Books published by Berrett-Koehler

Torture in Abu Ghraib prison. Corporate fraud. Falsified records at Veterans Administration hospitals. Teachers pressured to feed test answers to students. These scandals could have been prevented if, early on, people had said no to their higher-ups. In this timely new book, Ira Chaleff goes deeply into when and how to disobey inappropriate orders, reduce unacceptable risk, and find better ways to achieve legitimate goals.The inspiration for the book, and its title, came from a concept used in guide dog training. Guide dogs must be able to recognize a command that would put their human and themselves at risk, effectively resist the command, and identify safer options for achieving the goal. This is precisely what Chaleff shows humans how to do. He delves into the psychological dynamics of obedience, drawing in particular on what Stanley Milgram's seminal Yale experiments - in which volunteers were induced to administer shocks to innocent people - teach us about how to reduce compliance with harmful orders. Using dozens of vivid examples of historical events and everyday situations, Chaleff offers advice on judging whether intelligent disobedience is called for, how to effectively express opposition, and how to create a culture where, rather than "just following orders," citizens are educated and encouraged to think about whether those orders make sense.

As organizations grow, the demands on leadership change. The same old moves won't cut it any more. In Chess Not Checkers, Miller tells the story of Blake Brown, newly appointed CEO of a company troubled by poor performance and low morale. Nothing Blake learned from his previous job seems to help him deal with the issues he now faces. The problem, his new mentor points out, is Blake is playing checkers - he needs to play chess or he's going to lose. The early days of an organization are like checkers: a quick game with mostly interchangeable pieces. Everybody does a little bit of everything, the leader included, and things are so frantic you just have to react as fast as you can. But as the organization expands, you can't just keep jumping from activity to activity. You have to think strategically, look ahead, leverage every employee's specific talents. That's chess. And this approach creates unprecedented levels of performance. Adapting four strategies from the game of chess, Miller reveals four moves high-performance organizations make. They bet on leadership, act as one, win the heart, and excel at execution. Chess Not Checkers is an accessible and easily applied guide to help leaders elevate their own leadership and the performance of their entire team.

Good employees are hard to find, and they can be easy to lose. But there's a simple tool every manager can use to ensure that star performers and solid contributors alike will feel energized, engaged, and excited - and that they will give you fair warning if they're unhappy. It's called the stay interview, and this book is the manager's definitive guide, written by the women who created the concept. The idea is simple: ask people how they like their jobs and what would keep them there. Worried that your talented people will want things you can't deliver, like more money or a big promotion? Kaye and Jordan-Evans have a simple four-step process for dealing with that. Feel just plain awkward about doing stay interviews? They explain how to create an atmosphere that will make the interview more comfortable and provide dozens of suggested questions and icebreakers, as well as tips for easing any performance anxiety you might feel. Think you don't have time? They offer all kinds of options for where, when, and how you can do stay interviews, from folding them into other business processes to doing them casually, like on a walk to get a cup of coffee. Stay interviews prevent exit interviews. They cost nothing, and the price of not doing them - in lost talent and time - can be huge. Now that you have the most practical, authoritative, soup-to-nuts guide available, you have no excuse. Just ask!

What do the best leaders have in common? As president of MAP, John Manning should know. MAP has helped tens of thousands of top executives accelerate their leadership and management performance. Manning says the answer is one word: discipline. But for Manning, discipline has a very specific meaning. All leaders have scores of things they could do. But a disciplined leader is one who identifies and focuses on the Vital Few: the 20 percent of activities that will drive 80 percent of the results. And the results that are most important are those tied to the organization's most precious asset: its people.The Disciplined Leader offers fifty-two succinct lessons to help you home in on your own Vital Few in three critical areas: leading yourself, leading your team, and leading your organization. Each lesson comes with recommended tactics and practical "Take Action!" tips for implementing it, so there are literally hundreds of pieces of must-know, time-tested advice here. The chapters are self-contained, so you can read them in any order and come back to the ones that resonate with you - your own Vital Few! This is a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts guide to leadership practice that's built to inspire action, drive change, and achieve results.

