But below the surface, they share a common approach to finding, nurturing, leading, and even letting go of great people. The way they deal with talent makes them not merely success stories, not merely organization builders, but what Sydney Finkelstein calls superbosses. They’ve all transformed entire industries.

    Hadoop allowed small and medium sized companies to store huge amounts of data on cheap commodity servers in racks. The introduction of Big Data has allowed businesses to make decisions based on quantifiable analysis. Hadoop is now implemented in major organizations such as Amazon, IBM, Cloudera, and Dell to name a few. This book introduces you to Hadoop and to concepts such as ‘MapReduce’, ‘Rack Awareness’, ‘Yarn’ and ‘HDFS Federation’, which will help you get acquainted with the technology.

    It all begins with understanding how the world sees you—at your best. How the World Sees You gives you the step-by-step method to describe yourself in just two or three words. This short phrase is your Anthem, the tagline for your personality. Your Anthem guides you like a mission statement, helping you to build your team, write a LinkedIn profile, or captivate an audience.This book includes a private code to unlock one free Fascination Advantage® online assessment. Your customized online report, based on Sally Hogshead's extensive research on what fascinates listeners, will reveal how you fascinate others, includingYour top two Fascination Advantages in communication The personality Archetypes you need on your team to optimize your success The five words to describe your personality's highest valueTo become more successful, you do not have to change who you are—you have to become more of who you are. How the World Sees You reveals who you are at your best so you can create better relationships, grow your business, and become intensely valuable to those who matter most.

    Yet, companies continue to manage this new breed of employee with techniques designed for the Industrial Age. As this critical sector of the workforce continues to increase in size and importance, that's a mistake that could cost companies their future. Thomas Davenport argues that knowledge workers are vastly different from other types of workers in their motivations, attitudes, and need for autonomy--and, so, they require different management techniques to improve their performance and productivity.Based on extensive research involving over 100 companies and more than 600 knowledge workers, Thinking for a Living provides rich insights into how knowledge workers think, how they accomplish tasks, and what motivates them to excel. Davenport identifies four major categories of knowledge workers and presents a unique framework for matching specific types of workers with the management strategies that yield the greatest performance.Written by the field's premier thought leader, Thinking for a Living reveals how to maximize the brain power that fuels organizational success. Thomas Davenport holds the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is director of research for Babson Executive Education; an Accenture Fellow; and author, co-author, or editor of nine books, including Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (HBS Press, 1997).

    The resulting costs are high, for your career and the organization.In Your Next Move, Michael Watkins shows how you can survive and thrive in all the major transitions you will face during your career, including promotion, joining a new organization and making an international move. With real-life examples and case studies, he illustrates the defining hurdles associated with each type of transition. He then provides the insights, strategies, and tools-including relationship reengineering, business systems analysis, and "organizational immunology"-you'll need to accelerate through these crucial turning points and continue moving up in your career.

    It explains how to set clear expectations and focus on the endpoint as opposed to managing the process that gets you there. With eyes set on getting rid of distractions, long meetings, and unnecessary updates, this book offers quick, everyday strategies to experience huge increases in productivity (without adding resources) and dramatic drops in turnover.Authors Ressler and Thompson began their work together at Best Buy where they are credited with revolutionizing the workplace Reframes thinking away from counting on general availability (Where's Bob?) to creating clear expectations (Does Bob know exactly what's expected of him?) Explains how to reduce the number of meetings while increasing their quality Shows how to eliminate scheduled events in order to increase critical thinking and improve communication ROWE is a bold, cultural transformation that permeates the attitudes and operating style of an entire workplace, leveling the playing field and giving people complete autonomy--to manage their measurable results using adult common sense.

    The book begins with an Overview section. This provides an introduction to Financial Management and to the Financial Environment. The next part covers Financial Planning and Analysis. This section explains concepts like taxes, cash flow, financial statements, and analysis of funds flow and statements. It also discusses financial planning and forecasting.The third part covers the Fundamental Valuation Concepts. This section looks at risk and return, and Securities valuation. The next two parts focus on capital structure, budgeting and dividends. These sections discuss cost of capital, capital structure, planning the capital structure, share valuation and dividend policy. The chapter on Capital budgeting also includes techniques of capital budgeting and analyzing risks in capital budgeting. Part seven goes into Long Term Financing. It covers securities market and sources of long term finance.The next part discusses Working Capital Management. It covers topics like working capital policy and financing, inventory management, and cash and credit management. The last part looks at some special topics like acquisitions, restructuring and mergers. It also discusses international finance management, and project finance, leasing and hire purchase.Fundamentals Of Financial Management provides a good coverage of the basic concepts relating to the financial environment. The topics explained include tax systems, financial institutions, banking arrangements and the regulatory framework. All the concepts are explained using numerous examples and illustrations. Besides the illustrations given within the chapter, additional concepts, tools and techniques with illustrations are provided at the end of chapter sections. The book takes an analytical approach, and explains the various analytical methods in context.

    But Jeffrey J. Fox, the founder of a marketing consulting company, also gives these tips: never write a nasty memo, skip all office parties, and overpay your people. These are a few of his key ways to climb the corporate ladder.

