds, and turn a passion into a powerful tool for social change.

Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization


Robert Kegan - 2009
    Desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive.Given that the status quo is so potent, how can we change ourselves and our organizations?In Immunity to Change, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey show how our individual beliefs--along with the collective mind-sets in our organizations--combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. By revealing how this mechanism holds us back, Kegan and Lahey give us the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can bring our organizations forward with us.This persuasive and practical book, filled with hands-on diagnostics and compelling case studies, delivers the tools you need to overcome the forces of inertia and transform your life and your work.

Buzzing Communities: How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities


Richard Millington - 2012
    This book combines a century of proven science, dozens of real-life examples, practical tips, and trusted community-building methods.This step-by-step guide includes a lifecycle for tracking your progress and a framework for managing your organization's community efforts. This Book Will Help You toUnderstand what the members of your community really want.Dramatically increase the number of newcomers that become regulars.Avoid the mistakes most organizations make when they try to build online communities.Develop a fantastic, user-friendly website for your members.Grow your online community to critical mass and beyondKeep members engaged and active in your community.Measure the community's return on investment and explain the benefits to your organization.

Leadership on the Line, With a New Preface: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Change


Ronald A. Heifetz - 2017
    It's romantic and exciting to think of leadership as all inspiration, decisive action, and rich rewards, but leading requires taking risks that can jeopardize your career and your personal life. It requires putting yourself on the line, disrupting the status quo, and surfacing hidden conflict. And when people resist and push back, there's a strong temptation to play it safe. Those who choose to lead plunge in, take the risks, and sometimes get burned. But it doesn't have to be that way say renowned leadership experts Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky. In Leadership on the Line, they show how it's possible to make a difference without getting "taken out" or pushed aside. They present everyday tools that give equal weight to the dangerous work of leading change and the critical importance of personal survival. Through vivid stories from all walks of life, the authors present straightforward strategies for navigating the perilous straits of leadership. Whether you're a parent or a politician, a CEO or a community activist, this practical book shows how you can exercise leadership and survive and thrive to enjoy the fruits of your labor.