The Future of Work. Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization

"…a bright gem of a book." —JIM KOUZES & BARRY POSNER, authors of the best-selling The Leadership Challenge® Praise for The Work of Leaders «The Work of Leaders is a bright gem of a book. In a crystal clear and to-the-point style, the authors make leadership instantly accessible with a memorable model, rock solid fundamentals, original research, compelling stories, and highly practical tips for putting the principles to immediate use. There are invaluable lessons on every page, and you'll enjoy discovering each one. We highly recommend The Work of Leaders to anyone who aspires to make extraordinary things happen in organizations.» —JIM KOUZES & BARRY POSNER, authors of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge® «Clear, distinctive, intuitive, and deeply researched, The Work of Leaders gives every reader not only several 'a-ha!' moments, but smart, meaningful suggestions for changing the way we all lead.» —ELAINE BIECH, author of The Business of Consulting «The authors have indeed done their homework! Their combined expertise and engaging writing gives their readers a one-stop shop for understanding and improving the way we lead. Bravo!» —BEVERLY KAYE, coauthor of Love 'Em or Lose 'Em «The Work of Leaders shows you how to create a thriving organization by setting a vision and then collaborating with your people to guide your company to success. It is the strategic tool you need to move your business forward, with imaginative writing and a practical approach you can use right away.» —TOM MCKEE, CEO, The Ken Blanchard Companies «Anyone who is in a leadership position or is responsible for evaluating leaders should make this book a must-read. Collectively, the book's authors are unique in their knowledge, background and ability, which is what distinguishes this great piece of work from others of its kind.» —SIDNEY FELTENSTEIN, former CEO, Yorkshire Global Restaurants

With 26 inspiring chapters, this book celebrates the wisdom of some of the most recognized thought leaders of our day: emerging and established experts who share their unique vision of what the organization of the future should look like and must do to survive in the turbulent 21st Century. Outsmart Your Rivals by Seeing What Others Don’t, Jim Champy Organization Is Not Structure but Capability, Dave Ulrich & Norm Smallwood The Leader’s Mandate: Create a Shared Sense of Destiny, James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner A Different Kind of Company, Srikumar S. Rao Free to Choose: How American Managers Can Create Globally Competitive Workplaces, James O’Toole Managing the Whole Mandate for the Twenty-First Century: Ditching the Quick-Fix Approach to Management, Paul Borawski & Maryann Brennan The Values That Build a Strong Organization, Thomas J. Moran Revisiting the Concept of the Corporation, Charles Handy Mobilizing Emotions for Performance: Making the Most of the Informal Organization, Jon R. Katzenbach & Zia Khan Beyond Retirement: Mature Workers Are Essential Talent for Organizations of the Future, Richard J. Leider The Best Hope for Organizations of the Future: A Functioning Society, Ira A. Jackson Reframing Ethics, Spirit, and Soul, Lee G. Bolman &Terrence E. Deal Environment Drives Behavior and Expectations, Bill Strickland with Regina Cronin Dynamic Organizations for an Entrepreneurial Age, Christopher Gergen & Gregg Vanourek Multidimensional, Multinational Organizations of the Future, Jay R. Galbraith Designing Organizations That Are Built to Change, Edward E. Lawler III & Christopher G. Worley Refounding a Movement: Preparing a One-Hundred- Year-Old Organization for the Future, Kathy Cloninger Three Challenges Facing Nonprofits of the Future: People, Funding, and Strategy, Roxanne Spillett Pioneering the College of the Future: Building as We Walk, Darlyne Bailey The Organization of the Future Will Foster an Inclusive Environment, Lee Cockerell The Leader as Subculture Manager, Edgar H. Schein The New High-Performance, Horizontal Organization, Howard M. Guttman The Leadership Blueprint to Achieve Exponential Growth, David G. Thomson Leadership Judgment: The Essence of a Good Leader, Noel M. Tichy & Christopher DeRose The Leader of the Future, William A. Cohen Leadership by Perpetual Practice, Debbe Kennedy

A fun and creative guide to keeping customers ecstatically happy Businesses are used to competing for market share, inexpensive labor, and time-to-market, but today's biggest competition among top firms may be the war for top talent. Today's best organizations are reaching across traditional geopolitical and cultural boundaries to attract and retain the best and brightest workers. In The Talent Advantage, authors Weiss and MacKay tap into their long experience as experts in talent recruitment and retainment to explain why today's business leaders must take firm control of the talent hunting process to ensure great hires. Here, they show leaders exactly how to do that.

