Business Problem Solving

We all need agency to feel the power and joy of acting in the face of challenge and opportunity. But we also need humility and restraint to ensure that we guard against hubris and harm. We need trusted and testable navigation tools to give us confidence in our creative power and cautiousness in carrying out our work. Instead of looking for answers, what we are all seeking are tools for navigating the increasingly complex, noisy, conflicted culture that we inhabit. A personal manifesto is one of those tools.

"All of us have Seven Slices in our lives: our Family Slice, our Professional Slice, our Personal Slice, our Physical Slice, our Intellectual Slice, our Emotional Slice, and our Spiritual Slice. These all need to be served in some fashion - and in serving them, they, in turn, serve us." This concept is at the heart of the method executive coach David McNeff has used to transform the lives and careers of his clients. It begins with two important facts: 1) Stress happens - you can't avoid it; and 2) Your existence is composed of far more than "work" and "life".

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.

Drawing on the experience and insights of CEOs across several industries, as well as lessons from neuroscience, computer science, psychology, and philosophy, BCG's Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller provide a fascinating look into the mechanics of imagination and lay out a six-step process for creating ideas and bringing them to life. The Imagination Machine is the guide you need to demystify and operationalize this powerful human capacity, to inject new life into your company, and to head into unknown territory with the right tools by your side.

When faced with new challenges, it’s easy to feel our solutions need to be equally unprecedented. We think we need a revolution. But what if this is a big mistake? In Evolutionary Ideas, Sam Tatam shows how behavioral science and evolutionary psychology can help us solve tomorrow’s challenges, not by divining something the world has never seen, but by borrowing from yesterday’s solutions–often in the most unexpected ways.

In 2020, the world as we knew it changed. For close to two years, people were socially isolated. Many of us lost the art of human face-to-face connections that lead to the development of close intimate relationships. In Relational Intelligence, Dr. Adam C. Bandelli outlines the five essential skills that can help you reconnect with others and build strong, long-lasting relationships. Drawing on research from the fields of psychology, sociology, and behavioral science, he explains why these skills are necessary tools for building a life of joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

We are oddly paradoxical creatures who long to be happy while creating our own suffering. We replay past anguish, anticipate future distress, and stew in self-righteous anger. In Hard to Be Human, Ted Cadsby focuses on five cognitive design flaws that foster underthinking and overreacting, and reveals powerful strategies to overcome them.

How do you tell a real trend from the merely trendy? How, for example, will a technology—like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things—affect us, our businesses, and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think—and how should we prepare for it now? In The Signals Are Talking, noted futurist Amy Webb shows us how to analyze the "true signals" and land on the right side of disruption.

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.

This elegant method prompts listeners to engage with three deceptively simple questions: What? So what? Now what? The first leads to careful observation. The second invites you to thoughtfully consider options and implications. The third ignites effective action. Together, these questions, and the tools that support them, produce a dynamic and creative dance with uncertainty.

The New Restaurant Manager is for new managers who want to avoid the mistakes that most beginning managers make. This refreshing how-to guide is written in a practical, down-to-earth style, like having coffee with your mentor.

Listening might seem like the easiest thing in the world to do. But most people retain only a fraction of what they hear, resulting in miscommunications and lost opportunities. When you actively listen, you learn to gather perspectives, bridge differences, and resolve problems. Absorbing what a person is saying, thinking, and feeling sets the stage for dramatically improved relationships and increased professional success.

Over and over, we see big legacy businesses getting beaten to the punch by energetic little start-ups. It seems like innovation can come from only the bottom up or from the outside in. But tech experts Vivek Wadwha and Ismail Amla are here to tell you that “big equals slow and stodgy” is a myth. Based on decades of experience working with both the world’s leading brands and disruptive start-ups, this audiobook explores the opportunity legacy companies have to create new markets, supercharge growth, and remake their businesses.

The different ways that social change happens, from unleashing to nudging to social cascades. How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. White nationalist sentiments, on the other hand, were largely kept out of mainstream discourse; now there is no shortage of media outlets for them. In this book, with the help of behavioral economics, psychology and other fields, Cass Sunstein casts a bright new light on how change happens.

In Friend and Foe, researchers Galinsky and Schweitzer explain why this debate misses the mark. Rather than being hardwired to compete or cooperate, humans have evolved to do both. It is only by learning how to strike the right balance between these two forces that we can improve our long-term relationships and get more of what we want.

Drawing on a wide array of people and places, Uncharted traces long-term projects that shrewdly evolved over generations to meet the unpredictable challenges of every new age. Heffernan also looks at radical exercises and experiments that redefined standard practices by embracing different perspectives and testing fresh approaches. Preparing to confront a variable future provides the antidote to passivity and prediction.

How to Survive the Recession, Handle Layoffs, Raise Emergency Cash, Thwart an Employee Coup, and Avoid Other Potential Disasters! Don't Panic. Be Prepared. Have a Plan. Layoffs. Sales slumps. Dangerously low morale. Extreme cash tightness. Reorganizations. It's a scary world out there. Times are as tough as they've been in decades.

This book will gain insight into a difficult person's definition and unravel ideas on how to manage complex relationships. We will also consider balancing work and family relationships without difficulties and steps to deal with toxic people. To deal with difficult people, you must understand the role of psychology and self-help, which we analyzed in another chapter. The last chapter details how to rebuild your relationships that other parties' problematic behaviors may have negatively impacted.

Research shows that the human mind is prone to making thinking errors. These errors leave us vulnerable to making decisions based on false beliefs, leading to disastrous consequences for our personal lives, relationships, careers, civic and political engagement, and for our society as a whole. Fortunately, cognitive and behavioral scientists have uncovered many useful strategies for overcoming our mental flaws. This book presents a variety of research-based tools for ensuring that our beliefs are aligned with reality.

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.