Jocelyn’s Books
Ticket to Madland
After decades of smooth sailing in her professional and personal life, business author Jocelyn Davis finds herself caught in a storm of bizarre medical symptoms: patches of itchy pain, spinning vertigo, surging anxiety and, worst of all, a never-ending sensation of being on a boat in rough seas. This is her story: a vividly candid, darkly comic account of a high achiever’s self-guided voyage through an excruciating mind-body illness, the characters she meets along the way, and her courageous struggle to lead herself back to health.
Insubordinate
Witch. Temptress. Snow Queen.
For ages, labels like these have been used to malign women and deny their leadership potential. Now, we’re reclaiming them.
Insubordinate presents twelve timeless female archetypes reimagined and refreshed with stories of literary and everyday women who fought, cajoled, commanded, schemed, or blasted their way free of the chains that bound them. Discover your personal types, along with inspiration and strategies for expanding your range, tapping your inner power, and unleashing your natural leadership in work and life.
PRAISE FOR INSUBORDINATE
“This is a thoughtful and highly readable book that highlights the enduring value of folk and classical literature, even in the world of business… A delightful and wide-ranging folkloric self-help work.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Inspires us to be our best and bravest self and to give full expression to the female hero in each of us.” – Susan Chamberlin, Director, Joseph Campbell Foundation
“A captivating, articulate, and elegant masterclass in constructive insubordination.” – Sumeet Shetty, President, Literati: India’s largest corporate book club
“A book that centers women and what we have been doing forever: leading, each in our own unique way.” – Briana Saussy, author of Making Magic and Star Child
The Art of Quiet Influence
The Art of Quiet Influence weaves together timeless wisdom from the great sages of India, China, Japan, and the Islamic world—from Confucius to the Buddha, Rumi to Gandhi—with insights from modern-day experts. She offers a counterpoint to the Western view of influence as short-term persuasion or manipulation by showing how to create trust-based collaborations with lasting impact. Featuring twelve practices, twelve Western pitfalls, and scores of stories old and new, The Art of Quiet Influence is your best guide to leading without authority.
PRAISE FOR THE ART OF QUIET INFLUENCE
“A tremendous and relevant read.” –Stephen M.R. Covey, New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Speed of Trust
“A book for anyone who needs to lead without authority—that is, everyone!” –Rasmus Hougaard, Founder, Potential Project; author, The Mind of the Leader
“Wise, humane, and illuminating.” –Krishnan Venkatesh, author, Do You Know Who You Are? Reading the Buddha’s Discourses
“Be prepared to be inspired and moved to change as I was. A must-read.” –Cynthia Stuckey, Head of Sales Effectiveness Practice, Korn Ferry
“Demystifies Eastern philosophy and shows its relevance to today’s global business world.”–Karen Blal, CIPD Regional Director Asia
“A journey through time and thought, philosophy, history, and culture, all tempered into practical, actionable solidity” –800-CEO-READ
The Greats on Leadership: Classic Wisdom for Modern Managers
The Greats on Leadership is an in-depth tour of the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries, drawing out the key leadership insights from classic authors and weaving them together with business examples, the best contemporary research, and tools to help put it all into practice.
Among the 20 leadership topics: Leadership Traps (Shakespeare) • Change (Machiavelli) • Power (Sophocles) • Communication (Lincoln, Pericles) • Personality Types (Jung) • Motivation (Frankl) • Judgment (Maupassant, Melville, Austen, Shaw) • Character (Churchill, Plutarch, Shelley, Joyce)
PRAISE FOR THE GREATS ON LEADERSHIP
“For anyone who wants to be a great leader, in one manageable book” –Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World
“A book of substance that is a joy to read” –SUCCESS magazine
“A mind-stretching read that transforms the theoretical to the actionable” –Richard Whiteley, author, The Customer Driven Company
“Made me reconsider the way I think about business leadership” –Bryan Burrough, co-author, Barbarians at the Gate
“A great balance of introspection, inspiration, and impetus toward execution” –800-CEO-READ Editor’s Choice
The Age of Kali
The Age of Kali is India’s greatest epic, reimagined. The Mahabharata, often called “India’s Iliad,” tells of several generations of the royal family of Kuru: their ambitions, loves, moral dilemmas, and battles for a kingdom. As tradition has it, the heroes are the five Pandava brothers and their shared wife, Draupadi; the villain is their power-mad cousin, Duryodhana.
