Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers


Jeanne Liedtka - 2011
    Liedtka and Ogilvie cover the mind-set, techniques, and vocabulary of design thinking, unpack the mysterious connection between design and growth, and teach managers in a straightforward way how to exploit design's exciting potential.Exemplified by Apple and the success of its elegant products and cultivated by high-profile design firms such as IDEO, design thinking unlocks creative right-brain capabilities to solve a range of problems. This approach has become a necessary component of successful business practice, helping managers turn abstract concepts into everyday tools that grow business while minimizing risk.

Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers


Jay Baer - 2016
    . . . Ignoring them is.  Eighty percent of companies say they deliver out­standing customer service, but only 8 percent of their customers agree. This book will help you close that gap by reconfiguring your customer service to deliver knockout experiences.  The near-universal adoption of smartphones and social media has fundamentally altered the science of complaints. Critics (“haters”) can now express their displeasure faster and more pub­licly than ever. These trends have resulted in an overall increase in complaints and a belief by many businesses that they have to “pick their spots” when choosing to answer criticisms.  Bestselling author Jay Baer shows why that approach is a major mistake. Based on an exten­sive proprietary study of how, where, and why we complain, Hug Your Haters proves that there are two types of complainers, each with very differ­ent motivations:  ·Offstage haters. These people simply want solutions to their problems. They complain via legacy channels where the likelihood of a response is highest—phone, e-mail, and com­pany websites. Offstage haters don’t care if any­one else finds out, as long as they get answers. ·Onstage haters. These people are often disap­pointed by a substandard interaction via tradi­tional channels, so they turn to indirect venues, such as social media, online review sites, and discussion boards. Onstage haters want more than solutions—they want an audience to share their righteous indignation.  Hug Your Haters shows exactly how to deal with both groups, drawing on meticulously researched case studies from businesses of all types and sizes from around the world. It includes specific play­books and formulas as well as a fold-out poster of “the Hatrix,” which summarizes the best strate­gies for different situations. The book is also filled with poignant and hilarious examples of haters gone wild, and companies gone crazy, as well as inspirational stories of companies responding with speed, compassion, and humanity. Whether you work for a mom-and-pop store or a global brand, you will have haters—and you can’t afford to ignore them. Baer’s insights and tactics will teach you how to embrace complaints, put haters to work for you, and turn bad news into good outcomes.

FYI: For Your Improvement, A Guide for Development and Coaching


Michael M. Lombardo - 1996
    Updated forth edition of the 1996 title (see ISBN 0965571203 for further information)

Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life


Jim Benson - 2011
    People need to be effective.Productivity books focus on doing more, Jim and Tonianne want you to focus on doing better. Personal Kanban is about choosing the right work at the right time. Recognizing why we do the things we do. Understanding the impact of our actions. Creating value - not just product. For ourselves, our families, our friends, our co-workers. For our legacy.Personal Kanban takes the same Lean principles from manufacturing that led the Japanese auto industry to become a global leader in quality, and applies them to individual and team work. Personal Kanban asks only that we visualize our work and limit our work-in-progress. Visualizing work allows us to transform our conceptual and threatening workload into an actionable, context-sensitive flow. Limiting our work-in-progress helps us complete what we start and understand the value of our choices. Combined, these two simple acts encourage us to improve the way we work and the way we make choices to balance our personal, professional, and social lives.Neither a prescription nor a plan, Personal Kanban provides a light, actionable, achievable framework for understanding our work and its context. This book describes why students, parents, business leaders, major corporations, and world governments all see immediate results with Personal Kanban.

The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results


George B. Bradt - 2006
    Gelb former vice chairman, Bristol-Myers Squibb"I love this book and wish I had read it before stepping into my current leadership role. It provides a practical and indispensable road map to success that will help new leaders stack the odds in their favor. Read it and don't be among the forty percent of leaders who fail in the first eighteen months!" --Sandy Rogers former marketing manager, Procter & Gamble and Apple Computer, and former senior vice president, Corporate Strategy, Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company"The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan offers a comprehensive architecture with practical tools and techniques for new leaders to follow. I believe that leaders who utilize the advice from this book will have demonstrative business and culture-building results." --Joe Bonito Vice President, Global Leadership Effectiveness, Pfizer"One of the most basic yet comprehensive books I've read regarding the dos and don'ts of a successful on-boarding process. A must-read for all aspiring business leaders, from first-time CEO's to executives at every level of the organization. Also a great tool for human resources and talent manage-ment executives." --Joe Griesedieck Vice Chairman, Korn/Ferry Executive Search

The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative


Stephen Denning - 2005
    Now, in this hands-on guide, Denning explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time. Whoever you are in the organization CEO, middle management, or someone on the front lines you can lead by using stories to effect change. Filled with myriad examples, A Leader's Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few available ways to handle the principal and most difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future. The right kind of story at the right time, can make an organization "stunningly vulnerable" to a new idea.

The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource


Jeffrey Gitomer - 1994
    Now completely revised, this book is available for the first time in paperback. The Sales Bible has helped tens of thousands of salespeople all over the world reach their potential and close the big deal. Gitomer gives sales professionals the right answers to the toughest questions:How to make sales in any economic environment Twenty-five ways to get that most-elusive appointment Top-down selling How to fill the sales pipeline with prospects ready to buy How to use the right questions to make more sales in half the time This book is everything its title claims to be

The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage


B. Joseph Pine II - 1999
    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.

Making It Right: Product Management For A Startup World


Rian van der Merwe - 2014
    It's not for the faint of heart. It's for people who want to move mountains. It swallows some whole, but others derive endless invigoration and passion from the pace and the impact and the glory and the huge potential for failure as well as success. There's no other job like it, and this is a book to help you make it your job. The role of a product manager goes by many different names - and if that's not reason enough to be confused, some companies define product manager completely differently from how it's understood elsewhere. We sometimes get stuck in our quest to define the damn thing, but in the case of product management, it's effort well spent, because it's quite the jungle out there.

