Leading the Virtual Workforce. How Great Leaders Transform Organizations in the 21st Century

An innovative communication method for making change happen in any organization Getting Change Right presents a new view of leadership communication that says change doesn't flow top-down, bottom-up, or sideways, but inside-out. This is how change spreads through a complex system successfully-the other options are force or failure. Based on years of experience with organizations around the world, change expert Kahan presents a new model of communication, one that moves from a transactional view of information exchange to a collaborative construction of shared understanding. When the right people are having the right conversations and interactions, then they act in concert even though the situations they confront independently are impossible to predict or coordinate. This dynamic practitioner's guide to implementing change Presents the innovative co-creation communication model for creating change Reveals how communicating with a company's most valuable players is at the heart of organizational change Draws on the author's wealth of experience with Fortune 100 companies, leading government agencies, and associations Getting Change Right offers business insights and field-tested, practical techniques that can be put to work immediately.

From one of the most respected names in business and leadership, a rare look at the specifics of how great leaders achieve «common purpose» and success within their organizations. What is common purpose? It is that rare, almost-palpable experience that happens when a leader coalesces a group, team or community into a creative, dynamic, brave and nearly invincible we. It happens the moment the organization's values, tools, objectives and hopes are internalized in a way that enables people to work tirelessly toward a goal. Common purpose is rarely achieved. But Kurtzman has observed that when a leader is able to bring it about, the results are outsized, measurable and inspiring. Based on Kurtzman's all-new interviews with more than 50 leaders, including Ron Sargent, Ilene Lang, Micky Arison, Simon Cooper, Joel Klein, Janet Field, Steve Wynn, Shivan Subramaniam, Michael Dell, Richard Boyatzis, Tom Kelley, Michael Milken, and Warren Bennis Contains research on leadership Kurtzman has conducted during his years at The New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, Booz & Company, as well as with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mercer, and Korn/Ferry Based on all new interviews with some of the most dynamic, successful, and enduring leaders, Common Purpose sheds new light on the meaning of leadership, the crucial qualities of leaders, and most importantly, how to lead.

A systematic look at how relationships determine the success of leaders and their enterprises, along with tools to help strengthen and change them Since time immemorial, relationships have determined the fate of leaders. But today they are more critical to success than ever. No longer can leaders count on long time horizons or sloppy competition to make up for the inefficiencies that poor relationships create. Leaders must make decisions and take actions quickly and well with others, even those with whom they share very little?perhaps not even a time zone. This new world puts relationships at the center of what leaders must understand and master to succeed. Uses in-depth observational studies and clinical research to explore how relationships at the top of organizations work, develop, and change Shows how to understand, strengthen, and transform these relationships, so they can withstand the most intense pressures and conflicts This important book features a Foreword by Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline.

DISCOVER THE PROVEN PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES THAT MAKE GREAT LEADERS GREAT When some people hear the words «positive leadership» they roll their eyes because they think we're talking about Pollyanna positive, where life is full of unicorns and rainbows. But the truth is that we are not positive because life is easy. We are positive because life can be hard. As a leader, you will face numerous obstacles, negativity, and tests. There will be times when it seems as if everything in the world is conspiring against you and your vision seems more like a fantasy than a reality. That's why positive leadership is essential! Positive leadership is not about fake positivity. It is the real stuff that makes great leaders great. The research is clear. Being a positive leader is not just a nice way to lead. It's the way to lead if you want to build a great culture, unite your organization in the face of adversity, develop a connected and committed team and achieve excellence and superior results. There is a power associated with positive leadership and you can utilize the framework, stories, and practices in this book to start benefiting yourself and your team with it today!

The proven model that offers powerful and elegant strategies for leaders How Great Leaders Think: the Art of Reframing uses compelling, contemporary examples to show how more complex thinking is the key to better leadership. Leaders who understand what's going on around them see what they need to do to achieve the results they want. Bolman and Deal's influential four-frame model of leadership and organizations—developed in their bestselling book, Reframing Organizations: Artistry Choice and Leadership—offers leaders an accessible guide for understanding four major aspects of organizational life: structure, people, politics, and culture. Tapping into the complexity enables leaders to decode the messy world in which they live, see more options, tell better stories, and find strategies that are more effective. Case examples of leaders like Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Tony Hsieh at Zappos, Ursula Burns at Xerox, and the late Steve Jobs at Apple provide concrete lessons that readers can put to use in their own leadership. The book's lessons include: How to use structural tools to organize teams and organizations for better results How to build motivation and morale by aligning organizations and people How to map the terrain and build a power base to navigate the political dynamics in organizations How to develop a leadership story that shapes culture, provides direction, and inspires commitment to excellence

A proven model to create high-performing, high-trust organizations Globally, there has been a decline in trust over the past few decades, and only a third of Americans believe they can trust the government, big business, and large institutions. In The Decision to Trust, Robert Hurley explains how this new culture of cynicism and distrust creates many problems, and why it is almost impossible to manage an organization well if its people do not trust one another. High-performing, world-class companies are almost always high-trust environments. Without this elusive, important ingredient, companies cannot attract or retain top talent. In this book, Hurley reveals a new model to measure and repair trust with colleagues managers and employees. Outlines a proven Decision to Trust Model (DTM) of ten factors that establish whether or not one party will trust the other Filled with original examples from Daimler, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, QuikTrip, General Electric, Procter and Gamble, AzKoNobel, Johnson and Johnson, Whole Foods, and Zappos Reveals how leaders in Asia, Europe, and North America have used the DTM to build high-trust organizations Covering trust building in teams, across functions, within organizations and across national cultures, The Decision to Trust shows how any organization can improve trust and the bottom line.

