Agile may be the best-kept management secret on the planet and if you want a quickstart introduction, then Agile NOW is essential reading. Agile is a different way of thinking that’s steeped in common sense and produces immediate results. That’s why there’s a quiet revolution going on.

Agile will help you design better products, get faster results, cut down costs, and keep improving as you go. With a simple system called The Golden Triangle - Prioritising, Time Boxing and Change Management - you can hit the ground running and get started immediately.

Agile NOW is slim, accessible and easy to dip into - yet covers all the essential theory and provides practical advice. Agile is for everyone - from one-person start-ups to multinationals – the promise of quicker, cheaper, better has universal appeal. Agile NOW shows you how to get going fast at minimal cost.

The last twenty-five years have seen the world of work transformed in Britain. Manufacturing and nationalized industries contracted and private services expanded. Employment became more diverse. Trade union membership collapsed. Collective bargaining disappeared from much of the private sector, as did strikes. This was accompanied by the rise of human resource management and new employment practices. The law, once largely absent, increasingly became a dominant influence. The experience of work has become more pressured. The Evolution of the Modern Workplace, first published in 2009, provides an authoritative account and analysis of these changes and their consequences. Its main source is the five Workplace Employment Relations Surveys that were conducted at roughly five-year intervals between 1980 and 2004. Drawing on this unique source of data, a team of internationally renowned scholars show how the world of the workplace has changed, and why it has changed, for both workers and employers.

Black and brown women have been making profound strides in leadership and professional achievement, despite facing the added hurdles of both sexism and racism in the workplace. But so often, excelling at work comes at the expense of their wellness: the chronic stressors and demands on Black women can result in negative physical health outcomes such as sleep disturbance, hypertension, and diabetes, and negative mental health outcomes including anxiety and depression. We cannot talk about career advancement for Black and brown women without talking about strategies that promote their total wellbeing. Playing a New Game offers women a new way forward, in which ambition and wellness can not only coexist, but bolster each other. With insights from her 20 years of professional counseling experience and extensive research, mental health expert Dr. Tammy Wilborn expands the dialogue on BIPOC women's experiences of race and gender stereotypes at work, exploring them as a wellness issue. Through her evidence-based best practices that promote self-care and self-empowerment as necessary tools for professional success, Black and brown women can flip the script by prioritizing their wellness even as they advance professionally.

The #1 New York Times bestseller that examines how people can champion new ideas in their careers and everyday life-and how leaders can fight groupthink, from the author of Think Again and co-author of Option B "Filled with fresh insights on a broad array of topics that are important to our personal and professional lives."-The New York Times DealBook "Originals is one of the most important and captivating books I have ever read, full of surprising and powerful ideas. It will not only change the way you see the world; it might just change the way you live your life. And it could very well inspire you to change your world." -Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation's most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all? Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn't even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

More people are extending their working lives through necessity or choice in the context of increasingly precarious labour markets and neoliberalism. This book goes beyond the aggregated statistics to explore the lived experiences of older people attempting to make job transitions. Drawing on the voices of older workers in a diverse range of European countries, leading scholars explore job redeployment and job mobility, temporary employment, unemployment, employment beyond pension age and transitions into retirement. This book makes a major contribution and will be essential reading within a range of disciplines, including social gerontology, management, sociology and social policy.

The increasing globalization, the battle for talents, and global trends are changing the work patterns in organisations around the globe. Enterprises are working across country and cultural borders alongside complex supply and demand networks. Global incidents such as the financial crisis in 2008 and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have forced global organizations to find innovative ways to continue to connect globally and maintain a competitive advantage. Therefore, innovative enterprises have established global and virtual organisations including members of the value chain on supply and demand side. This book outlines these new work and leadership styles, and agile organisations, which are necessary to work virtually and globally. It provides case studies and experiences from different global organizations in different industries and sectors with a focus on value-adding processes and services.

