Here are 100 books that HR from the Outside In fans have personally recommended if you like
HR from the Outside In.
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The future of talent management is now. I’m a teacher, consultant, and board member who is deeply interested in the social and economic impact of the freelance revolution. Millions of people around the world are now working for themselves as independent professionals or “solopreneurs”. Millions more are taking on freelance assignments to augment their income or increase their expertise and experience. Technology makes it possible for professionals in many fields to work remotely and free themselves from the limitations of their local economy. These benefits organizations by offering greater access to talent and gives professionals greater access to opportunity.
Gene Dalton and Paul Thompson changed the way we think about career development through their research and what they called the four stages of development. It has influenced career development and talent management practices in companies around the world. Deeply accessible and practical, the four stages are fully described and the book is rich in application tools, methods and best practices.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
The future of talent management is now. I’m a teacher, consultant, and board member who is deeply interested in the social and economic impact of the freelance revolution. Millions of people around the world are now working for themselves as independent professionals or “solopreneurs”. Millions more are taking on freelance assignments to augment their income or increase their expertise and experience. Technology makes it possible for professionals in many fields to work remotely and free themselves from the limitations of their local economy. These benefits organizations by offering greater access to talent and gives professionals greater access to opportunity.
Quinn’s book should be read by every organization and talent specialist. He reminds us through both data and case study that radical change requires a transformational mindset combined with what he calls strategic incrementalism. His book provides a rich mix of examples, tools, and methods for continuously improving the organization and workforce to meet current and likely future challenges.
The future of talent management is now. I’m a teacher, consultant, and board member who is deeply interested in the social and economic impact of the freelance revolution. Millions of people around the world are now working for themselves as independent professionals or “solopreneurs”. Millions more are taking on freelance assignments to augment their income or increase their expertise and experience. Technology makes it possible for professionals in many fields to work remotely and free themselves from the limitations of their local economy. These benefits organizations by offering greater access to talent and gives professionals greater access to opportunity.
I first ran across Capelli’s book on the desk of Bill Allen, then CHRO of Maersk, and was an early observer of hybrid talent management. He reviews the challenges - tough to forecast business and therefore talent needs. He examines the key elements of modern talent management: rigorous forecasting, creating a more flexible talent sourcing model, better insight on current talent, adapting processes and practices to continue to innovate.
Executives everywhere acknowledge that finding, retaining, and growing talent counts among their toughest business challenges. Yet to address this concern, many are turning to talent management practices that no longer work--because the environment they were tailored to no longer exists. In today's uncertain world, managers can't forecast their business needs accurately, never mind their talent needs. An open labor market means inevitable leaks in your talent pipeline. And intensifying competition demands a maniacal focus on costs. Traditional investments in talent management wind up being hugely expensive, especially when employees you've carefully cultivated leave your firm for a rival. In Talent…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
The future of talent management is now. I’m a teacher, consultant, and board member who is deeply interested in the social and economic impact of the freelance revolution. Millions of people around the world are now working for themselves as independent professionals or “solopreneurs”. Millions more are taking on freelance assignments to augment their income or increase their expertise and experience. Technology makes it possible for professionals in many fields to work remotely and free themselves from the limitations of their local economy. These benefits organizations by offering greater access to talent and gives professionals greater access to opportunity.
In a recent survey of HR leaders, 80% mentioned that they were continuing to organize their HR department based on the “Ulrich” model. Is there a more impressive recommendation for the impact of this book, and Dave’s research and writing? In HR Champions, Ulrich points out the importance of three types of HR work: business partners, specialists, and shared services. In a recent HR Management article, that model was expanded to include a fourth category: project management. Technology is obviously a much bigger factor in HR work since 1996 when the book was first published. But, this oldie but goodie has aged extraordinarily well and continues to be relevant and insightful. If you are in HR or interested in talent management at scale, this book has to be on your list.
