Bøger af Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.

The question of how to lead, and what constitutes responsible leadership, becomes more stark and important in an increasingly unmanageable world. Based on decades of teaching, writing, and reflecting on leadership, the author illustrates how our market-driven world has invalidated answers to many of leadership's enduring questions.

When Business and Personal Values CollideDefining moments occur when managers face business decisions that trigger conflicts with their personal values. These moments test a persons commitment to those values and ultimately shape their character. But these are also the decisions that can make or break a career. Is there a thoughtful, yet pragmatic, way to make the right choice?Bestselling author Joseph Badaracco shows how to approach these dilemmas using three case examples that, when taken together, represent the escalating responsibilities and personal tests managers face as they advance in their careers. The first story presents a young manager whose choice will affect him only as an individual; the second, a department head whose decision will influence his organization; the third, a corporate executive whose actions will have much larger, societal ramifications. To guide the decision-making process, the book draws on the insights of four philosophersAristotle, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Jameswho offer distinctly practical, rather than theoretical, advice. Defining Moments is the ultimate managers guide for resolving issues of conflicting responsibility in practical ways.

The author aims to show how in today's business environment, companies need to utilize each type of knowledge to sustain their competitive advantage. The challenge for today's manager is to balance the opportunities offered by open boundaries and free flowing information.

How to Resolve the Really Hard ProblemsEvery manager makes tough callsit comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the gray areassituations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, youve done the best analysis you can, and you still dont know what to do. But you have to make a decision. You have to choose, commit, act, and live with the consequences and persuade others to follow your lead. Gray areas test your skills as a manager, your judgment, and even your humanity. How do you get these decisions right?In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems. Picking up where conventional tools of analysis leave off, this book provides tools for judgment in the form of five revealing questions. Asking yourself these five questions provides a simple yet profound way to broaden your thinking, sharpen your judgment, and develop a fresh perspective. What makes these questions so valuable is that they have truly stood the test of timetheyve guided countless men and women, across many centuries and cultures, to resolve the hardest questions of work, responsibility, and life.You can use the five-question framework on your own or with others on your team to help you cut through complexities, understand critical trade-offs, and develop workable solutions for even the grayest issues.

Most of us think of leaders as courageous risk takers, orchestrators of major events. In a word: heroes. Although such figures are inspiring, Joseph Badaracco argues that their larger-than-life accomplishments are not what makes the world work. What does, he says, is the sum of millions of small yet consequential decisions that individuals working far from the limelight make every day. Badaracco calls them "e;quiet leaders"e;--people who choose responsible, behind-the-scenes action over public heroism to resolve tough leadership challenges. Quiet leaders don't fit the stereotype of the bold and gutsy leader, and they don't want to. What they want is to do the "e;right thing"e;--for their organizations, their coworkers, and themselves--but inconspicuously and without casualties. Drawing from extensive research, Badaracco presents eight practical yet counter-intuitive guidelines for situations in which right and wrong seem like moving targets. Compelling stories illustrate how these "e;nonheroes"e; succeed by managing their political capital, buying themselves time, bending the rules, and more. From the executive suite to the office cubicle--Leading Quietly shows how patient, everyday efforts can add up to a better company and a better world.