Problems often arise with unrealistic or vague agendas, off-track conversations, tuned-out participants who don’t know why they’re there, and follow-up notes that no one reads—or acts on. Meetings can feel like a waste of time. But when you invest a little energy in preparing yourself and your participants, you’ll stay focused, solve problems, gain consensus, and leave each meeting ready to take action.With input from over 20 experts combined with useful checklists, sample agendas, and follow-up memos, the HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter will teach you how to:• Set and communicate your meeting’s purpose• Invite the right people• Prepare an achievable agenda• Moderate a lively conversation• Regain control of a wayward meeting• Ensure follow-through without babysitting or haranguingArm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, from a source you trust. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

     Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

    With vital performance and career lessons and ideas for how to apply them, it is a must-read for managers at every level.

    In Fish! the heroine, Mary Jane Ramirez, recently widowed and mother of two, is asked to engineer a turnaround of her company's troubled operations department, a group that authors Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen describe as a "toxic energy dump." Most reasonable heads would cut their losses and move on. Why bother with this bunch of losers? But the authors don't make it so easy for Mary Jane. Instead, she's left to sort out this mess with the help of head fishmonger Lonnie. Based on a bestselling corporate education video, Fish! aims to help employees find their way to a fun and happy workplace. While some may find the story line and prescriptions--such as "Choose Your Attitude," "Make Their Day," and "Be Present"--downright corny, others will find a good dose of worthwhile motivational management techniques. If you loved Who Moved My Cheese? then you'll find much to like here. And don't worry about Mary Jane and kids. Fish! has a happy ending for everyone. --Harry C. Edwards

    The book will do that through examples of how innovative practices can dramatically improve the success of change programs. These practices combine ideas from the Agile, Lean Startup, change management, organizational development and psychology communities. This book will change how you think about change. In this book we will cover: Why does change resistance emerge and what you should NOT do about it. And of course, how to harness that human reaction to the benefit of all involved in the change process. Step-by-step descriptions of how we combined ideas from many change methods and frameworks to develop a customized change management process that was right for The Commission. How you can customize your own change program just like we did at The Commission. How you can involve the people affected in the change in the design of that change. Directly contributing to the success of the change program. A newly appointed CIO had shaken the place up with some big changes, including a transition away from traditional management practices and towards Agile practices. How to implement these modern approaches to management in a very traditional organization? A new approach to change was needed. Lean Change Management was needed. This book describes how myself and team of change agents helped The Commission transform from an old-school public sector to a modern Agile organization. Was it easy? Of course not. But it was possible because of the innovative practices for Change Management that I describe in this book.

    It was their natural ability to start with why that enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way—and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be lead, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.Any organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not money or profit—those are always results. WHY does your organization exist? WHY does it do the things it does? WHY do customers really buy from one company or another? WHY are people loyal to some leaders, but not others?Starting with WHY works in big business and small business, in the nonprofit world and in politics. Those who start with WHY never manipulate, they inspire. And the people who follow them don't do so because they have to; they follow because they want to.Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire. This book is for anyone who wants to inspire others or who wants to find someone to inspire them.

    However well intentioned they may be, leaders who deceive themselves always end up undermining their own performance.This straightforward book explains how leaders can discover their own self-deceptions and learn how to escape destructive patterns. The authors demonstrate that breaking out of these patterns leads to improved teamwork, commitment, trust, communication, motivation, and leadership.

    Globally accepted and written by one of the most foremost authors in the field, this is a necessary read for all managers, human resource workers, and anyone needing to understand and improve their people skills.

    Yours don't have to.If you read nothing else on change management, read these 10 articles (featuring “Leading Change,” by John P. Kotter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you spearhead change in your organization.HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management will inspire you to:- Lead change through eight critical stages- Establish a sense of urgency- Overcome addiction to the status quo- Mobilize commitment- Silence naysayers- Minimize the pain of change- Concentrate resources- Motivate change when business is goodThis collection of best-selling articles includes: featured article "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" by John P. Kotter, "Change Through Persuasion," "Leading Change When Business Is Good: An Interview with Samuel J. Palmisano," "Radical Change, the Quiet Way," "Tipping Point Leadership," "A Survival Guide for Leaders," "The Real Reason People Won't Change," "Cracking the Code of Change," "The Hard Side of Change Management," and "Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change."

    People need to be effective.Productivity books focus on doing more, Jim and Tonianne want you to focus on doing better. Personal Kanban is about choosing the right work at the right time. Recognizing why we do the things we do. Understanding the impact of our actions. Creating value - not just product. For ourselves, our families, our friends, our co-workers. For our legacy.Personal Kanban takes the same Lean principles from manufacturing that led the Japanese auto industry to become a global leader in quality, and applies them to individual and team work. Personal Kanban asks only that we visualize our work and limit our work-in-progress. Visualizing work allows us to transform our conceptual and threatening workload into an actionable, context-sensitive flow. Limiting our work-in-progress helps us complete what we start and understand the value of our choices. Combined, these two simple acts encourage us to improve the way we work and the way we make choices to balance our personal, professional, and social lives.Neither a prescription nor a plan, Personal Kanban provides a light, actionable, achievable framework for understanding our work and its context. This book describes why students, parents, business leaders, major corporations, and world governments all see immediate results with Personal Kanban.

    Harvard Business School gathered data from assessments of more than 50,000 leaders, and the ability to inspire stood out as one of the most critical competencies. Inspiration creates the highest levels of engagement, it is what separates the best leaders from everyone else, and it is what employees want most in their leaders. The Inspirational Leader, Inspire Your Team To Believe In The Impossible was written to help all leaders successfully navigate all the disruptions in today fiercely competitive world we need a new generation of leaders who care deeply for the well-being of their team and who understand that their people are the heart of their leadership. Whether you are the leader of a large, medium or small organization; a Teacher, a V.P., CEO, Father, Mother, Police Officer, or Hustler; this book was written to help you inspire your team to believe in the impossible. Each chapter in this book will push you to become the leader you were destined to be; a leader of influence, a leader of value, a leader of vision and most importantly, an inspirational leader.

    Based on the true story of how one inspiring leader transformed a highly toxic organisational culture into an internationally recognised case study of success, Tribal Unity shares proven patterns that are revolutionising the way teams of teams connect and perform.

    How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?   Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

    It is filled with lessons and examples from the author's 40 years of experience, and shows how to set performance standards, make sure the right work is being done, and remove performance barriers. It also illustrates how leaders can make the transition to the next level and achieve full performance. This audiobook gives leaders in any industry an advantage over the competition.

    That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.