The Best Place to Work
The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
For readers of Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, and Freakonomics, comes a captivating and surprising journey through the science of workplace excellence.
Why do successful companies reward failure?
What can casinos teach us about building a happy workplace?
How do you design an office that enhances both attention to detail and creativity?
In The Best Place to Work, award-winning psychologist Ron Friedman, Ph.D. uses the latest research from the fields of motivation, creativity, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and management to reveal what really makes us successful at work. Combining powerful stories with cutting edge findings, Friedman shows leaders at every level how they can use scientifically-proven techniques to promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance.
Among the many surprising insights, Friedman explains how learning to think like a hostage negotiator can help you diffuse a workplace argument, why placing a fish bowl near your desk can elevate your thinking, and how incorporating strategic distractions into your schedule can help you reach smarter decisions. Along the way, the book introduces the inventor who created the cubicle, the president who brought down the world’s most dangerous criminal, and the teenager who single-handedly transformed professional tennis—vivid stories that offer unexpected revelations on achieving workplace excellence.
Brimming with counterintuitive insights and actionable recommendations, The Best Place to Work offers employees and executives alike game-changing advice for working smarter and turning any organization—regardless of its size, budgets, or ambitions—into an extraordinary workplace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
World-class cafeterias, on-campus dry-cleaning, and on-site massages these are some of the ways that companies like Google and Facebook attract and retain employees. But do office perks really make for an improved workplace, and is improving a workplace the best way to create an exceptional company? Psychologist Friedman explores this question in his useful guide. He says he became fascinated with the issue of office culture after leaving academe to work as a pollster in the corporate world. Office design, telecommuting, the importance of exercise, making friends with co-workers, resolving tense moments, and hiring and training the right people are among the range of subjects Friedman examines. His takeaways include "psychological needs are at the heart of employee engagement" and "integrating work and family life improves the quality of both." Stocked with action items for managers and plenty of case studies, this is an energetic, conversational look at what really makes an office environment tick. As for those on-site massages; it turns out that recognition is the most effective perk of all.