A behind-the-scenes look at the firm behind WordPress.com and the unique work culture that contributes to its phenomenal success 50 million websites, or twenty percent of the entire web, use WordPress software. The force behind WordPress.com is a convention-defying company called Automattic, Inc., whose 120 employees work from anywhere in the world they wish, barely use email, and launch improvements to their products dozens of times a day. With a fraction of the resources of Google, Amazon, or Facebook, they have a similar impact on the future of the Internet. How is this possible? What's different about how they work, and what can other companies learn from their methods? To find out, former Microsoft veteran Scott Berkun worked as a manager at WordPress.com, leading a team of young programmers developing new ideas. The Year Without Pants shares the secrets of WordPress.com's phenomenal success from the inside. Berkun's story reveals insights on creativity, productivity, and leadership from the kind of workplace that might be in everyone's future. Offers a fast-paced and entertaining insider's account of how an amazing, powerful organization achieves impressive results Includes vital lessons about work culture and managing creativity Written by author and popular blogger Scott Berkun (scottberkun.com) The Year Without Pants shares what every organization can learn from the world-changing ideas for the future of work at the heart of Automattic's success.

What Visual Meetings did for meetings and Visual Teams did for teams, this book does for leaders Visual Leaders explores how leaders can support visioning and strategy formation, planning and management, and organizationchange through the application of visual meeting and visual team methodologies organization wide—literally «trans-forming» communications and people's sense of what is possible. It describes seven essential tools for visual leaders—mental models, visual meetings, graphic templates, decision theaters, roadmaps, Storymaps, and virtual visuals—and examples of methods for implementation throughout an organization. Written for all levels of leadership in organizations, from department heads through directors, heads of strategic business units, and "C" level executives Explores how communications has become interactive and graphic and how these tools can be used to shape direction and align people for implementation Brings tools, methods and frameworks to life with stories of real organizations modeling these practices Visual Leaders answers the question of how design thinking and visual literacy can help to orient leaders to the complexity of contemporary organizations in the private, non-profit, and public sectors.

A proven system for rallying all of an organizations' employees around a new vision and ideas for making the vision stick When something at work isn't going smoothly, managers struggle with what part of the problem to tackle first. Do they start with cost reduction? Or should they go for process improvements first? The authors—who have helped hundreds of companies and individuals change and improve—say spend time and money adjusting the systems in which people operate, rather than targeting people and their performance directly. The authors show that it's in fact possible to change everything at once—with a focus on making such transformations permanent and repeatable. Brand-new Introduction written for the paperback edition Filled with illustrative examples from Northrup Grumman, BHP-Billiton, Reebok, Harvard Business School, and many others Two experts in the field show how to make major transformations happen The book outlines a process for engaging all employees to buy-in to an improved vision of an organization's new and improved future.

The source of competitive advantage has shifted in many organizations from reliability to innovation and flexibility. But what does it take for an organization that innovates to then manage effectively? In this follow-up to Built to Change, Ed Lawler argues that it is a combination of the right structure and the right people. First, organizations must decide what structure they are: are you a high-involvement organization that has products and services that require a high level of coordination and cooperation among employees? Or do you have a more global competitor structure in which you are constantly bringing in new talent and technological expertise? Are you a mixture of both? Lawler outlines the unique human capital strategy for each approach, shows what it looks like in action, and provides the foundation and tools for creating competitive and innovative organizations.

