In business, they are last-name-only disrupters like Jobs, Bezos, and Hastings, and, in politics, they are such transformative figures as Mandela and FDR. They're bold and prophetic and at the same time pragmatic. They don't just promote change--they drive it, and they inspire and mobilize others to do the same.Although these leaders possess innate qualities that make them extraordinary, what truly sets them apart is their ability to turn their visions into action.In this timely and compelling book, Mark W. Johnson, cofounder of Innosight, and Josh Suskewicz, an Innosight partner, lay out a new and innovative approach to developing and executing the visionary ideas that drive breakthrough growth. This approach includes: Developing a mind-set that enables you to look beyond the present Translating your vision into a strategic plan that your team can align around and commit to Instilling visionary thinking into the processes and culture of your whole organization As practical as it is inspiring, Lead from the Future is the guide you and your team need in order to think clearly, creatively, and expansively, and then act decisively about what comes next.

    It shows you how you can unleash astonishing potential by building the trust, delivering the change, and inspiring the focus that underpins sustainable high performance.From extensive interviews with executives from all over the world, as well as from surveys with more than a thousand executives, the book reveals the nine characteristics that Secure Base Leaders display on a daily basis. The research shows that a primary difference between a successful leader and a failed leader is the presence or absence of secure bases in his or her life.Care to Dare will take you on a journey where you will discover your own secure bases, past and present, and determine how you can be a secure base for other people in your life at work and at home.

    In its most simple form, earned value equates to fundamental project management. This is not a new book, but rather it is an updated book. Authors Quentin Fleming and Joel Koppelman have made some important additions. In many cases, there will be no changes to a given section. But in other sections, the authors have made substantial revisions to what they had described in the first edition. Fleming and Koppelman’s goal remains the same with this update: describe earned value project management in its most fundamental form, for application to all projects, of any size or complexity. Writing in an easy-to-read, friendly, and humorous style characteristic of the best teachers, Fleming and Koppelman have identified the minimum requirements that they feel are necessary to use earned value as a simple tool for project managers. They have also witnessed the use of simple earned value on software projects, and find it particularly exciting. Realistically, a Cost Performance Index (CPI) is the same whether the project is a multibillion-dollar high-technology project, or a simple one hundred thousand-dollar software project. A CPI is a CPI … period. It is a solid metric that reflects the health of the project. In every chapter, Fleming and Koppelman stick with using simple stories to define their central concept. Their project examples range from peeling potatoes to building a house. Examples are in round numbers, and most formulas get no more complicated than one number divided by another. Earned Value Project Management—Second Edition may be the best-written, most easily understood project management book on the market today. Project managers will welcome this fresh translation of jargon into ordinary English. The authors have mastered a unique "early-warning" signal of impending cost problems in time for the project manager to react.

