What if your software-intensive projects delivered on time - or early - without sacrificing quality? 2. What if your IT department's job was to deliver profits, through software, rather than just software? 3. What if your software developers worked in a way they loved - that didn't feel as if they spent their days ROLLING ROCKS UPHILL? ROLLING ROCKS DOWNHILL is a business novel in the tradition of Eli Goldratt's "The Goal". It introduces Throughput-Driven Development - the combination of Lean, Agile and Goldratt's Theory of Constraints (TOC) thinking to corporate software development.

    He gives us his personal thoughts on life’s big questions and turning points, mining his own experience to tell us what he’s learned along the way. From lessons his father taught him at the Vicarage in Kildare where he grew up, to what he learned in Borneo in his days working for Royal Dutch Shell, and later, in America, where corporate scandals have shaken our understanding of what is ethical and what is acceptable in business, and finally in Italy, where on a whim he decided to buy and fix up an old house in Tuscany. Throughout the book, he asks us to look at what we value — is it money? Family? Time? What is the role of work in our life? What do we find fulfilling? As our working lives blend ever more into the rest of who we are, Charles Handy has emerged as an invaluable social thinker. It is hard to imagine a better or wiser guide to life’s big questions.

    Learn to apply their proven insight and methods for success into your own life!

    Patrick Collins, an internationally recognized expert on the subject, offers an original, comprehensive guide to maximizing negotiation skills, whether in a one-on-one encounter or a larger, more formal negotiating session.Collins explains what negotiation is and isn’t (“negotiation is not confrontation”) and discusses ways to overcome the fear of negotiation, strategies for gaining the upper hand by manipulating the environment, and tactics tailored to negotiation type. What he offers is much more than just a guide to “magic words” or a collection of case studies; Collins provides a hard-working handbook on assessing situations and pinpointing the appropriate techniques for any given circumstance. There’s great real-life advice, including details on how to negotiate at restaurants and hotels. The tips are often surprisingly, almost shockingly simple and logical—such as the suggestion to get in line behind a belligerent customer to boost your own chances for success. Readers will come away with a set of “guerrilla negotiating” tactics, and a better understanding of:• when to continue talking and when to walk away• how to identify words that sabotage your best efforts• how to identify cultural customs that will smooth the process• how to bluff for maximum effectivenessEach chapter concludes with “key thoughts” that summarize the main lessons in the preceding pages.Viewing negotiation as both science and art, Collins will help executives, managers, and almost anyone master the skills to have the upper hand in any situation.

    Every so often employees are sent to “Brainstorm Island”: an off-site replete with trendy lectures, creative workshops, and overenthusiastic facilitators. But once they return, it’s back to business as usual.Innovation experts Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg suggest a better approach. They recommend that leaders at all levels become “innovation architects,” creating an ecosystem in which people engage in key innovation behaviors as part of their daily work.In short, this book is about getting to a state of “innovation as usual,” where regular employees—in jobs like finance, marketing, sales, or operations—make innovation happen in a way that’s both systemic and sustainable.Instead of organizing brainstorming sessions, idea jams, and off-sites that rarely result in success, leaders should guide their people in what the authors call the “5 + 1 keystone behaviors” of innovation: focus, connect, tweak, select, stealthstorm, (and the + 1) persist:• Focus beats freedom: Direct people to look only for ideas that matter to the business• Insight comes from the outside: Urge people to connect to new worlds• First ideas are flawed: Challenge people to tweak and reframe their initial ideas• Most ideas are bad ideas: Guide people to select the best ideas and discard the rest• Stealthstorming rules: Help people navigate the politics of innovation• Creativity is a choice: Motivate everyone to persist in the five keystone behaviorsUsing examples from a wide range of companies such as Pfizer, Index Ventures, Lonza, Go Travel, Prehype, DSM, and others, Innovation as Usual lights the way toward embedding creativity in the DNA of the workplace.So cancel that off-site. Instead, read Innovation as Usual—and put innovation at the core of your business.

    The book contains a series of short chapters filled with examples, data, and insights that challenge questionable assumptions and much conventional management wisdom. Each chapter also provides guidelines about how to think more deeply and intelligently about critical management issues. Covering topics ranging from managing people to leadership to measurement and strategy, it’s good organizational advice, delivered by Dr. Pfeffer himself.

