“The world is in need of better design, and Kozma’s book shows us how to get there.”
Last year Robert Kozma published "Make the World a Better Place: Design with Passion, Purpose, and Values".
The book has been well received and presents an insightful and hands-on discussion of design as a profoundly human activity and challenges us all to use design to transform the world for the better. The book explains how and why the design industry lost its way, and how to re-ignite the idealism that once made it a force for good.
Robert Kozma is a San Francisco-based author, researcher, and consultant with over 40 years of experience in technology, education, and social development. As an emeritus principal scientist at SRI International, he has collaborated with ministries of education, national agencies, multinational organizations, and high tech companies on how to use information and communication technology to transform education and support economic and social development
Make the World a Better Place describes a set of moral principles, based on our shared humanity, that can be used to create “good” designs: designs that reduce harm, increase well-being, advance knowledge, promote equality, address injustice, and build supportive, compassionate relationships and communities.
Read moreMagic @ Work is here! Inner secrets from Christian Vandsø Andersen, a magician who is also VP at the LEGO Group.
The new book ‘Magic @ Work’ is a journey into the extraordinary and in a recent member's call, Christian told us more about the book, shared his perspective on combining magic and management, and even used a card trick to illustrate his point.
The book dives into the mesmerizing world of magic and teaches the reader how its principles can elevate your leadership, whether you're leading teams, projects, or even yourself. You can also discover the enigmatic techniques that magicians use to captivate audiences and apply them to leadership, innovation, and influence.
There’s more in the book, incl. the first publicly available documentation of the leadership model at the LEGO Group. The book is also written on a sad personal backstory, and we’ll get to that, but in the call, we started with Christian telling us about the idea behind the book, so let’s begin there.
Read more“Change is inevitable. Resistance to change is just as predictable.
How do you motivate teams to willingly get on board?”
This is the premise from the recently published book called Change Fatigue by Jenny Magic and Melissa Breker. Released in May, the book focuses on what the authors call ‘flipping teams from burnout to buy-in’ and it addresses the foundational psychological safety domains that drive willingness to change, alongside practical change facilitation techniques you can use today, regardless of where your team is starting from.
In a recent member’s call we were joined by the two authors who in an informal conversation took us through what’s in the change facilitation book, and they also shared a few insights on how your team can lead, plan, deliver, and sustain change.
Read moreFarther, Faster, and Far Less Drama offers a simple but powerful set of leadership behaviors to align teams and accelerate progress.
From team leaders to consultants to stay-at-home parents, everyone wishes life could be less complex, but that often feels impossible.
In this new book that came out in April, Janice and Jason Fraser introduce the Four Leadership Motions, a method they have been using for decades to help all kinds of teams make fast, meaningful progress—including Navy SEALs, startup CEOs, and Fortune 100 executives.
Read more“We need a new strategy to earn trust and help consumers and citizens make confident decisions.”
This is the premise behind Trustworthy, a 2021 book by Margot Bloomstein with the catchy subtitle: “How the smartest brands beat cynicism and bridge the trust gap”.
Margot is a Boston-based working content strategist for more than 20 years, she’s consulted with clients in a range of industries, from software-as-a-service to sex toy retailers and footwear technology to 401(k)s.
In a recent member call, we held a book club for Trustworthy. Margot introduced the book, explained how to bridge the trust gap, what the smartest organizations are doing to foster trust by using content and design to build the confidence of consumers and citizens alike and much more.
Read moreHistory shows that hard times can lead to the greatest opportunities for renewal. The Purpose Upgrade, the latest book by UK-based Paul Skinner, supports readers in leading enterprises that thrive by solving our most important problems.
It shows how businesses can create more compelling benefits for customers, build meaningful livelihoods for colleagues, and unlock superior returns for investors by 'repurposing' and revitalising the activities they engage in.
The Purpose Upgrade is his second book. It builds on Collaborative Advantage: How collaboration beats competition as a strategy for success, which argued that we have now reached a turning point in history from which creating Competitive Advantage may no longer be in the best interests of an organisation.
Read moreThe conversation around digital leadership tends to go from somewhere between tech fascination and pretending that the rules of gravity don’t apply.
I’ve often wondered, why after all these years of doing digital, with many books covering each individual aspect of what that means, we haven’t had a handbook for leaders leading digital teams.
This is what Christian Vandsø Andersen, VP Digital at the LEGO Group, set out to write and in a recent member call he talked about his new book appropriately titled Wonderful digital leadership.
Read moreHow do you identify and remove the barriers to strong, effective content work?
This is the focus of Rachel McConnell’s recent book 'Leading Content Design', which shares how to create common standards, improve collaboration, iron out wrinkles in the design process, and build advocacy—so you can lead your team with impact.
Rachel works as Head of UX content at Flo, a women’s health app and was previously in various content roles at BT. In a recent member call, she shared her thinking behind the work and introduced us to her work on content operations.
Read moreEmergencies—landing a malfunctioning plane, resuscitating a heart attack victim, or avoiding a head-on car crash—all require split-second decisions that can mean life or death. Fortunately, designers of life-saving products have leveraged research and brain science to help users reduce panic and harness their best instincts. In her new book called Life and Death Design, Katie Swindler brings these techniques to everyday designers who want to help their users think clearly and act safely.
Katie works as is Innovation Design Strategist, Sr. Manager at insurance firm Allstate in Chicago, IL and recently hosted a member call introducing her book. She included some of the many insightful stories featured in the book and told us more about what she learned while researching on the topic. Below you’ll find my notes with some of the highlights from the call.
She opened with a true story on how famous astronaut Neil Armstrong once had a life and death experience and turned to reading the manual.
Read moreWith spoken content fast becoming a preferred way to get information, how will you prepare your content when navigation becomes negotiation and when links, calls to action, and breadcrumbs become a matter of aural and verbal gestures?
Preston So has written the first-ever book from A Book Apart about voice interface design. It's also the first-ever book to hit bookshelves about voice content, with everything you need to know about voice content strategy and voice content design.
In a recent member conference call, Preston joined us for more about what's inside the new book: Voice Content and Usability.
Read moreWhat do I have to do to earn and deserve the key relationships that are going to get me where I want to go?
As one of the world’s leading authorities on the management of professional service firms, David Maister is among the top business thinkers in the world. His book on Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What’s Obvious But Not Easy is a must-read for strategic thinkers.
Relationships play a key role when it comes to knowledge sharing, as trust is one of the vital factors that makes knowledge sharing work. To paraphrase the classic book title, investing time in both relationships and knowledge sharing is obviously the right thing to do, yet not easy.
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