Book Summaries

Michael Watkins, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, lays out the major steps involved in any negotiation, including diagnosing a situation, shaping the structuring, managing the process and assessing the results. He also offers key insights into building coalitions, managing conflicts and negotiating crises.

In The Responsibility Virus, Roger Martin unveils a vicious cycle of over-responsibility and under-responsibility infecting working relationships in many companies. Martin shows how heroic leaders take on too much responsibility, passive followers take on too little, and the two groups feed off each other. The result, general unhappiness and a dysfunctional operation.