Leading Solutions

This book on business psychology—particularly organizational leadership—crosses industries, continents, and business environments: it includes 45 précis on emerging theories of leadership; ethical and cultural considerations; group and team leadership; leadership self-development; management philosophy and practice; organizational diagnosis and cultural dynamics; personality and lifespan in the workplace; professional development; qualitative research methods; psychological, socio-cultural, and political dimensions of organizations; the role of technology in organizations; strategic change management; and systems theory. The material ranges widely but is pithy: each précis offers in easy bites the latest "take" on the subject, drawing from popular textbooks, recommended readings, case studies, group exercises, personal experience, and self-reflection; each was written as a key to understanding and change with an eye to re-imagining leadership in the 21st century. Both rigorously researched and entertaining, this book addresses the fast-changing realities of organizational leadership in domestic and international settings across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors: it will serve as a valuable quick-access resource for practitioners and students.

Many leaders are unaware of the amazing power of questions. Our conversations may be full of requests and demands, but all too often we are not asking for honest and informative answers, and we don’t know how to listen effectively to responses. When leaders start encouraging questions from their teams, however, they begin to see amazing results. Knowing the right questions to ask—and the right way to listen—will give any leader the skills to perform well in any situation, effectively communicate a vision to the team, and achieve lasting success across the organization. Thoroughly revised and updated, Leading with Questions will help you encourage participation and teamwork, foster outside-the-box thinking, empower others, build relationships with customers, solve problems, and more. Michael Marquardt reveals how to determine which questions will lead to solutions to even the most challenging issues. He outlines specific techniques of active listening and follow-up, and helps you understand how questions can improve the way you work with individuals, teams, and organizations. This new edition of Leading with Questions draws on interviews with thirty leaders, including eight whose stories are new to this edition. These interviews tell stories from a range of countries, including Singapore, Guyana, Korea, and Switzerland, and feature case studies from prominent firms such as DuPont, Alcoa, Novartis, and Cargill. A new chapter on problem-solving will help you apply questions to your toughest situations as a leader, and a new “Questions for Reflection” section at the end of each chapter will help you bring Marquardt’s message into all of your work as a leader. Now more than ever, Leading with Questions is the definitive guide for becoming a stronger leader by identifying—and asking—the right questions.

In their first book, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators, the authors provided a better model for executing disruptive innovation. They laid out a three-part plan for launching high-risk/high-reward innovation efforts: (1) borrow assets from the existing firms, (2) unlearn and unload certain processes and systems that do not serve the new entity, and (3) learn and build all new capabilities and skills. In their study of the Ten Rules in action, Govindarajan and Trimble observed many other kinds of innovation that were less risky but still critical to the company's ongoing success. In case after case, senior executives expected leaders of innovation initiatives to grapple with forces of resistence, namely incentives to keep doing what the company has always done--rather than develop new competence and knowledge. But where to begin? In this book, the authors argue that the most successful everyday innovators break down the process into six manageable steps: 1. Divide the labor 2. Assemble the dedicated team 3. Manage the partnership 4. Formalize the experiment 5. Break down the hypothesis 6. Seek the truth. The Other Side of Innovation codifies this staged approach in a variety of contexts. It delivers a proven step-by-step guide to executing (launching, managing, and measuring) more modest but necessary innovations within large firms without disrupting their bread-and-butter business.

This book acts as a valuable quick-access resource on the challenges and opportunities that the digital age presents to organizational leadership. Balanced, comprehensive, and thought-provoking, the book will be useful to professionals and practitioners. The book broadly follows a macro, meso, and micro approach to argumentation and is best read from beginning to end. The book synopsizes the historical context of technological revolutions and reflects on first-order results from enhanced use of information and communication technology in organizations; considers second-level impacts from information and communication technology on economy, society, work, and the very act of organizing; maps out core concepts of agility and principles that leaders should honor to exploit agility in newfound workforce ecosystems; showcases emerging leadership behaviors and mindsets; and specifies the good practice needed to plan and lead digital strategies. The book invites reference to the author's popular Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Organizational Performance (2017) and the more recent Leading Solutions: Essays in Business Psychology (2021), which it both rests on and extends.

First published in 1969, this book is concerned with the processes of policy-making in local government. The authors address themselves to the basic challenge of planning in a democracy and consider issues such as how those elected to exercise choice on our behalf can preserve and expand their capacity to choose discriminatingly, when the sheer complexity of the issues facing them tends all the time to make them increasingly dependent on the skills and judgements of their professional advisers. This question is explored in relation to the many different, yet interdependent, aspects of the planning process which impinge on any local community – with particular reference to the planning of housing, transport, education, and shopping, of land use and local government finance. The book is the outcome of a four-year program of research during which a mixed team of operational research and social scientists was given a unique opportunity to observe the ways in which decisions were made and plans formulated in one particular city- Coventry. It covers both political and professional aspects of local government in 1960s Great Britain and has had important implications for urban governments throughout the world.

This book delves into uncharted territory, offering an extensive exploration of the future of organizations and how they should be led. In a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), traditional organizational paradigms no longer suffice. Instead, this book introduces a visionary framework for the leadership of tomorrow's organizations, one that adapts to the unique demands of each situation. Drawing on insights from interviews with 12 subject matter experts, this research-driven work challenges the relevance of twentieth-century leadership styles in the VUCA era. The experts highlight the importance of metagovernance, complexity leadership, and sense-making as essential components of navigating the ever-evolving landscape of modern organizations. Central to this exploration is the question of how to develop a context-specific leadership management framework capable of guiding organizations through simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic contexts. This book not only identifies the pressing need for such a framework but also provides a comprehensive blueprint for its creation. This book is a valuable resource for those who wish to understand the future of organizational leadership and how it can adapt to the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. It not only reshapes the current understanding of leadership but also offers practical insights that will shape the organizations of the future.

Local Government and Strategic Choice, Second Edition is the result of a study of policy-formation in the City Council of Coventry during a four-year period. This edition is a reappraisal of the earlier edition, with an emphasis on ""connective planning."" Part I describes the planning strategies made in an urban setting. This part explains the City and the City Council, organization of the local authority, decision-making mechanisms, developmental planning including land use, school system planning, and cross-departmental planning. Part II is a study of city planning as a process of strategic choice that has been altered in many different ways depending on the purpose. This part also discusses the problems encountered in the planning process such as the existence of organization boundaries in the government sector. Part III deals with a fictional case that relates the uncertainties and political realities of decision-making in an urban setting. The case studies cover land allocation and development, tax, and traffic issues. Part IV discusses organizational challenge and also touches in some way on the future organizational structure of local governments. This text then explains the need for ""connective planning"" of how individuals build flexible networks among decision-making agencies to serve the various interests of both the private and government sectors. This book is suitable for sociologists, city administrators and officials, local government officials, heads of government agencies, and heads of planning and engineering departments of local government units.