Books like StrengthsFinder 2.0 have helped leaders discover their strengths - but they stop there. The Sindells argue that focusing only on your best abilities neglects a vital development opportunity. They show how to identify hidden strengths that can be quickly elevated into full strengths with attention and focus. Working mainly on your strengths can ultimately make you weaker, they argue - you need to continually add new skills, not rely on what you're already good at. And while most people assume that means they should try to turn their weaknesses into usable skills, the Sindells say that it takes too much time and effort - the ROI just isn't there. It's in the neglected middle skills, neither strengths nor weaknesses, that the most potent development opportunities lie. They're close enough to being strengths that putting your energy there can offer a powerful payoff. Using assessments, exercises, and case studies, the Sindells help you identify your most promising middle skills and create a plan to turn them into strengths. In today's work environment, not growing and stretching yourself translates into lack of innovation, stagnation, and obsolescence. Relying upon strengths is like relying upon training wheels - at a certain point you need to take them off in order to improve and grow.

In America, organizations spend $175 billion in training initiatives and more than $500 billion in human resource solutions every year yet often have little to show for it. One reason is that people "jump to solutions" before they identify the causes of the problem. Performance consultants are effective because they partner with clients to clarify business goals and determine root causes for gaps between desired and current results. Only then are specific solutions agreed upon and implemented. This third edition of the classic book that introduced performance consulting adds a wealth of new material. There are new case examples throughout and four new chapters providing detailed steps for measuring results from performance consulting initiatives on five different levels, including ROI. The book includes a never-before-published Alignment and Measurement Model, allowing you to connect organizational needs and performance consulting initiatives designed to address those needs with the appropriate level of measurement. This remains a profoundly practical book, featuring tools, models, and checklists. It will enable you to make a difference in your organization that is valued, measurable, and sustainable.

When Aspen Baker had an abortion at the age of 24 she felt caught between the warring pro-life and pro-choice factions, with no safe space to share her conflicted feelings. In this hopeful and moving book, Baker describes how she and Exhale, the organization she cofounded, developed their "pro-voice" philosophy and a set of tools that enable anyone to have respectful, compassionate exchanges about even the most contentious topics. Initially distrusted by both sides, Exhale now receives post abortion referrals from pro-life and pro-choice organizations. Baker examines the history of the abortion debate, identifying the mistakes and misunderstandings that have led us to the current painful divide. She shares how Exhale discovered creative ways to help women and men share their feelings about abortion, such as starting a post abortion telephone service and piloting a nationwide story-sharing tour led by women who'd had abortions. Thanks to Aspen Baker's innovative ideas and the trendsetting work of Exhale, the culture around abortion is changing.Pro-voice can be adopted by anyone interested in dialogue rather than dogma. Peace, in this perspective, isn't a world without fighting or conflict but one where conflict can be engaged in - fiercely and directly - without dehumanizing ourselves or our opponents. Our world is full of gray areas. It's vital we learn practices like pro-voice to help us move from paralysis to progress.

Business has a values problem. It's not just spectacular public scandals like Enron (which, incidentally, had a great corporate values statement). Many companies fail to live up to the standards they set for themselves, alienating the public and leaving employees cynical and disengaged - resulting in lower productivity, less innovation, and sometimes outright corruption. The reason, argue top scholars and consultants Edward Freeman and Ellen Auster, is that most companies' values are handed down from on high, with no employee input or discussion. This practically invites disconnects between intention and reality. To bridge this values gap, Freeman and Auster provide a process, Values through Conversation, that focuses on four key types of values: introspective (reflecting on who we are and how we do things), historical (understanding our past and how it influences us), relational (asking how we can best work together), and aspirational (articulating our hopes and dreams). By developing values through discussions - casual or formal, one-on-one or in groups - VTC ensures that they are dynamic and evolving, not static words on a wall or a website. Freeman and Auster offer advice, real-world examples, and sample questions to help you create values that are authentic and embraced because they are rooted in the lived experience of the organization.

