This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams. Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight. Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.

    This is a delightful book that is hard to put down.Gary Klein, world-leading psychologist and author of Intuition at WorkA wonderful book that s both practical and fun to read. As we ve experienced, Shawn s training programs are phenomenal, and now everyone has access to his techniques in Putting Stories to Work.Gerry Lynch, General Manager, Mars New ZealandPutting Stories to Work really helps you notice stories and bring them to life in your business in a way that s simple, practical and compelling. This book is full of interesting stories that are so relatable. It s a must-read.Lisa Mills, International Head of TESCO AcademyThe most successful leaders are storytellers. By mastering business storytelling, they achieve extraordinary business results. As a modern-day leader, you know you should develop this skill, but you don t have the time to do this in an ad-hoc way. What you need is a practical, reliable method to follow, one that will allow your business to reap the benefits of storytelling as soon as possible.In Putting Stories to Work, Shawn Callahan gives you a clear process for mastering business storytelling. He demolishes the thinking that storytelling has no place at work, reminding us that sharing stories is what we all do naturally, every day, and that it s one of the most powerful tools for getting things done. You just need to adapt this natural superpower to boost your business.Shawn s story mastery process of Discover, Remember, Share and Refresh is based on over two decades' work with high-achieving global companies. In Putting Stories to Work, each step is spelled out in detail, backed up by research, and, needless to say, illustrated by plenty of great stories. Learn how to find and share stories to connect with new people. How to explain why change is needed. How to influence opinions and promote success. And much more. Most importantly, learn how to take the latent skill of storytelling and turn it into a potent business habit. Imagine your colleagues telling the story of how you took the most diverse and opinionated group of experts and had them all working towards the same goal. Or the one about how you persuaded the executive team to change their minds and got a great result for the business. Or the one where everyone got inspired and turned things around. Imagine that your people all know exactly what the company strategy is and how they re making a difference to the organisation. As the successful film executive Peter Guber put it: Storytelling is not show business. It s good business ."

    An essential book that unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides readers with a toolkit for building a cohesive, innovative culture, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Talent Code

    

    Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing. People just don’t see the big idea - and it’s keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem.The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems.Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium. You will learn to:• Plan: Learn explanation basics, what causes them to fail and how to diagnose explanation problems.• Package: Using simple elements, create an explanation strategy that builds confidence and motivates your audience. • Present: Produce remarkable explanations with visuals and media. The Art of Explanation is your invitation to become an explanation specialist and see why explanation is now a fundamental skill for professionals.

    Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers. Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply “get”. In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can’t draw. Drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools – tools that take advantage of everyone’s innate ability to look, see, imagine, and show. THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.

    Focusing on customer needs isn't a nice–to–have, it's a strategic imperative. The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (JTBD) helps organizations turn market insight into action. This book shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering.

    Meeting Design will teach you the design principles and innovative approaches you’ll need to transform meetings from boring to creative, from wasteful to productive. Meetings can and should be indispensable to your organization; Kevin Hoffman will show you how to design them for success.

    If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office. Those are all just excuses.  What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of "downsizing," and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.

    Reveals how problems between managers and employees, and between companies or divisions within a larger corporation, stem from an inability to conduct a successful dialogue.

    Author Mike Rohde shows you how to incorporate sketchnoting techniques into your note-taking process--regardless of your artistic abilities--to help you better process the information that you are hearing and seeing through drawing, and to actually have fun taking notes. The Sketchnote Handbook explains and illustrates practical sketchnote techniques for taking visual notes at your own pace as well as in real time during meetings and events. Rhode also addresses most people's fear of drawing by showing, step-by-step, how to quickly draw people, faces, type, and simple objects for effective and fast sketchnoting. The book looks like a peek into the author's private sketchnote journal, but it functions like a beginner's guide to sketchnoting with easy-to-follow instructions for drawing out your notes that will leave you itching to attend a meeting just so you can draw about it.

    But the prospect of sharing potentially negative news can be overwhelming. How do you construct your message so that it’s not only well received but also expressed in a way that encourages change?Whether you’re commending exemplary work or addressing problem behavior, the HBR Guide to Delivering Effective Feedback provides you with practical advice and tips to transform any performance discussion—from weekly check-ins to annual reviews—into an opportunity for growth and development. You’ll learn to:• Establish trust with your direct reports• Assess their performance fairly• Emphasize improvement, even in criticism• React calmly to a defensive feedback recipient• Recognize and motivate star performers• Create individualized development plansArm 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.

    Every leader knows this to be true, yet few have systematic methods for converting organizational knowledge into economic value. This book argues that communities of practice--groups of individuals formed around common interests and expertise--provide the ideal vehicle for driving knowledge-management strategies and building lasting competitive advantage. Written by leading experts in the field, Cultivating Communities of Practice is the first book to outline models and methods for systematically developing these essential groups. Through compelling research and company examples, including DaimlerChrysler, McKinsey & Company, Shell, and the World Bank, authors Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder show how world-class organizations have leveraged communities of practice to drive strategy, generate new business opportunities, solve problems, transfer best practices, develop employees' professional skills, and recruit and retain top talent. Underscoring the new central role communities of practice are playing in today's knowledge economy, Cultivating Communities of Practice is the definitive guide to fostering, designing, and developing these powerful groups within and across organizations.

    social scientist and consultant examines five professions - engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy, and town planning - to show how professionals really go about solving problems. The best professionals, Donald Sch�n maintains, know more than they can put into words. To meet the challenges of their work, they rely less on formulas learned in graduate school than on the kind of improvisation learned in practice. This unarticulated, largely unexamined process is the subject of Sch�n's provocatively original book, an effort to show precisely how 'reflection-in-action' works and how this vital creativity might be fostered in future professionals.

    To ensure teams are well crafted, motivated, and successful, managers and HR professionals must step outside their comfort zone and adapt to younger, newer ways of thinking—they must become Agile. In Agile People, management consultant Pia-Maria Thoren outlines how managers, human resources professionals, company decision-makers, and employees can adopt the flexible, fluid, customer-focused mindset of modern tech companies to inspire their workers and strengthen their organizations. This essential handbook explains both the theories and practical applications behind the Agile framework, showing how companies can do the following: • Create a structure and culture for an organization to meet future challenges 
 • Give management and HR the changed mindset and the tools to facilitate employee drive and performance • Empower employees to become motivated stakeholders 
 • Adopt hiring practices that value attitude, behavior, and competence • Create a passionate, loyal, and accomplished workforce No matter the size of a company, it can benefit from an Agile mindset and launch into a future filled with successful leadership and motivated employees.