The Next Smart Step: How to Overcome Gender Stereotypes and Build a Stronger Organization

“A candid, readable, and useful book about how we can get past talking about gender bias and actually start doing something about it.”
   —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of ORIGINALS and GIVE AND TAKE, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

Empowering women empowers everyone. Women with confidence, equal pay, and leadership opportunity enrich workplace culture and help the whole organization. The first step is understanding that gender balance is not a zero-sum game. The Next Smart Step is a clear, assured guide to understanding the challenge of gender imbalance, implementing solutions, and equipping readers with the tools we all need to ensure change that is positive and enduring. It is about all of us becoming leaders.
The Next Smart Step builds on a positive reality, helping readers recognize and manage unconscious biases, see diversity as a 21st-century skill, and work towards equal partnerships in the workplace. It outlines strategies for flexibility, communication, openness, and mutual respect. Gender equity is not only the right thing to do—it makes life better, workplace culture more diverse, opportunity more widely available, and organizations more successful. The Next Smart Step will help everyone from new hires to corporate executives learn the personal leadership this important issue demands.

Jodi Detjen is an organizational consultant and educator with a foundation in operational change management. In addition to being co-founder and managing partner of Orange Grove Consulting, Jodi is clinical professor of management and academic MBA program director at Suffolk University. She has worked in organizational development for over twenty-five years, transforming the way people work at small and large companies. Jodi designs top-tier women's leadership training for clients that include Skillsoft and Linkage, and has consulted and run workshops for clients such as Accenture, Microsoft Partners, Dimension Data, and Oracle. She is co-author of the book, The Orange Line: A Woman's Guide to Integrating Career, Family, and Life.

Kelly Watson is managing partner of Orange Grove Consulting and has spent more than twenty years as an accomplished operations and organizational development consultant. Kelly's clients have included Raytheon, Oracle, and Toyota, as well as Skillsoft and Linkage, for whom she has designed women's leadership curricula. Kelly has been an adjunct professor at Loyola Marymount University and is co-author of the book, The Orange Line: A Woman's Guide to Integrating Career, Family, and Life.