The way you spend your time, your energy, and your purchasing dollars are investments just as much as any brokerage account is, and they deserve the same kind of attention. The Resilient Investor shows you how to expand the concept of investing beyond stocks and bonds, wake up from dangerous old investing patterns, open your eyes to new opportunities, and build a better world.The book's centerpiece is the Resilient Investment Map, which first lays out three classes of assets: personal (your time), tangible (the things you own or have access to), and financial (traditional investment funds). Then it offers three different strategies for those assets. You can invest them in ways that strengthen yourself, your family, and your community; in ways that encourage the continued growth of a sustainable global economy; or in more visionary efforts that will help create a better future. You'll learn how to diversify your investment eggs into many more baskets than those offered by Wall Street.The goal is to make yourself more resilient: able to anticipate and prepare for disturbance, rebuild as necessary, and adapt and evolve when possible. For example, investing in food and energy self-sufficiency will help if the financial system takes another tumble. But, as the authors persuasively argue, the choices that ultimately make you the most resilient also enhance our communities, our economy, and the planet - paying true dividends to everyone.

We weigh every significant decision based on how it will affect our future. But when it comes to figuring that out, we mostly make the process up as we go along. While financial professional Peter Neuwirth can't help you actually predict the future, he can offer a simple, systematic way to make much better guesses about it - and so make better decisions.Neuwirth offers an accessible, step-by-step guide to using the powerful concept of Present Value - which allows you to determine the value today of something that might happen in the future - to evaluate all of the outcomes that might arise from choosing one path as opposed to another. Using examples that anyone can relate to, Neuwirth walks you through the process. Your old refrigerator doesn't work as well as it used to - should you buy a new one right away or muddle through for a while? You're offered a great discount on a service you don't need at the moment but eventually will - buy the service now or wait? With just a little math and some common sense, you can compare future costs and benefits with present costs and benefits and make "apples to apples" comparisons. This book will be indispensable for anyone who has ever had to figure out whether to stick with an awful job or follow his or her bliss, fix that old car or buy a new one, increase 401(k) contributions or keep the same take-home pay, and a thousand other decisions.

Stories have power. They move people in a way that facts and figures can't. Many leaders use stories as a tool, but leadership development expert Tim Tobin says most have no idea what tale their own leadership is telling. He shows how, by thinking of your career as a narrative - with a plot, characters, and an arc - you can increase your awareness of yourself as a leader and become more effective, insightful, and inspiring. Using story as both a metaphor and a process for self-development, Tobin offers activities and questions that help you better understand your own leadership and how others perceive it. What is the plot of your leadership story - your overall goals and purpose? Who are the main characters and what roles do they play? How have the settings of your story influenced it? What are the conflicts that you need to resolve to move towards the ending you intend? Once you have a thorough grasp of your leadership story, Tobin gives detailed advice on communicating it - when, where, and how. Taking control of your leadership story enables you to more consciously shape the impact you have in the world. You'll be better equipped to make decisions, choose actions that tell the story you want to tell, and ensure that you become the kind of leader you want to be.

For astronaut Ron Garan, living on the International Space Station was a powerful, transformative experience - one that he believes holds the key to solving our problems on Earth. On spacewalks and through windows, Garan was struck by the stunning beauty of the earth from space but sobered by knowing how troubled our planet is. And yet on the International Space Station, Garan, a former fighter pilot, was working side by side with Russians, who only a few years before were "the enemy." If fifteen nationalities could collaborate on one of the most ambitious, technologically complicated undertakings in history, surely we can apply that kind of cooperation and innovation toward creating a better world. That spirit is what Garan calls the "orbital perspective."Garan vividly conveys what it was like learning to work with a diverse group of people in an environment only a handful of human beings have ever known. But more importantly, he describes how he and others are working to apply the orbital perspective here at home, embracing new partnerships and processes to promote peace and combat hunger, thirst, poverty, and environmental destruction. This book is a call to action for each of us to care for the most important space station of all: planet Earth. You don't need to be an astronaut to have the orbital perspective.

