"Even the best-run companies can get blindsided by disasters they should have anticipated. These predictable surprises range from financial scandals to operational disruptions, from organizational upheavals to product failures. In Predictable Surprises, Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins show you how to minimize your risk by understanding and lowering the psychological, organizational, and political barriers preventing you from foreseeing calamity. They then describe the powerful tools--including incentives and formal coalitions--that business leaders can use to ferret out and fend off threats invisible to insiders. Failure to see what's coming exposes your company to predictable surprises. Given the stakes involved, this book should count among every business leader's most trusted resources."--Publisher's website.
A “must-read” (Booklist) from Harvard Business School Professor and Codirector of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership: A guide to making better decisions, noticing important information in the world around you, and improving leadership skills. Imagine your advantage in negotiations, decision-making, and leadership if you could teach yourself to see and evaluate information that others overlook. The Power of Noticing provides the blueprint for accomplishing precisely that. Max Bazerman, an expert in the field of applied behavioral psychology, draws on three decades of research and his experience instructing Harvard Business School MBAs and corporate executives to teach you how to notice and act on information that may not be immediately obvious. Drawing on a wealth of real-world examples and using many of the same case studies and thought experiments designed in his executive MBA classes, Bazerman challenges you to explore your cognitive blind spots, identify any salient details you are programmed to miss, and then take steps to ensure it won’t happen again. His book provides a step-by-step guide to breaking bad habits and spotting the hidden details that will change your decision-making and leadership skills for the better, teaching you to pay attention to what didn’t happen, acknowledge self-interest, invent the third choice, and realize that what you see is not all there is. While many bestselling business books have explained how susceptible to manipulation our irrational cognitive blind spots make us, Bazerman helps you avoid the habits that lead to poor decisions and ineffective leadership in the first place. With The Power of Noticing at your side, you can learn how to notice what others miss, make wiser decisions, and lead more successfully.
Two leading experts in managerial decision making show that many disasters in business are preceded by clear warning signals that leaders either miss or purposely ignore. Here they outline the six danger signals that suggest a predictable surprise may be imminent.
Do your company and employees have the necessary "IQ" not only to withstand a crisis but also come through it with strength and confidence? Like many companies over the last few years, yours has probably done a great deal to reassess its physical, strategic, and financial vulnerabilities. However, there is a huge difference between business continuity planning and true crisis management. Ian Mitroff outlines seven distinct competencies your organization needs to handle crises effectively: Right Heart (emotional IQ): By accepting crisis as an inevitability, you can process much of the shock and grief beforehand, and avoid making the effects of the crisis even worse through an unconstructive response. Right Thinking (creative IQ): "Crises don’t care about the ways in which we have organized the world," so out-of-the-box thinking is essential. Right Social and Political IQ: Understand that your business is subject not only to the pitfalls of its industry, but to the universal and complex challenges that threaten all companies. Right Integration (integrative IQ): Realize that crises are perceived differently by different stakeholders, and are never simple "exercises" that can be "solved." Identify and reconcile these perceptions now so that the path is clear when the crisis strikes. Right Technical IQ: "Think like a controlled paranoid" to uncover ways in which malicious forces could cause a crisis in your company. Question every assumption about what is "normal," "impossible," or "absurd." Right Aesthetic IQ: Reconsider the classic design of the corporation, which is meant to address problems as they arise, and move toward one in which crisis management is an overarching discipline on a par with, for example, finance. Spiritual IQ: Reject the notion that people’s physical, mental, and spiritual beings are completely separate; and establish ahead of time why our work is, and must remain, important to us on many different levels. Although crisis management has taken on new urgency in recent turbulent times, the need for careful planning did not originate on September 11, 2001. Mitroff’s examples, drawn from interviews conducted both before and after the 2001 attacks during his 25 years of experience, demonstrate the need for action -- and offer a blueprint for taking it.
Introduction -- The end of the commodity super-cycle -- Binding carbon constraints -- An electric future -- The US: the lucky country -- The Middle East: more trouble to come -- Russia: blighted by the resource curse -- China: the end of the transition -- Europe: not as bad as it seems -- The gradual end of big oil -- Energy utilities: a broken model -- The new energy markets and the economics of the Internet -- Conclusion
Most people believe that meetings are a huge waste of time – and they're right. Though meetings are essential to the life of any organization, they tend to be boring, inefficient, and unproductive. But they don't have to be. Mission Critical Meetings shows you how to facilitate meetings that participants will look forward to. You'll learn how to: · get participants engaged · keep everyone on track · boost creativity · foster a sense of teamwork · make and implement decisions · ...and much more The impact of a well-run meeting extends far beyond the short-term enthusiasm of its participants. When you use the techniques described in this book, members will be better equipped to stay on task, work toward a common goal, and contribute to the success of your organization.
