How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything

Front Cover
John Wiley & Sons, Sep 9, 2011 - Business & Economics - 384 pages
The flood of information, unprecedented transparency, increasing interconnectedness-and our global interde¬pendence-are dramatically reshaping today's world, the world of business, and our lives. We are in the Era of Behavior and the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. It is no longer what you do that matters most and sets you apart from others, but how you do what you do. Whats are commodities, easily duplicated or reverse-engineered. Sustainable advantage and enduring success for organizations and the people who work for them now lie in the realm of how, the new frontier of conduct.

For almost two decades, Dov Seidman's pioneering organi¬zation, LRN, has helped some of the world's most respected companies build "do it right," winning cultures and inspire principled performance throughout their organizations. Seidman's distinct vision of the world, business, and human endeavor has helped enable more than 15 million people do¬ing business in more than 120 countries to outbehave the competition. In HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything, Dov Seidman shares his unique approach with you. Now updated and expanded, HOW includes a new Fore¬word from President Bill Clinton and a new Preface from Dov Seidman on why how we behave, lead, govern, operate, consume, engender trust in our relationships, and relate to others matters more than ever and in ways it never has before.

Through entertaining anecdotes, surprising case studies, cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, and reveal¬ing interviews with a diverse group of leaders, business executives, experts, and everyday people on the front lines, this book explores how we think, how we behave, how we lead, and how we govern our institutions and ourselves to uncover the values-inspired "hows" of twenty-first-century success and significance.

Divided into four comprehensive parts, this insightful book:

  • Exposes the forces and factors that have fundamentally restructured the world in which organizations operate and their people conduct themselves, placing a new focus on their hows
  • Provides frameworks to help you understand those hows and implement them in powerful and productive ways
  • Helps you channel your actions and decisions in order to thrive uniquely within today's new realities
  • Sheds light on the systems of how-the dynamics between people that shape organizational culture-andintroduces a bold new vision for leading and winning through self-governance

The qualities that many once thought of as "soft"-values, trust, and reputation-are now the hard currency of success and the ultimate drivers of efficiency, performance, innova¬tion, and growth.

With in-depth insights and practical advice, HOW will help you bring excellence and significance to your business endeavors- and your life-and refocus your efforts in powerful new ways.
If you want to stand out, to thrive in our fast changing, hyper¬connected, and hypertransparent world, read this book and discover HOW.

From inside the book

Contents

Making Waves
1
CHAPTER
11
CHAPTER 5
73
Keeping Your Head in the Game
103
PartII
125
CHAPTER 7
129
CHAPTER 8
157
CHAPTER 9
169
Reputation Reputation Reputation
181
The Case for SelfGoverning Cultures
241
CHAPTER 12
267
PartIV
298
Afterword
299
Notes
315
Selected Bibliography
331
Copyright

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About the author (2011)

Dov Seidman's professional career has focused on how companies and their people can operate in both a principled and profitable way. He is the founder and CEO of LRN. Since 1994, LRN has helped hundreds of companies simultaneously navigate complex legal and regulatory environments and foster ethical cultures. In 2008, LRN acquired environmental innovation firm GreenOrder. Today, LRN operates globally and reaches, works with, and helps shape winning organizational cultures inspired by sustainable values in hundreds of companies with over 20 million people working in more than 100 countries around the world. Fortune magazine called Dov the "hottest advisor on the corporate virtue circuit" and he was also named one of the "Top 60 Global Thinkers of the Last Decade" by the Economic Times. Dov became the exclusive corporate sponsor of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Prize in Ethics in 2008. He is a Harvard Law School graduate who also earned a bachelor's and master's degree in moral philosophy from UCLA and a BA with honors in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University.

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