Books

The Whole Systems Approach

The Whole Systems Change is a model for transforming any business into a thriving organization by aligning the company’s internal systems with external forces, and by engaging employees. Whole Systems changes are sustainable because the key elements can be used to run the business long after changes have been implemented. At a macro level, the Whole Systems Approach is a model for building an effective and successful organization.

In the Whole Systems Approach, every necessary system within the organization is assessed; created, modified, or redesigned; and integrated and aligned. The perspective of every stakeholder group – customers, employees, investors, and suppliers/partners – is integrated.

The Whole Systems Approach is particularly valuable when:

•  Business results are marginal or declining
•  The company needs or strongly desires fundamental change
•  A system or process is not running effectively or optimally
•  A compelling business opportunity requires new capabilities
•  Current efforts are not on track – they lack speed, quality or broad ownership
•  A good company wants to become a great company

The Quest for Quality: Prescriptions for Achieving Excellence

SERVICE. QUALITY. EXCELLENCE. RE-ENGINEERING.

These and other buzzwords dominate today’s business language – but their practical applications and implications often are lost in the translation from rhetoric to reality. In The Quest for Quality, three consultants who have worked with hundreds of companies offer a compelling concept: personalized customer service must be the core organizing principle for any successful business. Customer service flows two ways: yes, good service wins repeat customers and helps a business grow, but good service also empowers employees, giving them responsibility and dignity at every level of business. With example after example from scores of employee/customer interactions, The Quest for Quality demonstrates the difference between poor, good, and truly excellent service.  The book offers:

• Boxed service Rx “prescriptions” that articulate basic principles
•  Ways to improve service quality without tearing down your existing program
•  Strategies for increasing growth and profits by improving service and employee relations
•  Real-life anecdotes from scores of business situations, demonstrating how service can win – or lose – repeat customers
•  Four zones of service quality that show where you are – and where your company can go

The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future

THE CHANGE HANDBOOK features chapters by the originators and foremost practitioners of such high-leverage change methods as Future Search, Real Time Strategic Change, Gemba Kaizen, and Open Space Technology. The authors outline distinctive aspects of their approach; detail roles and responsibilities; share a story illustrating usage; and answer frequently asked questions about how to put it into practice. Examples of successful change efforts acquaint readers with the diverse array of methods being employed today. A one-stop comparative chart allows them to evaluate the methods to determine what will work best for them, and an in-depth reference section helps them locate the resources they need to get started.

The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems

Whole systems change methods continue to increase in recognition, variety, and use. The first edition of this book included 18 methods and just a few short years later, there are more than 60 methods in this edition. This creative explosion provides great opportunities for reaching further into organizations and communities to engage people in making a positive and productive difference.

The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods  for Engaging Whole Systems by Tom Devane, Steven Cady, and Peggy Holman (Berrett-Koehler Publishers) is the most comprehensive guide available to methods of organization and community change. It's designed for quick and easy access to information about high leverage change from today's foremost practitioners.

This new edition is updated to describe more than 43 additional change methods and includes new chapters on selecting a method, mixing and matching methods, and responsibilities of the people involved, conditions for success, and more. This tremendously expanded second edition--400 pages longer, nearly twice the length of the first edition--will undoubtedly become the definitive resource in this rapidly expanding area.

This book offers practical insights and how to affect systems in positive ways to make them do the things we wish them to do and to mitigate the harm caused by some systems. Anyone who is interested in social change and personal change at any level will find the practical suggestions for intervention in this book to be positively enlightening.

Best Practices for Succession Planning

Mark R. Sobol is co-editor of Linkage’s Best Practices for Succession Planning provides the ultimate guide for planning, developing, implementing, and sustaining succession planning in any organization. This must-have book provides step-by-step instructions, practical advice, templates, and tools from some of the world's best companies and Linkage, a global organization development company that specializes in leadership development.

Identifying and developing top talent are essential elements for any organization's long term success. However, putting in place an effective succession planning system can be a daunting process for many organizations.

Linkage's Best Practices for Succession Planning offers the case studies, strategies, and proven tools needed to create a solid succession plan that will enable organizations to examine leadership competencies and determine the steps needed to close leadership gaps. The book contains best practices and profiles what leading organizations—Bright Horizons, CIGNA, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Merrill Lynch, Purina, and Unilever—are doing to plan for succession and develop talent. Linkage's Best Practices for Succession Planning also includes a new methodology for succession planning, strategies for leadership progression and development, innovative tools, and a comprehensive resource guide.

Linkage's Best Practices for Succession Planning offers practical guidance based on Linkage's vast resources and helps organizations to

• Identify, develop, and retain top talent

• Assess future roles
• Integrate succession planning with other business and HR models within the organization
• Analyze bench strength
• Design the system
• Implement the plan
• Measure results

Written for chief human resource executives, heads of leadership development programs, human resource professionals, and consultants, Linkage's Best Practices for Succession Planning provides a flexible toolkit that can be adapted to the needs of any organization, whether their needs are small or large.

Handbook of Online Learning

Mark is a contributing author of The Handbook of Online Learning: Innovations in Higher Education and Corporate Training. Mark’s chapter tells the story of an executive team in a large telecommunications firm, their journey, challenges and triumphs. He chronicles the development and use of an online learning environment for the acceleration of their leadership development.

Scholars of education, management, psychology, and other disciplines, many from the Fielding Graduate Institute, share their insights from several years of experimenting with applying technological innovation to teaching students at a distance while maintaining a human component in educational transactions. They explore conceptual and pedagogical issues concerning teaching over electronic networks, and offer practical advice to educators and trainers responsible for teaching university students or corporate employees online. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Leading the Global Workforce: Best Practices from Linkage Inc.

Mark is co-editor of the newly published Leading the Global Workforce and its predecessor, Best Practices In Leading the Global Workforce, a book that includes full case studies of the world’s best global organizations that have achieved results in developing their global workforce. Trends and research are provided within the book on the behaviors and competencies that are most widely demanded within organizations as well as the profile of a best practice champion. The case studies were chosen for their innovation of design and include how strategies were created, aligned, implemented, sustained and evaluated within the organization. Mark’s chapter features “Verizon Dominican – Global Best Practice Case Study Summary.” It outlines a strategic business transformation where local leadership teams built a strategic competitive advantage that delivered positive financial results in the most challenging of economic times.

Leading the Global Workforce provides a handy guide for international organizations that must achieve results in managing and sustaining a global workforce. The fourteen illustrative cases outlined address the major concerns—recruiting and developing global leaders, global organizational learning, cross-cultural communication, outsourcing line functions, and managing global careers and transitions—from sixty of the world’s best-practice global organizations.  Each case shows how the organization advanced a global business strategy with a new initiative in the areas of global leadership development, cultural change, career transition, succession planning, change management, outsourcing, and global performance. In addition, Leading the Global Workforce also describes the overall strategy, planning, and implementation of the initiative; feedback from participants; and overall evaluation of results. Many of the cases contain competency models, practical tools, instruments, and materials that were most effective.

The Mission-Driven Organization

Mark is the co-author of The Visionary Leader, and its final edition: The Mission-Driven Organization, published by Prima, an imprint of Random House. In today’s highly competitive world, the top-down power structure that defines so many organizations is outmoded. That’s why savvy business leaders are exploring a new streamlined approach that strips away bureaucracy and allows communication to flow freely. Organizations everywhere have found that this horizontal structure spurs creativity, empowers employees, encourages learning and increases customer satisfaction. The book shows step by step how to reinvigorate your company with this new way of thinking. Editions of the book have been published in North America, India, Mexico and Singapore.