Co-Design, Volume III: Practical Ideas for Developing Across Complex Systems

$21.99

Working in complex systems brings fresh challenges to leaders, managers, consultants, and those involved in their education. This book (the third in a series of three) introduces a set of practices that will help you develop confidence and strength in working in new ways across boundaries. We know intuitively that when we move outside our organizational boundaries, we need new ways of practicing that will respond to the needs of others and shape the emerging future. Each chapter focuses on a specific practice and explains what it looks like, why it is relevant, and how to integrate it into your work. Questions for reflection and suggested activities offer ideas for immediate action.
The format invites the reader to pick a chapter or two when it feels like a good time to engage with professional development. The material is also suitable for discussion with colleagues as part of team development. The practical, applied nature of this book means that it can be used in many different ways to spark ideas and stimulate new ways of working as individuals and collectively. Leaders in complex systems will grow in confidence and expand their practice repertoire as they engage with the material in this volume

Strategic Engagement: Practical Tools to Raise Morale and Increase Results, Volume I: Core Activities

$21.99

“This book is a great ‘pocket book’—a leader’s best friend—saturated with a roadmap that puts theory into action. An organization is a ‘network of relationships’. Crosby highlights the many ways this network can fumble while providing clear steps to upgrade the entire system. Too many books give glamour to theory while missing the link of how theory is implemented. —Timothy Weber, PhD, Licensed Clinical Psychologist

“Chris has provided us with a virtual outline for a graduate-level program in OD! Amazing work!” —Dr. John J. Scherer, Co-Director, Scherer Leadership Center

“I have an extensive collection of business books, and this is a real gem. I started my last two CEO positions with transition sessions as outlined in this collection, led by Chris. In this book are activities that I have used to reach record results.” —Brian Bauerbach, President & CEO, Mold Rite Plastics

This two-volume set contains eight activities that create an engaged workplace and improve results.

Gallup’s State of the American Workplace showed that workplaces that are actively engaged outperform workplaces that are disengaged in every measure. Crosby’s two-volume set contains eight activities that create an engaged workplace and improve results.

Volume One, The Core Activities, starts with an overview and a chapter on building an engagement strategy to break long-standing dysfunction. Crosby then provides chapters on various conflict resolutions, transition meetings, and work group development.

Leveraging Business Analysis for Product Success, Second Edition

$21.99

Only 39 percent of projects today are successful. Nearly half of the projects that fail do so because of “poor requirements management” (PMI 2014). Leveraging Business Analysis for Project Success, Second Edition explores the role of the business analyst in setting a project up for success. It informs and educates project managers, sponsors, and organization leaders on what is necessary for project success. This book goes beyond requirements management in exploring how business analysis professionals (business analysts, product managers, product owners, and others) can con- tribute to increased profitability through project selection, scope definition, and post implementation evaluation.
The reader will learn about the history of business analysis, professional organizations and resources to support the profession, and what to expect from the business analysis professional at each phase of the project lifecycle as presented in a case study throughout the book. Project leaders will better be able to support the business analysis needs of the project by understanding the skills, expertise, tasks, resources, and time needed to do business analysis right and maximize the return on investment for each project.

In Search for the Soul of International Business

$21.99

There is a New World Order for trade and globalization. Inundated with constant information, new concepts, and endless data, individuals are caught in the whirl-wind of a fast-paced world, often without the ability to stop and think, particularly when it comes to issues of the soul.
I consider the soul the center of our activities and inspirations. If one says of an individual, “his soul has left him,” one connotes death. This also will apply to societies and corporations. Are we willing to permit the gradual march toward solitude with all the accompanying sharp cutting edges? Will the balloon go up? The reader can judge. I hope to supply the content here.
With a foreword by Ambassador Laszlo Szabo, a preface by the Rev. Horkan, and the humorous yet pensive illustrations by award-winning cartoonist David Clark, this book increases one’s ability to gain a comprehensive understanding of the most pressing international business and trade issues that the world faces today.

Project Management Essentials, Second Edition

$21.99

Project management is a critical skill across a broad range of disciplines. Yet most people, regardless of educational background, have never received training in how to plan, manage, and execute projects. Project Management Essentials, Second Edition, is the go-to book for tried and true project management skills combined with the most current ideas from Agile in a concise, up-to-date, user-friendly format.
It follows the project life cycle and provides several ready- to-use templates. Readers can use this book to plan and manage a project from start to finish or as a reference for help with one particular component of project management. Along- side each template is a brief description of what each template is and why it is useful, with an example to illustrate it.