    Pink, author of TO SELL IS HUMAN and DRIVE "The Ballé books are a great way to get started or to speed up your pace of transformation, personal and organizational." —Jim Womack, Founder of Lean Enterprise Institute In their new business novel Lead With Respect, authors Michael and Freddy Ballé reveal the true power of lean: developing people through a rigorous application of proven tools and methods. And, in the process, creating the only sustainable source of competitive advantage—a culture of continuous improvement. In this engaging and insightful story, CEO Jane Delaney of Southcape Software discovers from her sensei Andy Ward that learning to lead with respect enables her to help people improve every day. “For us, lean is all about challenging yourself and each other to find the right problems, and working hard every day to engage people in solving them,” he says. Lead With Respect’s timely message brings a new understanding of lean. While lean has become essential for companies to compete in today’s global economy, most practitioners see it as a rigorous focus on process to produce higher quality goods and services—a limited understanding that fails to realize the true power of this approach. This new novel by the Ballés, the third in a series that includes Shingo Research Award-winners The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager, breaks new ground by sharing huge amounts of practical information on the most important yet least understood aspect of lean management: how to develop people through a rigorous application of lean tools. You’ll learn: • How to apply Lead With Respect attitudes to the lean tools you are using now so that you develop a truly sustainable lean culture. • What specific steps to follow to make lean leadership behaviors daily habits. • How to manage with respect through the emotion, conflict, tension, and self-doubt that you’ll face during a lean transformation.

    While most B2B startups obsess over scalability and tracking, Drift takes a different approach. In This Won't Scale, you'll find insider lessons and plays from the Drift Marketing team that have helped the business grow at a hypergrowth rate. It contains 41 plays organized into easy-to-read and reference chapters. Keep it on your desk, thumb through it when you're looking for inspiration and come back to it over time. You’ll discover not only Drift's abnormal approach, but also hear never-before-told stories and learn how to implement Drift's marketing plays into your own marketing strategy.

    This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. A leader's singular job is to get results. But even with all the leadership training programs and "expert" advice available, effective leadership still eludes many people and organizations. One reason, says Daniel Goleman, is that such experts offer advice based on inference, experience, and instinct, not on quantitative data. Now, drawing on research of more than 3,000 executives, Goleman explores which precise leadership behaviors yield positive results. He outlines six distinct leadership styles, each one springing from different components of emotional intelligence. Each style has a distinct effect on the working atmosphere of a company, division, or team, and, in turn, on its financial performance. The styles, by name and brief description alone, will resonate with anyone who leads, is led, or, as is the case with most of us, does both. Coercive leaders demand immediate compliance. Authoritative leaders mobilize people toward a vision. Affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony. Democratic leaders build consensus through participation. Pacesetting leaders expect excellence and self-direction. And coaching leaders develop people for the future. The research indicates that leaders who get the best results don't rely on just one leadership style; they use most of the styles in any given week. Goleman details the types of business situations each style is best suitedfor, and he explains how leaders who lack one or more of these styles can expand their repertories. He maintains that with practice leaders can switch among leadership styles to produce powerful results, thus turning the art of leadership into a science.

    Written by highly respected experts and prestigious scholars, Hitt/Ireland/Hoskisson's STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: COMPETITIVENESS AND GLOBALIZATION, CONCEPTS AND CASES, 10E provides an intellectually rich, yet thoroughly practical analysis of strategic management today. This unique text is the only one to integrate the classic industrial organization model with a resource-based view of the firm to give readers a complete understanding of how today's businesses use strategic management to establish a sustained competitive advantage. The authors present cutting-edge research and strategic management trends within a strong global focus, using memorable examples from more than 600 companies. A wealth of learning features and selection of 30 all-new compelling cases prepare your students to face the broad range of critical issues confronting contemporary managers. Engaging video cases, CengageNOW online teaching tools, and a complete electronic business library keeps study current and relevant.

    Making matters worse, those leading the demos can rarely afford to spend months at a time figuring out how to improve their success rates. In Just F*Ing Demo!, Rob Falcone outlines the tactics that helped him overcome these challenges, lead clear, relevant demos, and exceed revenue generation goals quarter after quarter. The book will teach readers: - How to structure a demo; - How to ask questions that uncover what your audience truly cares about; - How to translate audience needs into a flow that is extremely easy to follow; - How to use simple but powerful interpersonal tactics within the demo itself. Just F*Ing Demo! distills Falcone’s highly successful training program into an intentionally concise yet impactful read. From the entrepreneur seeking investment to the sales professional chasing a deal, anyone can carve out a few hours, read this book, and immediately make their demos kick ass.

    Holacracy creates organizations that are fast, agile, and that succeed by pursuing their purpose, not following a dated and artificial plan.This isn't anarchy – it's quite the opposite. When you start to follow Holacracy, you learn to create new structures and ways of making decisions that empower the people who know the most about the work you do: your frontline colleagues.Some of the many champions of Holacracy include Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com (author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness), Evan Williams (co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium), and David Allen.

    And you'll be well-equipped to achieve your dreams!

    This book provides nonprofit professionals with the conceptual frameworks, practical knowledge, and concise guidance needed to succeed in the social sector. Designed as a handbook, the book is filled with sage advice and insights from a variety of trusted experts that can help nonprofit professionals prepare to achieve their organizational and personal goals, develop a better understanding of what they need to do to lead, support, and grow an effective organization.Addresses a wealth of topics including fundraising, Managing Technology, Marketing, Finances, Advocacy, Working with Boards Contributors are noted nonprofit experts who define the core capabilities needed to manage a successful nonprofit Author is the former Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation This important resource offers professionals key insights that will have a direct impact on improving their daily work.