Management Problem Solving

As the natural successor to Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner's landmark best seller, Riding the Waves of Culture, Managing Change Across Corporate Cultures reveals exactly how to create an environment where astonishing business breakthroughs are possible. You will also learn how to renew cultures as part of change and how to integrate cultures successfully following mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures.

We all face countless decisions throughout our careers. The specific circumstances that call us to lead will be different, but the core dilemmas and ethical challenges are very similar. Faced with these challenges, each of us must decide if we will follow our ego-centered inclinations or lead for the good of everyone whose lives we touch? Will we endanger or impair those around us to satisfy our own self-interest, or will we lead in a manner that is true to our values?

One of the biggest challenges for managers today is recruiting and maintaining quality employees. Authoritative managerial styles don’t work anymore. Today’s employees aren’t interested in blindly taking orders from the top and working dead-end jobs.

Generating and executing great ideas is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses - or none at all. There has to be a better way. In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions - the ones all companies must ask to survive.

James Murphy, one of America's top fighter pilots, has the answers. By combining the cool calculation of a four-star general and the hot-blooded nerve of a combat pilot, Murphy's "modern business warrior" is uniquely qualified to prioritize, maintain focus, assess risk, and develop the kind of teamwork necessary for long-term success.

In this revelatory book, Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks explain how in our uncertain and ambiguous world, the messenger is the message. We frequently fail to separate the idea being communicated from the person conveying it, they argue: the status or connectedness of the messenger become more important than the message itself.

Every one of us gets anywhere in life due to three things: someone observes us, forms an opinion about us, and decides to give us an opportunity...or not. Likewise, we do the same thing with others. People have played this essential role in our lives, and we play it in the lives of those around us - and no matter how skilled we’ve become, we can play it even better.

Managers, organizations, and even whole societies repeatedly get trapped into solving the wrong problems. Errors can be traced to one fundamental flaw-misdirected thinking. Leading business professor Ian Mitroff asserts that the ability to spot the right problems, frame them correctly, and implement appropriate solutions is the true competitive edge of the successful and prosperous organization.

In leadership, you need to be able to play to your strengths and look toward overcoming your limitations. The first and most important step is identifying and understanding your leadership style. Without this self-analysis, it’s impossible to know what your strengths and limitations are.

It’s not being negative or pessimistic to assume that something will always go wrong in business and in your career. It’s being realistic. What you do when crisis hits is the only thing matters - and this proven guide delivers everything you need to take positive action with confidence, skill, and professionalism. Frank Supovitz, the man who has been behind-the-scenes at major events like the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, and Indy 500 guides you through the process of making sure you handle inevitable problems as if it’s something you do day in and day out.

Truly resilient, thriving organizations are those that are purpose driven and focus on more than pure profits. Purpose, or an underlying company philosophy, not only drives strategic change but also encourages customer loyalty and employee engagement. In order to succeed, leaders must be willing to discard old ways of thinking and detrimental business habits - and recognize their blind spots. Authors Jim Haudan and Rich Berens identify the five most common leadership blind spots that hamper success: purpose, story, engagement, trust, and truth.

While it may not occur to us on a daily basis, there is a widespread cultural tendency toward quick decisions and quick action. Though the root cause is by no means malicious, we have begun to reward speed over quality, and the negative effects suffered in both our personal and professional lives are potentially catastrophic. Best-selling author and Chief Envisioner Dan Pontefract offers the solution to this predicament with what he coins "Open Thinking".

Wasting time in pointless meetings is the one thing that never seems to change. Martin Murphy, however, has helped a who's who of corporate clients transform time-sapping meetings into breakthrough sessions that are measurably productive. His strategy is not simply to make meetings more palatable; instead he reframes the entire concept of collaboration and introduces four "Work Sessions" that replace meetings to get more done faster than ever before.

Dan Foxx has spent more than 50,000 hours face-to-face with over 4,500 top execs from America’s finest companies, from high-flying high techs to promising start-ups. With pressure from boards of directors and investors to deliver dollars and high-ticket IPOs and with expectations from direct reports to make the savvy decisions, these CEOs bare all behind closed doors when their leadership chops are on the line.

Drawing on the latest research in social psychology, Dr Connson Chou Locke will look at why we are prone to miscommunicate and how to overcome these barriers. This practical guide, based on her hugely popular Guardian Masterclass, will help you hone your personal style and enhance your presence and influence with ease.

The most powerful weapon in business today is the alliance between the mathematical smarts of machines and the imaginative human intellect of great leaders. Together they make the mathematical corporation, the business model of the future. While smart machines are weapon number one for organizations, leaders are still the drivers of breakthroughs. Only they can ask crucial questions to capitalize on business opportunities newly discovered in oceans of data. This dynamic combination will make possible the fulfillment of missions that once seemed out of reach, even impossible to attain.

Technology thought leader and organizational architect Matt K. Parker breaks down the counterintuitive principles and practices that radically collaborative organizations thrive on. By combining the latest insights from organizational science, sociology, and psychology, he illuminates four imperatives that all radically collaborative organizations must embrace in order to succeed: team autonomy, managerial devolution, deficiency gratification, and candid vulnerability.

Serial Innovators: How Individuals Create and Deliver Breakthrough Innovations in Mature Firms zeros in on the cutting-edge thinkers who repeatedly create and deliver breakthrough innovations and new products in large, mature organizations. These employees are organizational powerhouses who solve consumer problems and substantially contribute to the financial value to their firms.

Be Visionary: Strategic Leadership in the Age of Optimization is a self-help, business leadership book that demonstrates to existing and aspiring leaders the positive impact of applying flexibility, creativity and decisiveness to achieve results—even in uncertain times. More importantly, this book helps leaders to understand that while business operations optimization may have value in certain circumstances, it can also adversely affect a leader's management style, his or her message and replace strategic thought with short-term focus and gratification.

In his book Driving Eureka!, best-selling business author Doug Hall presents the System Driven Innovation scientific method for enabling innovation by everyone, everywhere, every day. It’s the essential resource you need to enable yourself - and your team - to innovate, succeed, and do amazing things that matter, on a daily basis.