Best Organizational Learning

The Everything Store is the book that the business world can't stop talking about, the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read. Winner of the 2013 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award Chosen as aBest Book of 2013 by The Washington Post , Forbes , The New Republic , and Gizmodo , and as one of the Top 10 Investigative Journalism Books of 2013 by Nieman Reports. " The Everything Store is a revelatory read for everyone--those selling and those sold to--who wants to understand the dynamics of the new digital economy. If you've ever one-clicked a purchase, you must read this book." "A deeply reported and deftly written book.... Like Steven Levy's "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives," and "Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry -- and Made Himself the Richest Man in America" by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, it is the definitive account of how a tech icon came to life."

From one of the co-founders of Pixar Animation Studios—the Academy Award–winning studio behind Coco, Inside Out, and Toy Story —comes an incisive book about creativity in business and leadership for readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Huffington Post • Financial Times • Success • Inc. • Library Journal “[ Creativity, Inc. ]. just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”— Fast Company Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”. Praise for Creativity, Inc. “Over more than thirty years, Ed Catmull has developed methods to root out and destroy the barriers to creativity, to marry creativity to the pursuit of excellence, and, most impressive, to sustain a culture of disciplined creativity during setbacks and success.” —Jim Collins, co-author of Built to Last and author of Good to Great “Too often, we seek to keep the status quo working. “Just might be the best business book ever written.” — Forbes “Achieving enormous success while holding fast to the highest artistic standards is a nice trick—and Pixar, with its creative leadership and persistent commitment to innovation, has pulled it off. Any reader of Creativity, Inc., Catmull’s new book on the art of running creative companies, will have to agree. Catmull, president of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, has written what just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.” — Fast Company “It’s one thing to be creative; it’s entirely another—and much more rare—to build a great and creative culture. Over more than thirty years, Ed Catmull has developed methods to root out and destroy the barriers to creativity, to marry creativity to the pursuit of excellence, and, most impressive, to sustain a culture of disciplined creativity during setbacks and success. Catmull’s book is quickly becoming the latest bible for the show business crowd.” —The New York Times “The most practical and deep book ever written by a practitioner on the topic of innovation.” —Prof. [Catmull] uses Pixar’s triumphs and near-disasters to outline a system for managing people in creative businesses—one in which candid criticism is delivered sensitively, while individuality and autonomy are not strangled by a robotic corporate culture.” — Financial Times “A wonderful new book . An immensely readable and rewarding book that will challenge and inspire readers to make their workplaces hotbeds of creativity.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Punctuated with surprising tales of how the company’s films were developed and the company’s financial struggles, Catmull shares insights about harnessing talent, creating teams, protecting the creative process, candid communications, organizational structures, alignment, and the importance of storytelling. [ Creativity, Inc. ] will delight and inspire creative individuals and their managers, as well as anyone who wants to work ‘in an environment that fosters creativity and problem solving.’” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “For anyone managing anything, and particularly those trying to manage creative teams, Catmull is like a kind, smart godfather guiding us toward managing wisely, without losing our souls, and in a way that works toward greatness. What Ed Catmull shares instead is his astute experience that creativity isn’t strictly a well of ideas, but an alchemy of people. In Creativity, Inc. Ed reveals, with commonsense specificity and honesty, examples of how not to get in your own way and how to realize a creative coalescence of art, business, and innovation.” —George Lucas “This is the best book ever written on what it takes to build a creative organization. Ed Catmull is co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation.

TEACHING A LEVIATHAN TO IMPROVISE It’s no secret that in any field, small teams have many ad­vantages—they can respond quickly, communicate freely, and make decisions without layers of bureaucracy. A NEW APPROACH FOR A NEW WORLD McChrystal and his colleagues discarded a century of conventional wisdom and remade the Task Force, in the midst of a grueling war, into something new: a network that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority. Leaders looked at the best practices of the smallest units and found ways to ex­tend them to thousands of people on three continents, using technology to establish a oneness that would have been impossible even a decade earlier. The world is changing faster than ever, and the smartest response for those in charge is to give small groups the freedom to experiment while driving every­one to share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion. “In addition to being a fascinating and colorful read, this book is an indispensable guide to organizational change.” –Walter Isaacson , from the foreword “This is a bold argument that leaders can help teams become greater than the sum of their parts.” —Charles Duhigg , author of The Power of Habit “ Team of Teams is erudite, elegant, and insightful. Team of Teams harnesses these new realities as assets, providing a leader­ship framework to produce the inclusiveness and adaptability of a fast-moving start-up, at the scale of any size organization.” —Brad Smith , president and CEO, Intuit “In Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal, who won some of our most striking victories in the great war between nations and terrorist networks, shares insights for all in this lucid, persuasive, and sometimes wrenching account of our troubled yet transformational times.” —John Arquilla , professor, Defense Analysis United States Naval Postgraduate School “In the fast-moving world of today and tomorrow, organizations that don’t adapt will sim­ply fade.

