The Authors
Warren Bennis is university professor and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. He is the author or editor of over twenty-six books on such topics as leadership, change management, and creative collaboration. About two million copies of his books are in print.
He consults with a number of global corporations as well as political leaders. His book Leaders was recently designated as one of the top fifty business books of all time by the Financial Times. Forbes magazine refers to him as the “Dean of Leadership Gurus.” His latest books, Organizing Genius, 1997, Co-Leaders, 1999, and Managing the Dream, 2000, summarize his major concerns: leadership, change, and creative collaboration.
Tara Church cofounded Tree Musketeers at age eight as a neighborhood tree-planting project, and has grown it into a national nonprofit organization with a network of millions. She is a tireless activist in tree planting and other “in the trenches” kinds of projects, but her greatest love is empowering and mentoring other young people. She coordinated two national conferences, launched the national One In A Million campaign to empower a million kids to plant a million trees by the end of 2000, and currently promotes youth volunteerism as a partner on the White House Millennium Council.
Church's work has been widely recognized with honors such as the 1994 President's Volunteer Action Award from President Clinton, the 1996 BRICK Award for community building efforts, John Denver's Windstar Youth Award, and the United Nations/Earth Day International “Youth & Environment Award.” In a tremendous honor, she was also named one of fifty nonprofit delegates to the President's Summit For America's Future, and was recently selected as a Daily Point of Light.
Her academic achievements earned her membership in Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa; she was also a finalist for the Harry Truman Award and the Rhodes Scholarship. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2000 with highest honors in political science and history. She is currently pursuing a JD at Harvard Law School.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the C. S. and D. J. Davidson Professor of Psychology at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University and director of the Quality of Life Research Center. He is also emeritus professor of human development at the University of Chicago, where he chaired the department of psychology. His life's work has been to study what makes people truly happy. Drawing upon years of systematic research, he invented the concept of “flow” as a metaphorical description of the rare mental state associated with feelings of optimal satisfaction and fulfillment. His analysis of the internal and external conditions giving rise to “flow” show that it is almost always linked to circumstances of high challenge when personal skills are used to the utmost. The Hungarian-born social scientist, a graduate of the classical gymnasium Torquato Tasso in Rome, completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago and earned a Ph.D. in psychology there in 1965. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Psychological Society, the National Academy of Education, and the National Academy of Leisure Studies and is a foreign member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Serving on the editorial boards of numerous professional journals, he has been a consultant to business, government organizations, educational associations, and cultural institutions and has given invited lectures throughout the world. In addition to the hugely influential Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), which was translated into fifteen languages, he is the author of thirteen other books and some two hundred research articles. His latest volume is titled Becoming Adult (2000).
Thomas G. Cummings is a professor, chair of the Department of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California, and executive director of the Leadership Institute. He received his B.S. and MBA degrees from Cornell University, and his Ph.D. in sociotechnical systems from the University of California at Los Angeles. He was previously on the faculty at Case-Western Reserve University. He has authored thirteen books and over forty scholarly articles, and has given numerous invited papers at national and international conferences. He is associate editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Management Inquiry, chairman of the Organizational Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management, and president of the Western Academy of Management.
His major research and consulting interests include designing high-performing organizations and strategic change management. He has conducted several large-scale organization design and change projects, and has consulted to a variety of private and public sector organizations in the United States, Europe, and Mexico.
Thomas H. Davenport is director of the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, a visiting professor at the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College, and a distinguished scholar in residence at Babson College. He is a widely published author and acclaimed speaker on the topics of information and knowledge management, reengineering, enterprise systems, and the use of information technology in business. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard University in organizational behavior and has taught at the Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago, and the University of Texas at Austin Graduate School of Business. He has also directed research at Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Company, and CSC Index.
Davenport wrote the first article on reengineering and the first book—Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology (Harvard Business School Press, 1993). He has recently published two well-received books on new approaches to information and knowledge management, Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment (Oxford University Press, 1997) and the best-seller Working Knowledge: Managing What Your Organization Knows (Harvard Business School Press, 1998). His book on enterprise systems, Mission Critical, was published by Harvard Business School Press in March 2000. His latest work on attention management will appear in The Attention Economy in Spring 2001. His articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, and many other publications. Tom also writes a monthly column created expressly for him by CIO Magazine called “Davenport on …, ” is one of the founding editors of Knowledge, Inc., and is a board member for a variety of organizations.
