For the first time, William Poundstone reveals the toughest questions used at Microsoft and other Fortune 500 companies -- and supplies the answers. He traces the rise and controversial fall of employer-mandated IQ tests, the peculiar obsessions of Bill Gates (who plays jigsaw puzzles as a competitive sport), the sadistic mind games of Wall Street (which reportedly led one job seeker to smash a forty-third-story window), and the bizarre excesses of today's hiring managers (who may start off your interview with a box of Legos or a game of virtual Russian roulette). How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is an indispensable book for anyone in business. Managers seeking the most talented employees will learn to incorporate puzzle interviews in their search for the top candidates. Job seekers will discover how to tackle even the most brain-busting questions, and gain the advantage that could win the job of a lifetime. And anyone who has ever dreamed of going up against the best minds in business may discover that these puzzles are simply a lot of fun. Why are beer cans tapered on the end, anyway?

    While seemingly harmless, the question has unintended consequences. It can make you feel like you need to choose one job, one passion, one thing to be about. Guess what? You don't.Having a lot of different interests, projects and curiosities doesn't make you a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none." Your endless curiosity doesn't mean you are broken or flaky. What you are is a multipotentialite: someone with many interests and creative pursuits. And that is actually your biggest strength.How to Be Everything helps you channel your diverse passions and skills to work for you. Based on her popular TED talk, "Why some of us don't have one true calling", Emilie Wapnick flips the script on conventional career advice. Instead of suggesting that you specialize, choose a niche or accumulate 10,000 hours of practice in a single area, Wapnick provides a practical framework for building a sustainable life around ALL of your passions.You'll discover:•  Why your multipotentiality is your biggest strength, especially in today's uncertain job market.•  How to make a living and structure your work if you have many skills and interests.•  How to focus on multiple projects and make progress on all of them.•  How to handle common insecurities such as the fear of not being the best, the guilt associated with losing interest in something you used to love and the challenge of explaining "what you do" to others. Not fitting neatly into a box can be a beautiful thing. How to Be Everything teaches you how to design a life, at any age and stage of your career, that allows you to be fully you, and find the kind of work you'll love.

    Think of them instead as allies.As a manager you want your employees to help transform the company for the future. And your employees want the company to help transform their careers for the long term. But this win-win scenario will happen only if both sides trust each other enough to commit to mutual investment and mutual benefit. Sadly, trust in the business world is hovering at an all-time low.We can rebuild that lost trust with straight talk that recognizes the realities of the modern economy. So, paradoxically, the alliance begins with managers acknowledging that great employees might leave the company, and with employees being honest about their own career aspirations.By putting this new alliance at the heart of your talent management strategy, you’ll not only bring back trust, you’ll be able to recruit and retain the entrepreneurial individuals you need to adapt to a fast-changing world.These individuals, flexible, creative, and with a bias toward action, thrive when they’re on a specific “tour of duty”—when they have a mission that’s mutually beneficial to employee and company that can be completed in a realistic period of time.Coauthored by the founder of LinkedIn, this bold but practical guide for managers and executives will give you the tools you need to recruit, manage, and retain the kind of employees who will make your company thrive in today’s world of constant innovation and fast-paced change.

    “This is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in a magazine a few years ago and thought we’d work together someday.” After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he bought a little-known graphics company called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and executive to whom he had never spoken before, to persuade Levy to help him get Pixar off the ground. What Levy found was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the story of what happened next: how, working closely with Jobs, Levy produced and implemented a highly improbable plan that transformed Pixar into one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories. Set in the worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the book takes readers inside Pixar, Disney, law firms, and investment banks. It provides an up-close, firsthand account of Pixar’s ascent, how it made creative choices, Levy’s enduring collaboration and friendship with Jobs, and how Levy came to see in Pixar deeper lessons that can apply to many aspects of our lives.

    We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems ... [This book] probes the psychological forces that push us downstream--including 'problem blindness,' which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored ... victories by switching to an upstream mindset.

    Scott doesn’t just show you which sliders do what (every Lightroom book will do that). Instead, by using the following three simple, yet brilliant, techniques that make it just an incredible learning tool, this book shows you how to create your own photography workflow using Lightroom: Throughout the book, Scott shares his own personal settings and studiotested techniques. Each year he trains thousands of Lightroom users at his live seminars and through that he’s learned what really works, what doesn’t, and he tells you flat out which techniques work best, which to avoid, and why. The entire book is laid out in a real workflow order with everything step by step, so you can begin using Lightroom like a pro from the start. What really sets this book apart is the last chapter. This is where Scott dramatically answers his #1 most-asked Lightroom question, which is: “Exactly what order am I supposed to do things in, and where does Photoshop fit in?” You’ll see Scott’s entire start-to-finish Lightroom 5 workflow and learn how to incorporate it into your own workflow. Plus, this book includes a downloadable collection of some of the hottest Lightroom Develop module presets to give you a bunch of amazing effects with just one click! Scott knows first-hand the challenges today’s digital photographers are facing, and what they want to learn next to make their workflow faster, easier, and more fun. He has incorporated all of that into this major update for Lightroom 5. It’s the first and only book to bring the whole process together in such a clear, concise, and visual way. Plus, the book includes a special chapter on integrating Adobe Photoshop seamlessly right into your workflow, and you’ll also learn some of Scott’s latest Photoshop portrait retouching techniques and special effects, which take this book to a whole new level. There is no faster, more straight-to-the-point, or more fun way to learn Lightroom than with this groundbreaking book.

