It describes how to take the kinds of issues that all of us face today--lack of time, money, resources, attention, know-how--and see in them the opportunity for transformation of oneself and one's organization's fortunes. The ideas in the book are based on the authors' extensive work as business consultants, and are brought to life in 35 personal interviews from such varied sources as Nike, IKEA, Unilever, the U.S. Navy, Formula One racecar engineers, public school teachers in California, and barley farmers in South Africa. Underpinned by scientific research into the psychology of breakthrough, the book is a practical handbook full of tools and tips for how to make more from less. Beautifully designed and accessible, A Beautiful Constraint will appeal beyond its core business audience to anyone who needs to find the opportunity in constraint.The book takes the reader on a journey through the mindset, method and motivation required to move from the initial victim stage into the transformation stage. It challenges us to:Examine how we've become path dependent--stuck with routines that blind us from seeing opportunity along new paths Ask Propelling Questions to help us break free of those paths and put the most pressing and valuable constraints at the heart of our process Adopt a Can If mentality to answer these questions--focused on how, not if Access the abundance to be found all around us to help transform constraints Activate the high-octane mix of emotions necessary to fuel the tenacity required for success We live in a world of seemingly ever-increasing constraints, driven as much by an overabundance of choices and connections as by a scarcity of time and resources. How we respond to these constraints is one of the most important issues of our time and will be a large determinant of our progress as people, businesses and planet, in the future. A Beautiful Constraint calls for a more widespread capability for constraint-driven problem solving and provides the framework to achieve that.

    Traditionally, creating a marketing plan has been a difficult and time-consuming process, which is why it often doesn't get done. In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. It's literally a single page, divided up into nine squares. With it you'll be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero. Whether you're just starting out or are an experienced entrepreneur, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth. In this groundbreaking new book you'll discover: • How to get new customers, clients, or patients and how make more profit from existing ones. • Why “big business” style marketing could kill your business and strategies that actually work for small and medium-sized businesses. • How to close sales without being pushy, needy, or obnoxious while turning the tables and having prospects begging you to take their money. • A simple step-by-step process for creating your own personalized marketing plan that is literally one page. Simply follow along and fill in each of the nine squares that make up your own 1-Page Marketing Plan. • How to annihilate competitors and make yourself the only logical choice. • How to get amazing results on a small budget using the secrets of direct response marketing. • How to charge high prices for your products and services and have customers actually thank you for it.

    Wearied by eight years in the bond market and disillusioned by the financial services profession, he decides to get an “honest job” for a change. Before he knows what hit him, Jimmy finds himself waiting on tables of barflies at his local Waffle House.Amidst the glorious chaos of the night shift, the 24-hour diner affords a bevy of comedic experiences as the author struggles to ingratiate himself with a motley crew of waiters and cooks.Unexpectedly, the restaurant also becomes a font of insight into financial markets and the human condition.In a uniquely hilarious and thought-provoking narrative, Waffle Street unravels the enigmas of money, banking, economics, and grits once and for all. As they laugh heartily at the author’sexpense, readers will develop a profound appreciation for the first principle of economics: there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

    A New York Times bestseller for eleven months.

    A recent Wall Street Journal study revealed that the most sought-after executive skill is strategic thinking, but only three out of ten managers have this skill set. Author Rich Horwath explains the three keys to strategic thinking, breaks them down into simple, attainable skills, and gives you practical tools to apply them every day, providing managers with a clear path to mastery of the three disciplines: 1. Acumen-generate critical insights through a step-by-step evaluation of your business and its environment2. Allocation-focus your limited resources through strategic trade-offs 3. Action-implement a system to guarantee effective execution of strategy at all levels of your organization Based on new research with senior executives from 150 companies and the author's experience as a thought-leading strategist, Deep Dive is the first book to focus on the most important level of strategy-you. Armed with this knowledge and dozens of effective tools, you can become a truly strategic leader for your organization.

    Following on the footsteps of the National Best Seller "Choose Yourself" James Altucher is back with the revealing, funny, and embarrassing stories from his own life that show that even in the worst case scenario there is always a way towards reinvention and happiness.

    It breaks down the 5 stages of the service lifecycle into digestible chunks, helping you to ensure that customers receive the best possible IT experience. Whether readers need to identify their customers' needs, design and implement a new IT service, or monitor and improve an existing service, this official guide provides a support framework for IT-related activities and the interactions of IT technical personnel with business customers and users.Understanding how ITIL can help you Getting to grips with ITIL processes and the service lifecycle Implementing ITIL into your day to day work Learn key skills in planning and carrying out design and implementation projects

    health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums—not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets.In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying—and largely overlooked—causes of the problem, and provide a powerful prescription for change.The authors argue that competition currently takes place at the wrong level—among health plans, networks, and hospitals—rather than where it matters most, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. Participants in the system accumulate bargaining power and shift costs in a zero-sum competition, rather than creating value for patients. Based on an exhaustive study of the U.S. health care system, Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining the way competition in health care delivery takes place—and unleashing stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move health care toward positive-sum competition that delivers lasting benefits for all.