A radical new business book from business trailblazers Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson that offers a reappraisal of business best practice - advocating stripping everything back to bare essentials. With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who's ever dreamed of doing it on their own. It will COMPLETELY change your approach to work. Every once in a while, a book comes out that changes just about everything. This is one of those books. Ignore it at your peril' -- Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author 'Inspirational...REWORK is a minimalist manifesto that's profoundly practical. In a world where we all keep getting asked to do more with less, the authors show us how to do less and create more' -- Scott Rosenberg, Co-Founder of Salon.com 'Filled with excellent plain English advice, it's one of the best books out there for business productivity' -- ***** Reader review 'Every word is well-crafted, well-chosen, and easy to both digest and engage with' -- ***** Reader review 'Thought-provoking and truthful' -- ***** Reader review 'A must-read for today's managers' -- ***** Reader review ********************************************************************************************** From the founders of the trailblazing software company 37signals, here is a different kind of business book - one that explores a new reality. Today, anyone can be in business. Tools that used to be out of reach are now easily accessible. Technology that cost thousands is now just a few pounds or even free. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is now simple. That means anyone can start a business. And you can do it without working miserable 80-hour weeks or depleting your life savings. You can start it on the side while your day job provides all the cash flow you need. Forget about business plans, meetings, office space - you don't need them. The key is stripping everything back to the bare minimum and basics and then rebuilding; keeping everything simple and under control. You'll learn how to begin, why you need less than you think, when to launch, how to promote and whom (and when) to hire. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs who want to get out, and artists who don't want to starve anymore will all find valuable inspiration and guidance in these pages. It's time to rework work. Perfect for readers of Tim Ferriss's The 4 Hour Work Week, Seth Godin's Purple Cow and Chris Anderson's The Long Tail.

As business struggles to adapt to a rapidly changing world, managers are bombarded with a bewildering array of schemes for how to be a boss and make an organization tick. It's tempting to be seduced by futurist fantasies where every company has the culture of a startup, and where employees in wacky, whimsical office settings, liberated from hierarchies and bosses that oppress them, are the foundation for breakthrough performance. "Get real," warn Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein. These fads ironically lead to micromanaging and, often, to disaster. Companies and societies, they show, need authority and hierarchy to coordinate work, including creative work. And, counterintuitively, Foss and Klein illustrate how the creative use of authority and hierarchy helps companies to be more agile and flexible, enabling educated, motivated people and teams to thrive. And not a moment too soon: Foss and Klein provide evidence that global challenges such as the proliferation of artificial intelligence, economic disruption, empowered knowledge workers, and black swan events such as the pandemic actually make hierarchy and the job of the manager more important than ever.

This volume contributes to a growing consensus about effective workplace practices. The collection combines detailed studies of single industries (automobile assembly, apparel, and machine tools) with cross-industry studies of financial performance. Compared to most past investigations, the research here has better measures of both workplace practices and organizational performance. The contributors find that systems of innovative human resource management practices can have large effects on business performance. Success does not come from any single innovation, but from a coherent system encompassing pay, training, and employee involvement.

Never before in history have so many humans suffered from depression, anxiety, and stress. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 300 million people struggle with depression - equivalent to 4.4 percent of the world's population, with even more suffering from anxiety and stress. Therefore, it is critical to understand why those of us, especially in prosperous countries with high living standards, continue to get sick, particularly due to work-related stress. Studies have consistently shown purpose and meaningfulness to be essential for performance and mental health in a work place. As a result, human beings are increasingly seeking purpose and meaning in their life. Key to unlocking meaning is the idea that we are all one human being, regardless of the context. It is the purpose of this book to ensure we stop separating our persona into a working human being and private human being, and instead see ourselves as one human being, with one life in one lifetime.