This brand new edition of a classic, international bestseller continues to bring keen insight to an important topic - workforce diversity. Written in a charming, engaging style, it is a contemporary corporate fable - a tale for our times. This special 20th anniversary edition includes many new tips, tools, and strategies for peacocks and penguins alike - as well as an entirely new bonus parable.Through the story of Perry the Peacock and his fine feathered friends, authors Gallagher and Schmidt bring to life the challenges of birds of different feathers who struggle to be successful in the conformity-minded Land of Penguins. Their travails illuminate the challenges of creating a pluralistic corporate culture in which the talent, energy, and commitment of all employees are fully engaged. People who have new ideas that differ from business as usual are often ignored or criticized for the very thing that makes them valuable: their originality and creativity. This unique book helps organizations break out of ""penguin thinking" in order to tap into and leverage the creativity of diversity. Learn how to cultivate an organizational culture in which new ideas can flourish and innovation can take flight.

We need more women at the highest levels in business, government, and nonprofits - and there is no time to waste. The problem, says Helene Lerner, isn't so much that women lack confidence but that they misunderstand what confidence really is.True confidence isn't fearlessness; it's having the courage to move forward while your knees are shaking. Any woman waiting until she has enough confidence with a capital C to act never will. Lerner lays out practical strategies for beating this confidence myth, drawing on her own and other female leaders' experiences and on her survey of over 500 working women. You'll learn how to present your best self no matter how you feel inside, welcome even brutal feedback as a tool to hone your skills, avoid spreading yourself too thin by saying "no" strategically, and much more. The book features dozens of Confidence Sparks, simple but powerful exercises and techniques to catapult your career to the next level. The playing field is not level and gender inequities persist, but the women interviewed in this book have found ways to navigate through it, and you can, too. The key to success is seizing the opportunity and acting now. Helene Lerner is here to act as your personal coach as you silence the "mad mind chatter" and take risks, speak out, and step up.

In the United States today, our Bill of Rights has been rendered pointless by heavy surveillance of average citizens, political persecution of dissenters, and the threat of indefinite detention now codified into law. Corporations reap handsome profits collecting information for various agencies - 70 percent of the US intelligence budget is paid to private contractors. As a result, we now live in a Corporate Security State where the government is more interested in safeguarding the health of the companies who serve it than the citizens who support it.The Rise of the American Corporate Security State details the massive amount of information the government is collecting and exposes how far it's willing to go to conceal its activities and punish anyone who dares expose it. Further, the blurring of the boundaries between business and government is enabling corporations to spy on employees and citizens in the name of "cybersecurity" and has hobbled attempts to punish the corporate institutions responsible for the financial collapse of 2008. But Edwards offers a plan for fighting back - steps we can demand to restore transparency to government, keep private information private, and make democracy a reality once again.

Most companies, if they solicit employee ideas at all, essentially just set up a suggestion box, which employees know from experience is where ideas go to die. So nothing happens. But innovation is not an option - it's the key to survival. And innovation needs new ideas. So where are those ideas going to come from? Using numerous examples, Robinson and Schroeder argue that the employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services are in the best position to see where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact. Robinson and Schroeder explain how leaders can build the kind of idea-driven company capable of implementing fifty to a hundred or more ideas per employee per year. Drawing on their work with companies worldwide, they show what's needed to put together a management team open to grassroots innovation and describe the strategies, policies, and practices that encourage - and those that discourage - employee ideas. They detail exactly how high-performing idea processes work and how to design one customized for your organization - including advice for teaching people how to come up with new ideas. The best ideas may come from the bottom, but they have to be systematically solicited from the top.

