Whether you are a student or a working professional, you can benefit from being better at solving the complex problems that come up in your life. Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving provides a general framework and the necessary tools to help you do so. Based on his groundbreaking course at Rice University, engineer and former strategy consultant Arnaud Chevallier provides practical ways to develop problem solving skills, such as investigating complex questions with issue maps, using logic to promote creativity, leveraging analogical thinking to approach unfamiliar problems, and managing diverse groups to foster innovation. This book breaks down the resolution process into four steps: 1) frame the problem (identifying what needs to be done), 2) diagnose it (identifying why there is a problem, or why it hasn't been solved yet), 3) identify and select potential solutions (identifying how to solve the problem), and 4) implement and monitor the solution (resolving the problem, the 'do'). For each of these four steps - the what, why, how, and do - this book explains techniques that promotes success and demonstrates how to apply them on a case study and in additional examples. The featured case study guides you through the resolution process, illustrates how these concepts apply, and creates a concrete image to facilitate recollection. Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving is a tool kit that integrates knowledge based on both theoretical and empirical evidence from many disciplines, and explains it in accessible terms. As the book guides you through the various stages of solving complex problems, it also provides useful templates so that you can easily apply these approaches to your own personal projects. With this book, you don't just learn about problem solving, but how to actually do it.

For thirty-three years and through three editions, Bass & Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership has been the indispensable bible for every serious student of leadership. Since the third edition came out in 1990, the field of leadership has expanded by an order of magnitude. This completely revised and updated fourth edition reflects the growth and changes in the study of leadership over the past seventeen years, with new chapters on transformational leadership, ethics, presidential leadership, and executive leadership. Throughout the Handbook, the contributions from cognitive social psychology and the social, political, communications, and administrative sciences have been expanded. As in the third edition, Bernard Bass begins with a consideration of the definitions and concepts used, and a brief review of some of the betterknown theories. Professor Bass then focuses on the personal traits, tendencies, attributes, and values of leaders and the knowledge, intellectual competence, and technical skills required for leadership. Next he looks at leaders' socioemotional talents and interpersonal competencies, and the differences in these characteristics in leaders who are imbued with ideologies, especially authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, and self-aggrandizement. A fuller examination of the values, needs, and satisfactions of leaders follows, and singled out for special attention are competitiveness and the preferences for taking risks. In his chapters on personal characteristics, Bass examines the esteem that others generally accord to leaders as a consequence of the leaders' personalities. The many theoretical and research developments about charisma over the past thirty years are crucial and are explored here in depth. Bass has continued to develop his theory of transformational leadership -- the paradigm of the last twenty years -- and he details how it makes possible the inclusion of a much wider range of phenomena than when theory and modeling are limited to reinforcement strategies. He also details the new incarnations of transformational leadership since the last edition. Bass has greatly expanded his consideration of women and racial minorities, both of whom are increasingly taking on leadership roles. A glossary is included to assist specialists in a particular academic discipline who may be unfamiliar with terms used in other fields. Business professors and students, executives in every industry, and politicians at all levels have relied for years on the time-honored guidance and insight afforded by the Handbook.

This guide includes a wealth of practical information for inexperienced group leaders as well as new tools for seasoned facilitators --more than 100 reproducible forms, checklists, planning aids, and guides. Selected contents are reproduced in CD-ROM format so that you can customize tools to meet your specific needs.