The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.This book introduces the idea of design thinking‚ the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs not only with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short‚ design thinking converts need into demand. It′s a human−centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative.Design thinking is not just applicable to so−called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It′s a methodology that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to icnrease the quality of patient care by re−examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change‚ or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization‚ product‚ or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

    Moms in particular will welcome this trend.  A full 60% wish they had a flexible work option. But companies see advantages too in the way remote work increases their talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens their real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages.  In Remote, inconoclastic authors Fried and Hansson will convince readers that letting all or part of work teams function remotely is a great idea--and they're going to show precisely how a remote work setup can be accomplished.

    With ceaseless attention to every luxurious detail, the company has set the bar for creating memorable customer experiences in world-class settings. Now, for the first time, the leadership secrets behind the company's extraordinary success are revealed.The New Gold Standard takes you on an exclusive tour behind the scenes of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Granted unprecedented access to the company's executives, staff, and its award-winning Leadership Center training facilities, bestselling author Joseph Michelli explored every level of leadership within the organization. He emerged with the key principles leaders at any company can use to provide a customer experience unlike any other, such as:Understanding the ever-evolving needs of customersEmpowering employees by treating them with the utmost respectAnticipating customers' unexpressed needs and concernsDeveloping and conducting an unsurpassed training regimenSharing engaging stories from the company's employees--from the corporate office and hotels around the globe--Michelli describes the innovative methods the company uses to create peerless guest experiences and explains how it constantly hones and improves them.The New Gold Standard weaves practical how-to advice, proven leadership tools, and the wisdom of experts to help you create and embed superior customer-service principles, processes, and practices in your own organization.

    They're intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle--and as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shows in this book, subtle nuances make all the difference. These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back. Using Goldsmith's straightforward, jargon-free advice, it's amazingly easy behavior to change. Executives who hire Goldsmith for one-on-one coaching pay $250,000 for the privilege. With this book, his help is available for 1/10,000th of the price.

     The role of the devil's advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist—the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation. Filled with engaging stories of how companies like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, Cargill and Samsung have incorporated IDEO's thinking to transform the customer experience, THE TEN FACES OF INNOVATION is an extraordinary guide to nurturing and sustaining a culture of continuous innovation and renewal.

    Book by Roam, Dan

    Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't is the first major revision of this business classic. In Scaling Up, Harnish and his team share practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business. These approaches have been honed from over three decades of advising tens of thousands of CEOs and executives and helping them navigate the increasing complexities (and weight) that come with scaling up a venture. This book is written so everyone -- from frontline employees to senior executives -- can get aligned in contributing to the growth of a firm. There's no reason to do it alone, yet many top leaders feel like they are the ones dragging the rest of the organization up the S-curve of growth. The goal of this book is to help you turn what feels like an anchor into wind at your back -- creating a company where the team is engaged; the customers are doing your marketing; and everyone is making money. To accomplish this, Scaling Up focuses on the four major decision areas every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. The book includes a series of new one-page tools including the updated One-Page Strategic Plan and the Rockefeller Habits ChecklistTM, which more than 40,000 firms around the globe have used to scale their companies successfully -- many to $1 billion and beyond. Running a business is ultimately about freedom. Scaling Up shows business leaders how to get their organizations moving in sync to create something significant and enjoy the ride.

    At its root, the principle works like this: Like Dorothy and the gang in The Wizard of Oz, most businesspeople have the tools to succeed, but when things go wrong they blame circumstance or others instead of looking within for the true cause of unsatisfactory results. Once individuals learn to accept responsibility, they can use the Oz Principle to become better leaders. Now, with corporate scandals in the headlines and the culture of victimization running rampant at every level of the business world, Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman return with a new edition of The Oz Principle. Fully revised, this edition will update the statistics, concepts, and relevant companies through fresh, timely anecdotes and stories.

    For decades, technology leaders have struggled to balance agility, reliability, and security. The consequences of failure have never been greater whether it's the healthcare.gov debacle, cardholder data breaches, or missing the boat with Big Data in the cloud.And yet, high performers using DevOps principles, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Etsy, and Netflix, are routinely and reliably deploying code into production hundreds, or even thousands, of times per day.Following in the footsteps of The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook shows leaders how to replicate these incredible outcomes, by showing how to integrate Product Management, Development, QA, IT Operations, and Information Security to elevate your company and win in the marketplace."Table of contentsPrefaceSpreading the Aha! MomentIntroductionPART I: THE THREE WAYS1. Agile, continuous delivery and the three ways2. The First Way: The Principles of Flow3. The Second Way: The Principle of Feedback4. The Third Way: The Principles of Continual LearningPART II: WHERE TO START5. Selecting which value stream to start with6. Understanding the work in our value stream…7. How to design our organization and architecture8. How to get great outcomes by integrating operations into the daily work for developmentPART III: THE FIRST WAY: THE TECHNICAL PRACTICES OF FLOW9. Create the foundations of our deployment pipeline10. Enable fast and reliable automated testing11. Enable and practice continuous integration12. Automate and enable low-risk releases13. Architect for low-risk releasesPART IV: THE SECOND WAY: THE TECHNICAL PRACTICES OF FEEDBACK14*. Create telemetry to enable seeing abd solving problems15. Analyze telemetry to better anticipate problems16. Enable feedbackso development and operation can safely deploy code17. Integrate hypothesis-driven development and A/B testing into our daily work18. Create review and coordination processes to increase quality of our current workPART V: THE THRID WAY: THE TECHNICAL PRACTICES OF CONTINUAL LEARNING19. Enable and inject learning into daily work20. Convert local discoveries into global improvements21. Reserve time to create organizational learning22. Information security as everyone’s job, every day23. Protecting the deployment pipelinePART VI: CONCLUSIONA call to actionConclusion to the DevOps HandbookAPPENDICES1. The convergence of Devops2. The theory of constraints and core chronic conflicts3. Tabular form of downward spiral4. The dangers of handoffs and queues5. Myths of industrial safety6. The Toyota Andon Cord7. COTS Software8. Post-mortem meetings9. The Simian Army10. Transparent uptimeAdditional ResourcesEndnotes

