The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization


Peter M. Senge - 1990
    As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices. In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire. The updated and revised Currency edition of this business classic contains over one hundred pages of new material based on interviews with dozens of practitioners at companies like BP, Unilever, Intel, Ford, HP, Saudi Aramco, and organizations like Roca, Oxfam, and The World Bank. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book’s inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus (getting started), Strategies, Leaders’ New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future. Mastering the disciplines Senge outlines in the book will:• Reignite the spark of genuine learning driven by people focused on what truly matters to them• Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity• Free you of confining assumptions and mindsets• Teach you to see the forest and the trees• End the struggle between work and personal time

Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness


Frederic Laloux - 2014
    Deep inside, we sense that more is possible. We long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose.In this groundbreaking book, the author shows that every time, in the past, when humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness, it has achieved extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration. A new shift in consciousness is currently underway. Could it help us invent a more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools and hospitals?A few pioneers have already cracked the code and they show us, in practical detail, how it can be done. Leaders, founders, coaches, and consultants will find this work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples, and inspiring stories.ADVANCE PRAISE"Congratulations on a spectacular treatise! This is truly pioneering work. In terms of integral sophistication, there is simply nothing like it out there."--Ken Wilber, from the Foreword"The most exciting book I've read in years on organization design and leadership models."--Jenny Wade, Ph.D., Author of Changes of Mind"A book like Reinventing Organizations only comes along once in a decade. Sweeping and brilliant in scope, it is the Good To Great for a more enlightened age. What it reveals about the organizational model of the future is exhilarating and deeply hopeful."--Norman Wolfe, Author of The Living Organization"A comprehensive, highly practical account of the emergent worldview in business. Everything you need to know about building a new paradigm organization!"--Richard Barrett, Chairman and Founder, Barrett Values Center"Frederic Laloux has done business people and professionals everywhere a signal service. He has discovered a better future for organizations by describing, in useful detail, the unusual best practices of today."--Bill Torbert, Author of Action Inquiry"As the rate of change escalates exponentially, the old ways of organizing and educating, which were designed for efficiency and repetition, are dying. Frederic Laloux is one of the few management leaders exploring what comes next. It's deeply different."--Bill Drayton, Founder, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Freedom From Command And Control: A Better Way To Make The Work Work


John Seddon - 2003
    Seddon argues that while many commentators acknowledge command and control is failing us, no one provides an alternative. His contention is the alternative can only be understood when you see the failings of command and control by taking the better - systems - view. There is little in the book that you would find in a normal management curriculum. Seddon is scathing and controversial about leadership theorists, maintaining that leadership is being able to talk about how the work works with the people who do it. The book provides practical advice and examples of how to put this into place. Packed with illustrations of the unintended consequences of command and control thinking, you will be amazed that management of our organizations should be so appalling. You will see how customer service is poor and carries high costs and that changing the way the work is designed and managed will result in lower costs and better service. But, as Seddon points out, these are things managers cannot "see" from their current position. Managers don't know what they don't know. Seddon's case is that taking this view teaches managers to change their thinking, and he shows how the very observations they make when understanding what he calls "the what and why of current performance as a system" become the building blocks of the systems solution. And also illustrates the solutions for the cases he uses.

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies


James C. Collins - 1994
    It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary products or visionary market insights. Nor is it about just having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies." So write Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in this groundbreaking book that shatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance to those who would like to build landmark companies that stand the test of time.Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?"What separates General Electric, 3M, Merck, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, and Philip Morris from their rivals? How, for example, did Procter & Gamble, which began life substantially behind rival Colgate, eventually prevail as the premier institution in its industry? How was Motorola able to move from a humble battery repair business into integrated circuits and cellular communications, while Zenith never became dominant in anything other than TVs? How did Boeing unseat McDonnell Douglas as the world's best commercial aircraft company -- what did Boeing have that McDonnell Douglas lacked?By answering such questions, Collins and Porras go beyond the incessant barrage of management buzzwords and fads of the day to discover timeless qualities that have consistently distinguished out-standing companies. They also provide inspiration to all executives and entrepreneurs by destroying the false but widely accepted idea that only charismatic visionary leaders can build visionary companies.Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the twenty-first century and beyond.

The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer


Jeffrey K. Liker - 2003
    Less inventory. The highest quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer. In factories around the globe, Toyota consistently raises the bar for manufacturing, product development, and process excellence. The result is an amazing business success story: steadily taking market share from price-cutting competitors, earning far more profit than any other automaker, and winning the praise of business leaders worldwide.The Toyota Way reveals the management principles behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability. Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a renowned authority on Toyota's Lean methods, explains how you can adopt these principles--known as the "Toyota Production System" or "Lean Production"--to improve the speed of your business processes, improve product and service quality, and cut costs, no matter what your industry.Drawing on his extensive research on Toyota, Dr. Liker shares his insights into the foundational principles at work in the Toyota culture. He explains how the Toyota Production System evolved as a new paradigm of manufacturing excellence, transforming businesses across industries. You'll learn how Toyota fosters employee involvement at all levels, discover the difference between traditional process improvement and Toyota's Lean improvement, and learn why companies often think they are Lean--but aren't.

Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind


Geert Hofstede - 1993
    Professor Geert Hofstede's 30 years of field research on cultural differences and the software of the mind helps us look at how we think - and how we fail to think - as members of groups. This newly revised and expanded edition is based on the latest data from Professor Hofstede ongoing field research, and provides detailed comparisons of cross-cultural differences among 70 nations. business, family, schools and political organizations. Professor Hofstede explains phenomena such as culture shock, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, differences in language and humor. Most importantly, he discusses the practical implications of the culture differences described in the book and how understanding these cultural differences can enable people from different cultures to work together more productively. parents. Melding powerful intellectual analysis and hard social, cultural, and organizational research, Hofstede gives a sobering picture of a world perilously lacking in self-knowledge - unaware of serious difference between the businesses, organizations, cultures, and nations that populate our planet despite the fact of globalization. But culture shock - whether between an individual and a new country, between organizations, between the sexes, or between opposing diplomats - can be turned to our advantage, Hofstede says-if we understand it. Cultures and Organizations helps to explain the differences in the way leaders and their followers think, offering practical solutions for those in business and politics to help solve conflict between different groups.

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?


Aaron Dignan - 2019
    Clear, powerful and urgent, it's a must read for anyone who cares about where they work and how they work."--Seth Godin, author of This is Marketing "This book is a breath of fresh air. Read it now, and make sure your boss does too."--Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg When fast-scaling startups and global organizations get stuck, they call Aaron Dignan. In this book, he reveals his proven approach for eliminating red tape, dissolving bureaucracy, and doing the best work of your life.He's found that nearly everyone, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, points to the same frustrations: lack of trust, bottlenecks in decision making, siloed functions and teams, meeting and email overload, tiresome budgeting, short-term thinking, and more.Is there any hope for a solution? Haven't countless business gurus promised the answer, yet changed almost nothing about the way we work?That's because we fail to recognize that organizations aren't machines to be predicted and controlled. They're complex human systems full of potential waiting to be released.Dignan says you can't fix a team, department, or organization by tinkering around the edges. Over the years, he has helped his clients completely reinvent their operating systems--the fundamental principles and practices that shape their culture--with extraordinary success.Imagine a bank that abandoned traditional budgeting, only to outperform its competition for decades. An appliance manufacturer that divided itself into 2,000 autonomous teams, resulting not in chaos but rapid growth. A healthcare provider with an HQ of just 50 people supporting over 14,000 people in the field--that is named the "best place to work" year after year. And even a team that saved $3 million per year by cancelling one monthly meeting.Their stories may sound improbable, but in Brave New Work you'll learn exactly how they and other organizations are inventing a smarter, healthier, and more effective way to work. Not through top down mandates, but through a groundswell of autonomy, trust, and transparency.Whether you lead a team of ten or ten thousand, improving your operating system is the single most powerful thing you can do. The only question is, are you ready?

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action


Simon Sinek - 2009
    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.

Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap


Jeremy Hope - 2003
    Worse, it often causes dysfunctional and unethical managerial behavior. Based on an intensive, international study into pioneering companies, Beyond Budgeting offers an alternative, coherent management model that overcomes the limitations of traditional budgeting. Focused around achieving sustained improvement relative to competitors, it provides a guiding framework for managing in the twenty-first century.

An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization


Robert Kegan - 2016
    New

Critical Chain


Eliyahu M. Goldratt - 1997
    The novel aims to provoke readers to examine and reassess their business practices and transform the thinking and actions of managers.

Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable about Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors


Patrick Lencioni - 2006
    Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out the door, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals. As with his other books, Lencioni writes Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars as a fictional--but eerily realistic--story. The story is about Jude Cousins, an eager young management consultant struggling to launch his practice by solving one of the more universal and frustrating problems faced by his clients. Through trial and error, he develops a simple yet ground-breaking approach for helping them transform confusion and infighting into clarity and alignment.

Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency


Tom DeMarco - 2001
    That principle is the value of slack, the degree of freedom in a company that allows it to change. Implementing slack could be as simple as adding an assistant to a department and letting high-priced talent spend less time at the photocopier and more time making key decisions, or it could mean designing workloads that allow people room to think, innovate, and reinvent themselves. It means embracing risk, eliminating fear, and knowing when to go slow. Slack allows for change, fosters creativity, promotes quality, and, above all, produces growth. With an approach that works for new- and old-economy companies alike, this revolutionary handbook debunks commonly held assumptions about real-world management, and gives you and your company a brand-new model for achieving and maintaining true effectiveness.

Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World


Margaret J. Wheatley - 1992
    In this new edition, Margaret Wheatley describes how the new science radically alters our understanding of the world and how it can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic times. We live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born. We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us now. New science--the new discoveries in biology, chaos theory, and quantum physics that are changing our understanding of how the world works--offers this guidance. It describes a world where chaos is natural, where order exists for free. It displays the intricate webs of cooperation that connect us. It assures us that life seeks order, but uses messes to get there.This book will teach you how to move with greater certainty and easier grace into the new forms of organizations and communities that are taking shape. You'll learn that:- Relationships are what matters--even at the subatomic level - Life is a vast web of interconnections where cooperation and participation are required - Chaos and change are the only route to transformationIn this expanded edition, Wheatley provides examples of how non-linear networks and self-organizing systems are flourishing in the modern world. In the midst of turbulence, Wheatley shows, we create work and lives rich in meaning.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently


Marcus Buckingham - 1998
    With vital performance and career lessons and ideas for how to apply them, it is a must-read for managers at every level.