The Value Imperative

$21.99

Gautam has managed to put into one book almost everything we need to know about creating value, measuring value, and strategizing with value. Every marketer will benefit by rethinking their business in terms of value creation and management. —Philip Kotler, S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management,
Northwestern University
The Value Imperative is about understanding and creating value to become more prosperous, obtain higher levels of success as a business and as a person, and become a better executive, manager, and leader.
The book describes value and its creation, a practitioner concept that encompasses all aspects of human endeavor and happiness and covers different aspects of value, and how they impact you, business, society, technology, innovation and creativity, and education. The book demonstrates how to identify where value exists, how it can be increased, how it is destroyed and dissipated, and how it can re-emerge. The author also describes the 6A’s required of successful executives.

Agile Working and the Digital Workspace: Best Practices for Designing and Implementing Productivity

$21.99

Amid a myriad of competitive pressures for both customers and talent, ‘Agile Working and the Digital Workplace’ is essential reading for any organisation that aspires to build and secure its competitive advantage. John has mapped out the benefits and routes to achieving a more agile organisation. The complexity of such a significant cross-functional, cultural shift in performance and productivity is addressed with the benefit of John’s great experience.

Bryan Thomas, Workplace Strategist, CPB Projects Ltd

Organizations are increasingly adopting new ways of working to take advantage of new digital technologies to enhance the services they can offer and become more productive. This book defines and explains the different terms that are used to describe new ways of working and identifies the benefits and limitations of different approaches. Readers will learn about the key components of successful agile working and how a holistic approach is needed for the successful implementation of agile working.
The author provides advice on the introduction of new ways of working, including preparing a robust business case, setting up an agile working program, and providing a road map. The contributions of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence to the digital workspace and agile working are assessed.

Getting to Market With Your MVP: How to Achieve Small Business and Entrepreneur Success

$21.99

Getting to Market With Your MVP: How to Achieve Small Business and Entrepreneur Success is a book to assist college students, new entrepreneurs, and current business owners in their under- standing of how to bring a concept, product, or new business to market. The minimum viable product (MVP) is the foundation of the business and the staple for sustainable growth. Many businesses fail due to the inability of establishing a core concept, or primary product to introduce to the market.
This book is intended to provide a concise method of developing a business strategy for successful entry into the market while eliminating the frustration of trial and error. Through this work, readers learn the difference between the purpose of a business plan, market analysis, and a feasibility study. Readers will also understand the difference between a good idea and a great business model. This book serves as a tool for increasing the opportunity for success when launching a product, service, or a business.

No Dumbing Down: A No-Nonsense Guide for CEOs on Organization Growth

$21.99

When it comes to running a business, none of us has time for approaches that leave us asking, “So what?” In our decade of working together, Karen demonstrated an unflappable bias for action and an obsession for meaningful results. Her book will enable you to achieve those same kinds of results and all the different types of success that goes with them. — Rod Canion, Founder and former CEO, Compaq Computer Corporation
Karen Walker’s book, No Dumbing Down, is a quick-hitting treasure trove of applicable models that can and should be applied to a growing business. Her extensive insights are shared in a practical and approachable manner that supports the imperfect but all-important discipline of transitioning in and out of levels of organizational maturity. – Jeff Margolis, Chairman and CEO, Welltok, Inc. and Founding CEO, TriZetto
New podcast from Karen Walker and Overtime Leader! https://soundcloud.com/user-176252562/karen-walker-teamwork-and-strength-in-numbers
No Dumbing Down: A No-Nonsense Guide for CEOs on Organization Growth is a book for a company’s senior-most leaders looking to make improvements when aligning the organization’s internal and external strategies for fast, profitable, and sustain- able growth.
This book combines the author’s impactful and formative experience with leadership and strategy best practices, helping the reader master the counterintuitive art of actually delivering on the promise made to customers. Readers will learn how and why to put these strategies to work—taking direct aim at pitfalls that can trip up even the most stellar companies.

Sustain: Extending Improvement in the Modern Enterprise

$21.99

This is a work of system-think on why breakthroughs don’t sustain. In answer, it recalls mutual learning, by which the exceptional have defied the norms of decline since before humans could write about it.
Part 1 shows the mechanics how complex adaptive systems extend order—Hayek’s catallaxy. How lean exploits this is unpacked. Part 2 isolates popular fallacies of control that incentivize undoing. Part 3 offers countermeasures—leveled exploration and exploitation in strategy deployment, standard work, and development of employees, products, services, and methods. Lean turns paradigms and routines from holding on, to sustainably moving on.
Lean is not just a factory thing. Lessons abound in nature’s fractals and adaptations, admin, and history too; from the present back through World War II, the Industrial Revolution, the Reformation, to its roots in the civilizing of Antiquity.
Learners mine hard lessons while knowers sadly repeat them. Great sources on catallaxy—Juran, Hayek, Popper, Kuhn, Sproul, Rother, March—have left us rich deposits of distilled experience.
Sustain is a trail guide, locating pivotal insights to defy the entropy of abandon-and-revert, in any enterprise that coordinates re- sources, time, and treasure in the face of varying, alternative uses.