The author argues that the roles of human resource professionals must be redefined to meet the competitive challenges organizations face today and into the future. He provides a framework that identifies four distinct roles of human resource professionals: strategic player, administrative expert, employee champion, and change agent. He includes many examples to demonstrate that human resource professionals must operate in all four areas simultaneously in order to contribute fully. He urges a shift of these professionals' mentality from "what I do" to "what I deliver" and makes specific recommendations for how individuals in human resources can partner with line managers…
Business development and projects have fascinated me since my studies and my first experiences in companies. Time and again, I think I have understood what it's really all about... and shortly thereafter, completely new insights emerge that challenge previously perceived assumptions and thus enable leaps in performance. This is sometimes exhausting, but I wouldn't want to miss this path of development! Today I help management teams to improve their business results quickly and sustainably by guiding them to question assumptions, find new perspectives and thereby enable performance leaps.
Of course, when I started to apply the insights from "Critical Chain" over and over again in different companies, not everything always went smoothly. That was frustrating—for me and the people I worked with. Every company—or rather, every business—has its own idiosyncrasies. Understanding that and being able to take it into account when accelerating an entire project portfolio was crucial. Reading Reaching the Goal helped me a lot in this. Ricketts writes from his many years of experience at IBM.
"There is no doubt that this is a truly original and groundbreaking work in applying the Theory of Constraints. I run a services company and learned some things about the services business. Anyone involved in large services companies needs to look at what John is proposing. I will definitely quote this material frequently."
ChadSmith, Managing Partner, Constraints Management Group
"The information presented in this book is badly needed by service providers who struggle to balance supply and demand with their resources."
Carol A. Ptak, CFPIM, CIRM
"The techniques that John brings to light in this book are the…
My passion for helping organisations, industries, and communities to make better decisions led me into the field of strategic foresight more than 20 years ago. I am particularly passionate about scenario planning as the most valuable tool for improving decision-making in a volatile and uncertain environment. Scenarios enable people to question their (often implicit) assumptions about the future and to reframe their perceptions of the future. It’s this enlightening quality about scenarios that makes them so special to me. My quest is to see scenario planning become a mainstream activity in organisations throughout the world.
This is an outstanding read! Art Kleiner has undergone an enormous amount of research on so-called heretics of the business world in the 20th century. Kleiner is a great writer, and whether you have heard of the heretic in question or not, it doesn’t matter.
Kleiner’s storytelling and the depth of his research will keep you engaged as a reader. The section on scenario planning is why I was attracted to this book in the first place; however, the entire book is first class.
In this second edition of his bestselling book, author Art Kleiner explores the nature of effective leadership in times of change and defines its importance to the corporation of the future. He describes a heretic as a visionary who creates change in large-scale companies, balancing the contrary truths they can't deny against their loyalty to their organizations. The Age of Heretics reveals how managers can get stuck in counterproductive ways of doing things and shows why it takes a heretical point of view to get past the deadlock and move forward.
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
My passion for helping organisations, industries, and communities to make better decisions led me into the field of strategic foresight more than 20 years ago. I am particularly passionate about scenario planning as the most valuable tool for improving decision-making in a volatile and uncertain environment. Scenarios enable people to question their (often implicit) assumptions about the future and to reframe their perceptions of the future. It’s this enlightening quality about scenarios that makes them so special to me. My quest is to see scenario planning become a mainstream activity in organisations throughout the world.
Peter Schwartz uses an easy, storytelling style that had me engaged instantly and held my interest throughout the book. He uses multiple personal case studies and stories to teach you how to think about the future. I found these stories both interesting and educational, as they were no doubt intended.
It’s a very easy and very engaging book to read. When people ask where they should start to improve how they think about the future, I point them to this book.
"Artful scenario spinning is a form of convergent thinking about divergent futures. It ensures that you are not always right about the future but-better-that you are almost never wrong about the future. The technology is powerful, simple, and enjoyable, and so is Schwartz's book." -Stewart Brand What increasingly affects all of us, whether professional planners or individuals preparing for a better future, is not the tangibles of life-bottom-line numbers, for instance-but the intangibles: our hopes and fears, our beliefs and dreams. Only stories-scenarios-and our ability to visualize different kinds of futures adequately capture these intangibles. In The Art of the…
Burnout has become common enough to require regulation, which says something about how work is being structured. Much of the response continues to focus on individuals, while the environments that produce the problem remain largely unchanged. At some point, that approach reaches its limit. The focus needs to broaden and become a more explicit, shared responsibility between organisations and the people who work within them.