Praise for Uniting the Virtual Workforce «Uniting the Virtual Workforce offers much-needed guidance on how to navigate the largely unmapped territory of virtual work environments in the global economy. The authors do an outstanding job of presenting how organizations should address the challenges of virtual workforces so as to reap the huge potential benefits of increased growth, productivity, and innovation.» -C. Warren Axelrod, PhD, Chief Privacy Officer and Business Information Security Officer, U.S. Trust, and author of Outsourcing Information Security «Lojeski and Reilly bring us something that readers of business books so rarely get-no nonsense practical guidance on how to manage distance, especially where it most often serves as an impediment to working effectively.? If you interface with widely dispersed team members who rarely see one another and communicate by virtue of impersonal electronics, you may expect to find this book provocative, counterintuitive, and above all, exciting. It gives all of us who have to struggle, while working with talent stretched across distance, hope, that maybe there are ways to do this right!» -Patrick J. McKenna, author of First Among Equals? «A must-read for global corporate executives who manage geographically dispersed job sharing teams. Practical strategies for preventing productivity loss and optimizing innovation. The authors pull no punches in showing the real downsides to the virtual work phenomenon; they have done a great service for us all.» -Jeff Saperstein, author of Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy «Uniting the Virtual Workforce charts the course for competing in the twenty-first century by tapping into the powers of virtual work. Any manager who ignores the virtual workforce is underperforming, and any company or organization that does not appreciate virtual work is already at a competitive disadvantage. Karen and Dick have tapped into a key ingredient in the recipe for global growth.» -Jerry MacArthur Hultin, President, Polytechnic University, and former Under Secretary of the Navy «Authors Sobel Lojeski and Reilly have provided a useful primer for the harried executive striving for productivity improvements while seeing the workload expand and the workforce disperse. Using conceptual definitions of Physical, Operational, and Affinity Distance to describe the multifaceted dimensions of building teams of people to work effectively together, the authors construct a very powerful set of metrics for a manager to improve the capability of his or her workgroup, no matter where it resides or how it is composed. The book is rich in anecdotes and specific studies that illustrate the concepts in an engaging, pertinent, and easy-to-understand manner. In an age of outsourcing, offshoring, and decentralizing groups of people who have to get things done together, reading this small book will repay itself many times over.» -Charles House, Director, Media X Lab at Stanford University, and former Director of the Societal Impact of Technology, Intel Corporation

The sensational human story of the hunt for oil, and the politics, power and personalities involved.Over the last 20 years, oil prices have soared from $7 a barrel to $147 and down to $37. Amid economic boom and bust, speculators, traders, politicians and monarchs have plotted to earn fortunes from oil, and prayed for salvation from unpredictable natural and man-made disasters. Behind the headlines are the crushing rivalries between men and women exploring for oil five miles beneath the sea, battling for control of the world's biggest corporations and gambling billions of dollars twenty-four hours every day on oil prices. Success or failure for all those extraordinary personalities depends on squeezing their rivals and squeezing the crude out of the rocks. Overweening vanity and greed absorb those titans whose ambitions are forging the world's quest for oil.Exploiting unprecedented close access to the lives of irrepressible traders in New York, oil-oligarchs in Moscow, corporate chieftains in Dallas and London, and wily politicians floating in jets across the globe, Tom Bower presents the untold story of the most important quandary of our times: why, if there is plentiful oil in the earth, does mankind face a dire shortage threatening our lives? Self-interest is propelling the squeeze and there seems to be no salvation.

What does being a dad in the 21st Century really mean? Men today want to play an active role in the upbringing of their children; that means knowing how to cope with them, play with them, control them and love them. Becoming a father however, can be an extremely daunting prospect, after all it is completely uncharted territory. This wonderful book is not only for expectant and new fathers but covers the whole range of issues dads encounter from conception through to teenage traumas. Situations such as step-fatherhood and the changing relationship with partners are also discussed in a sensitive and informative style. The stresses imposed by modern lifestyles on fathers and kids are looked at as well as the problems and benefits encountered by the fact that kids today are often very sophisticated and clued-up. Chapters include: * I'm Going to be a Dad * Bonding for Fathers * Discipline * Learning to Play Again * Teenage Traumas Written in a light-hearted yet informative style, and including numerous interviews with fathers themselves, this book reflects the latest thinking and theories on how to be a good father.

Collective action problems are ubiquitous in situations involving human interactions and therefore lie at the heart of economy and political science. In one of the most salient statements on this topic, Elinor Ostrom (co-recipient of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences) even claims that “the theory of collective action is the central subject of political science”. The current volume, Modern Dilemmas: Understanding Collective Action in the 21st Century, is a collection of essays which target the problem of collective action from both a theoretical and applied perspective. The volume consists of four parts, each of these providing insights into different research fields. Thus, the first part, Theoretical Approaches, offers a guideline to the study of collective action in public choice theory and rational choice institutionalism and shows how it can be connected to other research programs such as constructivism, social network analysis and contractualism. The second part, Collective Action and Responsibility, tackles issues specific to political philosophy such as collective and individual responsibility and the morality of free-riding behavior. The third part, Collective Action and Public Policies, presents empirical studies on collective action in relation to educational policies, health policies and policies which target food security. Finally, the fourth part, Collective Action, Political Institutions and Social Movements, consists of various studies on classical problems of collective action such as political protests and revolutions, but also problems which are not traditionally associated with collective action such as party funding and the role of international organizations in economic recessions. The multidisciplinary character of the volume therefore makes it an interesting reading for students and scholars working in a number of different areas of study, such as political science, economy, political philosophy, public policies, comparative politics and international relations.