    This environment of constant change will only accelerate in the future and traditional business leaders are ill equipped to deal with it. Just as we took our cues from MBAs and the military in casting the ideal CEO of the 20th century, we can look to design - in its broadest form - to model our future leader, the DEO. These leaders possess characteristics, behaviors and mindsets that allow them to excel in unpredictable, fast-moving and value-charged conditions. They are catalysts for transformation and agents of change. A hybrid of strategic business executive and creative problem-solver, the DEO is willing to take on anything as an object of design and looks at ALL problems as design challenges. Readers will learn not only why this form of leadership is essential to the success of modern organizations, but also what characteristics are best suited to this role. Through intimate conversations with leading DEOs, we explore the mindsets, communities, processes and practices common to creative business leaders. The book lays out--graphically and through example--how DEOs run their companies and why this approach makes sense now. We help readers identify these skills in themselves and their colleagues, and we guide them in using these skills to build, revive or reinvent the next generation of great companies and organization.

    Through interviews with past and present Disney employees, some of the business secrets and practices of this vastly successful empire are revealed.

    In the War of Art Pressfield identifies the enemy to living an authentic life – resistance. In Turning Pro, Pressfield teaches you how to defeat it.

    With the help of visionary businessman Steve Jobs and animating genius John Lasseter, Pixar has become the gold standard of animated filmmaking, beginning with a short special effects shot made at Lucasfilm in 1982 all the way up through the landmark films Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, and others. David A. Price goes behind the scenes of the corporate feuds between Lasseter and his former champion, Jeffrey Katzenberg, as well as between Steve Jobs and Michael Eisner. And finally he explores Pixar's complex relationship with the Walt Disney Company as it transformed itself into the $7.4 billion jewel in the Disney crown.

    It's just that our traditional definition of work--Monday through Friday, nine to five--doesn't make sense in the always-on global economy. So, Ressler and Thompson created the Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, "you" control when, where, and how long you work. As long as you meet your objectives, the way you spend your time is entirely up to you. Suddenly, work isn't a place you "go," it's a thing you "do." In a ROWE, there are no mandatory meetings or fixed schedules. You stop doing any activity that wastes time, and no one criticizes you for "leaving early" or "coming in late." If you do your best work at midnight or on Sundays, go for it! ROWE sounds like a fantasy, but Ressler and Thompson have already made it a reality at Best Buy, a Fortune 100 company. They have proven that ROWE not only makes employees happier but also delivers "better results." And now the authors are helping companies implement ROWE nationwide. Infused with passion and common sense, "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It" will change the way you think about your job, your company, and your quality of life. Read it and join the revolution!

    Drawing on lessons learned from working with more than 15,000 small, medium-sized, and very large organisations, Gerber has discovered the truth behind why management doesn′t work and what to do about it. Unearthing the arbitrary origins of commonly held doctrines such as the omniscience of leader (Emperor) and the most widely embraced myth of all擨e E-Myth Manager offers a fresh, provocative alternative to management as we know it. It explores why every manager must take charge of his own life, reconcile his own personal vision with that of the organisation, and develop an entrepreneurial mind-set to achieve true success.

    It was also a weapon.Simplicity isn’t just a design principle at Apple—it’s a value that permeates every level of the organization. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It’s what helped Apple recover from near death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011.Thanks to Steve Jobs’s uncompromising ways, you can see Simplicity in everything Apple does: the way it’s structured, the way it innovates, and the way it speaks to its customers.It’s by crushing the forces of Complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory.As ad agency creative director, Ken Segall played a key role in Apple’s resurrection, helping to create such critical marketing campaigns as Think different. By naming the iMac, he also laid the foundation for naming waves of i-products to come.Segall has a unique perspective, given his years of experience creating campaigns for other iconic tech companies, including IBM, Intel, and Dell. It was the stark contrast of Apple’s ways that made Segall appreciate the power of Simplicity—and inspired him to help others benefit from it.In Insanely Simple, you’ll be a fly on the wall inside a conference room with Steve Jobs, and on the receiving end of his midnight phone calls. You’ll understand how his obsession with Simplicity helped Apple perform better and faster, sometimes saving millions in the process. You’ll also learn, for example, how to:• Think Minimal: Distilling choices to a minimum brings clarity to a company and its customers—as Jobs proved when he replaced over twenty product models with a lineup of four.• Think Small: Swearing allegiance to the concept of “small groups of smart people” raises both morale and productivity.• Think Motion: Keeping project teams in constant motion focuses creative thinking on well-defined goals and minimizes distractions.• Think Iconic: Using a simple, powerful image to symbolize the benefit of a product or idea creates a deeper impression in the minds of customers.• Think War: Giving yourself an unfair advantage—using every weapon at your disposal—is the best way to ensure that your ideas survive unscathed.Segall brings Apple’s quest for Simplicity to life using fascinating (and previously untold) stories from behind the scenes. Through his insight and wit, you’ll discover how companies that leverage this power can stand out from competitors—and individuals who master it can become critical assets to their organizations.

    His liberating message: you'll be more successful if you stop struggling so hard to plan or control your success. Messy is a deeply researched, endlessly eye-opening adventure in the life-changing magic of not tidying up' Oliver BurkemanThe urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned, scattered around or hard to describe. We find comfort in having a script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise and file away.We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Corporate middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical place in a logical system. Now that they are armed with computers and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in check. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Order is imposed when chaos would be more productive. Or if not chaos, then . . . messiness.The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them. This, then, is a book about the benefits of being messy: messy in our private lives; messy in the office, with piles of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets; messy in the recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important presentation; and messy in our approach to business, politics and economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably made-up-on-the-spot. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a little mess.

    Drawing on in-depth interviews, Benton identifies 22 vital traits that make a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) - the leader responsible for making decisions, guiding teams, selling ideas, managing crises and conquering the mountains before them.