Work Life Bloom

A thought-provoking and empowering book that will inspire leaders to take a fresh look at a new coalescence between work and life. In Work-Life Bloom: How to Nurture a Team That Flourishes, award-winning author Dan Pontefract takes a fresh look at integrating our professional and personal lives. Just as a flower needs the right mix of sunlight, water, and nutrients to grow and thrive, team members need the right mix of work-life factors to create a fulfilling and harmonious existence. Through primary global research, interviews, and personal experience, Pontefract delves into the current state of work and life, offering practical solutions for leaders and organizations to create environments where teams can flourish. Pontefract argues that there really is no such thing as work-life balance: our rigid attempts to achieve it don't reflect current realities, and are in fact leading us to further burnout, stress, and unhappiness. Instead, he encourages a more holistic approach, promoting the idea of "blooming" in both work and life. Pontefract stresses that for people to succeed, they must reach fulfillment through the integration of work and the personal aspects of life. After all, people bring their work into their lives and their lives into their work; an improved integration is necessary. Pontefract introduces six key work factors — trust, belonging, feeling valued, purpose, strategy, and norms —and six life factors —relationships, skills, well-being, meaning, agency, and respect — essential for creating an integrated work-life ecosystem that genuinely blooms. The 12 factors contain practical solutions and strategies for leaders who want to nurture Work-Life Bloom environments for their team members, and achieve this mindset for themselves. With a unique approach and vivid writing, Work-Life Bloom is a must-read for anyone looking to improve their impact as a leader.

While it may not occur to us on a daily basis, there is a widespread cultural tendency toward quick decisions and quick action. This pattern has resulted in many of our society's greatest successes, but even more of its failures. Though the root cause is by no means malicious, we have begun to reward speed over quality, and the negative effects suffered in both our personal and professional lives are potentially catastrophic. Best-selling author and Chief Envisioner Dan Pontefract offers the solution to this predicament with what he coins "Open Thinking," a cyclical process in which creativity is encouraged, critiquing leads to better decisions, and thoughtful action delivers positive, sustainable results. He proposes a return to balance between the three components of productive thought: dreaming, deciding, and doing. Based on organizational and societal data, academic research, historical studies, and a wide range of interviews, Open to Think is an appeal for a world of better thinking. Pontefract introduces tangible, actionable strategies to improve the way we think as organizations and individuals.

From the author of the mega-bestseller The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap comes a book on how to choose a worthy goal so you can unlock a greater version of yourself.

Your people are your most valuable asset, and if you want them to excel (and your profits to soar), you'll need to abandon your traditional command-and-control management style and adopt a collaborative, open leadership approach—one that engages and empowers your people. While this isn't a particularly new idea, many leaders, while they may pay lip service to it, don't really understand what it means. And most of those who do get it lack the skills for putting it into practice. In Flat Army you'll find powerful leadership models and tools that help you challenge yourself and overcome your personal obstacles to change, while pushing the boundaries of organizational change to create a culture of collaboration. • Develops an integrated framework incorporating collaboration, open leadership, technologies, and connected learning • Shows you how to flatten the organizational pyramid and engage with your peoples in more collaborative and productive ways—without undermining your authority • Explains how to deploy a Connected Leader mindset, a Participative Leader Framework, and a Collaborative Leader Action Model • Arms you with powerful tools for becoming a more visible leader who demonstrates the qualities and capabilities needed to become an agent of positive change

Pontefract combines years of experience and research on employee engagement, behavior and culture to create a work about the three crucial areas of purpose: personal, organizational and workplace role. If all three can come to fruition--if there is a positive interconnection between the three distinct definitions of purpose--the benefits should be felt by employees, teams, the organization, customers, and perhaps most importantly, society as a whole. We can refer to this balanced state as the "sweet spot." When one area is lacking or ignored the results range from disengagement, apathy, lack of growth and even bankruptcy. The Purpose Effect is aimed at both leaders and employees who wish to achieve a purpose mindset on a personal level, for the organization where they are employed and in their role at work, too. A business leader that is committed to purpose will create purpose for the organization. An employee that feels his/her personal sense of purpose is being fulfilled at work will be an invaluable asset to productivity and success. An organization centered on purpose will benefit every stakeholder, from employees to society in general. This "sweet spot" of purpose creates a reciprocal relationship between all three areas and sits at the center of Pontefract's work.

“Highly recommended for romantics of all stripes."—Library Journal, starred review Why isn’t real-life romance more like fiction? Patience Bloom asked herself this question, many times over. As a teen she fell in love with Harlequin novels and imagined her life would turn out just like their heroines: That shy guy she had a crush on would sweep her off her feet and turn out to be a rock star. Not exactly her reality, but Patience kept hoping. Years later she found her dream job, editing romances for Harlequin itself. Every day, her fantasies came true—on the page. Her dating life, however, remained uninspired. She nearly gave up hope. Then one day Patience got a real-life chance at romance, but Sam lived thousands of miles away. Was it worth the risk? Could love conquer all?

When Designing Your Life was published in 2016, Stanford’s Bill Burnett and Dave Evans taught readers how to use design thinking to build meaningful, fulfilling lives (“Life has questions. They have answers.” –The New York Times). The book struck a chord, becoming an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Now, in DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work they apply that transformative thinking to the place we spend more time than anywhere else: work. DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE teaches readers how to create the job they want—without necessarily leaving the job they already have. “Increasingly, it’s up to workers to define their own happiness and success in this ever-moving landscape,” they write, and chapter by chapter, they demonstrate how to build positive change, wherever you are in your career. Whether you want to stay in your job and make it a more meaningful experience, or if you decide it’s time to move on, Evans and Burnett show you how to visualize and build a work-life that is productive, engaged, meaningful, and more fun.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species. Praise for Lucky Us “Lucky Us is a remarkable accomplishment. One waits a long time for a novel of this scope and dimension, replete with surgically drawn characters, a mix of comedy and tragedy that borders on the miraculous, and sentences that should be in a sentence museum. Amy Bloom is a treasure.”—Michael Cunningham “Exquisite . . . a short, vibrant book about all kinds of people creating all kinds of serial, improvisatory lives.”—The New York Times “Bighearted, rambunctious . . . a bustling tale of American reinvention . . . If America has a Victor Hugo, it is Amy Bloom, whose picaresque novels roam the world, plumb the human heart and send characters into wild roulettes of kismet and calamity.”—The Washington Post “Bloom’s crisp, delicious prose gives [Lucky Us] the feel of sprawling, brawling life itself. . . . Lucky Us is a sister act, which means a double dose of sauce and naughtiness from the brilliant Amy Bloom.”—The Oregonian “A tasty summer read that will leave you smiling . . . Broken hearts [are] held together by lipstick, wisecracks and the enduring love of sisters.”—USA Today “Exquisitely imagined . . . [a] grand adventure.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Marvelous picaresque entertainment . . . a festival of joy and terror and lust and amazement that resolves itself here, warts and all, in a kind of crystalline Mozartean clarity of vision.”—Elle