Every group that executive coach Steve Arneson speaks to have the same question: what does my boss want? Even a good boss can be hard to read, but many people have difficult bosses. Many bosses aren't clear about their expectations, act in seemingly inexplicable ways, and suggest motives that appear to have nothing to do with helping you achieve your career goals. Arneson says the hard truth is that any efforts to improve, fix, or convert your boss won't work. The secret is to figure out what makes her tick and change your own approach to working with her. The book is divided into three sections and built around fifteen questions - ten to ask about your boss and five to ask about yourself. It begins by showing you how you can study your boss to gain an understanding of what drives his behavior - work style, leadership brand, and motives. Once you understand this, you can consider how your boss sees you. Studying your boss is important, but you also have to look at yourself from her perspective. Finally, you need to take responsibility for the relationship. In this section, you'll find practical suggestions for using what you've learned to change your interactions with your boss and tips for getting the relationship back on track. Arneson includes vivid real-world examples to show how he and his clients have put his advice into practice to gain more meaningful, productive, and enjoyable work lives.

One reason public speaking is such a nightmare for so many people is that they think they have to be "perfect." They drive themselves crazy trying to conform to all sorts of handed-down rules that tie them up in knots and put their audiences to sleep. Karen Hough says you can throw out those rules, relax, be yourself, make "mistakes," and connect with your audience much more effectively than the guy with the impeccable PowerPoint slides. Hough has used her unique presentation approach to take the anxiety out of one of the greatest fears in business. Her book debunks over a dozen myths about presentations to make them more fun and natural for everybody. Its authenticity and passion that win people over not polish. But you can't be authentic if you're following someone else's rules. Hough shows how you can embrace your own style and communicate your message without worrying constantly about antiquated dos and don'ts. Follow Karen's "bad advice" and you'll be surprised to learn you're actually a naturally skilled presenter.

We are living amidst a remarkable transformation. The linear, throwaway economy of today - in which we extract resources, create products, use them, and throw them away like a cheap plastic fork - is rapidly coming to a close. We are, simply put, running out of things to mine and places to trash. A new economy is being born, one that takes this line and turns it into a circle. Resource scarcity - the overfished ocean - is the reality virtually every company is swimming in. Those managers who deeply understand and master this shift will be able to turn the new reality into disruptive innovation and remarkable competitive advantage. Overfished Ocean Strategy offers five essential principles for developing products and services for this new reality. A business owner herself, Nadya Zhexembayeva fills the book with examples of companies that are already successfully navigating the overfished ocean. Unlike less-farsighted companies, they are not making "green" products as a sideline for a niche market but rather have made dealing with resource scarcity the central, driving force of their entire strategy. As these innovators ride ahead of the wave, new products, new business models, new markets, and new profits follow. You can join them, or you can be left standing on the shore.

It's a paradox: as big companies get better at achieving operational excellence, actual breakthroughs seem to decrease. It's the scrappy little startups, with comparatively tiny budgets, that continue to be founts of innovation. Why is it that as industry leaders get better at what they do, they get worse at innovation?By conducting deep research within companies as diverse as Apple, Google, Pfizer, General Motors, Nike, and Sony, the authors have found the answer: the very pursuit of operational excellence - that is, making one's existing business as efficient as it can be - blinds managers to the kinds of disruptive business model changes vital for innovation. These changes could threaten all that hard work. It's why Nokia famously killed its smart phone - the company was too invested in "dumb phones." Nothing less than a complete redesign and rethinking of the corporation - down to how accountants capture innovation costs and overhead - is necessary to get companies moving again. The authors' new model, "the startup corporation," marries the strengths of corporate scale to the nimbleness of entrepreneurs.For a model of the new startup corporation, the authors return again and again to Apple, which doesn't have the usual corporate structure and accounting systems. Not every company can be an Apple, but all companies can learn to break the bonds of operational thinking if they'll take the authors' lessons to heart.

