These factors remain critical, especially given today's unprecedented business climate. But Rich Karlgaard--Forbes publisher, entrepreneur, investor, and board director--takes a surprising turn and argues that there is now a third element that's required for competitive advantage. It fosters innovation, it accelerates strategy and execution, and it cannot be copied or bought. It is found in a perhaps surprising place--your company's values.Karlgaard examined a variety of enduring companies and found that they have one thing in common; all have leveraged their deepest values alongside strategy and execution, allowing them to fuel growth as well as weather hard times. Karlgaard shares these stories and identifies the five key variables that make up every organization's "soft edge"Trust: Northwestern Mutual has built a $25 million dollar revenue juggernaut on trust, the foundation of lasting success. Learn how to create an environment that engenders trust and propels high performance.Smarts: In most technical fields your formal education quickly becomes out of date. How do you keep up? Learn how the Mayo Clinic, Stanford University women's basketball team, and others stay on top by relentlessly pursuing an advantage through smarts.Teamwork: Since collaboration and innovation are a must in the global economy, effective teamwork is vital. Learn how global giant FedEx stays focused and how nimble Nest Labs relies on lean teams with cognitive diversity.Taste: Clever product design and integration are proxies for intelligence because they make customers feel smart. But taste goes further into deep emotional engagement. Specialized Bicycles calls it "the elusive spot between data truth and human truth." How can you consistently make products or services that trigger these emotional touch points?Story: Companies that achieve lasting success have an enduring and emotionally appealing story. What's your company's story? How do you tell it your way? Gain the ability to create a powerful narrative in a world where outsiders often exercise the louder voice.

    Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing. People just don’t see the big idea - and it’s keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem.The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems.Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium. You will learn to:• Plan: Learn explanation basics, what causes them to fail and how to diagnose explanation problems.• Package: Using simple elements, create an explanation strategy that builds confidence and motivates your audience. • Present: Produce remarkable explanations with visuals and media. The Art of Explanation is your invitation to become an explanation specialist and see why explanation is now a fundamental skill for professionals.

    As a long time manager who dealt with organizational issues, growth, personnel matters, finance, and political influences, and one who teaches undergraduate and graduate school courses in management and leadership, I have experienced most of these issues. The author has done a remarkable job in the detail and accuracy of the work. The work is clear and understandable and organized in such as way as to allow easy access to information. To find such a compendium of information in one book instead of many is an additional benefit. Content is also ratified by the collective skills sets the authors bring.I highly recommend this book as a desk reference for anyone in a leadership or management role, and highly recommend it for anyone aspiring to the job. The comprehensive nature of the material in the book provides the foundation for new managers. In addition, the reference material leads readers to many other sources, reducing the need for Internet surfing trying to find information, or visiting the local library. As a graduate school faculty member I would also state for the record that this would be a great textbook. The book is written by practitioners who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. This book is a must read. Well done to all the authors - you have provided a book any manager, supervisor, or teacher should have.

    The reason is simple: no matter what you think you're saying, your words, gestures, and tone of voice can actually communicate something entirely different.Too often, negative micromessages undermine morale, business opportunities, and ultimately your organization. Micromessaging examines the nuanced behaviors that we all blindly use and react to in our dealings with others. Yet as Young points out, these micromessages can reveal a lot about our own-and our superiors'-biases and preconceived notions. Learning how to constructively address these behaviors can bring about positive change.Young offers a common language for encouraging open discussion in the workplace, along with skills to identify and address familiar micromessages; tools for deploying microadvantages; and real-life workplace scenarios, self-assessments, and solutions that help readers interpret and alter ingrained behaviors and their effects. He delivers valuable information onCruicial leadership skills and how to acquire themUniversal workplace cultural issuesHow expectations affect the performance of othersWays to speak fairly, not falselyTechniques that eliminate group thinkHow to reset the filters you use to screen othersBased on research from MIT, Young's approach has already helped numerous Fortune 500 clients, including Merck, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Starbucks, IBM, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Cisco, and Raytheon to increase leadership effectiveness. With its proven wisdom, you can experience what so many business executives worldwide have discovered and make it a powerful part of your leadership skill set.

    It's when communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It's when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. It's when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there.Rules of the Rave:Nobody cares about your products (except you). No coercion required. Lose control. Put down roots. Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep. You can trigger a World Wide Rave: Just create something valuable that people want to share and make it easy for them to do so.What happens when people can't stop talking online about you, your company, and your products? A World Wide Rave is born that can propel a brand or company to seemingly instant fame and fortune. How do you create one? By learning the secret to getting links, YouTube, Facebook, and blog buzz to drive eager buyers to your virtual doorstep. For free.In World Wide Rave, David Meerman Scott, author of the award-winning hit book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, reveals the most exciting and powerful ways to build a giant audience from scratch.

