This book offers triple value: a coherent theory of quality improvement for individuals and organizations that highlights the multiple transformations necessary; real-life case histories of successful applications of the theory; and 'coaching' to help the reader begin putting quality improvement into action each day of the week.Dalmar Fisher and William R. Torbert present a totally fresh perspective on the challenge of improving your organization. With wit and intelligence, experience and case material, they reveal how quality programmes can make an impact on your organization - by first having an impact on the managers who lead them. This book offers ways of developing yourself and your team into people of vision and action who see quality as an ongoing, productive process, rather than a bolt-on extra. These strategies include action inquiry - being aware and responsive to strengths and weaknesses even in the midst of daily management; power - learning how to use your influence to create positive reactions to quality; and personal transformations - are you an Opportunist, Diplomat, Technician, Achiever or Magician, and how can you develop your working ways to meet quality ideals?Personal and Organizational Transformations is not just about the objectives of quality - such as building customer focus - but how to actually achieve these aims. Examples from transforming companies, exercises, studies of leaders, and an unusual case from deep space(!) provide illustrations which will stretch you, your beliefs, and build a convincing and inspiring portrait of how to get to grips with the challenge of continual quality improvement.

Personal and Organizational Transformations: The True Challenge of Continual Quality Improvement (The McGraw-Hill Developing Organizations Series)

Business & Money

Fisher, Dalmar

Torbert, William R.

Management & Leadership

McGraw=Hill

Learning from experience: toward consciousness

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Columbia University Press

Presenting a new theory of power, a new practice of management and a new theory of social science, this volume contradicts the following received wisdoms: that `all power corrupts′; that all organizational structure constrains; and that social science is `purer′ the more it is divorced from action. Torbert presents a conceptualization of power that generates productivity, justice and inquiry; develops a theory of `liberating structure′ through which organizations can generate continual quality improvement; and introduces a new paradigm of engaged social science - `action inquiry′.

The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry

Sage Publications, Inc.

Presenting a new theory of power, a new practice of management and a new theory of social science, this volume contradicts the following received wisdoms: that `all power corrupts′; that all organizational structure constrains; and that social science is `purer′ the more it is divorced from action.  Torbert presents a conceptualization of power that generates productivity, justice and inquiry; develops a theory of `liberating structure′ through which organizations can generate continual quality improvement; and introduces a new paradigm of engaged social science - `action inquiry′.

Human Resources

Describes the six stages of organizational and personal development, outlines the action inquiry approach to management, and shows how to ease the change from one stage to the next

Managing the Corporate Dream: Restructuring for Long-Term Success

Irwin Professional_Pub

Renowned senior member of the adult development, leadership, and organization transformation fields, award-winning researcher, consultant, and teacher, Bill Torbert offers us this final and signature book -- an anti-heroic memoir named Numbskull that shares his dramatic early life in Spain, Austria, Italy, and Somalia, then at Yale, the Southern Methodist University Business School, and the Harvard Ed School, culminating with the creation of The Theatre of Inquiry. He recounts for us how he gradually learned, from the experiences of his own leadership efforts, a theory of learning from experience. From his experiences, he also learned a theory of organizational transformation, culminating in 'liberating disciplines' that help others learn transformationally from their own experiences. And, last but not least, he formulated a developmental theory of social science that culminates in the paradigm of Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry (CDAI). CDAI interweaves first-, second-, and third-person research and practice, as Numbskull illustrates by surrounding Bill's first-person memoir with an introduction, a postscript, and endnotes in the second-person voices of his action inquiry colleagues, as well as appendixes in the third-person voice. Torbert received his BA and PhD from Yale, played leadership roles at Yale Upward Bound and The Theatre of Inquiry, later served as Graduate Dean at Boston College (where the MBA rose from below the top 100 to the top 25 during his tenure) and as Director of the PhD program in Organizational Transformation. He consulted and served as a board member at dozens of companies, and is the author of a dozen books including the award-winning Managing the Corporate Dream, award-finalist The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry, and Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership, translated into Chinese, Russian, and Japanese. Of his nearly 100 journal articles and book chapters, the best-known is his 2005 international-award-winning, Harvard Business Review article "Seven Transformations of Leadership" (co-authored with David Rooke). Partnering first with Susann Cook-Greuter and later with Elaine Herdman-Barker, he has transformed the Washington University Sentence Completion Test into the leadership development psychometric named the Global Leadership Profile. He currently serves as a founding board member of both Global Leadership Associates and Amara Collaboration and is a leadership professor emeritus at Boston College. In recent years, he has received a number of recognitions for his life work, including the Ulmer Applied Research Award from the Center for Creative Leadership in 2013 and the Argyris Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management in 2014.

Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Waterside Productions

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Books by Torbert, William R.