Books published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers

A modern, feminist take on the classic choose-your-own-journey book, inspiring readers to embrace the fact that there is no singular right path--just your own!So many women enter their adult lives believing that they should know where they are going and how to get there. This can make life decisions feel intimidating and overwhelming. While some choices that lie ahead are fairly predictable, such as those surrounding career, partnership, and motherhood, the effects of these choices can lead to more complicated and unexpected turns that are seldom discussed.Rather than suggesting a rule book, Rebekah Bastian, vice president at Zillow and recognized thought leader, inspires you to Blaze Your Own Trail. "I have the benefit of being a living example of crooked paths, magnificent screw-ups, and shocking successes," she writes. Through storylines and supportive data that explore workplace sexism, career changes, marriage, child-rearing, existential crises, and everything in between, you will learn to embrace and feel less alone in your own nonlinear journey. Even better, you can turn back decisions and make different ones. Blaze Your Own Trail includes nineteen possible outcomes and many routes to get there. You will find that you have the strength to make it through any of them.

"This book reminds us of what we have in common: the power to create a good life for ourselves and for others, no matter what the world has in store for us." --Michael J. FoxThis book reveals that people with disabilities are the invisible force that has shaped history. They have been instrumental in the growth of freedom and birth of democracy. They have produced heavenly music and exquisite works of art. They have unveiled the scientific secrets of the universe. They are among our most popular comedians, poets, and storytellers. And at 1.2 billion, they are also the largest minority group in the world.Al Etmanski offers ten lessons we can all learn from people with disabilities, illustrated with short, funny, inspiring, and thought-provoking stories of one hundred individuals from twenty countries. Some are familiar, like Michael J. Fox, Greta Thunberg, Stephen Hawking, Helen Keller, Stevie Wonder, and Temple Grandin. Others deserve to be, like Evelyn Glennie, a virtuoso percussionist who is deaf--her mission is to teach the world to listen to improve communication and social cohesion. Or Aaron Philip, who has revolutionized the runway as the first disabled, trans woman of color to become a professional model. The time has come to recognize people with disabilities for who they really are: authoritative sources on creativity, love, sexuality, resistance, dealing with adversity, and living a good life.

Project management is the art of making the right decisions. To be effective as a project manager, you must know how to make rational choices in project management, what processes can help you to improve these choices, and what tools are available to help you through the decision-making process. Project Decisions: The Art and Science is an entertaining and easy-to-read guide to a structured project decision analysis process. This valuable text presents the basics of cognitive psychology and quantitative analysis methods to help project managers make better decisions. Examples that portray different projects, real-life stories, and popular culture will help readers acquire the essential knowledge and skills required for effective project decision-making. Readers will be able to: *Understand psychological pitfalls related to project management*Establish a creative business environment in their organization*Identify project risks and uncertainties*Develop estimates of project time and cost based on an understanding of human psychology*Perform basic quantitative and qualitative risk and decision analysis*Use event chain methodology in managing projects*Communicate the results of decision analysis to decision-makers*Review project decisions and perform adaptive project management*Establish a project decision analysis process in their organization PLUS Test your own judgment through a quiz that examines your intuition!

Every year, 6 million companies and more than 100,000 products are launched. They all need an awesome name, but many (such as Xobni, Svbtle, and Doostang) look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game. In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyoneeven noncreative typescan create memorable and buzz-worthy brand names. No degree in linguistics required. The heart of the book is Watkins's proven SMILE and SCRATCH Testtwo acronyms for what makes or breaks a name. She also provides up-to-date advice, like how to make sure that Siri spells your name correctly and how to nab an available domain name. And you'll see dozens of examplesthe good, the bad, and the ';so bad she gave them an award.' Alexandra Watkins is not afraid to name names.

World-record endurance athlete and professional leadership coach Jason Caldwell draws on his amazing experiences to show how anyone can build and lead teams that accomplish incredible things.Thirty-five days, 14 hours, and 3 minutes. That's how long it took Jason Caldwell and the crew of the American Spirit to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean during the 2016 Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge--or, as it's known to those who attempt it, "The World's Toughest Row." They not only succeeded but set a world record. This was an extraordinary team effort. And that's what this book is about. Caldwell transfers the hard-won lessons of his transatlantic adventure out of the ocean and into your office, showing how to build and lead teams that do what others say cannot be done and sustain that level of performance. The thrilling details of Caldwell's quest to break the world's record deliver a "just-one-more-page" experience, during which you'll also learn lessons like • How to quit like a winner • Why results aren't the measure of a high-performance team • What four questions you should ask yourself before you set any goal • How to harness the power of emotion-first leadership • Why the best people aren't necessarily the right people for your teamThis book is a distillation of Caldwell's worldwide speaking programs delivered to packed crowds at Fortune 500 companies and universities worldwide. It is the answer to a question he is constantly asked: How were you and your teams able to accomplish such seemingly impossible goals? And it's also a guidebook that can teach anyone how to do the same.

