Richard Pascale Knihy

Think of the toughest problems in your organization or community. What if they'd already been solved and you didn't even know it?In The Power of Positive Deviance, the authors present a counterintuitive new approach to problem-solving. Their advice? Leverage positive deviants--the few individuals in a group who find unique ways to look at, and overcome, seemingly insoluble difficulties. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change.With vivid, firsthand stories of how positive deviance has alleviated some of the world's toughest problems (malnutrition in Vietnam, staph infections in hospitals), the authors illuminate its core practices, · Mobilizing communities to discover "invisible" solutions in their midst· Using innovative designs to "act" your way into a new way of thinking instead of thinking your way into a new way of acting· Confounding the organizational "immune response" seeking to sustain the status quoInspiring and insightful, The Power of Positive Deviance unveils a potent new way to tackle the thorniest challenges in your own company and community.

Surfing the Edge of Chaos is a brilliant, powerful, and practical book about the parallels between business and nature - two fields that feature nonstop battles between the forces of tradition and the forces of transformation. It offers a bold new way of thinking about and responding to the personal and strategic challenges everyone in business faces these days.

HOW IS THE ART OF JAPANESE MANAGEMENT DIFFERENT FROM AMERICAN METHODS? It's a matter of the Seven S's. Western companies have tended to favor these three S's: Strategy, Structure and Systems. When an American manager wants to make changes, the odds are that he'll reorganize structure, introduce a new strategic direction and impose a new control system. Our emphasis on the first three S's produces an arid world in which nothing is alive. An organization is often given its life through the soft S's: Staff, Skills, Style and Superordinate Goals. The tremendous success of many Japanese companies comes through meticulous attention to the soft S's, which act as a lubricant in the organization machine to keep the hard S's from grinding one another away. HOW CAN COMPANIES HERE USE THE ART OF JAPANESE MANAGEMENT? Pascale and Athos show you how to use the best of Japanese techniques, add them to your own strengths to benefit by both cultures.

Harvard Business Review on Change by Press,Harvard Business School. [1998,6th Edition.] Paperback