The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch


Dan Norris - 2014
     In The 7 Day Startup, Dan Norris, author and founder of wpcurve.com, shows us exactly how he built a cashflowing small business startup from scratch in 7 days (and has since grown it to over $400,000 in annual recurring revenue in a few short years). What you'll learn in The 7 Day Startup - Why validation isn’t the answer - How to evaluate your small business startup idea - How to choose a business name, fast - How to build a website in 1 day for under $100 - 10 proven ways to market a business quickly And much, much more… Who this book is for - Small Business Founders - Entrepreneurs (and Wantrepreneurs) - Freelancers and Agencies - Bootstrappers Additional resources included in The 7 Day Startup to help you build your startup - Idea evaluation spreadsheet - Business name checklist - Growth tracking spreadsheet - Marketing idea checklist for your small business startup - List of over 100 startup and new business resources

The Harvard Business Review Manager's Handbook: The 17 Skills Leaders Need to Stand Out


Harvard Business Review - 2016
    To reach your full potential in these situations, you need to master a new set of business and personal skills.Packed with step-by-step advice and wisdom from Harvard Business Review’s management archive, the HBR Manager’s Handbook provides best practices on topics from understanding key financial statements and the fundamentals of strategy to emotional intelligence and building your employees’ trust. The book’s brief sections allow you to home in quickly on the solutions you need right away—or take a deeper dive if you need more context.Keep this comprehensive guide with you throughout your career and be a more impactful leader in your organization.In the HBR Manager’s Handbook you’ll find:- Step-by-step guidance through common managerial tasks- Short sections and chapters that you can turn to quickly as a need arises- Self-assessments throughout- Exercises and templates to help you practice and apply the concepts in the book- Concise explanations of the latest research and thinking on important management skills from Harvard Business Review experts such as Dan Goleman, Clayton Christensen, John Kotter, and Michael Porter- Real-life stories from working managers- Recaps and action items at the end of each chapter that allow you to reinforce or review the ideas quicklyThe skills covered in the book include:- Transitioning into a leadership role- Building trust and credibility- Developing emotional intelligence- Becoming a person of influence- Developing yourself as a leader- Giving effective feedback- Leading teams- Fostering creativity- Mastering the basics of strategy- Learning to use financial tools- Developing a business case

Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders


Jurgen Appelo - 2010
    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.

Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business


John E. Mackey - 2012
    cofounder Raj Sisodia argue for the inherent good of both business and capitalism. Featuring some of today’s best-known companies, they illustrate how these two forces can—and do—work most powerfully to create value for all stakeholders: including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment.These "�Conscious Capitalism" companies include Whole Foods Market, Southwest Airlines, Costco, Google, Patagonia, The Container Store, UPS, and dozens of others. We know them; we buy their products or use their services. Now it’s time to better understand how these organizations use four specific tenets—higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management—to build strong businesses and help advance capitalism further toward realizing its highest potential.As leaders of the Conscious Capitalism movement, Mackey and Sisodia argue that aspiring leaders and business builders need to continue on this path of transformation—for the good of both business and society as a whole.At once a bold defense and reimagining of capitalism and a blueprint for a new system for doing business grounded in a more evolved ethical consciousness, this book provides a new lens for individuals and companies looking to build a more cooperative, humane, and positive future.

Who Moved My Cheese?


Spencer Johnson - 1998
    Cheese is a metaphor for what you want to have in life, for example a good job, a loving relationship, money or possessions, health or spiritual peace of mind. The maze is where you look for what you want, perhaps the organisation you work in, or the family or community you live in. The problem is that the cheese keeps moving.In the story, the characters are faced with unexpected change in their search for the cheese. One of them eventually deals with change successfully and writes what he has learned on the maze walls for you to discover.

The Great Game of Business: Unlocking the Power and Profitability of Open-Book Management


Jack Stack - 1992
    He didn't know how to  "manage" a company, but he did know about the  principal, of athletic competition and democracy:  keeping score, having fun, playing fair, providing  choice, and having a voice. With these principals  he created his own style of management --  open-book management. The key is to let everyone in on  financial decisions. At SRC, everyone learns how to  read a P&L -- even those without a high school  education know how much the toilet paper they use  cuts into profits. SRC people have a piece of the  action and a vote in company matters. Imagine  having a vote on your bonus and on what businesses the  company should be in. SRC restored the dignity of  economic freedom to its people. Stack's  "open-book management" is the key -- a system  which, as he describes it here, is literally  a game, and one so simple anyone can use  it. As part of the Currency paperback line, the  book includes a "User's Guide" -- an  introduction and discussion guide created for the  paperback by the author -- to help readers make  practical use of the book's ideas. Jack Stack is the  president and CEO of the Springfield Remanufacturing  Corporation, in Springfield, Missouri. The recipient  of the 1993 Business Enterprise Trust Award, Jack  speaks throughout the country on The  Great Game Of Business and Open  Book Management.