The world is not coming to an end soon, despite what you may have heard and continue to hear everywhere. Jurriaan Kamp argues that there are reasons to be positive and that, contrary to what the media says, the world is slowly and incrementally getting better. Not only that, but there is solid evidence that optimism - intelligent optimism, not rose-colored glasses wishful thinking - is good for your body and mind too.Certainly there is upheaval and economic, political, and social instability, but the near-exclusive focus on negative developments means that progress too often goes unnoticed, which just contributes to a general sense of pessimism. And pessimism can be fatal: Kamp cites research showing that pessimists are more likely to smoke, be overweight, have high blood pressure, suffer from high cholesterol, and have an increased risk of Parkinson's. Kamp demonstrates that, believe it or not on the whole we're living longer, becoming smarter, and working less, and that wealth is increasing, democracy is on the rise, and violence is on the decline. He explains how we can cultivate an informed optimistic outlook that will make our lives and the world better. Because, as he quotes Helen Keller, "No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed an uncharted land or opened ¿a new doorway for ¿the human spirit."

The United States has the highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world. But are we any safer? Journalist Maya Schenwar proves that locking people up actually makes society less safe - and that there are alternatives that do a better job of deterring crime and providing justice for victims. Schenwar looks at how incarceration breaks the bonds that hold people together and deprives incarcerated people of exactly the kind of support and life skills necessary to reintegrate into society - which is why more than two-thirds of prisoners are re-arrested within three years of release. She draws heavily on her personal experience (her sister has spent the better part of ten years entangled in the system), as well as the struggles of other prisoners and their families.Far from advocating the complete abolition of prisons, Schenwar simply argues that they shouldn't be the only approach. She describes how highly effective alternative justice programs in the US and other countries do a better job of both preventing recidivism and providing meaningful restitution to victims. Above all, however, Schenwar seeks to convince her readers that prisoners, for all their hurtful deeds, shouldn't be treated as "non-persons." Her book is a passionate argument that "throwing away the key" ultimately hurts individuals and society.

Trust is a non-negotiable for high performing relationships and organizations. Yet trust is fragile, and ninety percent of the behaviors that break it are subtle, fleeting, and unintentional. Drs. Dennis and Michelle Reina have rewritten this third edition of their best-selling, award-winning book Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace to empower everyone at every level of responsibility - not just leaders - to build and sustain trust in their workplaces. Updated and completely rewritten with new case studies, tools, tips, and reflections, this third edition is the culmination of the authors' more than 20 years of rigorous research and "in the trenches" trust building experience with hundreds of organizations and thousands of people around the world. As pioneers in the field of trust, Dennis and Michelle tell the truth about what it takes to build sustainable trust in the workplace - trust that withstands the tests of time, geography, and an increasingly volatile and competitive marketplace. In this third edition, the authors provide the most detailed blueprint available for building highly effective, trust-based connections and organizations. Drs. Dennis and Michelle Reina have devoted their careers to trust because they believe that people don't just want and need trustworthy relationships - they have a fundamental right to them. In this rewritten third edition of Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace, the authors reveal their practical, proven approaches to accessing this right to trust - one thought, intention, and behavior at a time.

According to Bob Johansen and Karl Ronn, the new way to succeed is to give what you have away. They call it the reciprocity advantage: sharing your assets with carefully chosen partners in order to learn how to make money in new ways - think give to grow.Johansen and Ronn explain each of the four steps involved in achieving reciprocity advantage, beginning with uncovering your "right-of-way": the space, resources, or technologies you control and have trust and permission to share with others. The next step is choosing the best partners to share these assets with, which can be surprising - for example, the authors tell how Microsoft partnered with the people who'd been hacking their Kinnect platform to find new uses for it. Then the authors explain how to experiment with your partners to figure out which new products or services might be scalable, and how to look at new technologies that can make scaling up faster than ever.Johansen and Ronn also identify four future forces that will dramatically impact each of these four steps, and include numerous examples of businesses that have succeeded by applying reciprocity principles as well as those that failed by sticking to shortsighted business practices. And they provide detailed, practical guidance for any business that wants to discover its own reciprocity advantage.