Putting Our Differences to Work: The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership and High Performance (AGENCY/DISTRIBUTED) - Tapa dura

"Debbe Kennedy teaches us how diversity accelerates innovation to everyone's advantage. This is a win-win-win book in which you and your people win, your organization wins, and the world wins."
--Joel A. Barker, from the foreword

"Personal, reflective, insightful and inspirational. Full of great ideas and a very powerful story that shows how we need to redefine leadership and diversity in order to help make the world a better place. Needs to be widely read - urgently!"
--Dr. Bruce Lloyd, Emeritus Professor of Strategic Management, London South Bank University

"The dangers of 'groupthink' are painfully apparent across our world. That's why diversity, broadly understood, is so essential to innovation and progress - as Debbe Kennedy reminds us in this pragmatic and wise guide for leaders."--Mike Wing, Vice President, Strategic Communications, IBM

"Rarely has there been a more relevant, more needed guidebook for leaders of the future than Putting Our Differences to Work. Debbe Kennedy has illuminated diversity, innovation, and leadership in a way that will help leaders across the sectors to redefine the future in our times of massive change."
--Frances Hesselbein, Chairman and Founding President, Leader to Leader Institute, and former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA

"The power of Debbe Kennedy's storytelling helps us all see our own accomplishments in a new light while encouraging us to take our leadership to a new level. The six steps she offers provide a road map for leaders and organizations on how to effectively put differences to work." --Emily J. Duncan, former Vice President, Culture and Diversity, Hewlett-Packard "Leaders must find new sources of growth more than ever today. After questioning what leadership means while reading Putting Our Differences to Work, I found myself focused on one thing: I, the leader, must first harness our people's rich and diverse experiences, cultures, and perspectives to attract growth."
--Lane A. Michel, Executive Vice President, Quaero Corporation

In this rapidly changing world, organisations of every type are finding that putting our differences to work is the most powerful accelerator for generating new levels of innovation, energy, leadership and employee engagement needed for high performance.

This new book is a practical guide to the strategies and steps needed to make differences the drivers of success. Debbe Kennedy shows that leveraging all the dimensions of difference – from thinking styles, perspectives, experience, position, goals, competencies, work habits, culture and management style to traditional diversity rubrics such as gender, race, ethnicity, physical abilities, sexual orientation and age – can accelerate teams’ and organisations’ performance.

Kennedy’s book is a practical guide for leaders at all levels that begins with a compelling invitation to pioneer a new era leadership history. It establishes the need for change, sets the course of action, offers proof points and defines five distinctive qualities all leaders need to add to their portfolio of skills. Kennedy provides hands-on guidance to six steps for ensuring that any work group or organisation welcomes and nurtures diversity, from assessing current realities, developing support for change and taking action to establishing accountability, measuring progress and keeping momentum alive.

This book will help leaders at all levels to develop and apply the skills needed to put differences to work. Everyone charged with leading diverse, often global teams and organisations will learn strategies and skills to reach higher levels of leadership, creativity, productivity and results.