    Covey's eldest son comes a revolutionary new path towards productivity and satisfaction. Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents —is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization. For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time–killing, bureaucratic check–and–balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

    We are on the threshold, say authors Pine and Gilmore, of the Experience Economy, a new economic era in which all businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers. The Experience Economy offers a creative, highly original, and yet eminently practical strategy for companies to script and stage the experiences that will transform the value of what they produce. From America Online to Walt Disney, the authors draw from a rich and varied mix of examples that showcase businesses in the midst of creating personal experiences for both consumers and businesses. The authors urge managers to look beyond traditional pricing factors like time and cost, and consider charging for the value of the transformation that an experience offers. Goods and services, say Pine and Gilmore, are no longer enough. Experiences and transformations are the basis for future economic growth, and The Experience Economy is the script from which managers can begin to direct their own transformations.

    Just Listen does this by providing simple but powerful techniques readers can use to really get through to people. You’ll learn how to: make a powerful and positive first impression; listen effectively; make even a total stranger (potential client) feel understood; talk an angry or aggressive person away from an instinctual, unproductive reaction and toward a more rational mindset; and achieve buy-in--the linchpin of all persuasion, negotiation, and sales. Whether they're coworkers, friends, strangers, or enemies, the first make-or-break step in persuading anyone to do anything is getting them to hear you out. With this groundbreaking book, readers will be able to master the fine but critical art of effective communication.

    It embraces a range of disciplines, from Technology to Human Resources, from Legal to Risk. Yet, unlike other senior executive roles, there is no established framework or body of knowledge to support the COO. This book de-mystifies the COO role and breaks it into 16 core elements; the three fundamental pillars of Culture, Strategy and Change, plus 13 technical areas. It outlines responsibilities, warning signs, and how to boost performance. It equips you with the questions you need to ask to gain early insight, diagnose the issues and move into execution. Drawing on industry standards and enriched with expert insight and real-life current examples, it condenses a vast range of knowledge and experience into one accessible read. This book, which can be consumed in one sitting, will make you a more effective leader, faster. This is the book that current COOs wish they had at the outset of their journey. It is the book that your CEO, Board and team need you to read. ‘A must-read guide for all aspiring COOs. Packed with practical insights and based on real life experiences, it gives a clear and powerful road map for this transformational organizational role.’ Justin Forsyth, Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF ‘It is rare for a single book to command such breadth of expertise, practical insight and advice that is so easy to put into action. This is a consequence of the superb clarity of Jennifer’s writing, and the fact that she has earned her expertise – and the scars that come with it – from working on the business end of the stick for over twenty years.’ Mark Waddington, CEO, Hope and Homes for Children ‘Crisply written, clear and to the point.’ Ben Brabyn, CEO, Level 39 ‘An impressive read. De-codes the very tricky role of COO and inspires you on how to be a great one.’ Niamh O’Keeffe, Author of “Your First 100 days” and “Your Next Role” ‘The defining text on the role of the COO and its component parts. This is an informative and useful read for existing COOs. It is a must read for new COOs, aspiring COOs and most importantly CEOs and Heads of HR in hiring COOs for their organisations.' Paul Ford, CEO, Anchura Partners ‘The role of COO is a balancing act, and requires multiple hard and soft skills. This nifty handbook provides a shortcut to understand the critical skills required, and is filled with nuggets of practical and accessible advice.’ Sinead Mahon, Banking COO ‘This book takes one of the most frameless and unstructured roles in business today, and using personal experiences seeks to help others to demystify the role and deliver insight on how to be effective and successful. Insightful and extensive, a book I would have loved to have access to when I was starting out in my career.’ Pam Murphy, COO, Infor

    Each chapter utilizes case studies and numerous examples. Mathematical and technical sections can be skipped without loss of continuity. Most textbooks do not include models and decision support systems robust enough for industry, but that is not true of this new edition.The accompanying CD-ROM also features the return of two simulations, the Computerized Beer Game and the Risk Pool Game and a computerized tool. These simulations help users develop and execute supply chain contracts while also illustrating many of the concepts discussed in the text.

    The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.The ChallengeBuilt to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The StudyFor years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?The StandardsUsing tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The ComparisonsThe research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? The FindingsThe findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.