    A malicious online rumor costs a company millions. A political sideshow derails the national news cycle and destroys a candidate. Some product or celebrity zooms from total obscurity to viral sensation. What you don't know is that someone is responsible for all this. Usually, someone like me.I'm a media manipulator. In a world where blogs control and distort the news, my job is to control blogs--as much as any one person can. In today's culture... 1) Blogs like "Gawker," "Buzzfeed" and the "Huffington Post" drive the media agenda. 2) Bloggers are slaves to money, technology, and deadlines. 3) Manipulators wield these levers to shape everything you read, see and watch--online and off.Why am I giving away these secrets? Because I'm tired of a world where blogs take indirect bribes, marketers help write the news, reckless journalists spread lies, and no one is accountable for any of it. I'm pulling back the curtain because I don't want anyone else to get blindsided. I'm going to explain exactly how the media "really" works. What you choose to do with this information is up to you.

    Green and Robert M. Galford to bring us the essential tool for all consultants, negotiators, and advisors.In today's fast-paced networked economy, professionals must work harder than ever to maintain and improve their business skills and knowledge. But technical mastery of one's discipline is not enough, assert world-renowned professional advisors David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The key to professional success, they argue, is the ability to earn the trust and confidence of clients. To demonstrate the paramount importance of trust, the authors use anecdotes, experiences, and examples -- successes and mistakes, their own and others' -- to great effect. The result is an immensely readable book that will be welcomed by the inexperienced advisor and the most seasoned expert alike.

    It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it's more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions. For instance, enchantment is what enabled . . .A Peace Corps volunteer to finesse a potentially violent confrontation with armed guerrillas.A small cable channel (E!) to win the TV broadcast rights to radio superstar Howard Stern.??A seemingly crazy new running shoe (Vibram Five Fingers) to methodically build a passionate customer base.??A Canadian crystal maker (Nova Scotian Crystal) to turn observers into buyers.This book explains all the tactics you need to prepare and launch an enchantment campaign; to get the most from both push and pull technologies; and to enchant your customers, your employees, and even your boss. It shows how enchantment can turn difficult decisions your way, at times when intangibles mean more than hard facts. It will help you overcome other people's entrenched habits and defy the not-always-wise "wisdom of the crowd."Kawasaki's lessons are drawn from his tenure at one of the most enchanting organizations of all time, Apple, as well as his decades of experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. There are few people in the world more qualified to teach you how to enchant people.As Kawasaki writes, "Want to change the world? Change caterpillars into butterflies? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to convince people to dream the same dream that you do." That's a big goal, but one that's possible for all of us.

    Suppose that different food inspectors give different ratings to indistinguishable restaurants — or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to be handling the particular complaint. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same inspector, or the same company official makes different decisions, depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.   In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Cass R. Sunstein, and Olivier Sibony show how noise contributes significantly to errors in all fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, police behavior, food safety, bail, security checks at airports, strategy, and personnel selection. And although noise can be found wherever people make judgments and decisions, individuals and organizations alike are commonly oblivious to the role of chance in their judgments and in their actions.   Drawing on the latest findings in psychology and behavioral economics, and the same kind of diligent, insightful research that made Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge groundbreaking New York Times bestsellers, Noise explains how and why humans are so susceptible to noise in judgment — and what we can do about it.

    Businesses of the future need all hands on deck when implementing new ways to stimulate grown and cost efficiency, and this includes human resources. In HR Transformation, the team presents a four-phase model of transformation that shows you step-by-step how to make meaningful progress in contributing to the performance of your company by redesigning HR to work as a strategic partnership.From the "#1 Management Educator & Guru"-BusinessWeek"The authors have presented us with an accessible, readable, and practical illustration of a clear path for successful strategy execution in a complex environment." -Majed Al Romaithi, Executive Director, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority"HR can only transform organizations if it transforms HR. This book shows us how. HR Transformation would have been important in the past-it is critical now! We are entering a new world. HR Transformation can help our organizations thrive in the midst of uncertainty." -Marshall Goldsmith, author of the Wall Street Journal bestsellers What Got You Here Won't Get You There and Succession: Are You Ready? "Ulrich and his colleagues talk tough and provide a detailed blueprint for how those of us in the field can use our own tools to do a "720-degree" evaluation of ourselves. We cannot contribute to the success of our organizations until we upgrade ourselves." -Linda A. Hill, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School"Based on groundbreaking research with hundreds of companies and thousands of executives, HR Transformation provides compelling theory and practical tools to create alignment between strategy, systems, and people. This important book should be read carefully by leadership teams everywhere." -Mark Huselid, Professor of HR Strategy, Rutgers University, Co-author of The HR Scorecard, The Workforce Scorecard, and The Differentiated WorkforceTurn to the front matter for more than thirty rousing endorsements of HR Transformation.INCLUDES CASE STUDIES FROM Intel, Pfizer, Takeda, Flextronics

    Uber and Airbnb are household names: redefining neighbourhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business and changing the way we travel.In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, a new generation of entrepreneurs is sparking yet another cultural upheaval through technology. They are among the Upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence. Young, hungry and brilliant, they are rewriting the traditional rules of business, changing our day-to-day lives and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process.The Upstarts is the definitive account of a dawning age of tenacity, creativity, conflict and wealth. In Brad Stone’s highly anticipated and riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, we find out how it all started, and how the world is wildly different than it was ten years ago.

    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.