    Now, after a unique, five-year study of more than 5,000 managers and employees, Morten Hansen reveals the answers in his “Seven Work Smarter Practices” that can be applied by anyone looking to maximize their time and performance.Each of Hansen’s seven practices is highlighted by inspiring stories from individuals in his comprehensive study. You’ll meet a high school principal who engineered a dramatic turnaround of his failing high school; a rural Indian farmer determined to establish a better way of life for women in his village; and a sushi chef, whose simple preparation has led to his restaurant (tucked away under a Tokyo subway station underpass) being awarded the maximum of three Michelin stars. Hansen also explains how the way Alfred Hitchcock filmed Psycho and the 1911 race to become the first explorer to reach the South Pole both illustrate the use of his seven practices (even before they were identified).Each chapter contains questions and key insights to allow you to assess your own performance and figure out your work strengths, as well as your weaknesses. Once you understand your individual style, there are mini-quizzes, questionnaires, and clear tips to assist you focus on a strategy to become a more productive worker. Extensive, accessible, and friendly, Great at Work will help you achieve more by working less, backed by unprecedented statistical analysis.

    Get expert advice and take back control over your life and workday by managing all your communications action items and interactions with proven time management and productivity techniques and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 In this book productivity expert Sally McGhee shows you how to take control and reclaim something you thought you had lost forever your work life balance Now you can benefit from Sally s popular and highly regarded corporate education programs learning simple but powerful techniques for rebalancing your personal and professional commitments by using the latest productivity features in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 If you re bogged down by unrelenting e mail messages conflicting commitments and endless interruptions it s not too late to reclaim control of your workday and take back your life By applying the same time management and productivity techniques used by leading companies you can better manage all of your communications action items and interactions In this book productivity expert Sally McGhee shows you how to take control and reclaim something you thought you had lost forever your work life balance Now you can benefit from Sally s popular and highly regarded corporate education programs learning simple but powerful techniques for rebalancing your personal and professional commitments by using the latest productivity features in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Learn the proven methods that empower you to clear away distractions and loose ends and focus on what s really important to you and your business You will discover what defines and what limits your personal productivity and learn how to create your own management system Examine how you collect and store information process and organize your e mail messages for efficiency and plan and prioritize with the calendar features in Office Outlook 2007 Learn what thousands of people worldwide have discovered about taking control of their everyday productivity and

    Bruce Daisley shares the learnings from his hugely popular podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat, and he takes us on a quest to probe experts on about how best to make our jobs happier and more fulfilling.Now, in The Joy of Work, provides the fruits of his discoveries. Its succinct chapters range across all aspects of 21st-century office life, tackling the key questions and offering inspiration, empirically tested insight and down-to-earth practical answers in equal measure. Covering personal motivation through to the science of building winning team cultures this is a fascinating read. Are lunch breaks for wimps, or do they actually make us more productive? Is it true that you can improve team performance simply by moving the location of the kettle or coffee machine? And what is a Monk Mode Morning, and why do people swear by it?If you’re not happy with the status quo, if you think things could be done better, if you’re seeking greater fulfilment at work and a life that is a little less fraught, The Joy of Work will point the way.

    However well intentioned they may be, leaders who deceive themselves always end up undermining their own performance.This straightforward book explains how leaders can discover their own self-deceptions and learn how to escape destructive patterns. The authors demonstrate that breaking out of these patterns leads to improved teamwork, commitment, trust, communication, motivation, and leadership.

    Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when• coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it• you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all”• you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all• you catch a colleague in a lie• your boss seems unhappy with your work• your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal• you got drunk at the holiday party

    That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.

    Smith shows how, by managing time better, anyone can lead a happier, more confident and fulfilled life.

    As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices. In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire. The updated and revised Currency edition of this business classic contains over one hundred pages of new material based on interviews with dozens of practitioners at companies like BP, Unilever, Intel, Ford, HP, Saudi Aramco, and organizations like Roca, Oxfam, and The World Bank. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book’s inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus (getting started), Strategies, Leaders’ New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future. Mastering the disciplines Senge outlines in the book will:• Reignite the spark of genuine learning driven by people focused on what truly matters to them• Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity• Free you of confining assumptions and mindsets• Teach you to see the forest and the trees• End the struggle between work and personal time

    His groundbreaking research exposes ten well-disguised mental Saboteurs. Nearly 95 percent of the executives in his Stanford lectures conclude that these Saboteurs cause “significant harm” to achieving their true potential. With Positive Intelligence, you can learn the secret to defeating these internal foes. Positive Intelligence (PQ)SM measures the percentage of time your mind is serving you as opposed to sabotaging you. While your IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence) contribute to your maximum potential, it is your PQ that determines how much of that potential you actually achieve.The great news is that you can improve your PQ significantly in as little as 21 days. With higher PQ, teams and professionals ranging from leaders to salespeople perform 30 to 35 percent better on average. Importantly, they also report being far happier and less stressed. The breakthrough tools and techniques in this book have been refined over years of coaching hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams. Shirzad tells many of their remarkable stories, showing how you too can take concrete steps to unleash the vast, untapped powers of your mind.Discover how to•    Identify and conquer your top Saboteurs. Common Saboteurs include the Judge, Controller, Victim, Avoider, and Pleaser.  •    Measure the Positive Intelligence score (PQ) for yourself or your team—and see how close you come to the critical tipping point required for peak performance.•    Increase PQ dramatically in as little as 21 days.•    Develop new brain “muscles,” and access 5 untapped powers with energizing mental “power games.”•    Apply PQ tools and techniques to increase both performance and fulfillment. Applications include team building, mastering workload, working with “difficult” people, improving work/life balance, reducing stress, and selling and persuading.

    Updated forth edition of the 1996 title (see ISBN 0965571203 for further information)