Contract management is a critical skill for all contemporary public managers. As more government duties are contracted out, managers must learn to coordinate and measure the performance of private contractors, and to write contract requirements and elicit bids that obtain important services and products at the best possible price and quality. They must also learn to work in teams that include both public and private sector partners.The Responsible Contract Manager delves i...

In recent years, increasingly sophisticated metrics have been created to measure sustainability. First devised to address environmental concerns such as greenhouse gas emissions, they now also assess organizational governance, community benefits, and hiring practices, among others. The field of sustainability management uses these metrics to track and advance progress on environmental, social, and business goals. How can an organization incorporate sustainability metrics into performance m...

Skillful management is essential to the functioning of any organization. But what are the fundamental elements of a manager’s work? What tools and techniques can managers employ to achieve their goals? At a time when organizations must work across sectors, between farther physical distances, and while interweaving sustainability and equity, what do managers need to know about the changing nature of work and leadership?This book is a succinct handbook of the essentials of management...

Will the COVID-19 pandemic be remembered as a turning point in how universities deliver teaching and learning? How might the widespread use of digital tools change higher education?This groundbreaking book explores the role of digital education at this crucial crossroads. Built on interviews with more than fifty leading practitioners from major universities and ed-tech firms, Leveling the Learning Curve is an indispensable guide to the inner workings of digital education. ...

Will the COVID-19 pandemic be remembered as a turning point in how universities deliver teaching and learning? How might the widespread use of digital tools change higher education?This groundbreaking book explores the role of digital education at this crucial crossroads. Built on interviews with more than fifty leading practitioners from major universities and ed-tech firms, Leveling the Learning Curve is an indispensable guide to the inner workings of digital education. ...

Skillful management is essential to the functioning of any organization. But what are the fundamental elements of a manager’s work? What tools and techniques can managers employ to achieve their goals? At a time when organizations must work across sectors, between farther physical distances, and while interweaving sustainability and equity, what do managers need to know about the changing nature of work and leadership?This book is a succinct handbook of the essentials of management...

Social Value Investing presents a new way to approach some of society’s most difficult and intractable challenges. Although many of our world’s problems may seem too great and too complex to solve — inequality, climate change, affordable housing, corruption, healthcare, food insecurity — solutions to these challenges do exist, and will be found through new partnerships bringing together leaders from the public, private, and philanthropic sectors.In their new book, Howard W...

When discussing being stuck in a "win-win vs. win-lose" debate, most negotiation books focus on face-to-face tactics. Yet, table tactics are only the "first dimension" of David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius' pathbreaking 3-D Negotiation (TM) approach, developed from their decades of doing deals and analyzing great dealmakers. Moves in their "second dimension"-deal design-systematically unlock economic and noneconomic value by creatively structuring agreements. But what sets the 3-D approach...

"A timely and smart discussion of how different cities and regions have made a changing economy work for them—and how policymakers can learn from that." —Barack ObamaWe're used to thinking of the United States in opposing terms: red versus blue, haves versus have-nots. But today there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs—cities like San Francisco, Boston, and Durham—with workers who are among the most productive, creative, and best paid on the plane...

Renowned playwright George Bernard Shaw once said "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." By this definition, some of today's entrepreneurs are decidedly unreasonable--and have even been dubbed crazy. Yet as John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan argue in The Power of Unreasonable People, our very future may hinge on their work.Through vivid ...

Government Alone Can’t Solve Society’s Biggest ProblemsWorld hunger. Climate change. Crumbling infrastructure. It’s clear that in today’s era of fiscal constraints and political gridlock, we can no longer turn to government alone to tackle these and other towering social problems. What’s required is a new, more collaborative and productive economic system. The Solution Revolution brings hope-revealing just such a burgeoning new economy where players from a...

Our intuition on how the world works could well be wrong. We are surprised when new competitors burst on the scene, or businesses protected by large and deep moats find their defenses easily breached, or vast new markets are conjured from nothing. Trend lines resemble saw-tooth mountain ridges.The world not only feels different. The data tell us it is different. Based on years of research by the directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Forces...