Russ Linden: “How Do We Retain Optimism during Troubling Times?”
Russ Linden is a management educator and author who specializes in organizational change methods. He is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Virginia and at the Federal Executive Institute. He writes a column on management innovations for Management Insights, an online column sponsored by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Governing Magazine. In 2003 he was the Williams Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the State University of New York (Fredonia) School of Business.
His current teaching and consulting interests include collaboration, the human side of change, strategic thinking and acting, developing an agile and resilient culture, and crisis leadership.
He has published numerous articles and five books. His book Seamless Government: A Practical Guide to Re-engineering in the Public Sector (Jossey-Bass, 1994), is considered the primary source on that topic by many. Working Across Boundaries is now in its 7th printing. It was a finalist for the best book on nonprofit management in 2002 (awarded by the Alliance for Nonprofit Management). His latest book, Leading Across Boundaries, focuses on the leader’s roles and challenges in making collaboration work.
Author of Loss and Discovery: What the Torah Can Teach Us about Leading Change. Changes – including happy ones – involve loss. You have your first child, a truly blessed event, but lose sleep, energy, time with your partner, and more. Yet change also offers opportunities for discovery. My new book taps ancient wisdom and contemporary insights on how we can help others, and ourselves, manage the losses and discover the opportunities during these turbulent times.