    Plus, the book is filled with real-world examples - the case studies and snapshots of how best practice companies are achieving success with knowledge management.Praise for The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management is Changing the Way We Do Business"You may think you know knowledge management, but this is new--how knowledge initiatives can incorporate social media, mobile technologies, and learning, for example. This book integrates the new knowledge management with the best of the old, such as communities of practice and measurement. KM still matters, and this book tells you why." --Thomas H. Davenport, President's Distinguished Professor of IT and Management, Babson CollegeOver the last decade, knowledge management has emerged as a key success factor for the modern corporation, driven by tremendous advances in business analytics. This book studies the best practices in knowledge management and how leadership companies are applying them today. --Virginia M. Rometty, Senior Vice President and Group Executive Sales, Marketing and Strategy, IBM"APQC has been on the leading edge of knowledge management for almost two decades. O'Dell and Hubert have captured those best practices and created a road map to transform the way people work. Reap the benefits of their experience." --C. Jackson Grayson, Chairman and Founder, APQC and co-author of If Only We Knew What We Know"The New Edge in Knowledge is a useful how-to manual that takes best practice sharing and organizational capability building to the next level: Web 2.0, social networking, mobility, and communities of practice. National and international examples show how companies can create strategic alignment and systematic management to transfer knowledge rapidly and effectively." --Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and author of SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social GoodWhat has made our KM program strong is sticking to the fundamentals-- that's exactly what this book outlines. It provides trusted advisor guidance on how any company or organization can take the concrete steps to create and implement a world class KM strategy. --Dan Ranta, Director of Knowledge Sharing, ConocoPhillips"Carla O'Dell and Cindy Hubert have written an amazingly down to earth, useful and practical book on knowledge management and its importance to modern business. Starting with the distinction between information and knowledge, they provide a viewpoint that leaves IT in the dust. Read it to prepare for tomorrow's world!" --A. Gary Shilling, President, A. Gary Shilling & Co., Inc."A practical business approach to knowledge management, this book covers KM's value proposition for any organization, provides proven strategies and approaches to make it work, shares how to measure KM's impact, and illustrates high level knowledge sharing with wonderful case studies. Well done!" --Jane Dysart, Conference Chair, KMWorld & Partner, Dysart & Jones Associates"This book is a tour de force in the field of knowledge management. Read every single page and learn about best practices from the leading firms around the world. All of this and more from the company that leads the way in the field: APQC. I highly recommend it for your bookshelf." --Dr. Nick Bontis, Director, Institute for Intellectual Capital Research"Food for thought from two of the pioneers. Carla O'Dell and Cindy Hubert have been in the trenches with many of the organizations that have succeeded in leveraging KM for business benefit. They recognized early the symbiotic relationship between knowledge flow and work flow and have guided practitioners in the quest to optimize and streamline both." -- Reid Smith, Enterprise Content Management Director, Marathon Oil Company"Carla O'Dell and Cindy Hubert take knowledge management from vague idea to strategic enabler. In so doing, they clear up the not only the whats, but the whys and the hows. This book establishes knowledge management as an organizational discipline. The authors offer a straightforward set of execution steps, coaching readers on how to launch their own knowledge management programs in a deliberate and rigorous way." --Jill Dych�, Partner and Co-Founder, Baseline Consulting; Author of Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth"The authors and APQC have put together an excellent 'how to' manual for Knowledge Management (KM) that can benefit any organization, from those experienced in KM to those just starting. The authors have taken their years of experience and excellence in this field and written a masterful introduction and design manual that incorporates industry best-practices and alerts readers to the pitfalls they are likely to encounter. This book needs to be in the hands of every KM professional and corporate senior leader." --Ralph Soule, a member of the US Navy

    Selling to the C-Suite is the first book that reveals how to land those career-making sales in the words of CEOs themselves!With 60 years of combined experience selling to corporations around the world, Nicholas A.C. Read and Stephen J. Bistritz, Ed.D., conducted in-depth interviews with executive- level decision makers of more than 500 organizations. One thing they learned might surprise you: leaders at the highest corporate levels don't avoid sales pitches; in fact, they welcome them--provided the salesperson approaches them the right way. Inside this invaluable book, CEOs reveal exactly which sales techniques they find most effective, as well as those you should avoid.Selling to the C-Suite provides all the insight you need to:Gain access to executivesEstablish trust and credibilityLeverage relationshipsCreate value at the executive levelIt also reveals when executives personally enter the buying process and sheds light on what role they play.Selling to the C-Suite provides field-tested techniques to put you well ahead of thecompetition when it comes to making those multimillion-dollar sales you never thought possible.

    But what are the habits and behaviors that actually lead to success? Drawing on his own experiences, Rajeev Agarwal, the founder and CEO of MAQ Software, concisely explains the steps he took for a successful career. As Agarwal realized that an IIT degree and a technical knowledge was not enough for his success. To distinguish himself, he shares his habits, behaviors, and thinking. Encouraging graduates to look at their careers over a forty-year span, Agarwal explains that successful people choose to be passionate about every job they have. Successful people recognize that performing average work does not advance them in the direction they want. The little bits of dedication here and there all add up-showing up to work on time, getting proper rest and nutrition, always striving to learn, and owning the results of your actions all build toward success. Transitioning from college to the workplace can be difficult. Graduates are required to determine their own lives, making several important decisions before the age of thirty. By providing an honest account, this book will make that transition easier.

    Born Creative teaches you that: Being able to spot issues and solve problems is a competitive advantage in any setting Building your creative confidence boosts your self-confidence Unlocking your creative visualization abilities puts you on the path to greater individual freedom Mastering the ability to let ideas flow at will, breaking your creative block makes you realize that nothing can stand in your way Add Born Creative to your cart and start building a better life now…to creativity and beyond! So, take the creativity challenge today by reading Born Creative and applying your new knowledge to build the life you desire. A happier life is just a few creativity exercises away!

