Business Problem Solving

Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the "creative types." But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world's top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential.

After two decades as a behavior analyst in the FBI, Robin Dreeke knows a thing or two about sizing people up. He's navigated complex situations that range from handling Russian spies to navigating the internal politics at the Bureau. Through that experience, he was forced to develop a knack for reading people - their intentions, their capabilities, their desires and their fears. In Sizing People Up, Dreeke shares his simple, six-step system that helps you predict anyone's future behavior based on their words, goals, patterns of action, and the situation at hand.

What if the mystery of market crashes stems from a simple but total misunderstanding of our own minds? Could everything we think we know about ourselves - intelligence and rationality versus emotion and irrationality - be wildly off the mark? Simply put: yes. With these words, Denise Shull introduces her radical - and supremely rational - approach to risk. Her vision stems from the indisputable fact that human beings can't make any decision at all without emotion and that emotion gets the first - and last - word when it comes to our perceptions and judgments.

The subject of “design thinking” is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press - due in large part to work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this audiobook to reveal how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is an audiobook for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

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.

Klein proposes a naturalistic approach to decision making, which views people as gaining experience that enables them to use a combination of intuition and analysis to make decisions. To illustrate this approach, Klein tells stories of people - from pilots to chess masters - acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions.

Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution? Now there’s a surefire way to answer these important questions: the Design Sprint, created at Google by Jake Knapp. This method is like fast-forwarding into the future, so you can see how customers react before you invest all the time and expense of creating your new product, service, or campaign.

A popular process improvement strategy used in many corporations, Lean Six Sigma exemplifies eliminating waste and optimizing flow at an operational level. With the strategies outlined in this book, you'll have your projects, team, and maybe even your organization running at peak efficiency.

There’s no doubt that our world has gotten more extreme. Pandemics, climate change, superpower rivalries, cyberattacks, political radicalization—virtually, everywhere we look there is mayhem bearing down on us, putting trillions of assets at risk. And at least two factions have formed around how to respond. In Chaos Kings, Scott Patterson depicts how one faction, led by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan, believes humans can never see the big disaster coming.

All prospects lie, all the time. Never ask for the order. Get an IOU for everything you do. Don't spill your candy in the lobby. Until now, these unique rules (and 45 more) were given out only to Sandler Training clients in special seminars and private coaching. After three decades of proven success, the secrets are out in The Sandler Rules. And when salespeople know the rules, they get results.

Scott knows firsthand what it’s like to go from out-of-touch boss to team-growing leader. In Management Mess to Leadership Success, you’ll find 30 leadership challenges, honed by FranklinCovey through years of research, instructional programs, and executive consultancy, and illustrated with real-life experiences shared by someone who’s lived these challenges.

From a course they created for professionals, Mark Waldman and Chris Manning adapted their lectures and present simple brain exercises, based on the latest neuroscience research, to guide listeners on what makes us happy, wealthy, and wise. The promise of their original class - and now of this book - is to help people create more "wealth" in their lives, defined as the combination of money, happiness, and success. The book presents both the scientific background and sets of NeuroWisdom exercises that will help everyone transform their environment.

This is clearly abook every manager should listen to. One of the issues Mintzberg addresses is the frenetic pace and relentless pressures of the job - most managers hardly have time to think. So Mintzberg has done some revising and some updating and has distilled the essence of his original book into a lean, action-oriented shortened version. The core of the book remains the same: Mintzberg's observations of twenty-nine different managers, from business, government, and nonprofits, working in diverse settings ranging from a refugee camp to a symphony orchestra.

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech world's most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, having led Snowflake to the largest software IPO ever after leading Data Domain and ServiceNow to exponential growth and the public market before that. In Amp It Up, he shares his leadership approach for the first time.

For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.

As a savvy and motivated professional, you’re constantly on the lookout for high-impact leadership strategies to take your business to the next level and beyond—without bogging you down in abstract theories or exhaustive case studies. You need foolproof ways to lead your people to achieve outstanding results, even in challenging times. As legendary football coach Vince Lombardi said, it’s time to get “brilliant on the basics.”

Samit has been at the helm of businesses in the ecommerce, digital video, social media, mobile communications, and software industries, helping to navigate them through turbulent economic times and guide them through necessary transformation so that they stay ahead of the curve and profitable. In Disrupt You!, he reveals how specific strategies that help companies flourish can be applied at an individual level. By challenging assumptions, pinpointing one's unique value, and identifying weaknesses in the structure of current industries, anyone can achieve success and lasting prosperity.

The companion to the blockbuster best seller, Getting Things Done. Since its publication in 2001, Getting Things Done has become, as Time magazine put it, "the defining self-help business book" of the decade. Having inspired millions of readers/listeners around the world, it clearly spoke to an urgent need in an increasingly time-pressured society. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel Making It All Work, Allen unlocks the full power of his methods across the entire span of life and work.

A well-paid executive feels trapped in her very respected but unsatisfying job. A startup founder has paying customers, but knows that unless he "fires" them and pivots the business, his startup won't make it. A senior government planner is tasked with undoing the nation's reliance on outdated infrastructure. These are all examples of individuals stuck in a Local Maximum; we've reached a peak, but not the one that fulfills the highest potential. In order to move up in our pursuits, we must first move back down.

People Skills is a communication-skills handbook that can help you eliminate these and other communication problems. Author Robert Bolton describes the twelve most common communication barriers, showing how these "roadblocks" damage relationships by increasing defensiveness, aggressiveness, or dependency. He explains how to acquire the ability to listen, assert yourself, resolve conflicts, and work out problems with others. These are skills that will help you communicate calmly, even in stressful emotionally charged situations.