Some people seek purpose in work. Others see work as a tool to live with purpose outside of work. Where do you sit on this scale? 'An exciting, refreshing, curious read which addresses not just the future of work but how to fundamentally rethink the way we live' -EMMA GANNON, author of The Sunday Times bestseller The Multi-Hyphen Method "At a time when many of us are reconsidering our work/life balance in the long-term, it's an illuminating read." - Cosmopolitan "The Reset is a provocative guide to how we fit into an ecosystem' - The Financial Times "Uviebinene's passion about resetting how we live and work is infectious and eye-opening." - Marie Claire "This book made me stop and rethink my relationship with work. Elizabeth challenges us all to create a new social contract with trust, purpose and community at its heart. Where we work by design and not by default and in doing so, create a world of work that is more balanced, inclusive and better for everyone." - Helen Tupper, CEO of Amazing If and co-author of The Squiggly Careers ________________ Being busy isn't an Identity Perks aren't office Culture Profit isn't all we want from Business Loneliness shouldn't happen in a Community Inequality isn't inevitable in a City We can all shape Society From the award-winning author and Financial Times columnist Elizabeth Uviebinene, a fundamental rethink of how we work and live. Because if we're going to really benefit from the radical shift of 2020, we have to rethink how we fit into an ecosystem. Elizabeth started with a simple desire to explore our relationship with work, and how it was impacting our lives. It became clear if we want to reset how we work as individuals, we're going to need to reset the work culture we exist in, the businesses we work for, the communities we're a part of, the cities we live in and the society we can shape. We can't just rethink one strand of society; we need to rethink everything together. It's time for a Reset. The Reset is a short, digestible book for people who want to work better, and live better. Elizabeth addresses our urge to work differently, to work in a way that suits more parts of our lives. It's optimistic, positive and provocative, offering fresh perspectives on the way we live now, and a punchy idea for how we might live in the future. So what's possible now that would have seemed impossible before? The Reset features interviews from: Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London Alex Mahon, CEO of Channel 4 Ete Davies, CEO of Engine Group Rachel Botsman, Oxford University's first Trust fellow Sereena Abassi, Worldwide Head of Culture and Inclusion, M&C Saatchi Anna Whitehouse (Mother Pukka), flexible working campaigner Cassandra Stavrou, Founder of Proper Indy Johar, Founder of think tank Dark Matter Labs Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham Pip Jameson, Founder of the Dots Karen Rosenkranz, trend forecaster and consultant Joanna Lyall, UK CEO of Brainlabs

This book provides a framework to understand the disregarded aspect of emerging market growth which is informal employment. Informal employment in unregistered enterprises or of workers without employment contracts or social protection contributions constitutes 88 per cent of employment in India and is a ubiquitous feature of the economy. A large proportion of informal employment (86 per cent) is self-employment and this category of employment has been neglected in the literature on work and development which has focused instead on wage employment that is a contract for work with another person or enterprise. Another striking feature of such economies which the book engages with is that, as they have liberalized, informal employment in the registered enterprises or formal part of the economy has grown. The informal sector has been analyzed by recourse to two major approaches. One is a public economics framework that underlines how informal enterprises evolve as they trade-off reduced access to public services such as contract enforcement with the payment of taxes and regulatory compliances. This book extends this literature by focusing on the access to formal sector credit and its potential for financing productive enterprises as a factor that is considered when an enterprise contemplates whether to incorporate or not. The second leg of the literature takes a labour perspective and emphasizes mandated labour costs such as hiring and firing costs, benefits, and minimum wages as considerations when deciding on whether to engage labour on a formal or informal basis. The book broadens this literature by taking into account how the human capital of workers and the monitoring costs of ensuring that workers are adhering to the terms of negotiated contracts inform the decision with regard to informality. The book will resonate with those academics and policy makers who are engaged with the conundrums of development.

In The Organized Mind, New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin offers practical solutions to the problems of information overload. ___________________________________________________ Overwhelmed by demands on your time? Caught in an unproductive spiral of emails and multitasking? You're not alone. When we're deluged with information our creativity plummets, our decision making suffers and we grow absent-minded. Nowadays, we drown in our inboxes, forever juggle several tasks at once and try to make complex decisions ever more quickly. This is information overload. Combining the latest neuroscience with everyday examples, Daniel Levitin explains how to take back control of your life - from your home to your business to your children - all through organization. You'll discover life-changing facts about: - How to make the most of your brain's daily processing limit - Why pressing Send or clicking Like are addictive - Why daydreaming is your brain at its most productive - What the most successful people keep in their drawer - Why multitasking is a bad way to do nearly everything In a world where information is power, The Organized Mind holds the key to harnessing that information and making it work for you. 'A comprehensive account of the way we think about organizing everything from our possessions to our friends' - Financial Times 'The perfect antidote to the effects of information overload' - Scott Turow, New York Times bestselling author of Identical and Innocent

Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, corporate personnel experts--not Congress or the courts--were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination.

Dobbin shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel. He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn't take "affirmative action" to end discrimination. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers; how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan's threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs; and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues.