I don't return to this book, but I'm glad it exists.
It's slightly confronting and sometimes blunt or mildly irritating, but that bluntness is its value: it cuts through the layer people hide behind. The idea is simple: care personally and challenge directly. The book shows how easily that balance slips; conversations are softened to avoid discomfort or delivered without care, and something of worth is lost.
What lingers is the clear cost of avoiding honest conversation, visible in everyday interactions where something needs to be said and isn't. It did not make me comfortable. If you can take a cold shower first thing, it will speak your language. It demands transparency, which makes it worth reading.
Featuring a new preface, afterword and Radically Candid Performance Review Bonus Chapter, the fully revised & updated edition of Radical Candor is packed with even more guidance to help you improve your relationships at work.
'Reading Radical Candor will help you build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives.' - Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In.
If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all . . . right?
While this advice may work for home life, as Kim Scott has seen first hand, it is a disaster when adopted…
My passion for this topic dates back to my childhood and being impressed by the scary diseases and unhygienic toilets that were part of my family lore. I grew up to be a historian of medicine, which allowed me to indulge my interest in deadly diseases—at a safe historical distance! That curiosity led me to write the Gospel of Germs, a history of popular understandings of the germ theory of disease. Post-COVID, I am thinking about how to get ready for the next big pandemic that climate change and globalization will likely throw at us: will it be bird flu, dengue, mpox, or some new COVID variant?
I love this book because Mark Honigsbaum puts COVID in a sweeping historical perspective. He writes insightfully about well-known epidemics of the past century (the 1918-1919 influenza, HIV- AIDs, Ebola) and lesser-known outbreaks of diseases (like bubonic plague and parrot fever).
Honigsbaum combines good science writing with profiles of interesting characters, including microbial, animal, and human actors. Be sure to buy the new version that he revised to include COVID-19.
Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing such catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet, despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. In The Pandemic Century, a lively account of scares both infamous and less known, medical historian Mark Honigsbaum combines reportage with the history of science and medical sociology to artfully reconstruct epidemiological mysteries and the ecology of infectious diseases. We meet dedicated disease detectives, obstructive or incompetent public health officials and…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
After receiving my doctorate in Social Anthropology at Oxford University, I worked in the Nixon Administration until I was fired for publishing a study, Work in America, that garnered front-page attention and accolades in the New York Times (and condemnation in Wall Street Journal editorials). Unemployed and with a family to support, I was rescued by the Aspen Institute, which hired me to direct a program on workplace issues. There, I met philosopher Mortimer Adler, the management guru Peter Drucker, and the father of leadership studies, Warren Bennis. They became my mentors, and through them, I received the education I didn’t get in seven years of formal higher education!
He was the CEO who famously coined the slogan “We Try Harder” in the ‘60s, signaling Avis's transition from obscurity to Hertz’s top rental car competitor.
The book is irreverent, witty, wise, and brutally honest about the perils of executive egotism and corporate board indolence. Published in the late ‘60s, the book has withstood the test of time.
I was working as a consultant for McKinsey and Company when I read it. What I learned was that we were giving our business clients all the wrong advice. I submitted my resignation and changed careers.
Although it was first published more than thirty-five years ago, Up the Organization continues to top the lists of best business books by groups as diverse as the American Management Association, Strategy + Business (Booz Allen Hamilton), and The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. 1-800-CEO-READ ranks Townsend's bestseller first among eighty books that "every manager must read."
This commemorative edition offers a new generation the benefit of Robert Townsend's timeless wisdom as well as reflections on his work and life by those who knew and worked with him. This groundbreaking book continues to remind us not to get…