But what if tradition got it wrong? What if Duryodhana, despite his flaws, were the real hero—with a passionate heart buried under his emotional and physical scars—and the supposedly noble Pandavas were the evil ones? What if Draupadi and the many other women of the tale were rebels behind the scenes? And what if, thanks to a young girl who ferreted out the family secrets and kept them hidden for years, the truth could at last be told?
PRAISE FOR THE AGE OF KALI
“What a marvel this book is. In taut, lyrical prose shot through with moments of wry humor, Jocelyn Davis brings ancient India to life so thoroughly that the gulf between past and present disappears completely: we feel as if she is telling our own story. Riveting and deeply moving, The Age of Kali is the work of an immensely gifted novelist.”
–Abigail DeWitt, author of News of Our Loved Ones, Lili, and Dogs
“To lovers of the Indian epics, this book is a devious, heretical topsy-turvying of the Mahabharata; to Hindu fundamentalists, dangerous, blasphemous, a book to be burnt; to the general reader, a brilliant, enthralling, complex fantasy that will linger in your mind long after you have finished it.”
–Krishnan Venkatesh, author of Do You Know Who You Are? Reading the Buddha’s Discourses
Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution
Success in business goes to the swift. It’s about who can create the most value, smarter and faster than the competition. Yet the majority of strategic initiatives fail to implement successfully and on time—even with streamlined processes in place and plenty of resources on hand to get the job done. Why?
Authors Davis, Frechette, and Boswell argue that an exclusive focus on pace and process leads only to superficial speed: lots of activity, but little forward motion. To implement strategies both quickly and well, leaders need to make people the key ingredient in their success formula. Three people factors—Clarity, Unity, and Agility—are a powerful accelerator for organizational performance. From big change initiatives to everyday work projects, Strategic Speed supplies you with the tools to make it really happen.
PRAISE FOR STRATEGIC SPEED
“Where urgency meets execution” –Walt Macnee, President, International Markets, MasterCard Worldwide
“In Strategic Speed,we finally get the implementation model that needs to go with the strategy” –Len Schlesinger, President, Babson College
“Just as Einstein requested: simple, without being simplified” –Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School
“Relevant business cases and practical suggestions to deliver real outcomes” –Catriona Noble, Managing Director, McDonald’s Australia
Leadership Failures Sink Unsinkable Ship
The Titanic disaster has been called the greatest news story of modern times. A century later, historians are still arguing about what could have been done to prevent the sinking of the “unsinkable” ship and the drowning of more than 1500 passengers and crew. The massive investigations that followed the event resulted in a host of new laws and safety improvements to ships, including better hull and rudder design, lifeboat requirements, and radio communications laws. But while these technical and legal improvements undoubtedly saved lives in the years to come, they didn’t address the catastrophe’s fundamental cause: a failure in leadership.
Davis uses contemporary research to illuminate what leaders did wrong on the Titanic and the Californian—and what they did right on the Carpathia—on that long-ago night in the North Atlantic. The same lessons can be applied to 21st-century organizations that operate on dry land. This concise and fresh take on the disaster uncovers its true causes and provides practical advice you can apply as a business leader today.
PRAISE FOR LEADERSHIP FAILURES SINK UNSINKABLE SHIP
“An engaging and easy read … a case study for those interested in effective leadership strategies (5 stars)” –Michael H. Roberts, Vice President for Research and Emerging Initiatives, Coastal Carolina University
Forum's Principles of Learning: A Guidebook for Advancing Performance in Today's Workplace
Beginning in 1990, The Forum Corporation became known for its Principles of Adult Learning: six research-based precepts for fostering learning in the workplace. Joan Bragar and Kerry Johnson were the authors of that first study. In 2003, Jocelyn Davis and Tom Atkinson updated the research and the white paper. And in 2010, Elizabeth Griep, Simon Fowler, and Jocelyn updated it yet again. Over the years, the principles were the touchstone for our R&D efforts and our work with clients.
This latest report is enhanced with many real-life examples and a complete tool kit for driving business results through learning. With robust data, strategies, and tools, Forum’s Principles of Learning remains an indispensable guide for L&D and line leaders alike.