"Inventing Equal Opportunity" reveals how the personnel profession devised--and ultimately transformed--our understanding of discrimination.

'An amazing portrait of how grifters came to be called visionaries and high finance lost its mind.' Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit The definitive inside story of WeWork, its audacious founder, and the company's epic unravelling from the journalists who first broke the story wide open. In 2001, Adam Neumann arrived in New York after five years as a conscript in the Israeli navy. Just over fifteen years later, he had transformed himself into the charismatic CEO of a company worth $47 billion. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the six-foot-five Neumann looked the part of a messianic Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The vision he offered was mesmerizing: a radical reimagining of work space for a new generation. He called it WeWork. As billions of funding dollars poured in, Neumann's ambitions grew limitless. WeWork wasn't just an office space provider; it would build schools, create cities, even colonize Mars. In pursuit of its founder's vision, the company spent money faster than it could bring it in. From his private jet, sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke, the CEO scoured the globe for more capital but in late 2019, just weeks before WeWork's highly publicized IPO, everything fell apart. Neumann was ousted from his company, but still was poised to walk away a billionaire. Calling to mind the recent demise of Theranos and the hubris of the dotcom era bust, WeWork's extraordinary rise and staggering implosion were fueled by disparate characters in a financial system blind to its risks. Why did some of the biggest names in banking and venture capital buy the hype? And what does the future hold for Silicon Valley 'unicorns'? Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell explore these questions in this definitive, rollicking account of WeWork's boom and bust.

***WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER*** 'A smart, funny, brilliant book on how to be smart about being funny, brilliantly' Sarah Cooper 'This book has finally convinced me that joking around can actually be important and powerful' Ed Gamble 'Eye-opening, important and utterly enjoyable. Come for the humour, stay for the insights' Arianna Huffington Humour is a superpower. If you're not using it, the joke's on you. When we're kids we laugh all the time. The average four year-old laughs as many as 300 times a day, while the average forty year-old laughs 300 times every two and a half months! We grow up, start working and suddenly become "serious and important people", trading laughter for bottom lines and mind-dumbing zoom calls. But the benefits of humour for our work and life are huge. Studies have shown that humour makes us appear more competent and confident, strengthens our relationships, unlocks creativity and boosts resilience during difficult times. Dr. Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas are on a mission to help everyone discover the power of humour. Based on the popular Stanford Business course, this book will show you how to mine your life for material, explore the Four Deadly Humour Myths and help you figure out which style of humour you fall into - The Magnet, The Sweetheart, The Sniper or the Stand Up. Drawing on behavioural science, advice from world-class comedians and stories from top leaders, Humour, Seriously will show you how to harness the power of humour every day.

In recent years diversity and its management has become a feature of modern and postmodern organizations. Different practices have spread around the globe focusing on the organizing and management of inclusion and exclusion of different groups such as men and women, heterosexual and homosexuals, persons with different racial and ethnic background, ages, and (dis)abilities. However, although increasingly recognized as important, the discourses of diversity are multifaceted and not without controversy. Furthermore, diversity management practices have the potential to reproduce both inclusion and exclusion. This book presents the foundations of organizing and managing diversities, offers multidisciplinary, intersectional, and critical analyses on key issues, and opens up fresh perspectives in order to advance the diversity debate. The contributors are a team of leading diversity scholars from all over the world.

The issue of gender in organizations has attracted much attention and debate over a number of years. The focus of examination is inequality of opportunity between the genders and the impact this has on organizations, individual men and women, and society as a whole. It is undoubtedly the case that progress has been made with women participating in organizational life in greater numbers and at more senior levels than has been historically the case, challenging notions that senior and/or influential organizational and political roles remain a masculine domain. The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations is a comprehensive analysis of thinking and research on gender in organizations with original contributions from key international scholars in the field. The Handbook comprises four sections. The first looks at the theoretical roots and potential for theoretical development in respect of the topic of gender in organizations. The second section focuses on leadership and management and the gender issues arising in this field; contributors review the extensive literature and reflect on progress made as well as commenting on hurdles yet to be overcome. The third section considers the gendered nature of careers. Here the focus is on querying traditional approaches to career, surfacing embedded assumptions within traditional approaches, and assessing potential for alternative patterns to evolve, taking into account the nature of women's lives and the changing nature of organizations. In its final section the Handbook examines masculinity in organizations to assess the diversity of masculinities evident within organizations and the challenges posed to those outside the norm. In bringing together a broad range of research and thinking on gender in organizations across a number of disciplines, sub-disciplines, and conceptual perspectives, the Handbook provides a comprehensive view of both contemporary thinking and future research directions.

