Problem Management

David Rakoff's best-selling collection of autobiographical essays, Fraud, established him as one of today's funniest and most insightful writers. Now, in Don't Get Too Comfortable, Rakoff moves from the personal to the public, journeying into the land of unchecked plenty that is contemporary America. Rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly and wittily skewered.

In the past few years, a number of well-known firms have failed; think of Blockbuster, Kodak, or RadioShack. When we hear about their demise, it often seems inevitable - a natural part of "creative destruction." But closer examination reveals a disturbing truth: Companies large and small are shuttering more quickly than ever. What does it take to buck this trend? The simple answer is: ambidexterity. Firms must remain competitive in their core markets, while also winning in new domains.

For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear - but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including more than 200 interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions - and breakthrough insights - and how anyone can create them.

In How to Kill a Unicorn, Payne pulls back the curtain on how the company is able to bring more innovative products and ideas successfully to market than any other firm, and offers inside accounts of how they solved their biggest challenges. Embedded in their approach to new ideas are hard-earned lessons about what separates innovations that work from those that don’t.

Holacracy distributes authority and decision-making throughout an organization and defines people not by hierarchy and titles but by roles. Holacracy creates organizations that are fast and agile and that succeed by pursuing their purpose, free from the tyranny of top-down planning that's instantly out of date. This isn't anarchy - it's quite the opposite.

Difficult people are the worst part of a manager's job. Whether it comes from direct reports or people above, outbursts, irrational demands, griping, and other disruptions need to be dealt with - and it's your responsibility to do it. Leading the Unleadable turns this dreaded chore into a straight forward process that gently, yet effectively, improves behaviors.

For creators, getting that promotion to management is exciting but can also be scary. The skills that made them so successful may not translate to the skill required to be a great manager, and this gets even more complicated when managing other creatives who often don’t thrive under traditional management procedures. Creative Directions is a management masterclass in which you attend lectures and seminars as you learn from some of the best in the business.

Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success - and survival - is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst and enjoy every moment of it.

A decade since its original publication, the term go-giver has become shorthand for a defining set of values embraced by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Today this timeless story continues to help its readers find fulfilment and greater success in business, in their personal lives and in their communities. The Go-Giver tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be.

The Concise Reads Management Series gives us some of the important tools in the management tool belt including problem solving, communicating, and building a team. The guides are concise on purpose and should take you no more than an hour or so to read but the principles within them take weeks and months to master. These are essential principles to find success as a manager or leader and therefore it is important that you absorb them and turn them into habits. Problem Solving Introduction: If you are or aspire to become a business executive then you cannot escape being confronted with ...

List the hottest buzzwords in business today and "analytics" is bound to come out near the top. But to most people, analytics implies complex tools and technical experts manipulating massive amounts and varieties of information (i.e.,"Big Data"). But complex Big Data analytics isn't the only game in town. And many people don't realize that a business doesn't need data scientists and complex tools to derive useful information and valuable benefits from any amount of raw data.

Decisions equal success - nothing happens until one is made. Businesses make millions of decisions every day. But once in a great while a leader makes a truly game-changing decision that shifts not only the strategy of a single company but how everyone does business. These big decisions are counterintuitive - they go against the conventional wisdom. In hindsight, taking a different direction may seem easy, but these bet-the-company moves involve drama, doubt, and high tension.

Captain David Marquet was used to giving orders. In the high-stress environment of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, it was crucial his men did their job well. But the ship was dogged by poor morale, poor performance and the worst retention in the fleet. Marquet took matters into his own hands and pushed for leadership at every level. Before long, his crew became fully engaged and the Santa Fe skyrocketed from worst to first in the fleet. No matter your business or position, you can apply Marquet's approach to create a workplace where everyone is a leader.

Here, drawing on revealing, honest stories from his five decades in business - the company's many successes as well as its stumbles - Koch walks the listener step by step through the five dimensions of Market-Based Management to show stockholders, entrepreneurs, leaders, students - and innovators, supervisors and employees of all kinds, in any field - how to apply the principles to generate Good Profit in their organizations, companies, and lives.

Harvard professor (and negotiation advisor to organizations around the world) Deepak Malhotra shows how to defuse even the most potentially explosive situations and to find success when things seem impossible. Malhotra illustrates key lessons using behind-the-scenes stories of fascinating real-life negotiations, including drafting the US Constitution, resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, ending bitter disputes in the NFL and NHL, and beating the odds in complex business situations.

Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process—a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.

Jonathan Smart, business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach, reveals the patterns and antipatterns that will help organizations from every industry deliver better value sooner, safer, and happier through high levels of engagement, inclusion, and empowerment. Through his decades of experience in the technology world, Smart provides business leaders with a blueprint for creating a world-class organization of the future.

In an audiobook that challenges everything you thought you knew, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne assert that tomorrow's leading companies will succeed, not by battling their rivals for market share in the bloody "red ocean" of a shrinking profit pool, but by creating "blue oceans" of untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

Finally enjoy the deep sleep you’ve been missing! This quality sleep guide will provide you everything you need to know in order to fall asleep, stay asleep, and enjoy a good night’s sleep. Night after night after night. Deep sleep and rejuvenating sleep should not be hard. Unfortunately, our modern lives have pulled us away from what was once easy and natural. Given how many different distractions, devices and stressors we deal with daily, it is no wonder that so many people don’t know how to get to sleep! In fact, the World Association of Sleep Medicine estimates that 45% of the ...

In The Partnership Charter, psychologist and business mediation expert David Gage offers a comprehensive guide to the art of establishing and maintaining a business partnership. The centerpiece of his approach is the Partnership Charter, a document that clearly outlines the goals, expectations, responsibilities, and relationships of the principals. The charter identifies potential sources of conflict and how they will be resolved, while addressing such sensitive issues as personal styles, values, money, and power.