Now in its third edition, this project management classic has been updated with an array of field-tested tools to help upper management ensure the success of projects within organizations.For over twenty years, Creating an Environment for Successful Projects has been a staple for upper managers who want to help projects succeed. This new edition includes case studies from companies that have successfully applied the approach, along with practical tools such as templates, surveys, and benchmark reports for savvy leaders who want to ensure project success throughout their organizations. The insights in this book will help management speed projects along instead of getting in their way. All too often, well-intentioned managers put roadblocks in the team's way instead of empowering them with the tools they need to succeed. This approach to project environments, grounded in decades of research and practice, will help you make your organization the most project-friendly it's ever been. Organizational changes rarely work unless upper management is heavily involved. Although project managers are most closely responsible for the success of projects, upper managers are the ones who ultimately create an environment that supports those projects. The way upper managers define, structure, and act toward projects has an important effect on the success or failure of those projects and, consequently, the success or failure of the organization. This book helps all managers understand the need for project management changes and shows how to develop project management as an organizational practice.

Businesses worry about new technologies, but customers are the ultimate disruptors—Suman Sarkar offers bold strategies for making sure you understand your customers and keep up with their ever-changing needs. Disruption—the brutal roiling of markets, the decline of long-established brands and products, and the rise of new upstarts—drives business failure and success. Most people think technology causes disruption, but technology merely enables it. Changing customer needs cause disruptions, and too many businesses get caught unaware.  Suman Sarkar offers proven strategies that will enable any business to stay radically close to its customers and address their evolving needs. He argues that businesses need to focus on existing customers first—research shows they’re likely to spend more and are more profitable than new customers. Personalization is becoming important for the newer generations in both developed and developing markets, so Sarkar describes approaches to make them cost-effective. In our era of instant gratification, customers want what they want now—Sarkar explains how you can develop and deliver products and services faster than ever. And since a few bad Yelp reviews, social media posts, or angry tweets from customers can ruin you, Sarkar shows how to proactively make sure the quality of your products and services stays better than that of your competitors.  The key to survival in this era of changing customer needs is to focus on and address them quickly so customers don’t switch to the competition. Drawing on his experiences with leading companies worldwide, Sarkar offers five strategies and techniques that will keep you ahead of the curve.

The authors of the classic bestseller The Leadership Challenge bring their expertise to higher education, offering five practices that can make any college or university leader into an exemplary leader.  Drawing on the same pioneering research that formed the foundation of their classic bestseller The Leadership Challenge (over 2.7 million copies sold), James Kouzes and Barry Posner offer a set of leadership skills and practices that will make a significant difference in every area of higher education—faculty, administration, library services, career counseling, auxiliary services, campus safety, and more. It’s about the behaviors that leaders, regardless of their position, use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, segments into solidarity, and risks into rewards.  Kouzes and Posner tell the leadership story from the inside and move outward, describing it first as a personal journey and then as mobilizing others to want to do things they have never done before. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership is the operating system for this adventure. Leadership in Higher Education explains the fundamental principles that support these practices and provides case examples of people in higher education who demonstrate each one.  A core theme that weaves its way through all the chapters is that, whether it’s one to one or one to many, leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. We need leaders who can unite us and ignite us. This book lights the way.

Bestselling author, therapist, lawyer, and mediator Bill Eddy describes how dangerous, high-conflict personalities have gained power in governments worldwide--and what citizens can do to keep these people out of office.Democracy is under siege. The reason isn''t politics but personalities: too many countries have come under the sway of high-conflict people (HCPs) who have become politicians. Most of these high-conflict politicians have traits of narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial (i.e., sociopathic) personality disorder, or both. This is the first and only guide for identifying and thwarting them. HCPs don''t avoid conflict, they thrive on it, widening social divisions and exacerbating international tensions. Eddy, the world''s leading authority on high-conflict personalities, explains why they''re so seductive and describes the telltale traits that define HCPs--he even includes a helpful list of forty typical HCP behaviors.Drawing on historical examples from Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Nixon to Trump, Maduro, and Putin, Eddy shows how HCPs invent enemies and manufacture phony crises so they can portray themselves as the sole heroic figure who can deal with them, despite their inability to actually solve problems. He describes the best ways to expose HCPs as the charlatans they are, reply to their empty and misleading promises, and find genuine leaders to support. Eddy brings his deep psychotherapeutic experience to bear on a previously unidentified phenomena that presents a real threat to the world.

