Business Problem Solving

How to Stop Yourself Before You Make Another Costly Decision - No one intentionally makes bad decisions. Yet we make them all the time. In fact, some of the worst disasters in recent history - the collapse of major investment banks, the global financial meltdown - were the result of seemingly reasonable decisions made by a lot of smart people. How does this happen? Michael J. Mauboussin argues that the correct process for deciding well - especially when the stakes are high - conflicts with how our minds naturally work.

The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today's workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation - especially difficult ones - leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches listeners how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person.

Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules, and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable, while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers - only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new audiobook, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset.

Presenting a clear, accessible guide to solving important leadership challenges through human resources-focused and other data analytics, this engaging audiobook tells you how to transform the HR function and overall organizational effectiveness by using data to make decisions grounded in facts vs opinions, identify root causes behind your company's thorniest problems, and move toward a winning, future-focused business strategy.

Slowing down is not a luxury, it is a necessity. A frenetic brain simply doesn't perform at optimal levels. By maintaining a snail's pace, you actually achieve better results - at rocket speed - because you're firing on all cylinders. You'll think of new things, approach old problems from new perspectives, and breathe a breath of fresh air into everything you do. This book shows you how to achieve this state of steady, sustainable fire and how to get further by crawling than you ever did while attempting to fly.

In this perennial best seller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written, Blue Ocean Strategy, now updated with fresh content from the authors, argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool.

In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help listeners tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide listeners through each step in the process.

Are you new to TRIZ and looking for an easy-to-follow guide on how you can use it to enhance your company's creativity, innovation, and problem-solving abilities? Look no further! Written in plain English and packed with tons of accessible and easy-to-follow instruction, TRIZ for Dummies shows you how to use this powerful toolkit to discover all the ways of solving a problem, uncover new concepts, and identify previously unseen routes for new product development.

Hiring and firing are hard to get right - and potentially costly to get wrong. Two of the most crucial tasks you face as a manager, they are vital to both the success of the enterprise...and your own career. No need to worry. This handy guide breaks down the simple but powerful strategies you can use to bring better employees onboard - and weed out the weaker ones.

Move is your guide to mobilizing your whole organization to take your business forward. Whatever your needed transformation may be - a new initiative, a new market, a new product, your fresh strategy is up against a powerful foe - an organization's tendency to stay very busy and completely engaged what it's already doing. Author Patty Azzarello draws on over 25 years of international business management experience to identify the chronic challenges that keep organizations from decisively executing strategy, and to give you a practical game plan for breaking through.

Whether you're starting a business from scratch or in an existing company facing new threats, this audiobook offers the direction you need. The HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy provides practical tips and advice that break down the process of crafting strategy so you can identify the areas your company should build on and help it thrive long into the future.

As a manager you have to make decisions - from daily choices about team priorities to deciding which long-term innovation projects to pursue. But most decisions don't have a clear-cut answer, and assessing the alternatives and the risks involved can be overwhelming. You need a smarter approach to making the best choice possible. The HBR Guide to Making Better Decisions provides practical tips and advice to help you identify the problem, evaluate your alternatives, select the right path forward, and follow through successfully.

A practical four-step methodology for any leader or manager facing a tough choice, and for creating integrative solutions to big, complex, and pressing problems. Stimulating and practical, Creating Great Choices blends storytelling, theory, and hands-on advice to help any leader or manager facing a tough choice.

For more than 40 years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside.

The ability to make sound and timely decisions is the mark of a good leader. But when leaders with otherwise strong track records suddenly begin making poor decisions - as seen in the recent corporate scandals that rocked the business world - the impact can be widespread. In The Stress Effect, leadership expert Henry L. Thompson argues that stress is often the real culprit behind this leadership failure.

In his latest engrossing work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings. And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary.

The language of business. In order to understand how your business is performing right now and to evaluate, assess, and devise new strategies to boost future performance, you need information. Financial statements are a critical source of the information you need. In direct and simple terms, Richard A. Lambert, Miller-Sherrerd Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, demystifies financial statements and concepts and shows you how you can apply this information to make better business decisions for long-term profit.

In his landmark best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant, in the blink of an eye, that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept?

We have more choices than we realize. In fact, according to positive psychology expert Tal Ben-Shahar, our entire life is made of choices, large and small. It is what we choose moment by moment and day by day - to do, to feel, to experience - that determines how happy and fulfilled we are. Every moment, then, is an opportunity to make a choice that will bring us greater happiness. Ben- Shahar presents 100 such opportunities, some simple, such as whether to frown or smile; others complex....

Best-selling author and scholar Michael Roberto presents a thorough investigation of organizational obstacles to creative thought. Highly relevant to the growth crises many enterprises face in today's economic landscape, this book examines how to break barriers to spark creativity and foster new ideas.