With a new Afterword by the author In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning business reporter. Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NPR. BESTSELLER • WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • USA TODAY BESTSELLER • PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • Financial Times “Sharp, provocative, and useful.” —Jim Collins “Few [books] become essential manuals for business and living. Charles Duhigg not only explains how habits are formed but how to kick bad ones and hang on to the good.” — Financial Times “A flat-out great read.” —David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity “You’ll never look at yourself, your organization, or your world quite the same way.” —Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind “Entertaining . The stories that Duhigg has knitted together are all fascinating in their own right, but take on an added dimension when wedded to his examination of habits.” — Associated Press “There’s been a lot of research over the past several years about how our habits shape us, and this work is beautifully described in the new book The Power of Habit .” —David Brooks, The New York Times “A first-rate book—based on an impressive mass of research, written in a lively style and providing just the right balance of intellectual seriousness with practical advice on how to break our bad habits.” — The Economist “I have been spinning like a top since reading The Power of Habit, New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg’s fascinating best-seller about how people, businesses and organizations develop the positive routines that make them productive—and happy.” — The Washington Post. A. I first became interested in the science of habits eight years ago, as a newspaper reporter in Baghdad, when I heard about an army major conducting an experiment in a small town named Kufa. The major had analyzed videotapes of riots and had found that violence was often preceded by a crowd of Iraqis gathering in a plaza and, over the course of hours, growing in size. When the major met with Kufa’s mayor, he made an odd request: Could they keep food vendors out of the plazas? Since starting work on this book, I've lost about 30 pounds, I run every other morning (I'm training for the NY Marathon later this year), and I'm much more productive. By learning how to analyze my habit, I figured out that the reason I walked to the cafeteria each day wasn't because I was craving a chocolate chip cookie. And the cue for my behavior - the trigger that caused me to automatically stand up and wander to the cafeteria, was a certain time of day. So, I reconstructed the habit: now, at about 3:30 each day, I absentmindedly stand up from my desk, look around for someone to talk with, and then gossip for about 10 minutes. The most surprising thing I've learned is how companies use the science of habit formation to study - and influence - what we buy. Target collects all kinds of data on every shopper it can, including whether you’re married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how much money you earn, if you've moved recently, the websites you visit. Charles Duhigg not only explains how habits are formed but how to kick bad ones and hang on to the good.” — Financial Times “A flat-out great read.” —David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity “You’ll never look at yourself, your organization, or your world quite the same way.” —Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind “Entertaining . a serious look at the science of habit formation and change.” — The New York Times Book Review “Cue: see cover. Reward: fully comprehend the art of manipulation.” — Bloomberg Businessweek “A fresh examination of how routine behaviors take hold and whether they are susceptible to change . The stories that Duhigg has knitted together are all fascinating in their own right, but take on an added dimension when wedded to his examination of habits.” — Associated Press “There’s been a lot of research over the past several years about how our habits shape us, and this work is beautifully described in the new book The Power of Habit .” —David Brooks, The New York Times “A first-rate book—based on an impressive mass of research, written in a lively style and providing just the right balance of intellectual seriousness with practical advice on how to break our bad habits.” — The Economist “I have been spinning like a top since reading The Power of Habit,New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg’s fascinating best-seller about how people, businesses and organizations develop the positive routines that make them productive—and happy.” — The Washington Post “An absolutely fascinating . Instead, what is needed is to teach the managers to identify the cues that lead to these bad habits and rewards, and then learn alternative routines that lead to similar rewards, i.e. business and personal success.” — Forbes “ The Power of Habit is chock-full of fascinating anecdotes . how an early twentieth century adman turned Pepsodent into the first bestselling toothpaste by creating the habit of brushing daily, how a team of marketing mavens at Procter & Gamble rescued Febreze from the scrapheap of failed products by recognizing that a fresh smell was a fine reward for a cleaning task, how Michael Phelps’ coach instilled habits that made him an Olympic champion many times over, and how Tony Dungy turned the Indianapolis Colts into a Super Bowl–winning team.” — Los Angeles Times “Duhigg clearly knows that people do not like, or even buy, the idea that we’re not creatures of choice.

