Change isn’t going anywhere. Learn how to manage it. We live in a wild world of volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity, with change seemingly as the only constant. Change can be difficult. It often induces resistance, panic, and fatigue. And, as you may expect or have experienced first-hand, many organizations aren’t handling change all that well, with many efforts resulting in failure. What you may not realize, however, is that some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes, rolling out smoothly and more easily embraced. Why do some change initiatives fail while others succeed? How can organizations and employees handle change better? In The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management, Kathryn Zukof offers practices and approaches to help you and your organization roll out, receive, and manage change effectively. Namely, Zukoff shows that you need to manage the process (or the “hard”) side and the people (or the “soft”) side of change and find the sweet spot between the two. She demonstrates that when you integrate both sides, you and your organization can make change less of a hit-or-miss affair. Successful change management means deploying sound project management techniques that increase the odds of achieving the outcomes of your change initiative. It also means helping employees understand the need and vision for change, so they feel less threatened by it and become excited and energized by what’s ahead. To deliver best results, you need to: Define the change and how to get there—with project charters and plans. Involve the right people in the right ways—from dedicated change teams to affected stakeholders. Build support, understanding, and awareness—with communication, training, and resistance management plans. Assess progress and adjust along the way—through action reviews and steps to tackle thorny issues. Capturing the inherently messy nature of workplace change—from technology implementations, mergers and acquisitions, and business transformations to office relocations and more—this book offers tangible insights to help you and your organization tackle change challenges. Follow the book’s tools and practices to lessen the messy and objectionable parts of change and actively give your change initiatives the best chance for positive outcomes.

In The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management, Kathryn Zukof shows that when you find the sweet spot between process and people, you and your organization can make change less of a hit-or-miss affair. Follow the tools and approaches in this book, and you can start to manage change.

Many managers thrive on overseeing budgets and paperwork, but they're intimidated when it comes to communicating, listening, and being diplomatic. These skills are often seen as side dishes to the real meat of business, but in private, veteran managers will tell you that these ?soft-side? skills matter the most. William D. Mayo, who served his country in the U.S. Navy for nine years before spending almost thirty years at Caterpillar Inc., helps you master soft-side skills that will boost results at your business or organization. Learn how to: · achieve more while experiencing less stress; · speak the truth without apology'especially when dealing with employees; and · deploy a people-centric philosophy rooted in courage, service, love, and authenticity to unleash the power of people. Mayo weaves in lessons from his experiences as an executive officer of a ship, a battalion commander for more than nine hundred recruits and senior noncommissioned officers, and an executive at one of America's industrial giants and most admired companies so you can master soft-side skills that will boost performance.

Drawing from his thirty-five years as a CEO, popular leadership literature, and the Scriptures, Eugene Habecker makes the case of the integration of soft skills, like emotional intelligence and character quality, in building healthier professional and personal lives and healthier organizations.

The Statue of Liberty likeness illustrated on the cover of Enlightenment is a very symbolic image not only for Americans but for many other people of the world who harbor dreams for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, there are many individual and collective responsibilities that come with any such vision. Most Americans know orderly governmental systems are required to maintain a civilized culture, but in many societies one often wonders what type is most appropriate. While the western democracy structure has had significant success to date, it is far from perfect even within the United States. The author has spent the past forty years working within national and international governmental systems from the grass roots local level to regional, state, and federal jurisdictions. In this book, he notes the timeless lessons learned from experience and history as well as new and innovative ways to utilize the modern age of information technology. The net result is an effort to create new public excellence from tired work cultures. In the future, it is clear that economic globalization with its associated social and cultural impacts will bring about a new competition between many societies and their related governmental structures. This simple reality means that less efficient future governments will jeopardize the very viability of their own cultures. Therefore, if Americans wish to effectively compete on the coming international level of tomorrow, they must get their collective governmental house in order today. Enlightenment illustrates how a healthy competitive environment can be developed and sustained without jeopardizing any of the freedoms and opportunities we have come to expect.

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: • The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients • The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping • The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.

Publishers face a "Copernican change." Until recently, the book was"the sun" of a publishing solar system, and all other opportunitieswere subsidiary rights revolving as planets around it. Now, theintellectual property is the sun, and the book becomes just one of theorbiting opportunities. To be successful in the 21st centuryenvironment, publishers must produce agile content: content that canbe rendered in different forms without great additional expense. XMLprovides both a path to agility and opens opportunities for currentand future digital content revenue streams. StartWithXML is an industry-wide project to understand and spread theknowledge publishers need to move forward with XML. It's about thebusiness issues driving the "why" of XML and the technical andorganizational issues, strategies, and tactics underlying the "how" ofgetting started. This research report takes a pragmatic look at XMLworkflows, addressing questions such as: Where am I and where do I want to end up? How much benefit do I want to obtain from content reuse and repurposing? How much work do I want to do myself? How much time and money will this take? What can I do internally to increase my chances of success?