How to Resolve the Really Hard Problems Every manager makes tough calls—it comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the “gray areas”—situations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, you’ve done the best analysis you can, and you still don’t know what to do. But you have to make a decision. You have to choose, commit, act, and live with the consequences and persuade others to follow your lead. Gray areas test your skills as a manager, your judgment, and even your humanity. How do you get these decisions right? In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems. Picking up where conventional tools of analysis leave off, this book provides tools for judgment in the form of five revealing questions. Asking yourself these five questions provides a simple yet profound way to broaden your thinking, sharpen your judgment, and develop a fresh perspective. What makes these questions so valuable is that they have truly stood the test of time—they’ve guided countless men and women, across many centuries and cultures, to resolve the hardest questions of work, responsibility, and life. You can use the five-question framework on your own or with others on your team to help you cut through complexities, understand critical trade-offs, and develop workable solutions for even the grayest issues.

Culture is in right now for Christians. Engaging it, embracing it, consuming it, and creating it. Many (younger) evangelicals today are actively cultivating an appreciation for aspects of culture previously stigmatized within the church. Things like alcohol, Hollywood's edgier content, plays, art openings, and concerts have moved from being forbidden to being celebrated by believers. But are evangelicals opening their arms too wide in uncritical embrace of culture? How do they engage with culture in ways that are mature, discerning, and edifying rather than reckless, excessive, and harmful? Can there be a healthy, balanced approach--or is that simply wishful thinking? With the same insight and acuity found in his popular Hipster Christianity, Brett McCracken examines some of the hot-button gray areas of Christian cultural consumption, helping to lead Christians to adopt a more thoughtful approach to consuming culture in the complicated middle ground between legalism and license. Readers will learn how to both enrich their own lives and honor God--refining their ability to discern truth, goodness, beauty, and enjoy his creation.

Many people know what to believe and why to hold to those beliefs. But the majority of them don’t know how to do when it comes to the countless decisions we must make that the Bible doesn’t specifically address. Chasing Elephants carefully examines the biblical subject of freedom in Christ. Taking into account values, priorities, accountability, and cultural issues, Author Brent Crowe extracts a set of principles to act as a theology of belief for the seemingly gray areas of life. With these principles as a guide, you will be prepared to handle the moral or ethical decisions you will face in life.

It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up

The Smart Classroom Management Way is a collection of the very best writing from ten years of Smart Classroom Management (SCM). It isn't, however, simply a random mix of popular articles. It's a comprehensive work that encompasses every principle, theme, and methodology of the SCM approach. The book is laid out across six major areas of classroom management and includes the most pressing issues, problems, and concerns shared by all teachers. The underlying SCM themes of accountability, maturity, independence, personal responsibility, and intrinsic motivation are all there and weave their way throughout the entirety of the book. Together, they form a simple, unique, and sometimes contrarian approach to classroom management that anyone can do. Whether you're an elementary, middle, or high school teacher, The Smart Classroom Management Way will give you the strategies, skills, and know-how to turn any group of students into the motivated, well-behaved class you love teaching.

An illustrated guide to surviving today's turbulent and challenging workplace from the authors of The Wall Street Journal bestseller The Boss's Survival Guide Forget the Australian Outback or the Amazon jungle-today's toughest survival challenge is the minefield we call work. It's impossible to "do more with less," especially with the looming threat of another reorganization, layoff, or other dramatic change. The good news is that you've got a new power tool for what ails you at work: Gray Matters. This inventive new book combines lively visuals, engaging characters, and impudent humor. But Gray Matters also offers hope and proven strategies to show you how to succeed at work today: how to sell successfully how to survive a layoff how to overcome the stress and pressure of today's frenetic workplace. Think Dilbert with a solution. Your tour guides are the employees of GlobalGadget: Gray Blanderson, a frazzled employee seeking a promotion; Rick Newman, Gray's nemesis; S. P. Chan g, a Gen-Xer and a wise soul; and Virginia Edgarly, Gray's boss who will do whatever is required to be the next CEO. A follow-up to the bestseller, The Boss's Survival Guide, this new book is a must for all managers in this turbulent work environment. This funny guide will help managers navigate change, improve morale and develop business strategies. WARNING: Gray Matters is addictive; get ready to laugh and learn.