This open access book provides a theoretical framework and case studies on decision science for regional sustainability by integrating the natural and social sciences. The cases discussed include solution-oriented transdisciplinary studies on the environment, disasters, health, governance and human cooperation. Based on these case studies and comprehensive reviews of relevant works, including lessons learned from past failures for predictable surprises and successes in adaptive co-management, the book provides the reader with new perspectives on how we can co-design collaborative projects with various conflicts of interest and how we can transform our society for a sustainable future. The book makes a valuable contribution to the global research initiative Future Earth, promoting transdisciplinary studies to bridge the gap between science and society in knowledge generation processes and supporting efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Compared to other publications on transdisciplinary studies, this book is unique in that evolutionary biology is used as an integrator for various areas related to human decision-making, and approaches social changes as processes of adaptive learning and evolution. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended to all readers seeking an integrated overview of human decision-making in the context of social transformation.
As our society faces more complex challenges, the demand for effective leadership grows. Leaders, especially education leaders, often need to solve complicated problems quickly with limited resources. Understanding their own leadership styles, roles, and practices enhances the impact that leaders have every day. Leading Every Day offers direction on providing high-quality leadership amid turbulent times. Modeling the philosophy that leadership exists in all of us, the authors inspire educators to lead in big and small ways. This second edition offers: inspirational stories illustrating effective leadership, cogent quotations for educators to carry with them each day, actionable advice that can be implemented today, invitations for larger discourse that can change the lives of leaders and the lives of those they lead, and the latest research on best practices in leadership, change, professional development, and group leadership.
Praise for Workforce Wake-Up Call "Great questions + great thinkers = novel ideas. Workforce Wake-Up Call deals with the challenges of getting, revitalizing, treating (engaging), and leading talent in today's workplace. These talent issues are at the core of successful organizations. And the authors deal with these challenges as a marvelous mix of theory, research, and practice. This anthology offers practical insights that give hope for mastering the challenges of the new workforce." —David Ulrich, Professor, Ross School of Business University of Michigan and Partner, The RBL Group "In the near future, there will be dramatic shifts in workplace practices and a further evolution of employment relationships. The authors provide provocative insights that help business leaders better navigate the talent maze and workforce challenges." —J. Randall MacDonald, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, IBM "This book addresses the question that all companies need to answer: Are your talent management efforts competitively positioning the business? The global economy is leveling the playing field on many fronts, leaving talent as the one true area where your company can gain leverage in the marketplace. Change is proving to be a constant in the workplace, and the authors have created a great blueprint for handling these ever-present challenges in the recruitment and retention of your workforce. This book is a must-read for any executive serious about building a high-performing team and achieving sustainable advantage for both today and tomorrow." —Dennis Donovan, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, The Home Depot "The best ideas from the best minds on the workforce of the future!" —Marshall Goldsmith, author or coeditor of twenty books, including The Leader of the Future (a BusinessWeek bestseller) and Global Leadership: The Next Generation Contributors to Workforce Wake-Up Call include: * Max Bazerman, Harvard Business Schoolcoauthor of Predictable Surprises * Peter Cappelli, The Wharton School author of The New Deal at Work * Lynda Gratton, London Business School author of The Democratic Enterprise * Ed Lawler, University of Southern California author of Treat People Right! * Thomas Malone, MIT Sloan School of Management author of The Future of Work * N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited * Nigel Nicholson, London Business School author of Executive Instinct * Jeffrey Pfeffer, Stanford University author of The Human Equation * Matt Schuyler, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Capital One * Ricardo Semler, President of Semco author of The Seven-Day Weekend * Noel Tichy, University of Michigan author of The Leadership Engine * Sheila Wellington, Stern School of Business author of Be Your Own Mentor
Water is our most fundamental natural resource, a resource that is limited. Challenges to our nation's water resources continue to grow, driven by population growth, ecological needs, climate change, and other pressures. The nation needs more and improved water science and information to meet these challenges. Toward a Sustainable and Secure Water Future reviews the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) Water Resource Discipline (WRD), one of the nation's foremost water science organizations. This book provides constructive advice to help the WRD meet the nation's water needs over the coming decades. Of interest primarily to the leadership of the USGS WRD, many findings and recommendations also target the USGS leadership and the Department of Interior (DOI), because their support is necessary for the WRD to respond to the water needs of the nation.
