Brave New Workplace

"Brave new work! If that has a familiar ring, it is no doubt because of Aldous Huxley's Brave new world . Published in 1932, Huxley's classic novel depicted a dystopian society based on the principles upon which Henry Ford's assembly line was built: Efficiency, mass production, conformity, predictability and mass consumerism. Brave new workplace could not be more different. At its essence, Brave new workplace presents an optimistic picture of a post-pandemic work environment that is productive, healthy, and safe. And each of the words, Brave new workplace, convey something very different about this perspective on work"--

What's stopping you from doing the best work of your life? People are sick of the old ways of doing business. Despite the enthusiasm that surrounded the emergence of a hybrid working world, it still takes for ever to get anything done. Meetings and emails are almost belligerently incessant. Bureaucracy and hierarchy continue to stifle creativity and talent. So - after literal decades of management theory, as well as multiple shifts in the technological landscape - why can't we do better? Aaron Dignan is an expert in modernizing workplaces. He has built a career teaching top-level companies how to change to suit their workforce better and, in doing so, how to foster genuine innovation, loyalty and growth. In Brave New Work, he uses stories and experiences gathered from that career to lay out a fearless manifesto for a new type of work. This book will show you how to transform your team, department or business from the inside out, making work more adaptable, enjoyable and human. It's packed with tactics and tips for updating your company's operating system: the assumptions so deeply embedded within your organization that you don't even know you're being crippled by them. Learn how to reignite passion and energy throughout your organization, how to retain and attract a dedicated and happy workforce, and, ultimately, how to build a company that runs itself.

"Brave new work! If that has a familiar ring, it is no doubt because of Aldous Huxley's Brave new world . Published in 1932, Huxley's classic novel depicted a dystopian society based on the principles upon which Henry Ford's assembly line was built: Efficiency, mass production, conformity, predictability and mass consumerism. Brave new workplace could not be more different. At its essence, Brave new workplace presents an optimistic picture of a post-pandemic work environment that is productive, healthy, and safe. And each of the words, Brave new workplace, convey something very different about this perspective on work"--

“This is the management book of the year. Clear, powerful and urgent, it's a must read for anyone who cares about where they work and how they work.” —Seth Godin, author of This is Marketing “This book is a breath of fresh air. Read it now, and make sure your boss does too.” —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg When fast-scaling startups and global organizations get stuck, they call Aaron Dignan. In this book, he reveals his proven approach for eliminating red tape, dissolving bureaucracy, and doing the best work of your life. He’s found that nearly everyone, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, points to the same frustrations: lack of trust, bottlenecks in decision making, siloed functions and teams, meeting and email overload, tiresome budgeting, short-term thinking, and more. Is there any hope for a solution? Haven’t countless business gurus promised the answer, yet changed almost nothing about the way we work? That’s because we fail to recognize that organizations aren’t machines to be predicted and controlled. They’re complex human systems full of potential waiting to be released. Dignan says you can’t fix a team, department, or organization by tinkering around the edges. Over the years, he has helped his clients completely reinvent their operating systems—the fundamental principles and practices that shape their culture—with extraordinary success. Imagine a bank that abandoned traditional budgeting, only to outperform its competition for decades. An appliance manufacturer that divided itself into 2,000 autonomous teams, resulting not in chaos but rapid growth. A healthcare provider with an HQ of just 50 people supporting over 14,000 people in the field—that is named the “best place to work” year after year. And even a team that saved $3 million per year by cancelling one monthly meeting. Their stories may sound improbable, but in Brave New Work you’ll learn exactly how they and other organizations are inventing a smarter, healthier, and more effective way to work. Not through top down mandates, but through a groundswell of autonomy, trust, and transparency. Whether you lead a team of ten or ten thousand, improving your operating system is the single most powerful thing you can do. The only question is, are you ready?

An inspirational, practical, and research-based guide for standing up and speaking out skillfully at work. Have you ever wanted to disagree with your boss? Speak up about your company's lack of diversity or unequal pay practices? Make a tough decision you knew would be unpopular? We all have opportunities to be courageous at work. But since courage requires risk—to our reputations, our social standing, and, in some cases, our jobs—we often fail to act, which leaves us feeling powerless and regretful for not doing what we know is right. There's a better way to handle these crucial moments—and Choosing Courage provides the moral imperative and research-based tactics to help you become more competently courageous at work. Doing for courage what Angela Duckworth has done for grit and Brene Brown for vulnerability, Jim Detert, the world's foremost expert on workplace courage, explains that courage isn't a character trait that only a few possess; it's a virtue developed through practice. And with the right attitude and approach, you can learn to hone it like any other skill and incorporate it into your everyday life. Full of stories of ordinary people who've acted courageously, Choosing Courage will give you a fresh perspective on the power of voicing your authentic ideas and opinions. Whether you’re looking to make a mark, stay true to your values, act with more integrity, or simply grow as a professional, this is the guide you need to achieve greater impact at work.

In this important book, Ulrich Beck - one of the leading social thinkers in Europe today - examines how work has become unstable in the modern world and presents a new vision for the future. Beck begins by describing how the traditional work society, with its life-long job paths, is giving way to a much less stable world in which skills can be suddenly devalued, jobs obliterated, welfare cover reduced or eliminated. The West would appear to be heading towards a social structure of ambiguity and multiple activity that has hitherto been more characteristic of the developing world. But what appears to be the end of traditional working practices can also be seen as an opportunity to develop new ideas and models for work in the twenty-first century. Beck's alternative vision is centred on the concept of active citizens democratically organized in local, and increasingly also regional or transnational, networks. Against the threat of social exclusion, everyone can and must have a right to be included in a new definition and distribution of work. This will involve constant movement between formal employment (with a major reduction in working hours) and forms of self-organized artistic, cultural and political 'civil labour', providing equal access to comprehensive social protection. The aim must be to turn insecurity around, so that it becomes a positive and enriching discontinuity of life. Drawing on his earlier work on risk and reflexive modernization, The Brave New World of Work is also closely linked to his studies on globalization and individualization. These processes are part of the same challenge upon which a politics of modernity must now base itself. Not only the future of work, but also the very survival of democracy and the welfare state will depend on the development of a newly committed and 'multi-active' transnational citizenship. This book will be of great interest to second- and third-year students in sociology, politics, geography and the social sciences generally. It will also appeal to a broader audience interested in the issues and debates surrounding the changing nature of work.

In The Science of Leadership, Julian Barling takes an evidenced-based approach, relying primarily on the knowledge generated from research on organizational leadership conducted around the world and personal reflections based on two decades of involvement in leadership research and leadership development with executives. While leadership has been studied within all the major social sciences, Barling mainly focuses on findings from psychological research. The first part of the book explains the nature of organizational leadership, responds to the question of whether leaders "matter," and explains how leadership works. A longstanding issue is whether leadership can be taught. Barling explores the debate over whether leadership is "born or made" as well as the effectiveness of leadership development interventions in organizations. He gives consideration to what can be learned from leadership in other contexts such as sports, the political arena, and schools, and devotes individual chapters to topics that include gender and leadership, destructive leadership, and followership.