The age of heretics

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Emmanuel Gobillot

Traditional organizational boundaries limit our ability to deliver results. The Connected Leader argues that many of the old leadership recipes are outdated and don't take into account changes in the work environment and informal social networks within the organization. Taking a new approach to leadership theory, the author (a senior director at Hay Group) argues that modern leaders engage with employees and improve performance by building on trust, giving meaning to workplace relationships and by creating dialogue within the organization. The Connected Leader provides diagnostic tools for readers to evaluate their own skills and directly relate the insights from the book to their own situation.

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M. Chris Mason

"The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were lost before they began, not on the battlefields, where the United States won every tactical engagement, but at the strategic level of war. In each case, the U.S. Government attempted to create a Western-style democracy in countries which were decades at least away from being nations with the sociopolitical capital necessary to sustain democracy and, most importantly, accept it as a legitimate source of governance. The expensive indigenous armies created in the image of the U.S. Army lacked both the motivation to fight for illegitimate governments in Saigon, Baghdad, and Kabul and a cause that they believed was worth dying for, while their enemies in the field clearly did not. This book examines the Afghan National Security Forces in historical and political contexts, explains why they will fail at the tactical, operational and strategic levels of war, why they cannot and will not succeed in holding the southern half of the country, and what will happen in Afghanistan year-by-year from 2015 to 2019. Finally, it examines what the critical lessons unlearned of these conflicts are for U.S. military leaders, why these fundamental political lessons seem to remain unlearned, and how the strategic mistakes of the past can be avoided in the future"--Publisher's web site.

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Steven J. Thiele

"This commentary attempts to tie the interpretation closely to the original Essay rather than to the political charged reactions to that essay. Rather than a simplistic projection of future population growth and inevitable collapse, the Essay is a far subtler social theory of the relationships between sociocultural systems and their environments. The work includes commentary and criticism of Malthus' methodology, the materialist, evolutionary, and functional elements of his theory, as well as the application of his theory to understanding the nature of welfare programs and possibilities for social progress. Includes a reprint of the original essay by Malthus."--BOOK JACKET.

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Eric Dodge

I am not an expert on fear, nor pretending to be an expert on anything. However, my fears at times have gotten the best of me. Let me be clear about something. This book is not about my journey as a country music entertainer, but it has everything to do with being able to achieve that dream. This book came to life because of my overwhelming desire to help others who struggle with the same issues that many of us have lived with, and still live with today. You are the reason this book was written. Let me help you to achieve your dreams. It starts by facing your fears. We all have fears that control us. It is my belief that if we can control our fears we can accomplish anything. If we master our fears, we master our future. When we are born and when we are little kids we are, for the most part, fearless. Outside circumstances, introduced to us throughout our lives, begin the process of developing fears. When we have a fear of something, we have a reason for it. Something happened to us. Maybe it was something we saw, or a reaction we witnessed from someone we loved. This is where our deepest, most strongly rooted fears come from. We can push past these fears. Many years ago I started believing that we should face our fears instead of running from them. As part of this hard-won knowledge, I'd like to share some stories from my life that caused me to start living a life of fear.