    Meanwhile, countless entrepreneurs shot themselves in the foot with basic PR mistakes — spending far too much money hiring the wrong sort of PR people. The goal of this book is simple: to save entrepreneurs from the overpriced and ineffective PR gurus of the world — and to give them the tools they need to take on the media themselves (or at least, to hire someone who doesn't stink).

    Maxwell has devoted his life to helping people become more successful. His books and seminars teach that anyone can be a REAL success if they master skills in four areas: Relationships, Equipping, Attitude, and Leadership. This book is designed to give you the essentials of attitude.People's lives are so hectic. Their time is valuable, and yet, they are also on information overload. More new information has been produced in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand. A weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than average people in seventeenth-century England were likely to come across in their lifetime. The amount of information available in the world has doubled in the last five years, and it will keep doubling.So this book, a companion to Leadership 101, Relationships 101 (available January 2004), and Equipping 101 (available January 2004), is the short course on attitude. Dr. Maxwell recognizes that as an individual, your attitude has a profound impact on your life. As a leader, you cannot ignore the attitudes of the people you lead and expect to achieve success--whether you're leading a business, a family, a sports team, or a group of volunteers. A person's attitude impacts their relationships, colors their view of failure, and defines their approach to success. Attitude can make or break you.

    A former Navy commando provides a guide to personal success, offering aggressive strategies and skills to help readers meet the challenges of business and everyday life.

    Raped by her father from age six and pregnant at eleven and again at thirteen, he kidnapped her and went on the run as the net eventually closed in around him. Shannon's story is not an easy read; she goes into graphic detail about her sexual, physical and mental abuse, which included being burned with an iron, hit with a hammer and even stabbed. Her father told her "it was something all fathers do with their daughters," and for a time she believed him. Shannon wrote this book to start making sense of her childhood and is currently studying towards a degree in Forensic Psychology to help understand what makes people evil. "It was a painful journey," she explains, “but it was worth it because I want to help others who have been through similar experiences."

    This book provides up-to-date information on how good project, program, and portfolio management can help you achieve organizational success. It includes over 50 samples of tools and techniques applied to one large project, and is suitable for all majors, including business, engineering, healthcare, and more.

    Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book.In Aligning Strategy and Sales, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution.With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firm’s unique goals, not a generic selling formula.Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether you’re a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firm’s customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy.

    Yet although the heart of Six Sigma is statistics, most books on Six Sigma give a general overview, with little detail on actually Using the Six Sigma tools. Books that cover Six Sigma statistics typically are 500+ pages and cost near USD100. Basic Statistics for Six Sigma gives the information needed to apply the statistical tools of Six Sigma to real-world problems in a simplified, USD24.95 paperback format, for Greenbelts and Six Sigma Project Team Leaders. A typical company's Greenbelt training in Six Sigma includes 7 books, 4 software packages, and 3 weeks of class work. It is very extensive in statistics. Although this kind of course is excellent, not all companies or individuals want to commit to that level of instruction. Statistics for Six Sigma--Made Easy! describes only the tools used by most successful Six Sigma practitioners. The only software package needed is Excel, and the 14 formulas and 5 tables included in the book enable you to use all the basic Six Sigma statistical tools. Using these tools will enable a person t

    One of a manager's toughest--and most important--responsibilities is to evaluate an employee's performance, providing honest feedback and clarifying what they've done well and where they need to improve. In How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, Dick Grote provides a concise, hands-on guide to succeeding at every step of the performance appraisal process--no matter what performance management system your organization uses. Through step-by-step instructions, examples, do-and-don't bullet lists, sample dialogues, and suggested scripts, he shows you how to handle every appraisal activity from setting goals and defining job responsibilities to evaluating performance quality and discussing the performance evaluation face-to-face. Based on decades of experience guiding managers through their biggest challenges, Grote helps answer the questions he hears most often: -How do I set goals effectively? How many goals should someone set?-How do I evaluate a person's behaviors? Which counts more, behaviors or results? -How do I determine the right performance appraisal rating? How do I explain my rating to a skeptical employee?-How do I tell someone she's not meeting my expectations? How do I deliver bad news? Grote also explains how to tackle other thorny performance management tasks, including determining compensation and terminating poor performers. In accessible and useful language, How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals will help you handle performance appraisals confidently and successfully, no matter the size or culture of your organization. It's the one book you need to excel at this daunting yet critical task.