    . . these are just a few of the uncomfortable topics you may have to discuss with your employees. 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees provides you with proven guidance and realistic sample dialogues you can use to facilitate clear, direct interactions with your people, helping to sidestep potential awkwardness and meet issues head on.This solution oriented book walks you through some of the most common—as well as the most serious—employee problems you’re ever likely to encounter. Covering everything from substandard performance reviews to personal hygiene to termination meetings, this handy guide helps you treat your people with dignity, focusing not just on what to say but also on how to say it. This helpful guide provides down to earth techniques you can use to protect yourself and your organization—and get the very best from your people.Praise for Paul Falcone’s Previous Books: 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems: “When you feel the need to document an employee’s actions (or inactions), turn to this great tool.”— Legal Management96 Great Interview Questions to Ask Before You Hire: “Takes the guesswork out of the interview process.” — Benefits and Compensation SolutionsThe Hiring and Firing Question and Answer Book: “If the art and science of hiring and firing has become a puzzle, then author Paul Falcone has the answer.” — Houston Business JournalPaul Falcone is Vice President of Employee Relations at Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles and was formerly Vice President of Human Resources at Nickelodeon. He is the author of 2600 Phrases for Effective Perform­ance Reviews, 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems, 96 Great Interview Questions to Ask Before You Hire, and The Hiring and Firing Question and Answer Book. He lives in Valencia, California.

    Using Chinese military genius Sun Tzu’s strategies as a guide, Brown examines why some companies triumph while others crumble.Business is a fight for survival. In business as in war, leaders match their wills in pursuit of opposing outcomes, they devise strategies, and marshal resources for victory. Success can turn on the smallest of details; a single tactical blunder can topple an empire. Ultimately, one side triumphs—and victory is all that matters.David Brown, host of the hit podcast Business Wars, masterfully frames some of the biggest business rivalries in history using revered Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu’s insights and pragmatic advice. Each rivalry he examines tells a story of combined wits, strategies, and resources. Brown chronicles the rise of companies as they vanquish rivals, formulate innovative plans, and adapt to keep up with shifting societal needs. The goal? Stay ahead of the competition and emerge victorious as an industry titan.By compiling powerful insights uncovered over hundreds of episodes and more than a year of in-depth research, Brown has developed a formula for business intrigue that uses popular history as a hook to lure readers in. The stories in The Art of Business Wars are fascinating, but the lessons we draw from them—about determination, ingenuity, patience, grit, subtlety, and other traits that contribute to a victorious enterprise—are invaluable, whether you're a software-slinging freelancer or the CEO of a multinational manufacturer.

    Unfortunately, reliable guidance on Agile management has been scarce indeed. Now, leading Agile manager Jurgen Appelo fills that gap, introducing a realistic approach to leading, managing, and growing your Agile team or organization. Writing for current managers and developers moving into management, Appelo shares insights that are grounded in modern complex systems theory, reflecting the intense complexity of modern software development. Appelo's Management 3.0 model recognizes that today's organizations are living, networked systems; and that management is primarily about people and relationships. Management 3.0 doesn't offer mere checklists or prescriptions to follow slavishly; rather, it deepens your understanding of how organizations and Agile teams work and gives you tools to solve your own problems. Drawing on his extensive experience as an Agile manager, the author identifies the most important practices of Agile management and helps you improve each of them. Coverage includes - Getting beyond "Management 1.0" control and "Management 2.0" fads - Understanding how complexity affects your organization - Keeping your people active, creative, innovative, and motivated - Giving teams the care and authority they need to grow on their own - Defining boundaries so teams can succeed in alignment with business goals - Sowing the seeds for a culture of software craftsmanship - Crafting an organizational network that promotes success - Implementing continuous improvement that actually works Thoroughly pragmatic-and never trendy-Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 helps you bring greater agility to any software organization, team, or project.

    It’s essential to be pitch perfect—to get the right message across to the right person at the right time. In Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan shows you how to craft the right message and deliver it using the right language—both verbal and nonverbal.Pitch Perfect teaches you how to overcome common communication pitfalls using McGowan’s simple Principles of Persuasion, which are highly effective and easy to learn, implement, and master. With Pitch Perfect you can harness the power of persuasion and have people not only listening closely to your every word but also remembering you long after you’ve left the room.

    But all too often when we interact with people—especially those who report to us—we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry.Ed Schein defines Humble Inquiry as “the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.” In this seminal work, Schein contrasts Humble Inquiry with other kinds of inquiry, shows the benefits Humble Inquiry provides in many different settings, and offers advice on overcoming the cultural, organizational, and psychological barriers that keep us from practicing it.

    To grow professionally, you also need soft skills and effective learning techniques. Honing those skills is what this book is all about. Authors Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye have cataloged dozens of behavior patterns to help you perfect essential aspects of your craft. Compiled from years of research, many interviews, and feedback from O'Reilly's online forum, these patterns address difficult situations that programmers, administrators, and DBAs face every day. And it's not just about financial success. Apprenticeship Patterns also approaches software development as a means to personal fulfillment. Discover how this book can help you make the best of both your life and your career. Solutions to some common obstacles that this book explores in-depth include:Burned out at work? "Nurture Your Passion" by finding a pet project to rediscover the joy of problem solving.Feeling overwhelmed by new information? Re-explore familiar territory by building something you've built before, then use "Retreat into Competence" to move forward again.Stuck in your learning? Seek a team of experienced and talented developers with whom you can "Be the Worst" for a while. "Brilliant stuff! Reading this book was like being in a time machine that pulled me back to those key learning moments in my career as a professional software developer and, instead of having to learn best practices the hard way, I had a guru sitting on my shoulder guiding me every step towards master craftsmanship. I'll certainly be recommending this book to clients. I wish I had this book 14 years ago!" -Russ Miles, CEO, OpenCredo

    It includes a nine-minute template for staying focused, numerous action-oriented tips, scripted questions, formulas, and simple truths that motivate leaders to stay on mission.James Robbins founded The Robbins Group to help organizations increase their productivity and lower their employee turnover. He is also the creator of Help Me Lead TV, a weekly web-show for managers.