Building the Future


Book Description

Niccolò Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about--innovation far more audacious than a new way to find a restaurant or a smart phone you can wear on your wrist. Harvard professor Amy Edmondson and journalist Susan Salter Reynolds explore how to bring into being systems that transform human experience and make the world more livable and sustainable. This demands "big teaming": intense collaboration across professions and industries that may have completely different mindsets and even be antagonistic to each other. To do this successfully requires practicing new forms of leadership that combine an expansive vision with incremental action--not an easy balance. To reveal how pioneers build the future, Edmondson and Reynolds tell the story of Living PlanIT, an award-winning "smart city" start-up with a breathtakingly ambitious goal: building a showcase high-tech city from scratch to pilot its software. This meant a joint effort spanning a truly disparate group of software entrepreneurs, real estate developers, city government officials, architects, construction companies, and technology corporations. We get to know Living PlanIT's leaders and follow them and their partners through cycles of hope, exhaustion, disillusionment, pragmatism, and renewal. There are powerful lessons here for anyone, in any industry, seeking to transform the world.




Building and Managing High-Performance Distributed Teams


Book Description

The age of the distributed team is upon us. Teams can now operate and collaborate from locations other than a central office, and events surrounding the 2020 COVID pandemic have thrown its practicality into sharp relief. Managing a team whose members are distributed across several locations requires a different mindset and will remain a must-have for all areas of business from this point forward. Building and Managing High-Performance Distributed Teams explains what the distributed teams concept means to the future of your company. Author Alberto S. Silveira Jr. leverages his industry knowledge to explore why the high-performance distributed team model is vital to the future of business, and explains how to build and maintain one through times of change. You will learn to differentiate between distributed teams, remote work, offshoring, and what each means in a modern context. Silveira also weaves in stories from his other life as a boater and sailor, using analogies and lessons gained from humankind’s thousands of years of maritime adventure to illustrate the value of well-managed teams, and to also convey the importance of life-work balance in today’s working world. The book analyzes team management strategies from some of the great successes and failures in recent years so that you can learn from the experiences of others. Building and Managing High-Performance Distributed Teams is your definitive guide for building a dynamic distributed team, using collaboration technology to attract and engage the most important element of any business—your people. Whether you are a department head, a business owner, or a team leader, this book presents the no-nonsense knowledge you need now to chart your course for success. What You Will Learn Understand what the new era of connected business means, and the role distributed teams will play. Differentiate between distributed teams, remote work, nearshore, and offshoring, and what each means to modern business. Discover the true heart of a high-performance distributed team (hint: it’s not the technology). Find out what the era of distributed teams means to existing infrastructure. Uncover what we can learn about team management from some of the great successes and failures of recent years. Appreciate the techniques honed by seafarers, pilots, and software designers combined to create a successful project plan for team management and company navigation. Comprehend the effective simplicity of the “power of three” in building successful teams. Apply proven techniques of measurement and metrics without leaving the human factor behind to improve team morale and productivity. Who This Book Is For Team leaders or officers of small-ish companies, with populations in the tens through to the mid-hundreds. It’s also for managers of somewhat autonomous departments within larger companies, and for everyone else in the boat because everyone in a company ultimately needs to know what being in a distributed team is all about.




The Training and Development Sourcebook


Book Description

Included are 50 of the most important articles written by leading practitioners in the training field. Also includes over 50 fully reproducible training tools and instruments that will save you valuable time in new program development and delivery




Future-Proof Your Team


Book Description

From renowned leadership guru Hakala-Ausperk, author of the bestseller Be A Great Boss, comes this unique planner for helping your team survive and thrive amidst change. The first in a series of pragmatic leadership planners, this tool is designed to be useful as soon as you turn the first page.




The 2006 ASTD Training & Performance Sourcebook


Book Description

Contains tools needed in areas such as e-learning, communication skills, diversity and cross-cultural awareness, performance improvement, and management development - Back cover.




LIS Career Sourcebook


Book Description

A must-have guide of professional development resources for library staff at every phase of their career—from those just entering the field, to paraprofessionals building a career trajectory, to seasoned librarians looking to explore additional career options. Thousands of students graduate with a Master of Library and Information Science degree every year. Unfortunately, budget cuts at libraries diminish available job opportunities and prompt administrators to hire less qualified—and less expensive—professionals. However, armed with the right information, library science professionals can successfully build and sustain a resilient library and information science (LIS) career inside—or outside—the traditional library setting. LIS Career Sourcebook: Managing and Maximizing Every Step of Your Career provides a chapter-by-chapter overview of key career stages and strategies, and identifies for each the best information resources to help readers develop a successful LIS career. The author lays out the typical stages that workers are likely to encounter as they move through their professional life, highlighting important issues associated with each stage and providing insights and resources for making smart career choices along the way. Covering the entire career lifespan from entry level to retirement, the resources cited will help readers make informed choices about career options, professional development, and personal career satisfaction.




Leadership Resources


Book Description

This guide provides over 300 pages of resources suggested by leadership educators in surveys, Center for Creative Leadership staff, and search of library resources. This eighth edition is half-new, including web sites and listserv discussion groups, and it places a stronger focus on meeting the needs of human resources professionals and corporate trainers. An annotated bibliography groups leadership materials in several broad categories: overview; in context; history, biography and literature; competencies; research, theories, and models; training and development; social, global, and diversity issues; team leadership; and organizational leadership (180 pages). Includes annotated lists of: journals and newsletters (9 pages); instruments (21 pages); exercises (41 pages); instrument and exercise vendors (5 pages); videos (29 pages); video distributors (4 pages); web sites (6 pages); organizations (21 pages); and conferences (9 pages). (Contains a 66-page index of all resources.) (TEJ)




The World Bank Participation Sourcebook


Book Description

Presents case studies resulting from participation in the World Bank by developing countries such as Chad, Brazil, and Nigeria




The Work of the Future


Book Description

Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.




Building Teams, Building People


Book Description

Here is an update of the previous edition, more relevant for the new millennium. The classic resources in management and team building are people, money, facilities and time. Increasingly, though, the fifth resource_energy_is becoming more crucial. Each chapter of this book deals with one of the five building blocks or resources and concludes with suggested activities and events that managers can use to build that resource. The authors also show the importance of using all five resources together for a manager to be effective. It is important to note that team building is not itself an activity, but the result of attending to the seventeen characteristics that demarcate effective teamwork. When these characteristics exist to a high degree, you have an effective team. It is the manager's job to assess the strength of these characteristics in the organization and then to remediate any weakness. Building upon the strengths of the people in the organization ensures that a manager is building for the future. This widely read practical guide is free of technical jargon, with many examples of successful implementation.