Rituals are powerful tools: they reinforce good habits, motivate personal and professional achievement, create a common bond between co-workers and build shared values; they can transform an organization's culture and provide a foundation to achieve common goals. Focusing on real-world examples, this book takes a practical approach to the power and benefits of workplace rituals. This insightful guide presents 50 creative rituals, from business and management to design and personal development. Specific case studies highlight the use of rituals and their positive impact to real-world organizations, while vivid visuals allow us to feel their energy and emotion.A ritual is only effective when its purpose is clearly defined. This book goes beyond simple analysis to provide actual recipes for individual rituals designed to promote specific habits, change negative behaviors, and instill values. Each ritual can be adapted to achieve a multitude of goals and tailored to fit your organization or team's specific needs.● Change behaviors, form positive habits, and assign meaning to shared goals● Build shared values, foster innovation, and encourage strong teamwork● Deal with conflicts effectively and engage others to work on resolutions● Learn the fundamental concepts of ritual-building and share your knowledge with your teamAn informative and inspirational resource for executives, managers, team leaders, and employees of every level, Rituals for Work provides a blueprint for building a culture of engagement, innovation, and shared purpose for organizations of all sizes, across industries.

    This bridge is a model which has been 10 years in the making. In fact, the bridge is the practical plan that Reward Gateway have used to engage with their own workforce and build the world's largest employee engagement technology company. The model, information and tips/tools provided in the book speak at a level that HR professionals will easily be able to understand and action. Build It not only contains information based on Reward Gateway's experience using the bridge, but includes case studies and research from both academics and HR practitioners who have excelled in improving employee engagement through one or more sections of the bridge.

    Also appropriate for a wide variety of administration courses in disciplines such as nursing, psychology, health sciences, social work, public administration, agriculture, religion, education, and human development.Used by more than a million people throughout the world, this highly readable book provides a comprehensive examination of the applied behavioral sciences, and focuses on fundamental ideas which have stood the test of years of application in academic, business, not-for-profit and administrative environments.

    Hardcover published by Quadragle/The New York Times Book Co., third printing, August 1977, copyright 1975.

    When inexperienced entrepreneurs ask my advice about their idea for a tech startup, they often worry "What if Google decides to compete with us? They will crush us!" I respond that far more startups die of suicide than homicide. If you can avoid hurting yourself, then you are already better off than most of your competitors. Startups are a chance to build something entirely original with brilliant and ambitious people. But startups are also dangerous. Limited money means there is little room for mistakes. One bad decision can mean bankruptcy. The potential payoff attracts capital, which in turn attracts scam artists. The unscrupulous often lack the skills needed to succeed, but sometimes they are smart enough to trick investors. Even entrepreneurs who start with a strong moral compass can find that the threat of failure unmoors their ethics from their ambition. Emotions matter. We might hope that those in leadership positions possess strength and resilience, but vanity and fragile egos have sabotaged many of the businesses that I’ve worked with. Defeat is always a possibility, and not everyone finds healthy ways to deal with the stress. In this book I offer both advice and also warnings. I've seen certain self-destructive patterns play out again and again, so I wanted to document one of the most extreme cases that I've witnessed. In 2015 I worked for a startup that began with an ingenious idea: to use the software techniques known as Natural Language Processing to allow people to interact with databases by writing ordinary English sentences. This was a multi-billion dollar idea that could have transformed the way people gathered and used information. However, the venture had inexperienced leadership. They burned through their $1.3 million seed money. As their resources dwindled, their confidence transformed into doubt, which was aggravated by edicts from the Board Of Directors ordering sudden changes that effectively threw away weeks' worth of work. Every startup forces its participants into extreme positions, often regarding budget and deadlines. Often these situations are absurd to the point of parody. Therefore, there is considerable humor in this story. The collision of inexperience and desperation gives rise to moments that are simply silly. I tell this story in a day-to-day format, both to capture the early optimism, and then the later sense of panic. Here then, is a cautionary tale, a warning about tendencies that everyone joining a startup should be on guard against."

    It proposes enlightening similarities between, for instance, maneuvering in limited war and in a traffic jam; deterring the Russians and one's own children; the modern strategy of terror and the ancient institution of hostages.

    Schein gets back to basics and delivers a dynamite primer on changing cultures packed with practical advice. Here, Schein separates the sense from the nonsense regarding culture change theory and practice and tells in plain terms how readers can assess their organization to determine if its current culture fits its people and products. He then examines corporate culture on three levels--behaviors, values, and shared assumptions--and shows how each factors into change initiatives. Framed around the questions managers ask most often, the book uses case studies to show what successful change looks like and to demonstrate how you can dismantle a dysfunctional culture. A Warren Bennis Book

    The long-awaited update for work and organizations in the knowledge age!A book about complexity and work - and about how to deal productively with both.A condensed introduction to the theory and practice of organizational high performance.A manifesto for contemporary leadership and profound transformation in organizations of all kinds.

