Transforming The Clunky Organization

The doldrums of inertia -- Leading for robust discovery -- Leading for focused delivery -- Conclusion : pragmatic leadership and the couch-potato organization

Organizations, institutions, and individuals get stuck in spite of their innovative ideas and ambitious agendas. Never has the timing been better for a book that cuts through the theoretical jargon and delineates the exact political and managerial skills leaders need to move agendas forward. Whether you're a team leader trying to lead change and innovation in a large corporation, an entrepreneur trying to gain support, a politician trying to expand your coalition, or an individual trying to advance your career and build networks, The Agenda Mover will give you the political and managerial leadership skills necessary to achieve results. Based on the premise that leadership competencies and skills can be learned, The Agenda Mover is the inaugural volume of the practitioner-oriented Pragmatic Leadership Series published in association with Cornell University Press. Each volume emphasizes specific skills of execution that leaders at all levels need to master. Visit pragmaticleadershipseries.com to learn more about the series.

How best to adapt established companies to a rapidly changing economy has long been a topic of debate in both the corporate and academic worlds. This challenge is especially pressing for large organizations that may have grown top-heavy and rigid with time but now need to be light on their feet to stay relevant and profitable. Until now, the best attempts have consisted of plucking tools and methods from the world of start-ups and applying them wholesale in large corporate environments. Most of these efforts have either fizzled or failed outright because they lacked a framework for a comprehensive corporation-sized rollout. The Loop Approach introduces a new series of methods that could help change the course of operations for even the most colossal organizations. Sebastian Klein and Ben Hughes provide a wide-ranging set of guidelines for achieving corporate agility, complete with checklists and worksheets that should prove instantly applicable. Want proof? The methods outlined in The Loop Approach have already been successfully implemented at such European corporate giants as Audi, Deutsche Bahn, and Telekom.

Politics is an inevitable, legitimate, and even beneficial aspect of corporate and organizational life. Hard work and good ideas are not enough to ensure success-your ability to win allies and head off resistance is what really matters in today's corporate environment. If you don't garner support for your ideas, you could become an organizational casualty. Get Them on Your Side outlines how to: Assess allies and resistors Build coalitions Negotiate support Understand the agendas of others Get Them on Your Side, written by Samuel B. Bacharach-the McKelvey-Grant chair in the Department of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations-builds your political competence with fascinating illustrations from the worlds of business, government, academia, and nonprofit organizations. With Get Them on Your Side, you'll develop the specific leadership skills you need to get results.

The first clear guide to the Semantic Web and its upcoming impact on the business world Imagine that, in 1992, someone handed you a book about the future of something called the World Wide Web. This book claimed that through a piece of software called a "browser", which accesses "web sites", the world economy and our daily lives would change forever. Would you have believed even 10 percent of that book? Did you take advantage of the first Internet wave and get ahead of the curve? Pull is the blueprint to the next disruptive wave. Some call it Web 3.0; others call it the semantic web. It's a fundamental transition from pushing information to pulling, using a new way of thinking and collaborating online. Using the principles of this book, you will slash 5-20 percent off your bottom line, make your customers happier, accelerate your industry, and prepare your company for the twenty-first century. It isn't going to be easy, and you don't have any choice. By 2015, your company will be more agile and your processes more flexible than you ever thought possible. The semantic web leads to possibilities straight from science fiction, such as buildings that can order their own supplies, eliminating the IRS, and lawyers finally making sense. But it also leads to major changes in every field, from shipping and retail distribution to health care and financial reporting. Through clear examples, case studies, principles, and scenarios, business strategist David Siegel takes you on a tour of this new world. You'll learn: -Which industries are already ahead. -Which industries are already dead. -How to make the power shift from pushing to pulling information. -How software, hardware, media, and marketing will all change. -How to plan your own strategy for embracing the semantic web. We are at the beginning of a new technology curve that will affect all areas of business. Right now, you have a choice. You can decide to start preparing for the exciting opportunities that lay ahead or you can leave this book on the shelf and get left in the dust like last time.

This is an important and timely book. Students of organizational behavior for the last 15 years have been asking how to integrate the technology of data gathering and data analysis with critical organizational challenges. This book shows how to do that, using the field of customer service to illustrate the broader point. This volume allows lay readers to understand telemetry and helps them enhance their data-gathering activities to strengthen customer relations. Author of The Agenda Mover: When Your Good Idea Is Not Enough and Transforming the Clunky Organization: Pragmatic Skills for Breaking Inertia (Cornell University Press) Telemetry is an automated way of collecting data at remote sites or locations, and transmitting it to collectors at receiving site for monitoring, analyzing, and driving improvement actions. This book provides the necessary knowledge and information to understand the telemetry infrastructure and associated details. It will enable readers to implement a telemetry program to address customer experience pain and improve customer experience. The authors of this book have all served in different roles and capacities in one of Silicon Valley's premier technology companies. These roles include software engineering, customer assurance, quality management, technology development, and implementation. Their paths intersected in the area of quality management, and they have witnessed first-hand how the latest technology/market transitions around Internet of Things (IoT), digitization, and telemetry are impacting the company they work, as well as the high-tech industry and global economy as a whole. The real-time nature of data and the advent of machine-learning algorithms have set the stage for a new era that the authors call adaptive customer experience. The premise of this concept is that real-time availability of customer experience data opens the door for real-time responses based on machine-learning algorithms. This creates an unprecedented opportunity to change the relationship between customers and the systems they depend on in their digital world. The proliferation of sensors and improvements in data science capabilities are creating an environment where the possibilities for telemetry are limitless. The book provides several examples of use cases and applications that help bring telemetry to life.

Transform your organization into a dynamic catalyst for success Accelerating Performance is not just another “warm and fuzzy” change management book—it's a practical, comprehensive, data-driven action plan for picking up the pace and achieving more. Co-written by one of the authors of Beyond Performance, this book draws on a combination of empirical research and decades of experience advising global companies to show you how to reduce time to value by building and changing momentum more quickly than your competitors. The META framework (short for Mobilize, Execute, and Transform with Agility) offers advice for leading change at four levels: strategy, the organization, teams, and individuals. In addition to step-by-step guidance toward assessment, planning, and implementation, the book offers: A diagnostic tool for leaders, teams, and organizations to assess their starting place, and highlight the specific areas needed to improve the ability to accelerate performance. A detailed look at the factors proven to create drag—and drive—at each of the four levels: strategy, organizations, teams, and individuals. An exploration of the 39 differentiating actions that organizations can combine as dictated by their strategy and context into a winning recipe. A closer look at the practices of 23 “superaccelerators,” a global (and perhaps unexpected) mix of companies that have demonstrated a consistent ability to accelerate performance. A single taste of success is all it takes to spark change, but the hard work of following through requires constant vigilance—and a plan. Learn how to capture that drive, bottle it, and use it to sustain motivation, inspiration, and achievement. Deliver at the highest level, and then turn around and do even better next time. Accelerating Performance gives leaders a step-by-step framework for taking action and transforming their organizations, teams, and even themselves—starting today.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reality. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or a Robot Apocalypse depending on whom you ask, is already underway. The transition has already started. But what it means in terms of leadership? How should leaders prepare for the dramatic shifts in the global workforce? The authors, emerging technology risk researchers and practitioners, demystify the processes behind this revolution. Rather than offering another sensationalistic, panic-inducing view on AI – or its overly-optimistic alternative – the authors explain the reality of AI implementation in business environments. The transformed economy will need a new kind of executives – motivators, innovators and social experimenters – those that have, paradoxically, developed their distinctly human skills. The Future of Leadership in the Age of AI clarifies those new roles and makes the transition easier.