Why am I passionate about this?

Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. The organizations where we live, work, play, and worship affect every part of our lives. Organizations turn individual competencies into collective capabilities, isolated events into sustained patterns, and personal values into collective values. In short, organizations matter in our lives. By adapting their answer to “what is an organization,” leaders, employees, customers, and investors will be better able to improve their organization's experiences.


I co-authored

Reinventing the Organization: How Companies Can Deliver Radically Greater Value in Fast-Changing Markets

By Dave Ulrich, Arthur Yeung,

Book cover of Reinventing the Organization: How Companies Can Deliver Radically Greater Value in Fast-Changing Markets

What is my book about?

In today’s changing world, your company needs to manage information, be agile, focus on customers, and discover innovation.  The new…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Designing Organizations: Strategy, Structure, and Process at the Business Unit and Enterprise Levels

Dave Ulrich Why did I love this book?

Jay Galbraith was the godfather of organization design. His work on how to design organizations has been the foundation of future work. He provides a system model with five parts (his star model) to diagnose and improve the organization. He also highlights the importance and role of information that flows from good organization design which was ahead of its time.

By Jay R. Galbraith,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Designing Organizations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This Third Edition of the groundbreaking book Designing Organizations offers a guide to the process of creating and managing an organization (no matter how complex) that will be positioned to respond effectively and rapidly to customer demands and have the ability to achieve unique competitive advantage. This latest edition includes fresh illustrative examples and references, while the foundation of the book remains the author s popular and widely used Star Model. * Includes a comprehensive explanation of the basics of organization design * Outlines a strategic approach to design that is based on the Star Model, a holistic framework for…


Book cover of Competing for the Future

Dave Ulrich Why did I love this book?

This is another classic in that it redefines the organization less as morphology and structure and more as a set of capabilities. Capabilities represent what an organization is known for and good at doing. Creating the right organization is less about roles and rules, but more about identifying and creating the right capabilities.

By Gary Hamel, CK Prahalad,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Competing for the Future as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New competitive realities have ruptured industry boundaries, overthrown much of standard management practice, and rendered conventional models of strategy and growth obsolete. In their stead have come the powerful ideas and methodologies of Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, whose much-revered thinking has already engendered a new language of strategy. In this book, they develop a coherent model for how today's executives can identify and accomplish no less than heroic goals in tomorrow's marketplace. Their masterful blueprint addresses how executives can ease the tension between competing today and clearing a path toward leadership in the future.


Book cover of Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them

Dave Ulrich Why did I love this book?

This book does a very nice job highlighting the costs of traditional bureaucracy and shows that bureaucracy costs the economy trillions of dollars. The authors then review how to create an organization where people feel empowered to accomplish all that they can. By fulling engaging the hearts, minds, and actions of people, organizations are more successful over time.

By Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Humanocracy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller

In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring.

Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book.

In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing…


Book cover of The Agility Factor: Building Adaptable Organizations for Superior Performance

Dave Ulrich Why did I love this book?

Ed Lawler has a lifetime of melding academic theory and organization practice. In this research based book, he and his colleagues not only recognize that agility matters, but they do research to validate processes that create organization agility. Agility is one of the emerging capabilities for a successful organization in today’s changing world. Anything El Lawler works is well thought out, researched, and usable.

By Christopher G. Worley, Edward E. Lawler, Thomas D. Williams

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Agility Factor as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A research-based approach to achieving long-term profitability in business What does it take to guarantee success and profitability over time? Authors Christopher G. Worley, a senior research scientist, Thomas D. Williams, an executive advisor, and Edward E. Lawler III, one of the country's leading management experts, set out to find the answer. In The Agility Factor: Building Adaptable Organizations for Superior Performance the authors reveal the factors that drive long-term profitability based on the practices of successful companies that have consistently outperformed their peers. Of the 234 large companies across 18 industries that were studied, there were few companies that…


Book cover of Competing by Design: The Power of Organizational Architecture

Dave Ulrich Why did I love this book?

In doing organization diagnosis, it is important to have a framework for thinking about and designing organizations. Like an architect, organization and management practitioners can become architects who build blueprints for creating the right organization. The Nadler/Tushman model is one of the most insightful and comprehensive frameworks for organization diagnosis and improvement.

By Mark B. Nadler, Michael Tushman, David Nadler

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Competing by Design as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

If the defining goal of modern-day business can be isolated to just one item, it would be the search for competitive advantage. And, as everyone in business knows, it's a lot harder than it used to be. On the one hand, competition is more intense than ever-technological innovation, consumer expectations, government deregulation, all combine to create more opportunities for new competitors to change the basic rules of the game. On the other hand, most of the old
reliable sources of competitive advantage are drying up: the hallowed strategies employed by GM, IBM, and AT&T to maintain their seemingly unassailable positions…


Explore my book 😀

Reinventing the Organization: How Companies Can Deliver Radically Greater Value in Fast-Changing Markets

By Dave Ulrich, Arthur Yeung,

Book cover of Reinventing the Organization: How Companies Can Deliver Radically Greater Value in Fast-Changing Markets

What is my book about?

In today’s changing world, your company needs to manage information, be agile, focus on customers, and discover innovation.  The new organization form (Market Oriented Ecosystem … MOE) draws on numerous models: agile, networked, holacracy, and remarkable cases including Tencent, Alibaba, Google, Facebook to distill 6 principles for creating an organization that delivers employee, strategy, customer, and financial results.  This work is a roadmap for the new organization journey.

Book cover of Designing Organizations: Strategy, Structure, and Process at the Business Unit and Enterprise Levels
Book cover of Competing for the Future
Book cover of Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them

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Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did

By Margot Machol Bisnow,

Book cover of Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did

Margot Machol Bisnow Author Of Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve become passionate about telling parents how to raise happy, resilient, creative, confident, entrepreneurial children who are doing something that gives them joy. So many young people are unhappy; parents don’t understand how to help. They think their children should follow their path, but that no longer works for many. For the last 10 years, I’ve been speaking to parent groups; I was an Advisor to EQ Generation, an after-school program that gives children the skills to succeed; on the Advisory Board of MUSE School, preparing young people with passion-based learning; and on the Board of Spark the Journey, mentoring low-income high school students to achieve college and career success. 

Margot's book list on learn how to raise confident children

What is my book about?

This book shakes longstanding assumptions of parenting.

Through 99 stories of people who are now changing the world, it shows how to raise creative, confident, resilient children who are filled with joy and purpose. Based on interviews with top entrepreneurs and their parents, it guides you to help your children identify their passion and figure out how they can spend their professional lives doing something they love. 

Parents' well-intentioned efforts often boomerang. By ignoring their children’s skills and interests, parents can inadvertently create pressure and anxiety, thwarting their children's ability to excel and find happiness. Too often, following your heart…

Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams - 99 Stories from Families Who Did

By Margot Machol Bisnow,

What is this book about?

Learn how successful entrepreneurs were raised! Could your children start a company that disrupts existing industries? Or a non-profit that helps people around the world? Or follow their passion as an artist or activist? And most important, lead a life of joy and purpose, to be happy and fulfilled? Margot Machol Bisnow, mother of two thriving entrepreneurs, reveals how to raise creative, confident, resilient, fearless kids who achieve their dreams, through 99 stories of families who did it.

Read stories from 70 families who raised true game changers. See family photos of these thriving entrepreneurs, both when they were young…


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