    This thoroughly revised, second edition, updated to include new case histories and fresh research findings, uses country-by-country graphs, examples, and other comparisons to clearly illustrate how different cultures respond to different management approaches; provides case histories to show how managers have successfully anticipated and mediated difficult and potentially costly dilemmas; and shows how managers can prepare their organizations for the process of internationalization through specific points of intervention.

    Widely praised and much-discussed, this classic book explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking egoists—whether superpowers, businesses, or individuals—when there is no central authority to police their actions. The problem of cooperation is central to many different fields. Robert Axelrod recounts the famous computer tournaments in which the “cooperative” program Tit for Tat recorded its stunning victories, explains its application to a broad spectrum of subjects, and suggests how readers can both apply cooperative principles to their own lives and teach cooperative principles to others.

    Supermaker empowers and unites the next generation of entrepreneurs.• A go-to guide for the passion-to-profit journey.• The perfect read for aspiring entrepreneurs, makers, creatives, and anyone with an interest in natural products, selling your products online, retail strategy, and digital marketing.• Great for anyone who enjoyed Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie, Craft, Inc: Turn Your Creative Hobby into a Business by Meg Mateo Ilasco, and The Girls' Guide to Starting Your Own Business: Candid Advice, Frank Talk, and True Stories for the Successful Entrepreneur by Caitlin Friedman.

    But often their solutions fall far short of what they want to accomplish and what is truly needed. Moreover, the answers they propose and fund often produce the opposite of what they want over time. We end up with temporary shelters that increase homelessness, drug busts that increase drug-related crime, or food aid that increases starvation. How do these unintended consequences come about and how can we avoid them? By applying conventional thinking to complex social problems, we often perpetuate the very problems we try so hard to solve, but it is possible to think differently, and get different results. Systems Thinking for Social Change enables readers to contribute more effectively to society by helping them understand what systems thinking is and why it is so important in their work. It also gives concrete guidance on how to incorporate systems thinking in problem solving, decision making, and strategic planning without becoming a technical expert. Systems thinking leader David Stroh walks readers through techniques he has used to help people improve their efforts to end homelessness, improve public health, strengthen education, design a system for early childhood development, protect child welfare, develop rural economies, facilitate the reentry of formerly incarcerated people into society, resolve identity-based conflicts, and more. The result is a highly readable, effective guide to understanding systems and using that knowledge to get the results you want.

    An attempt to formulate common laws that apply to virtually every scientific field, this conceptual approach has had a profound impact on such widely diverse disciplines as biology, economics, psychology, and demography.

    Then, when the dot-com bubble burst and the economy cooled, many assumed the war for talent was over. It's not. Now the authors of the original study reveal that, because of enduring economic and social forces, the war for talent will persist for the next two decades. McKinsey & Company consultants Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod argue that winning the war for leadership talent is about much more than frenzied recruiting tactics. It's about the timeless principles of attracting, developing, and retaining highly talented managers - applied in bold new ways. And it's about recognizing the strategic importance of human capital because of the enormous value that better talent creates.Fortified by five years of in-depth research on how companies manage leadership talent - including surveys of 13,000 executives at more than 120 companies and case studies of 27 leading companies - the authors propose a fundamentally new approach to talent management. They describe how to: create a winning EVP (employee value proposition) that will make your company uniquely attractive to talent; move beyond recruiting hype to build a long-term recruiting strategy; use job experiences, coaching, and mentoring to cultivate the potential in managers; and, strengthen your talent pool by investing in A players, developing B players, and acting decisively on C players.Central to this approach is a pervasive talent mindset - a deep conviction shared by leaders throughout the company that competitive advantage comes from having better talent at all levels. Using practical examples from companies such as GE, The Home Depot, PerkinElmer, Amgen, and Enron, the authors outline five imperatives that every leader - from CEO to unit manager - must act on to build a stronger talent pool. Written by recognized authorities on the topic, this is the definitive strategic guide on how to win the war for talent.

    Author Howard Love calls this pattern the  start-up J Curve: The toughest part of the endeavor is the time between the actual start of a new business and when the product and model are firmly established. The Start-Up J Curve gives entrepreneurs the tools they need to get through the early challenges so they can reach the primary value creation that lies beyond.Love brings thirty-five years of start-up experience to this comprehensive guide to starting a business. He outlines the six predictable stages of start-up growth and details the activities that should be undertaken at each stage to ensure success and to avoid common pitfalls. Instead of feeling lost and confused after a setback, start-up founders and investors can anticipate the challenges, overcome the obstacles, and ride the curve to the top.