Ever notice how companies with the best service also have the happiest employees? That’s no accident. Do you want to build a strong, successful organization? Start by ignoring your customers. Really. Instead, focus first on creating a better employee experience, or EX. Your employees interact with customers, make them smile, and carry your brand message from the warehouse to the front lines. If your employees are having a great experience, so will your customers. In The Employee Experience, employee engagement pioneers Tracy Maylett and Matthew Wride reveal the secrets not only to attracting and retaining top talent, but to building a deeply engaged workforce—the foundation of organizational success. With deep insights into the dynamics of trust and mutual expectations, this book shows that before you can deliver a transcendent customer experience (CX), you must first build a superlative EX. With real-world examples and more than 24 million employee survey responses, Maylett and Wride reveal a clear, consistent pattern among the world’s most successful organizations. By establishing a clear set of expectations and promises—collectively known as the Contract—and upholding it consistently, employers can build the trust that leads to powerful engagement. Whether in business, healthcare, education, sports, or nonprofit, these organizations are consistently more successful and more profitable, enjoy sustainable growth, and win the battle to keep today’s rarest resource: talented people. Blending rigorous research, detailed case studies, in-depth interviews and expert insights, The Employee Experience will teach you to: Make the employee experience a core part of your strategy Understand employee expectations and bridge the “Expectation Gap” Establish rock-solid Brand, Transactional, and Psychological Contracts that breed trust and confidence Build an employee-employer partnership in creating something extraordinary Turn employee engagement into fuel for customer satisfaction, profit, and growth Attracting talent, retaining top performers, and creating an environment in which employees choose to engage drives results. The Employee Experience shows you where truly extraordinary organizations begin…and how to build one. TRACY MAYLETT, Ed.D, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is the CEO of DecisionWise, where he currently advises leaders across the globe in leadership, change, and employee engagement. Maylett holds a doctorate from Pepperdine University and an MBA from BYU. He is a recognized author, and teaches in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. MATTHEW WRIDE, JD, PHR, is the COO of DecisionWise. With an extensive business background, Wride brings a fresh approach to organization development and leadership consulting. He is passionate about helping leaders create winning employee experiences. Wride holds a JD from Willamette University and a master’s degree from the University of Washington. For over two decades, DecisionWise has advised organizations and leaders in more than seventy countries on leadership, assessment, talent, organization development, and the employee experience. Visit us online at www.decision-wise.com.

Enhance business performance by using sustainability for competitive advantage The Future of Value reveals what it takes for companies to grow and outperform the competition in today's growth-constrained, sustainability conscious world. The author shows leaders how to use sustainability as a powerful, pragmatic lens to enhance business performance. He also explores how to craft and oversee a portfolio of effective tools, develop competitive strategies, and adjust value chain activities, talent management practices, and corporate policies to help organizations execute powerful sustainability strategies. He provides a systematic, yet instantly familiar, model all companies can use to connect sustainability with their growth and competitive strategies. In this way, the author shows leaders how to shape, color, and own The Future of Value. Outlines the keys to implementing sustainability in organizations to achieve business success today and tomorrow Reveals how to engage stakeholders in day to day sustainability management as a means to shape and fuel efforts to continuously renew their sustainability strategies The author is a 15-year veteran of sustainability and strategy management consulting, having worked with clients in the US, Japan, Australia, and Europe. He has an MBA in Strategic Management from The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and writes a regular column for Sustainable Life Media and GreenBiz, two of the world's most heavily trafficked sustainability news and thought leadership portals The author draws useful and accessible conclusions from a rich, diverse set of corporate interviewees. A core part of his research was the selection and interrogation of more than 25 Global Fortune 500 companies' sustainability, strategy, and finance leads.

What does it mean in practice to be a values-based leader? When faced with real situations, how can you be your best self and create best teams—while also being a best partner with customers and vendors, a best investment for your stakeholders, and a best citizen making a difference in the world? It's a tall order, but these are the expectations for world-class organizations today. In his bestselling book From Values to Action, Harry Kraemer showed how self-reflection, balance, true self-confidence, and genuine humility are the traits of today's most effective leaders. In Becoming the Best, his highly anticipated follow-up, Kraemer reveals how, in practical terms, anyone can apply these principles to become a values-based leader and to help create values-based organizations. Drawing on his own experiences as the former CEO and chairman of Baxter International, as well as those of other notable leaders and organizations, Kraemer lays out a pathway for understanding the principles and putting them into practice, showing specifically, how to: Use self-reflection to become your «best self» as you lead yourself and others more effectively Create a «best team» that understands and appreciates what they're doing, and why Forge «best partnerships» through win/win collaboration with vendors and customers that enhance the end user's experience Support the mission, vision, and values of the organization to generate returns that distinguish a «best investment» Make a difference in the world beyond the organization by becoming a «best citizen» Powerful case studies from Campbell's Soup, Ernst & Young, Target, Northern Trust, and many others demonstrate the four principles of values-based leadership in action and show how thinking beyond the corporation can trigger positive outcomes for both the company and the world. Regardless of level or job title, individuals can make a difference in their organization and beyond by embodying the essential traits of a great leader. Becoming the Best offers a definitive, actionable guide to show anyone how to apply in practice the principles of values-based leadership personally and professionally, making it an indispensable manual for the new wave of better leaders.