Book picks similar to
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Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change
William Bridges - 2003
When restructures, mergers, bankruptcies, and layoffs hit the workplace, employees and managers naturally find the resulting situational shifts to be challenging. But the psychological transitions that accompany them are even more stressful. Organizational transitions affect people; it is always people, rather than a company, who have to embrace a new situation and carry out the corresponding change. As veteran business consultant William Bridges explains, transition is successful when employees have a purpose, a plan, and a part to play. This indispensable guide is now updated to reflect the challenges of today's ever-changing, always-on, and globally connected workplaces. Directed at managers on all rungs of the corporate ladder, this expanded edition of the classic bestseller provides practical, step-by-step strategies for minimizing disruptions and navigating uncertain times.
Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies
Tim Koller - 1990
Valuation provides up-to-date insights and practical advice on how to create, manage, and measure an organization's value. Along with all-new case studies that illustrate how valuation techniques and principles are applied in real-world situations, this comprehensive guide has been updated to reflect the events of the Internet bubble and its effect on stock markets, new developments in academic finance, changes in accounting rules (both U. S. and IFRS), and an enhanced global perspective. This edition contains the solid framework that managers at all levels, investors, and students have come to trust.
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
A.G. Lafley - 2013
But it is hard. It’s hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn’t happen in most companies.Now two of today’s best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy—explaining what it’s for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G’s sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. Now, drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean, this book shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success—where to play and how to win.The result is a playbook for winning. Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are:• What is our winning aspiration?• Where will we play?• How will we win?• What capabilities must we have in place to win?• What management systems are required to support our choices?The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach—and then making the right choices to support it—makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.
Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews
Lewis C. Lin - 2013
The author gives an industry insider's perspective on how to conquer the most difficult PM interview questions. Decode and Conquer will reveal: Frameworks for tackling product design and metrics questions, including the CIRCLES Method™, AARM Method™, and DIGS Method™ Biggest mistakes PM candidates make at the interview Decode what interviewers are looking for, why they're looking for it, and how to deliver it Answers to the most important PM interview questions
The Mind of the Strategist: The Art of Japanese Business
Kenichi Ohmae - 1982
The author does not purport to be inventing strategy in this book or to be revealing the secrets of Japanese business and strategic planning. Rather, he is exploring with the reader the ways in which the strategist must think, the key principles and thought patterns that real-world strategists have used to move their companies forward in Japan and throughout the world. He explores the relationship of the Strategic Triangle formed by the company, the customer, and the competition and shows how these factors must be the basis for all strategic thinking and planning.
Business Model Generation
Alexander Osterwalder - 2010
You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a new business model or analyze and renovate an old one.2) Co-created by 470 strategy practitionersBusiness Model Generation practices what it preaches. Co-authored by 470 Business Model Canvas practitioners from 45 countries, the book was financed and produced independently of the traditional publishing industry. It features a tightly-integrated, visual, lie-flat design that enables immediate hands-on use.3) Designed for doersBusiness Model Generation is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new, innovative models of value creation: executives, consultants, entrepreneurs and leaders of all organizations.
A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas
Warren Berger - 2014
Questioning—deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully"—can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why?"Berger's surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn't encouraged—and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They've mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking—and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses like Google, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them—by starting with a "beautiful question."Berger explores important questions, such as:- Why aren't we nurturing kids' natural ability to question—and what can parents and schools do about that?- Since questioning is a starting point for innovation, how might companies and business leaders begin to encourage and exploit it?- And most important, how can each of us re-ignite that questioning spark—and use inquiry as a powerful means to rethink and reinvent our lives?A More Beautiful Question outlines a practical Why / What If / How system of inquiry that can guide you through the process of innovative questioning—helping you find imaginative, powerful answers to your own "beautiful questions."
Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success
G. Richard Shell - 2013
You have to search your heart and engage these questions honestly to discover insights that go far beyond conventional notions of fame, fortune, and happiness. Award-winning author and Wharton School professor G. Richard Shell challenges readers to set aside the preconceived definitions of success promoted by society, schools, family, and the media. Then he helps readers replace these old definitions with aspirations based on their unique values, talents, personalities, and motivations. Along the way he shares inspiring stories of others who defined success for themselves. Take a chance. Do what you were meant to do.
The Synergist: How to Lead Your Team to Predictable Success
Les McKeown - 2012
In his new book, McKeown argues that every successful team includes a critical player, the Synergist, who can take the three exisiting types - The bold dreamers (Visionaries), the pragmatic realists (Operators), and the systems designers (Processors) - and knit them together into a dynamic, well-rounded team. Most importantly, according to McKeown, the Synergist is a role that anyone can learn. While most attempts at teamwork improvement deal only with the symptoms of group dysfunction such as distrust, poor communication, and fear of change, McKeown address the root cause: the innately unstable Visionary-Operator-Processor triangle. Because each of the three styles' motivations, views, and goals are incompatible, without a Synergist every team will eventually implode, stall, or underperform. Only the Synergist can put aside their own agenda and interpret the language of difficult personalities, capture the best from each person, and put the good of the enterprise ahead of their own ego.McKeown- who has used techniques presented here in his consulting with Harvard University, American Express Financial Services, the US Army, Pella Corporation, Microsoft, United Technologies Corporation, and more- shows how any individual can fill this critical role, whether or not they're the formal leader of the group. With thought-provoking self-assesments and an extensive Synergist Toolkit, he teaches how anyone can learn to be an effective Synergist by recognizing the vital signs of inneffective teamwork and making the right interventions at these pivitol moments.
Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People
Ken Watanabe - 2007
His goal was to help shift the focus in Japanese education from memorization to critical thinking, by adapting some of the techniques he had learned as an elite McKinsey consultant.He was amazed to discover that adults were hungry for his fun and easy guide to problem solving and decision making. The book became a surprise Japanese bestseller, with more than 370,000 in print after six months. Now American businesspeople can also use it to master some powerful skills.Watanabe uses sample scenarios to illustrate his techniques, which include logic trees and matrixes. A rock band figures out how to drive up concert attendance. An aspiring animator budgets for a new computer purchase. Students decide which high school they will attend.Illustrated with diagrams and quirky drawings, the book is simple enough for a middleschooler to understand but sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their most challenging problems.
The Alchemy of Growth: Practical Insights for Building the Enduring Enterprise
Mehrdad Baghai - 1999
It revitalizes organizations and invigorates the people in them, creating energy, a sense of purpose, and the glow of being on a winning team. Like the alchemy of old, it seeks to transform the everyday into the exalted by means that seem little short of magical. Yet growth is often elusive, achieved at unacceptable costs, or managed in fits and starts. Based on over three years of research and application at high-performing companies around the world, The Alchemy of Growth is a comprehensive, practical approach to initiating, achieving, and sustaining profitable growth -- today and tomorrow. As the book shows, the secret is to manage business opportunities across three time horizons at once: extending and defending core businesses, building new businesses, and seeding options for the future. The Alchemy of Growth offers managers at all levels the tools and concepts for investing in the right initiatives, capabilities, and talent to propel their companies into the future.
The Ten-Minute Trainer: 150 Ways to Teach it Quick and Make it Stick! (Pfeiffer Essential Resources for Training and HR Professionals)
Sharon L. Bowman - 2005
These back-pocket activities are easy, quick, topic-related, and fun, and you can draw on with a minimum of preparation. The Ten-Minute Trainer features a variety of exercises, ranging from one to ten minutes in length, and provides content-specific exercises as well as activities for transitioning between topics and gauging understanding. You'll find a useful answer section that explains the brain research behind the book and a special section on learning styles that ties in with the philosophy of learn it fast and make it last.Order your copy of this effective resource today!
Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love
Richard Sheridan - 2013
. . joy. As a package-delivery person once remarked, “I don’t know what you do, but whatever it is, I want to work here.”Every year, thousands of visitors come from around the world to visit Menlo Innovations, a small software company in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They make the trek not to learn about technology but to witness a radically different approach to company culture.CEO and “Chief Storyteller” Rich Sheridan removed the fear and ambiguity that typically make a workplace miserable. His own experience in the software industry taught him that, for many, work was marked by long hours and mismanaged projects with low-quality results. There had to be a better way.With joy as the explicit goal, Sheridan and his team changed everything about how the company was run. They established a shared belief system that supports working in pairs and embraces making mistakes, all while fostering dignity for the team.The results blew away all expectations. Menlo has won numerous growth awards and was named an Inc. magazine “audacious small company.” It has tripled its physical office three times and produced products that dominate markets for its clients.Joy, Inc. offers an inside look at how Sheridan and Menlo created a joyful culture, and shows how any organization can follow their methods for a more passionate team and sustainable, profitable results. Sheridan also shows how to run smarter meetings and build cultural training into your hiring process.Joy, Inc. offers an inspirational blueprint for readers in any field who want a committed, energizing atmosphere at work—leading to sustainable business results.
Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success
Thomas J. DeLong - 2011
In response, we're hunkering down, blocking ourselves from new challenges. This response hurts us and our organizations, but we fear making ourselves even more vulnerable by committing mistakes while learning something new.In Flying Without a Net, Thomas DeLong explains how to draw strength from vulnerability. First, understand the forces that escalate anxiety in high achievers and the unproductive behaviors you turn to for relief. Then adopt practices that give you the courage to "do the right things poorly" before "doing the right things well."Drawing on his extensive research and consulting work, DeLong lays out:- Roots of high achievers' anxiety: fear of being wrong and lack of a sense of purpose, and a craving for human connection- Destructive behaviors we adopt to relieve our anxiety: busyness, comparing ourselves to others, and blaming others for our frustrations- Behaviors we must adopt to gain strength from vulnerability: putting the past behind us and seeking honest feedbackPacked with practical advice and inspiring stories, Flying Without a Net is an invaluable resource for all leaders seeking to thrive in this Age of Anxiety.
Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution
Michael Hammer - 1993
This book leads readers through the radical redesign of a company's processes, organization, and culture to achieve a quantum leap in performance.Michael Hammer and James Champy have updated and revised their milestone work for the New Economy they helped to create—promising to help corporations save hundreds of millions of dollars more, raise their customer satisfaction still higher, and grow ever more nimble in the years to come.