'That's not my job.' If you don't want your employees to say that, why do you start your relationship by giving them a narrow task and competency focused description of their job? We need people to fulfil many different roles at work yes the need to do their job, but they also need to contribute positive energy, collaborate, and take personal reasonability for innovation and personal development. How do they fit into a traditional job description? It is futile persevering with the job description borne out of the scientific management movement one hundred years ago. The world of work is vastly different to the assembly lines of the Ford Motor Company of the early twentieth-century. Building on the phenomenal success of The End of the Performance Review, Baker examines four essential 'Non-Job' roles that all employees must fulfil and shows how to create meaningful role descriptions that can help you recruit better people and enable them to deliver better results.

Meetings allow us to bring people together to inspire each other, solve problems and make a difference. Yet, we all spend too much time in dull, frustrating meetings where little is achieved and even less is followed up on afterwards. In Hold Successful Meetings, executive coach and former Google leader Caterina Kostoula will change all this. Her unique framework will: - Equip you to hold fewer, more purposeful meetings - Create a creative and inclusive environment - Leave participants inspired and ready to take action Whether virtual or in-person, people will leave your meetings inspired by the value you created together and ready to make an impact. 'I bought this for my whole team at Google!' Reader review

'Reported with skill and personal insight' The Times Bestselling author and the most famous woman in a flak jacket Kate Adie sets out on a fascinating journey to discover just who is attracted to living dangerously - and why. Ever since her days as a reporter on the front line in Iraq and the Iranian Embassy siege in London, Kate Adie has earned her reputation as one of the most intrepid women of her day. Throughout her career she has regularly reported from the world's most dangerous war zones - often placing her own life at serious risk. It has given her a curiosity about the people who are attracted to danger. Why when so many are fearful of anything beyond their daily routine, are others drawn towards situations, or professions which put them in regular peril of their lives? It has proved a fascinating quest that has taken her to the four corners of the globe in pursuit of an answer. She has met those who choose a career in danger, like stuntpeople, landmine exploders, and even a 'snake man' who - aged 96 - has been bitten countless times by poisonous snakes to find venom for vaccines. She has questioned those whose actions put them in danger, like Sir Richard Leakey whose determination to speak out in Kenya nearly cost him his life, as well as criminals and prostitutes who risk all for money. And of course there are those who - through no choice of their own - have been put in danger, such as Saddam Hussein's food taster - not his career of choice. With Kate's insight, wit, and gift for illumination, this is a compelling read.

The "informal" economy economic activity and income outside government regulation, taxation and observation is, by its very nature, difficult to quantify. Recent estimates suggest it accounts, in OECD countries, for around 13% of national income (in the UK, the equivalent of GBP150 billion) and in developing nations it can make up as much as three-quarters of all non-agricultural employment. Whatever the exact figures, it is clear that the informal economy plays a significant role in national incomes (eventhough excluded from calculations of GDP or GNP) and affects a large share of the global workforce. Colin C. Williams provides an authoritative introduction to the topic, explaining what the informal economy is (and what it isn't) and how it can best be measured. Taking a global perspective, he examines its characteristics in developed, developing and transitional economies, and looks at its role as a driver of economic growth. The theoretical underpinnings are explored, from conceptual origins in the development models of the 1950s, through to present-day discussions, which question whether a formalised economy is always the ideal. The book considers the economic motivations of the informal economy workforce, which may include tax evasion, circumventing regulations and maintaining state benefits, and assesses the different policy options available to governments to combat them, whether a punitive policy of deterrence, or one of accommodation that recognises the value of the sector in generating income and in meeting the needs of poor consumers. The book provides a masterly summation of the published research on the informal economy and an expert assessment of the key areas for research going forward. It will be welcomed by students taking courses in development economics, economic growth, labour economics, welfare economics and public policy.