Cathy L. Greenberg-Walt is a partner with Accenture, Organization and Human Performance. In 1996, Greenberg-Walt founded the Executive Leadership Theme Team at the Institute for Strategic Change, with Alastair Robertson as co-lead. For more than two decades, Greenberg-Walt has used her academic training and professional expertise to assist companies with the successful management and integration of business strategy, process, technology, and people. She has consulted in numerous fields including finance, utilities and regulated industry, manufacturing, transportation, consumer goods, and government. Her expertise in transformational and transitional business change includes process reengineering, executive coaching, cultural and organizational assessment, and journey management during enterprise-wide change programs. With an interdisciplinary doctorate in the behavioral sciences from the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, Greenberg-Walt is a frequent keynote speaker and an adjunct professor at Rutgers University.
Charles Handy was, for many years, a professor at the London Business School. He is now an independent writer and broadcaster, and describes himself, these days, as a social philosopher. Handy's main concern is the implications for society, and for individuals, of the dramatic changes that technology and economics are bringing to the workplace and to all our lives. His book The Empty Raincoat (published in the United States as The Age of Paradox) is a sequel to his earlier best-selling The Age of Unreason, which first explored these changes.
Handy graduated from Oriel College, Oxford, with first class honors in “Greats,” an intellectual study of classics, history, and philosophy. After college, Handy worked for Shell International before entering the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. After only one week at Sloan, Handy had already met Warren Bennis, Chris Argyris, Ed Schein, and Mason Haire, among others— people who fired his fascination with organizations and how they work. When he received his MBA from Sloan in 1967, he returned to England to design and manage the only Sloan Program outside the United States, at Britain's first Graduate Business School, in London. In 1972 Handy became a full professor at the school, specializing in managerial psychology. From 1977 to 1981, he served as warden of St. George's House in Windsor Castle, a private conference and study center concerned with ethics and values in society. He was chairman of the Royal Society of Arts in London from 1987 to 1989, and holds honorary doctorates from seven British universities. Handy lives and works in London, with his wife and business partner, the photographer Elizabeth Handy.
Edward W. Headington serves as a staff assistant to the Political Operations Department, Government Affairs Division, for the National Association of Home Builders. Headington is also a student at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management—leadership tract. In addition to his work responsibilities and academic studies, he also served as a graduate senator in GWU's Student Association.
Prior to joining the NAHB and attending GWU's GSPM, he served as an aide to California Assemblymember Scott Wildman and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. He has also founded the Robert F. Kennedy Forum, an education forum on the life and legacy of RFK, self-published a book of quotes and phrases titled The Speaker's Bible, and currently releases a quarterly newsletter called the Headington Cabal.
His campaign experience includes fieldwork done at the state, local, and presidential level. He holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Southern California and is a charter student of Warren Bennis and Steven Sample's USC leadership course.
Steven Kerr is vice president of corporate leadership development and chief learning officer for General Electric, including responsibility for GE's renowned leadership education center at Crotonville. He was previously on the faculties of Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Michigan and was dean of the faculty of the USC business school from 1985 through 1989.
Kerr is a past president of the Academy of Management, the world's largest association of academicians in management. His writings on leadership, substitutes for leadership, and “The folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B” are among the most cited and reprinted in the management sciences. Among his recent publications are The Boundaryless Organization (Jossey-Bass, 1995; coauthor); “Risky Business: The New Pay Game” (Fortune, July 22, 1996), and Ultimate Rewards (Harvard Business School Press, 1997; editor).
James M. Kouzes is the coauthor, along with Barry Posner, of several award-winning books on leadership, including The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations; Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It; Encouraging the Heart: A Leader's Guide to Rewarding and Recognizing Others; and The Leadership Challenge Planner: An Action Guide to Achieving Your Personal Best. He also codeveloped the widely used and highly acclaimed “Leadership Practices Inventory,” a 360-degree questionnaire assessing leadership behavior. Kouzes is chairman emeritus of tompeters!company, a professional services firm that specializes in developing leaders at all levels. He's also an executive fellow in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. A popular seminar and conference speaker, in 1993 Kouzes was cited by the Wall Street Journal as one of the twelve most-requested “nonuniversity executive-education providers” to U.S. companies. Among his clients have been AT&T, Arthur Anderson, Bank of America, Boeing, Charles Schwab, Consumers Energy, Dell Computer, Federal Express, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Motorola, Pacific Telesis, and the YMCA.
Edward E. Lawler III joined the faculty of Yale University as assistant professor of industrial administration and psychology after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1964. In 1978, he became a professor in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. During 1979, he founded and became director of the University's Center for Effective Organization. In 1982, he was named professor of research at the University of Southern California. In 1999, he was named Distinguished Professor of Business.
Lawler has been honored as a major contributor to theory, research, and practice in the fields of human resources management, compensation, organizational development, and organizational effectiveness. He is the author or coauthor of over two hundred articles and thirty books. His most recent books include Tomorrow's O rganization (Jossey-Bass, 1998), Strategies for High-Performance Organizations: The CEO Report (Jossey-Bass, 1998), The Leadership Challenge Handbook (Jossey-Bass, 1999), and Rewarding Excellence (Jossey-Bass, 2000).
