Business Problem Solving

The creative mode in your brain is like a butterfly. It's beautiful and erratic, hard to catch, and highly valued as a result. If you want to capture it, you need a net. Enter the executive mode, the task-oriented network in your brain that helps you tie your shoes, run a meeting, or pitch a client. To succeed, you need both modes to work together - your inner butterfly to be active and free, but your inner net to be ready to spring at the right time and create that "aha!" moment. But is there any way to trigger these insights, beyond dumb luck?

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes can make us poor and unhealthy. We often make bad decisions about education, personal finance, health care, family, and the environment.

As Vikram Mansharamani shows in this eye-opening book, our complex, data-flooded world has made us ever more reliant on experts, protocols, and technology. We've stopped thinking for ourselves. Of course, experts, protocols, and computer-based systems are essential to helping us make informed decisions. What we need is a new approach for integrating these information sources more effectively. The author provides principles and techniques for doing just that, empowering listeners with a more critical and nuanced approach to making decisions.

From Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer and acclaimed business journalist Charles Fishman comes a brilliantly entertaining peek into the weekly "curiosity conversations" that have inspired Grazer to create some of America's favorite and iconic movies and television shows - from 24 to A Beautiful Mind.

At this moment, rogue waves are forming under your business. Emerging technologies, changing demographics, the data economy, automation, and other trends are crashing into each other. When they converge, they’ll produce sea changes that sink companies and wash away entire industries overnight. If your competitor can’t ride out the next wave and you can, you win. Jonathan Brill - a renowned expert on resilient growth and decision-making under uncertainty - shows you how to prepare your business to survive and thrive through the most radical upheavals.

You're facing a problem at work. There are many ways you can approach the situation, but each comes with its own pros and cons. How do you sort through all the information so that you know you're taking the right path? The answer is in how you think. The HBR Guide to Critical Thinking will help you navigate your most challenging issues, from difficult problems to tough decisions to complex scenarios.

In the age of Big Data we often believe that our predictions about the future are better than ever before. But as risk expert Gerd Gigerenzer shows, the surprising truth is that in the real world, we often get better results by using simple rules and considering less information. In Risk Savvy, Gigerenzer reveals that most of us, including doctors, lawyers, financial advisers, and elected officials, misunderstand statistics much more often than we think, leaving us not only misinformed, but vulnerable to exploitation.

A leading economist charts the indirect road to happiness and wealth. Using dozens of practical examples from the worlds of business, politics, science, sports, literature, even parenting, esteemed economist John Kay proves a notion that feels at once paradoxical and deeply commonsensical: The best way to achieve any complex or broadly defined goal-from happiness to wealth to profit to preventing forest fires-is the indirect way.

Dream, Believe, Dare, Do. Though four simple words, this carefully crafted credo lies at the heart of Walt Disney's enviable empire and has led The Walt Disney Company to prosperity for decades. As foremost experts on Disney, authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson return with an updated and expanded third edition of The Disney Way to show how organizations can incorporate this four-pillared credo to support any business, drive any team, and guide any leader to create immeasurable success.

To achieve the ultimate in entrepreneurial breakthrough success requires an uncanny ability to spot the next big wave of consumer demand - but how do you do that? For most small business owners, the true cash cows seem to be reserved for lucky people who were in the right place at the right time.

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.

With rapid technological innovation leading the charge, today's world is transforming itself at an extraordinary and unprecedented pace. As jobs become more multifaceted, as information streams multiply, and as myriad devices place increasing demands on our attention, we are confronted every day with a plethora of new challenges. Fortunately, as Leonard Mlodinow shows, the human brain is uniquely engineered to adapt.

This book is all about the equations that make our world go round. Ten of them, in fact. They are integral to everything from investment banking to betting companies and social media giants. And they can help you to increase your chance of success, guard against financial loss, live more healthfully, and see through scaremongering. They are known by only the privileged few - until now.

This is a book about common sense—what it is, how to make it, and how to put it into practice across all contexts of leadership and life. It's also a book of stories from my leadership journey across continents, cultures, and contexts (e.g., combat, business, and government). In this book, you’ll learn what I learned and what many other common-sense leaders across the ages have learned before us.

A simple and accessible plan for success, based on seven scientifically tested steps that really work. We're often told to dream big, the sky's the limit and that nothing is impossible. While it is undoubtedly good advice to set yourself goals that have the potential to make you and those around you healthier and happier, how to reach those goals is often less clear. From getting fit or securing a new job to becoming a better manager or parent, simply setting your mind to something will rarely get you where you want to be.

Organizational psychologist and executive coach Rebecca Newton has found that even her most successful clients still want more of one quality: gravitas. They want their words to carry weight, to have a positive, lasting impact on those around them. Gravitas can seem like an elusive, intangible quality, but it isn't about adopting the style of another or being someone you're not. Newton draws on extensive research and experience coaching business leaders to show what underpins authentic gravitas and how anyone can develop it.

In 2015 Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's popular podcast and radio show Note to Self, led tens of thousands of listeners through an experiment to help them unplug from their devices, get bored, jump-start their creativity, and change their lives. Bored and Brilliant builds on that experiment to show us how to rethink our gadget use to live better and smarter in this new digital ecosystem. In this fascinating new audiobook, Manoush explains the connection between boredom and original thinking.

The ability to think clearly and critically is a lifelong benefit that you can apply in any situation that calls for reflection, analysis, and planning. Being able to think systematically and solve problems is also a great career asset. Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies helps you hone your thinking abilities and become a better communicator. You'll find hands-on, active instruction and exercises that you can put to work today as you navigate social media and news websites, chat with AI, fact-check your own and others' views, and more. Become a thinking machine, with this Dummies guide.

Former consultant Dr. Paul Friga distills the guiding principles first presented in the best-selling The McKinsey Way and the tested-in-the-trenches methodologies outlined in The McKinsey Mind, and combines them with many of the principles and procedures implemented by the military and other organizations. The result is nothing less than the business equivalent of a Special Forces Field Manual.

How can you come up with great ideas by yourself, or in the context of your team, and quickly determine which are worthy of investment? The simple metric of ideaflow determines success like no other. Ideaflow is a mindset, a way of approaching all your business problems, that multiplies your efforts and unleashes your full potential. Nurture ideaflow and watch your results transform.