Major New York Times bestseller. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012. Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011. A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title. One of The Economist 's 2011 Books of the Year. One of The Wall Street Journal 's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011. 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient. Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2011 : Drawing on decades of research in psychology that resulted in a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Daniel Kahneman takes readers on an exploration of what influences thought example by example, sometimes with unlikely word pairs like "vomit and banana." My main problem in doing this review was preventing family members and friends from stealing my copy of the book to read it for themselves...this is one of the greatest and most engaging collections of insights into the human mind I have read -- William Easterly * Financial Times * Absorbing, intriguing...By making us aware of our minds' tricks, Kahneman hopes to inspire individuals and organisations to identify strategies to outwit them -- Jenni Russell * Sunday Times * Profound . As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be * The Economist * [Thinking, Fast and Slow] is wonderful, of course. So impressive is its vision of flawed human reason that the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently declared that Kahneman and Tversky's work 'will be remembered hundreds of years from now,' and that it is 'a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.'. But Mr. Kahneman's simple experiments reveal a very different mind, stuffed full of habits that, in most situations, lead us astray -- Jonah Lehrer * The Wall Street Journal * This is a landmark book in social thought, in the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of 'The Black Swan' Daniel Kahneman is among the most influential psychologists in history and certainly the most important psychologist alive today...The appearance of Thinking, Fast and Slow is a major event -- Steven Pinker, author of * The Language Instinct * Daniel Kahneman is one of the most original and interesting thinkers of our time. It will change the way you think, on the job, about the world, and in your own life -- Richard Thaler, co-author of 'Nudge' [A] tour de force of psychological insight, research explication and compelling narrative that brings together in one volume the high points of Mr. Kahneman's notable contributions, over five decades, to the study of human judgment, decision-making and choice . Thanks to the elegance and force of his ideas, and the robustness of the evidence he offers for them, he has helped us to a new understanding of our divided minds-and our whole selves -- Christoper F. Chabris * The Wall Street Journal * Thinking, Fast and Slow is a masterpiece - a brilliant and engaging intellectual saga by one of the greatest psychologists and deepest thinkers of our time. Kahneman should be parking a Pulitzer next to his Nobel Prize -- Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, author of 'Stumbling on Happiness', host of the award-winning PBS television series 'This Emotional Life' A major intellectual event . Daniel Kahneman has discovered a path to make it possible -- Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget For anyone interested in economics, cognitive science, psychology, and, in short, human behavior, this is the book of the year. Kahnemann is the godfather of behavioural economics, and this distillation of a lifetime's thinking about why we make bad decisions - about everything from money to love - is full of brilliant anecdote and wisdom.

Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek , shares the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book—a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world's top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life's most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life. To find answers, I reached out to the most impressive world-class performers in the world, ranging from wunderkinds in their 20s to icons in their 70s and 80s. This book, Tribe of Mentors , includes many of the people I grew up viewing as idols or demi-gods. • Why tennis champion Maria Sharapova believe that “losing makes you think in ways victories can’t.”. • How to truly achieve work-life balance (and why most people tell you it isn’t realistic). This reference book, which I wrote for myself, has already changed my life. He is one of Fast Company ’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show , which has exceeded 200 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.

-Six ways to make people like you. -Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking. -Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people." You learn how to make people like you, win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment.