Jean Lipman-Blumen is an organizational sociologist who received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and both A.B. and A.M. degrees from Wellesley College. She spent two postdoctoral years of study in mathematics, statistics, and computer science, the first at Carnegie-Mellon University and the second at Stanford University. In addition to her professorial roles at Claremont Graduate University, she is cofounding director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Leadership at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management. She also is director of the Achieving Styles Institute, a Pasadena-based consulting group.
Before coming to Claremont, Lipman-Blumen held appointments as visiting professor of sociology and organizational behavior at the universities of Connecticut and Maryland. Prior to that, she served on the Domestic Policy Staff under President Carter. Lipman-Blumen spent 1978–79 as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. From 1973 to 1978, she was an assistant director of the National Institute of Education (NIE), where she directed the Women's Research Program. Subsequent to her NIE appointment, she served as a special assistant in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Education. From 1979 to 1984, she served as president of LBS International, Ltd., a Washington-based policy analysis and management consulting firm.
James O'Toole is research professor in the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California. In 1994, he retired after a career of over twenty years on the faculty of USC's Graduate School of Business, where he held the University Associates' Chair of Management. At USC he served as executive director of the Leadership Institute, editor of New Management magazine, and director of the Twenty-Year Forecast Project (where from 1973 through 1983 he interpreted social, political, and economic change for the top management of thirty of the largest U.S. corporations). O'Toole's research and writings have been in the areas of political philosophy, planning, corporate culture, and leadership. He has published over seventy articles and thirteen books. His most recent books, Leading Change and Leadership A TO Z: A Guide for the Appropriately Ambitious, are both published by Jossey-Bass.
O'Toole received his doctorate in Social Anthropology from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has served as a special assistant to Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Elliot Richardson, as chairman of the Secretary's Task Force on Work in America, and as director of field investigations for President Nixon's Commission on Campus Unrest. He has won a coveted Mitchell Prize for a paper on economic growth policy, has served on the prestigious Board of Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and has served as editor of the American Oxonian magazine.
From 1994 through 1997 O'Toole was executive vice president of the Aspen Institute. Most recently, he has been managing director of the Booz•Allen & Hamilton Strategic Leadership Center, where he currently serves as chair of the center's academic Board of Advisors.
Tom Peters followed In Search of Excellence (1982, with Robert H. Waterman Jr., and named by NPR as one of the three most influential management books of the century) with four more best-selling hardback books: A Passion for Excellence (1985, with Nancy Austin), Thriving on Chaos (1987), Liberation Management (1992, and recently acclaimed as the “Management Book of the Decade” for the 1990s), The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness (1997); and a pair of best-selling paperback originals, The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations (1993) and The Pursuit of WOW!: Every Person's Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times (1994). The first three of his new series of books on reinventing work were released in September 1999.
Peters is a graduate of Cornell (B.C.E., M.C.E.) and Stanford (MBA, Ph.D.). He served on active duty in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam (a Navy Seabee) and Washington from 1966 to 1970, was a senior White House drug abuse adviser in 1973–74, and worked at McKinsey & Co. from 1974 to 1981, becoming a partner in 1977. He is a fellow of the International Academy of Management, the World Productivity Association, the International Customer Service Association, and the Society for Quality and Participation.
Barry Z. Posner is dean and professor of leadership at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. He coauthored (with Jim Kouzes) several award-winning books on leadership, along with two other books in the area of project management, and is the author of more than ninety academic and practitioner-oriented articles on leadership, organizational culture, managerial values, and teamwork. He serves on the editorial review board of three journals and is on the board of directors of several organizations. He is a widely renowned leadership speaker, and has conducted leadership development programs for organizations around the globe, including Applied Materials, Ciba-Geigy, Conference Board of Canada, Hewlett-Packard, Kaiser Permanente Health Care, Levi Strauss & Co., Merck, Network Appliance, and the U.S. Postal Service.
Alastair G. Robertson heads up Accenture's Worldwide Leadership Development Practice. He is also a partner in the Organizational and Human Performance Competency, providing in-depth expertise in strategic change, leadership, and organizational performance. He has worked extensively with clients on the development of leadership behaviors specifically linked to the building of enhanced performance, tailored to the context of an organization's business strategy. He is a specialist in individual, team, and organization leadership assessment and behavior development, building on personal motivational strengths, and is an adviser and coach to many European and U.S.-based executives. His clients include many Fortune 500 companies across all industry sectors. In addition to consulting and coaching, Robertson conducts research in leadership on an ongoing basis and is regularly interviewed by the media on this topic.
