Ask a Manager


Book Description

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together




Facilitation in Complexity


Book Description

This book trailblazes co-evolution approaches which have been prototyped and tried out by the authors, with global academic and practitioner backgrounds. It was devised to help humanity, people, perceived as complex adaptive systems, to self-organize, co-create, and manage complexity, by showcasing with own example, as individuals and open networks. The book bundles main components needed for facilitation in complexity, while each chapter covers conceptual solutions for specific complexity strategies, tactics, operations - projects. These solutions serve as blueprints and roadmaps, providing approaches for practitioners and researchers alike. The main features incorporated in all the approaches are transcending silos and organizational hierarchies toward a borderless collaboration between diverse stakeholders with dynamic roles and accountabilities regarding purposes, missions and solutions. The book includes suggestions for strategic, tactical and operational managerial and governance approaches for disruptive, short-term, innovative, open, large-scale engagements where rapid onboarding, situational awareness, innovation and innovation in context, and action are expected while fast facilitation, dynamic reconfiguration, and self-organization are required. It also describes how long-term sustained co-creative action needs to be facilitated, to adapt to external and internal complexity dynamics while initiating positive change. This book showcases how co-creation and co-dreaming emerge with co-evolution. Chapters 1, 2, and 11 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.