 Keith Yamashita, author of UNSTUCK, started out as a design major at Stanford University and switched to economics, believing he wanted to become an economist (what was he thinking?). He stayed on at Stanford to pursue a master of arts in organizational behavior. Keith has worked with CEOs to drive significant change. He has worked with CEOs and executive teams at companies including Hewlett-Packard, Gap Inc., PBS, Apple Computer, Herman Miller, IBM, and Saturn, among others.
The idea for UNSTUCK came about when Sandy was teaching an MBA course at Yale and invited Keith to teach a few classes with her. The topic for the classes? How to flex leadership and communications skills in complicated times. In preparing for those classes, their ambition was to create a tool that would help the students lead their teams through times of change. They wanted to take knowledge from Sandy's research, other thinkers in the field, and Keith's on-the-frontlines work with CEOs — and bake that knowledge into a form that these leaders could use in tough situations to drive the right actions in their teams.
They soon discovered that while there are thousands of books published every year on leadership, management, and innovation, very few function as in-the-moment tools that let you take instant action. They ended up creating a set of flash cards, which they hastily named Unstuck Cards. And an interesting thing happened. The cards were a hit. The students demanded more of them. One student even remarked, "This is the stuff I came to business school to learn, wrapped up in a way that I can actually use." They were on to something.
UNSTUCK takes all that's tough about leading change, breaks it down, and serves it up in a way that makes you want to take action. Right now.
—Paul Pressler, CEO, Gap Inc.
Reinventing an institution with as important a legacy as PBS required strategic clarity matched with creativity—and that?s just what Stone Yamashita Partners brought to the process. UNSTUCK captures their unique approach that helped us get unstuck from the past and focused on the future.
—Pat Mitchell, CEO, PBS
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