Robertson has also published extensively in books and professional journals; recent publications include “The Leader Within” (June 1999), “Leadership Under Stress” (February 1999), “Leadership's New Convergence” (October 1998), “E-Leadership” (November 1999), and “Leadership: One Size Does Not Fit All” (March 2000), as well as a chapter in the book Coaching for Leadership published in May 2000 (Wiley). Robertson has an M.S. from the University of Glasgow, United Kingdom, and spent a total of twelve years with the Pillsbury Corporation, PepsiCo, and Mars Inc. before joining PA Consulting in London in 1994. He joined Accenture in 1995.
Philip Slater was a professor of sociology and department chair at Brandeis University in 1971 when he decided to leave academia. He cofounded Greenhouse, Inc., a growth center, then moved to Santa Cruz to study theater and write plays. He is the author of ten books of nonfiction and a novel, How I Saved the World. His nonfiction includes The Pursuit of Loneliness, Wealth Addiction, and A Dream Deferred, and he is coauthor with Warren Bennis of The Temporary Society. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Newsday, Psychology Today, Ms., and various professional journals. He is currently at work on a new nonfiction book, tentatively titled The Gun and the Web.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is chairman and president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of management education through scholarly research and peer-driven educational programs. He is also an adjunct professor at Yale University's School of Management. Previously, he was a professor at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University. There he founded the Center for Leadership & Career Studies, which he ran for eight years. Prior to this, Sonnenfeld spent ten years as a professor at the Harvard Business School. His research, publications, and consulting address issues of top leadership development, executive succession, and board governance.
Sonnenfeld received his A.B., MBA, and doctorate from Harvard University. He has been the recipient of the Irwin Award for Social Research in Industry, AT&T's Hawthorne Fellowship for Social Research in Industry, the John P. Whitehead Faculty Fellowship, and—on two occasions—Emory's Outstanding Educator Award. He was awarded another Outstanding Educator Award in 1996 from the American Society for Training and Development, the nation's professional association for corporate educators. Sonnenfeld has published five books and numerous articles in the areas of career management, executive training and development, and the management of corporate social performance. He has served as a member of the board of governors of the Academy of Management, and recently chaired the Blue Ribbon Commission on CEO Succession for the National Association of Corporate Directors. Sonnenfeld has served on several boards of directors.
Gretchen M. Spreitzer is a faculty member at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and a faculty affiliate of both the Center for Effective Organizations and the Leadership Institute. She focuses her research in the areas of employee empowerment and managerial development, particularly in a context of organizational change and decline. Based on extensive field research, she has authored numerous articles on contemporary issues in organizational behavior. Her recent books include A Company of Leaders: Five Disciplines for Unleashing the Power in Your Workforce (2001, with Robert Quinn) and The Leader's Change Handbook: An Essential Guide to Setting Direction and Taking Action (1999, edited with Jay Conger and Edward Lawler). She completed her doctoral work and continues to teach in executive education programs at the University of Michigan School of Business. She is an editor of the Journal of Management Inquiry and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. She is also a member of the Academy of Management (where she serves on the Executive Board of the Organization Development and Change Division), the Western Academy of Management (where she serves on the Executive Board as well). She was recognized as an Ascendant Scholar by the Western Academy of Management in 1997.
Thomas A. Stewart is a member of the Board of Editors of Fortune and the author of the monthly management column, “The Leading Edge,” as well as other articles. His book, Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, was a finalist for the Financial Times/Booz•Allen & Hamilton award for the best business book of the year in 1997. In 1999, the American Society for Training and Development gave him its second Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance Award—won the previous year by General Electric CEO Jack Welch. In 1996, Business Intelligence awarded Stewart its inaugural Knowledge Management Awareness Award. In 1993, the Journal of Financial Reporting named him to its “Blue Chip Newsroom” of best business journalists. The previous year, he received the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Award for his December 1991 cover story, “Gay in Corporate America.”
Prior to joining Fortune, Stewart worked in the book publishing business for eighteen years, serving as editor-in-chief, president, and publisher of Atheneum Publishers. He held editorial jobs at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He has written articles that were published in Manhattan, Inc., 7 Days, Town and Country, the New York Times, and Harvard Magazine. His areas of expertise include intellectual capital, the management of change, human resources, business sociology, global competitiveness, and information technology. Stewart is a fellow of the World Economic Forum and served as an adviser to the World Bank's 1998 World Development Report. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1970.
Karl E. Weick is the Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology and professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. His Ph.D. is from Ohio State University in social and organizational psychology. He is a former editor of the journal Administrative Science Quarterly (1977–1985), former associate editor of the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Performance (1971–1977), and current topic editor for human factors at the journal Wildfire. Weick's research interests include collective sensemaking under pressure, medical errors, handoffs and transitions in dynamic events, high-reliability performance, improvisation, and continuous change. His book The Social Psychology of Organizing was named by Inc. magazine as one of the “nine best business books ever written.”