In this “enjoyable, fast-paced tale” ( The Economist ), master historian David McCullough “shows as never before how two Ohio boys from a remarkable family taught the world to fly” ( The Washington Post) and “captures the marvel of what the Wrights accomplished” ( The Wall Street Journal ). Essential reading, this is “a story of timeless importance, told with uncommon empathy and fluency…about what might be the most astonishing feat mankind has ever accomplished… The Wright Brothers soars” ( The New York Times Book Review ). An Amazon Best Book of May 2015: Most people recognize the famous black-and-white photo of the Wright brothers on a winter day in 1903, in a remote spot called Kitty Hawk, when they secured their place in history as the first to fly a motor-powered airplane. That brilliant moment is the cornerstone of the new masterful book by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, who brings his deft touch with language and his eye for humanizing details to the unusually close relationship between a pair of brothers from Dayton, Ohio, who changed aviation history. Bicycle shop owners by day, Wilbur and Orville taught themselves flight theory through correspondence with the Smithsonian and other experts. But the brothers soon realized that theory was no match for practical testing, and they repeatedly risked life and limb in pursuit of their goal—including when Orville fractured a leg and four ribs in a 75-foot plunge to the ground. McCullough’s narration of ventures such as this—their famous first flight at Kitty Hawk; the flight in Le Mans, France that propelled the brothers to international fame; the protracted patent battles back at home; and the early death of elder brother Wilbur—will immerse readers in the lives of the Wright family. The Wright Brothers soars.” (Daniel Okrent The New York Times Book Review). “David McCullough has etched a brisk, admiring portrait of the modest, hardworking Ohioans who designed an airplane in their bicycle shop and solved the mystery of flight on the sands of Kitty Hawk, N.C. Mr. McCullough is in his element writing about seemingly ordinary folk steeped in the cardinal American virtues—self-reliance and can-do resourcefulness.” (Roger Lowenstein The Wall Street Journal). Mr. McCullough presents all this with dignified panache, and with detail so granular you may wonder how it was all collected.” (Janet Maslin The New York Times). "McCullough’s magical account of [the Wright Brothers'] early adventures — enhanced by volumes of family correspondence, written records, and his own deep understanding of the country and the era — shows as never before how two Ohio boys from a remarkable family taught the world to fly." But it’s also a story that resonates with anyone who believes deeply in the power of technology to change lives – and the resistance some have to new innovations.” (Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google ). With his ear for dialect and eye for detail, McCullough puts the Wrights in historical context, flushed out by vivid portraits of their loyal father and sister. "McCullough's usual warm, evocative prose makes for an absorbing narrative; he conveys both the drama of the birth of flight and the homespun genius of America's golden age of innovation." "McCullough shows the Wright brothers (snubbed by the British as mere bicycle mechanics) for the important technoscientists they were. The United States honors David McCullough for his lifelong efforts to document the people, places, and events that have shaped America.” (From The Presidential Medal of Freedom Citation).

TEACHING A LEVIATHAN TO IMPROVISE It’s no secret that in any field, small teams have many ad­vantages—they can respond quickly, communicate freely, and make decisions without layers of bureaucracy. A NEW APPROACH FOR A NEW WORLD McChrystal and his colleagues discarded a century of conventional wisdom and remade the Task Force, in the midst of a grueling war, into something new: a network that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority. Leaders looked at the best practices of the smallest units and found ways to ex­tend them to thousands of people on three continents, using technology to establish a oneness that would have been impossible even a decade earlier. The world is changing faster than ever, and the smartest response for those in charge is to give small groups the freedom to experiment while driving every­one to share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion. “In addition to being a fascinating and colorful read, this book is an indispensable guide to organizational change.” –Walter Isaacson , from the foreword “This is a bold argument that leaders can help teams become greater than the sum of their parts.” —Charles Duhigg , author of The Power of Habit “ Team of Teams is erudite, elegant, and insightful. Team of Teams harnesses these new realities as assets, providing a leader­ship framework to produce the inclusiveness and adaptability of a fast-moving start-up, at the scale of any size organization.” —Brad Smith , president and CEO, Intuit “In Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal, who won some of our most striking victories in the great war between nations and terrorist networks, shares insights for all in this lucid, persuasive, and sometimes wrenching account of our troubled yet transformational times.” —John Arquilla , professor, Defense Analysis United States Naval Postgraduate School “In the fast-moving world of today and tomorrow, organizations that don’t adapt will sim­ply fade.

Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional, because they don't have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson, the coauthor of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager, uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods--our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in--although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. Dr. Johnson, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and many other books, presents this parable to business, church groups, schools, military organizations--anyplace where you find people who may fear or resist change. And although more analytical and skeptical readers may find the tale a little too simplistic, its beauty is that it sums up all natural history in just 94 pages: Things change. This is a brief tale of two mice and two humans who live in a maze and one day are faced with change: someone moves their cheese. Capably narrated by Tony Roberts, this audiotape is recommended for larger public library collections.AMark Guyer, Stark Cty.