Behavior Business

Early in the 21st century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, or software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, from tech firms and pharma companies to coffee shops and gyms, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success.

Babson College business educator and consultant Mary Gentile challenges the assumptions about business ethics at companies and business schools. She gives business leaders, managers, and students the tools not just to recognize what is right, but also to ensure that the right things happen. She explains why past attempts at preparing business leaders to act ethically too often failed, arguing that the issue isn't distinguishing what is right or wrong, but knowing how to act on your values despite opposing pressure.

Become the effective, proactive leader you aspire to be with this practical tool kit for leading people and organizations.

In Beverly Hills Manners, Lisa Gache offers a behind-the-scenes look at the unique social dilemmas of the residents of the hills of Beverly through the eyes of an etiquette expert tasked with transforming her awkward, boorish, and sometimes challenging clients into social virtuosos. From Saudi princesses to Oscar winners, talent agents to intelligence operatives, child actresses, butlers, and football players, Lisa has amassed an astounding roster.

When the daily business news breaks away from stories of profit and loss, it often shines a spotlight on ethical failures. But Christians aim to be ethical in all the areas of daily life and work - not just when the spotlight is on them. For those facing the many questions and quandaries of doing business with ethical integrity, Alec Hill offers a place to begin. In this third edition of a popular textbook on business ethics, Hill carefully explores the foundational Christian concepts of holiness, justice, and love.

In the old days, when we made physical products, setting project goals wasn’t that hard. But in today’s service - and software-driven world, “done” is less obvious. When is Amazon done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, services powered by digital systems are never done. So then how do we give teams a goal that they can work on? Mostly, we simply ask teams to build features - but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that create no value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to achieve.

The United States has always proved an inviting home for boosters, sharp dealers, and outright swindlers. Worship of entrepreneurial freedom has complicated the task of distinguishing aggressive salesmanship from unacceptable deceit, especially on the frontiers of innovation. At the same time, competitive pressures have often nudged respectable firms to embrace deception. As a result, fraud has been a key feature of American business since its beginnings.

If you're aspiring to satisfy your customers, then you’re aspiring to mediocrity. That's the fascinating premise of From Impressed to Obsessed, a book that will fundamentally change how you think about creating a successful, beloved business. Acclaimed customer experience expert Jon Picoult explains why building customer loyalty requires leaving indelible positive impressions on everyone you work with - not just shaping their experiences, but also shaping their memories.

With the explosion of social media, the competition for attention - and customers - is more intense than ever before. Standing out is not only more challenging than ever, it now has less of an impact on sustained growth. To be a lasting company, leader, or brand on a positive trajectory today, one must become iconic. Award-winning author and speaker Scott McKain examines what an iconic organization or leader is and helps you attain and retain that rare status. If your company has slipped in its standing, McKain teaches you how you can regain your position.

The idea is simple: You don't have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor - avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy - you can be kind and clear at the same time. Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class.

Your workday is filled with them - people who frustrate, impede, maneuver, undermine, plot, connive, and whine. This indispensable guide details specific techniques for handling all of them, with easy-to-follow scenarios for every situation. Updated and revised to reflect modern issues including technology, generation gaps, and language barriers, this guide describes 10 kinds of culprits and offers helpful strategies and phrases for diffusing workplace tensions and effectively resolving conflicts.

We've all had experiences with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them and always need to be the smartest people in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them.

What Retirees Want presents the culmination of 30 years of research by world-famous "Age Wave" expert Ken Dychtwald, PhD, and author and consultant Robert Morison. This entertaining, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging book explains how individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and governments can best prepare for a new era - where the needs and demands of the "Third Age" will set the lifestyle, health, social, marketplace, and political priorities of generations to come.

Decoding the New Consumer Mind provides marketers with practical ways to tap into this new consumer psychology, and Yarrow shows how to combine technology and innovation to enhance brand image; win love and loyalty through authenticity and integrity; put the consumer's needs and preferences front and center; and deliver the most emotionally intense, yet uncomplicated, experience possible. Armed with Yarrow's strategies, marketers will be able to connect more effectively with consumers - driving profit and success across the organization.

Playing to Win, a noted Wall Street Journal and Washington Post best seller, outlines the strategic approach Lafley, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, used to double P&G’s sales, quadruple its profits, and increase its market value by more than $100 billion when Lafley was first CEO (he led the company from 2000 to 2009). The book shows leaders in any type of organization how to guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business successwhere to play and how to win.

It's Monday. Time to hit the pause button on your personality and get ready for the next meeting because, for the next five days, we'll be speaking the language of business. And, from bloated jargon and monotonous memos to syrupy slogans and deadly dull presentations, the official language of business is bull. The second we get to work, we join the masses who trade the wit and warmth of their voices for a corporate stamp of approval and the comfort of conformity.

We all know that IQ, education, knowledge, and technical skills are essential for professionals, but they alone are insufficient for effective leadership. Who you are as a person - your personality and character - drives leadership performance and determines who thrives and who fails. In Personality at Work, psychologist Ron Warren lays out the key personality traits that drive high performance - and the common traits that derail it.

In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that the Objectives and Key Results system has spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

Shola Richards had reached the end of the road: after nearly two years at a soul-sucking job, he felt numb and suicidal. So he quit and devoted himself to nothing less than transforming the workplace, turning it into a space of respect, courtesy, and endless energy. Making Work Work focuses on inspiring current and future leaders to start a movement that will banish on-the-job bullying, put meaning back into work, and enhance coworkers' happiness and engagement.

In his classic best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking, new approach for attacking the dangerous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here, he turns his focus to the individual member of a team, revealing the three indispensable virtues that make some people better team players than others. Lencioni’s latest fable is the story of a leader desperate to save his company by cracking the code on the virtues that define a true team player.