We all want to be in control-of our jobs, our relationships, our lives. However, the autocratic behaviors stemming from our desire for control are proving less and less effective in today's more participative organizational cultures.

In Memoirs of a Recovering Autocrat, Richard Hallstein speaks to all of us. Through revealing anecdotes and personal examples, he helps us see the many ways in which we manifest our constant struggle for control and thereby make our work and our lives more difficult for ourselves and those around us. And he offers practical help for learning more participative styles of managing and living a more joyous and satisfying life, both personal and professional.

Written with an intimacy rare in business books, the twenty-one vignettes in this enlightening and entertaining confession evoke twinges of recognition in all of us. Through Richard Hallstein's experiences, we recognize our own autocratic behaviors-encouraging competition instead of collaboration; demanding perfection from ourselves and others; hanging on to power instead of sharing it; even surrounding ourselves with people just like ourselves in order to avoid conflict. His prescription for overcoming the autocrat within us not only creates new possibilities for getting a job done, but releases us from having to know everything, do everything, and control everything.

• An easy-to-read, how-to guide for executives, managers, business professionals, entrepreneurs, and change leaders who are seeking profit improvement strategies that fit their organizations
• By a working executive who has put these ideas into action and seen them work
• Provides a cost-reduction alternative to employee layoffs that also helps managers motivate employees to generate creative ideas
• Reveals how to immediately improve profits with over 100 innovative profit building ideas

• Brings together 50 of Berrett-Koehler's top authors to share real world stories about making positive and lasting change, despite the challenges of our times
• Emphasizes people, actions, and ideas that are "mad"-out-of-the-ordinary, unexpected, counter-intuitive, defiant, offbeat, and edgy

Featuring contributions by more than 50 of Berrett-Koehler's most renowned authors, Positively M.A.D. is a collection of stories about real people making real changes, large and small, in their organizations and communities. The founder of an adoption agency specialzing in placing "unadoptable" children. A former big-city mayor, the son of a convict, who now works with the children of convicts. A psychiatrist who was able to take his severely ill patients to their first Chicago Bears game by unexpectedly tapping into the kindness of the fans. An office worker who transforms a malcontent colleague with the gift of a chocolate cake. A woman who salvages used computers and donates them to Africa.

These engaging, optimistic, "can do" vignettes-organized around twelve different "lessons" that provide the chapter headings-are designed to inspire people to resolve their disillusionment by getting off the couch and doing something.

As editor Bill Treasurer writes, "Regardless of our station in life, each of us is entitled, and perhaps obliged, to etch our initials onto the tree of humanity. Despite the complexity of the world's problems and inadequacies, and despite our own frustration with the current state of affairs, we can indeed Make A Difference."

• Brings together 50 of Berrett-Koehler's top authors to share real world stories about making positive and lasting change, despite the challenges of our times
• Emphasizes people, actions, and ideas that are "mad"-out-of-the-ordinary, unexpected, counter-intuitive, defiant, offbeat, and edgy

The Change Handbook features chapters by the originators and foremost practitioners of such high-leverage change methods as Future Search, Real Time Strategic Change, Gemba Kaizen, and Open Space Technology. The authors outline distinctive aspects of their approach; detail roles and responsibilities; share a story illustrating usage; and answer frequently asked questions about how to put it into practice. Examples of successful change efforts acquaint readers with the diverse array of methods being employed today. A one-stop comparative chart allows them to evaluate the methods to determine what will work best fro them, and an in-depth reference section helps them locate the resources they need to get started.

• Features descriptions of sixty-one change methods--up from eighteen in the first edition--and new chapters on selecting a method, mixing and matching methods, and sustaining results
• Describes every change method's essential concepts and processes and provides advice on when to use each
• Including ninety contributors, with many of the originators of the change methods described

In a wonderfully readable and fun way, SEEING SYSTEMS (over 30,000 copies sold) presents a unique and innovative theory of power dynamics that provides the reader with a new way of looking at, understanding, surviving, and prospering in the many systems of which we are part.In this extensively revised and updated edition of his classic book, Barry Oshry shows how we can transform “system blindness” into “system sight,” enabling us to live and work together in productive partnership. Based on more than thirty years of research and packed with illustrative cases and solid systems theory on human interaction, Seeing Systems provides a penetrating look at the dynamics of systems and a unique foundation for revolutionizing our understanding of system life. This new edition features an extensive new section on having the wisdom and courage to face and work with the reality of uncertainty, and a new epilogue describing how Oshry is currently using theater, blogs, and podcasts to extend his multi-pronged revolution aimed at transforming system blindness into system sight.

• New edition of a classic, revised and updated throughout, with a new section and a new epilogue

• Explains why so many efforts at creating satisfying and productive systems end in disappointment

• Offers an approach to improving organizational life that removes the personal biases that stymie so many change efforts 

The new edition of the bestselling, acclaimed, and influential guide to applying the new science to organizations and management. In this new edition, Margaret Wheatley describes how the new science radically alters our understanding of the world and how it can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic times.
 
We live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born. We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us now. New science—the new discoveries in biology, chaos theory, and quantum physics that are changing our understanding of how the world works—offers this guidance. It describes a world where chaos is natural, where order exists "for free." It displays the intricate webs of cooperation that connect us. It assures us that life seeks order, but uses messes to get there.
 
This book will teach you how to move with greater certainty and easier grace into the new forms of organizations and communities that are taking shape. You'll learn that:
 
• Relationships are what matters—even at the subatomic level
• Life is a vast web of interconnections where cooperation and participation are required
• Chaos and change are the only route to transformation
 
In this expanded edition, Wheatley provides examples of how non-linear networks and self-organizing systems are flourishing in the modern world. In the midst of turbulence, Wheatley shows, we create work and lives rich in meaning.