Our economy is designed by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent. This book offers a compelling vision of an equitable, ecologically sustainable alternative that meets the essential needs of all people.We live in a world where twenty-six billionaires own as much wealth as half the planet's population. The extractive economy we live with now enables the financial elite to squeeze out maximum gain for themselves, heedless of damage to people or planet. But Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard show that there is a new economy emerging focused on helping everyone thrive while respecting planetary boundaries. At a time when competing political visions are at stake the world over, this book urges a move beyond tinkering at the margins to address the systemic crisis of our economy. Kelly and Howard outline seven principles of what they call a Democratic Economy: community, inclusion, place (keeping wealth local), good work (putting labor before capital), democratized ownership, ethical finance, and sustainability. Each principle is paired with a place putting it into practice: Pine Ridge, Preston, Portland, Cleveland, and more.This book tells stories not just of activists and grassroots leaders but of the unexpected accomplices of the Democratic Economy. Seeds of a future beyond corporate capitalism and state socialism are being planted in hospital procurement departments, pension fund offices, and even company boardrooms. The road to a system grounded in community, democracy, and justice remains uncertain. Kelly and Howard help us understand we make this road as we walk it by taking a first step together beyond isolation and despair.

We are living in a time when dishonesty and duplicity are common in our public institutions, our workplaces, and even in our personal relationships. But by recognizing and resisting the small, seemingly inconsequential ways we make moral compromises in our own lives, we can repair the tear in our social and moral fabric.The Law of Small Things begins with an IQ (Integrity Quotient) test designed to reveal the casual way we regard our promises and the misconceptions we have about acting truthfully. The book shows how most people believe that integrity is something we ';just have' and that we just do, like a Nike commercial. It depicts these and other deceptions we deploy to appear to act with integrity without actually doing so. The Law of Small Things also exposes how our culture encourages breaches of integrity through an array of ';permitted promise-breaking,' a language of cliches that equates self-interest with duty, and the ';illusion of inconsequence' that excuses small breaches with the breezy confidence that we can fulfill integrity when it counts. Brody challenges the prevailing notion that integrity is a possession you hold permanently. No one ';has integrity' and no one is perfect in practicing it. What we have is the opportunity to uphold promises and fulfill duties in each situation that faces us, large and small. Integrity is a practice and a habit of keeping promises, the ones we make explicitly and the ones that are implied in all our relationships. Ultimately, developing skill in the practice of integrity leads us to knowledge of who we are--not in the way the culture defines us, but in the way we truly know ourselves to be.

Top Cornell law professor Lynn Stout and her coauthors Tamara Belinfanti and Sergio Gramitto offer a visionary but practical proposal to provide a guaranteed minimum income--it not only avoids creating a new government program or increasing taxes, but also gives the entire citizenry more influence in the economy.Corporations have a huge influence on the life of every citizen--this book offers a visionary but practical plan to give every citizen a say in how corporations are run while also gaining some supplemental income. It lays out a clear approach that uses the mechanisms of the private market to hold corporations accountable to the public. This would happen through the creation of what the authors call the Universal Fund, a kind of national, democratic, mega mutual fund. Every American over eighteen would be entitled to a share and would participate in directing its share voting choices. Corporations and wealthy individuals would donate stocks, bonds, cash, or other assets to the fund just like they do to other philanthropic ventures now. The fund would pay out dividends to its citizen-shareholders that would grow as the fund grows. The Universal Fund is undoubtedly a big idea, but it is also eminently practical: it uses the tools of capitalism, not government, to give all citizens a direct influence on corporate actions. It would be a major institutional investor beholden not to a small elite group of stockholders pushing for short-term gain but to everyone. The fund would reward corporations that made sure their actions didn't harm people, communities, and the environment, and it would enable them to invest in innovations that would take more than a few months to pay off. Which is another reason corporations would donate to the fund--they could be freed from the constant pressure to maximize their quarterly share price and would essentially be subsidized for doing good. The authors demonstrate that our current economic rules force corporations to be shortsighted and even destructive because for most large investors, nothing matters but share price. The Universal Fund is designed to be a powerful positive balancing force, making the world a better place and the United States a better nation.