Metro system. Named a best book of 2018 by the financial timesa groundbreaking take on how complexity causes failure in all kinds of modern systems--from social media to air travel--this practical and entertaining book reveals how we can prevent meltdowns in business and life"Endlessly fascinating, and more fun than a book about failure has any right to be, brimming with insight, Meltdown will transform how you think about the systems that govern our lives.
It reveals why ugly designs make us safer, how a five-minute exercise can prevent billion-dollar catastrophes, why teams with fewer experts are better at managing risk, and why diversity is one of our best safeguards against failure. This is a wonderful book. Charles duhigg, author of the Power of Habit and Smarter Faster BetterA crash on the Washington, D.
C. An overcooked holiday meal. The result is an eye-opening, empowering, and entirely original book--one that will change the way you see our complex world and your own place in it.
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth
Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, new challenges, ridicule or intimidate. The fearless organization helps you bring about this most critical transformation. With so much riding on innovation, and spark, creativity, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent—but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of “fitting in” and “going along” spells doom in the knowledge economy.
The road is sometimes bumpy, but succinct and informative scenario-based explanations provide a clear path forward to constant learning and healthy innovation. Fertilize creativity, achieve accountability, redefine leadership, clarify goals, and much more. People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, and where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing.
This book explores this culture of psychological safety, and provides a blueprint for bringing it to life. Explore the link between psychological safety and high performance create a culture where it’s “safe” to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes Nurture the level of engagement and candor required in today’s knowledge economy Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization Shed the “yes-men” approach and step into real performance.
In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business
From twelve angry men to edward snowden, lone objectors who make people question their assumptions bring groups far closer to truth--regardless of whether they are right or wrong. In the name of comity, we embrace stupidity. An eminent psychologist explains why dissent should be cherished, not fearedWe've decided by consensus that consensus is good.
We can make better decisions by embracing dissent. In in defense of troublemakers, unoriginal, psychologist Charlan Nemeth argues that this principle is completely wrong: left unchallenged, the majority opinion is often biased, or false.
The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
The myth of capitalism is the story of industrial concentration, but it matters to everyone, because the stakes could not be higher. It tackles the big questions of: why is the us becoming a more unequal society, why is economic growth anemic despite trillions of dollars of federal debt and money printing, why the number of start-ups has declined, and why are workers losing out.
The solution is vigorous anti-trust enforcement to return America to a period where competition created higher economic growth, more jobs, higher wages and a level playing field for all. The myth of capitalism tells the story of how America has gone from an open, competitive marketplace to an economy where a few very powerful companies dominate key industries that affect our daily lives.
. Amazon is capturing almost all online shopping dollars. Every day, the average American transfers a little of their pay check to monopolists and oligopolists.
On Grand Strategy
Its purpose has been to prepare future leaders for responsibilities they will face, through lessons drawn from history and the classics. An unforgettable guide to the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, its own master class. Roosevelt and beyond.
An Economist Walks into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk
When you start to look at risky decisions through Schrager's new framework, you can increase the upside to any situation and better mitigate the downside. A financial times book of the month pick for april!is it worth swimming in shark-infested waters to surf a 50-foot, career-record wave?Is it riskier to make an action movie or a horror movie?Should sex workers forfeit 50 percent of their income for added security or take a chance and keep the extra money?Most people wouldn't expect an economist to have an answer to these questions--or to other questions of daily life, such as who to date or how early to leave for the airport.
What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life. In an economist walks into a brothel, Schrager equips readers with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers. Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day.
Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out--the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all.
Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies - Updated Edition
By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them. The first edition fulfilled one reviewer's prediction that it "may mark the beginning of accident research.
In the new afterword to this edition Perrow reviews the extensive work on the major accidents of the last fifteen years, including Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Challenger disaster. The new postscript probes what the author considers to be the "quintessential 'Normal Accident'" of our time: the Y2K computer problem.
Normal accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk.
How Change Happens The MIT Press
. Finally, social cascades, he considers social divisions, and “partyism, ” when identification with a political party creates a strong bias against all members of an opposing party—which can both fuel and block social change. Then one day, someone challenges the norm—a child who exclaims that the emperor has no clothes; a woman who says “me too.
Sometimes suppressed outrage is unleashed, and long-standing practices fall. Sometimes change is more gradual, as “nudges” help produce new and different decisions—apps that count calories; texted reminders of deadlines; automatic enrollment in green energy or pension plans. The different ways that social change happens, from unleashing to nudging to social cascades.
Sunstein's book is illuminating because it puts norms at the center of how we think about change. David brooks, the new york timeshow does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. Sunstein explores what kinds of nudges are effective and shows why nudges sometimes give way to bans and mandates.
When norms lead people to silence themselves, even an unpopular status quo can persist.
On the Future: Prospects for Humanity
Rich with fascinating insights into cutting-edge science and technology, this accessible book will captivate anyone who wants to understand the critical issues that will define the future of humanity on Earth and beyond. Various outcomes—good and bad—are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism.
In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity’s prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow. The future of humanity is bound to the future of science and hinges on how successfully we harness technological advances to address our challenges.
If we are to use science to solve our problems while avoiding its dystopian risks, we must think rationally, collectively, globally, and optimistically about the long term. At the same time, further advances in space science will allow humans to explore the solar system and beyond with robots and AI. Advances in biotechnology, cybertechnology, and artificial intelligence—if pursued and applied wisely—could empower us to boost the developing and developed world and overcome the threats humanity faces on Earth, robotics, from climate change to nuclear war.
Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
Building upon the flywheel concept introduced in his groundbreaking classic Good to Great, how to accelerate the flywheel’s momentum, Jim Collins teaches readers how to create their own flywheel, and how to stay on the flywheel in shifting markets and during times of turbulence. Combining research from his good to great labs and case studies from organizations like Amazon, and the Cleveland Clinic which have turned their flywheels with outstanding results, Vanguard, Collins demonstrates that successful organizations can disrupt the world around them—and reach unprecedented success—by employing the flywheel concept.
It is the act of turning the flywheel, slowly gaining momentum and eventually reaching a breakthrough.
Learn To Think in Systems: Use System Archetypes to Understand, Manage, and Fix Complex Problems and Make Smarter Decisions
Your household is a system. Learn to think in systems gives you real-life examples to make the adoption process of this type of thinking smooth. This book will help you to find strategic solutions to every complex, modern problem. Learn to think in systems focuses on the nine fundamental system archetypes; our mental models related to them, and the step-by-step implication methods to fix them.
See through the motivations and understand the drives of contemporary politics, economics, and education. Think differently and get different results. Your class at school, your department at work, and your weekend soccer team made of wholehearted dads is a system too. The world is more connected than ever thanks to innovations like telephone, television, computers, and internet.
We need to know the elements of systems thinking to see beyond simple cause-effect connections.