Business Problem Solving

Numbers make or break you. Ask any bankrupt business or successful startup and they’ll both agree, numbers don’t lie. Unfortunately, most teams focus on too many numbers or the wrong numbers or maybe no numbers at all! Author Lee Benson knows numbers. He grew his business from 3 employees to 500 with 15 consecutive years of 20 percent compounded average annual growth. Friends and families asked for his secret. He told them it came down to Your Most Important Number.

In this book, you will find the main ingredients you need to take your competitive intelligence program to the next level. You will learn how to build, manage, and optimize your program. You will learn how to move your program from the tactical to the strategic level of your organization. Most importantly, you will learn how to extract the most business value from the program.

This book adds examples from over twenty years of experience by Dr. Liker in working with companies outside of Toyota. This audiobook treats you as a student who will be actively engaged in developing lean leader skills as you read. It acts as a tutorial for beginning the journey!

Many of the prices we pay seem to make little sense. We shell out $2.29 for a coffee at Starbucks when a nearly identical brew can be had at the corner deli for less than a dollar. We may be less willing to give blood for $25 than to donate it for free. Americans hire the cheap labor of illegal immigrants to fix the roof or mow the lawn and vote for politicians who promise to spend billions to keep them out of the country.

On average, people leave about 20 percent of potential mutual gains untapped in any negotiation. This is akin to taking 20 percent of the value in any deal and dumping it into a garbage canister. Finding that hidden 20 percent, the “sweet spot”, is a skill that takes practice but is also one that anybody can learn. In Negotiating the Sweet Spot, Leigh Thompson offers surefire best practices and tools to use in daily negotiations and conflict situations.

Think differently, be more creative, and catch ideas in the air to solve problems quickly and skyrocket your productivity. People only see what is just visible. Thinking out of the box will empower you see the alternatives that others simply miss out on. Learn how to think out of the box, be known as “idea person”, and solve problems smarter, faster, and better.

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?

Whether you're rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful. In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works in three steps.

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.

The modern practice intended to motivate individuals has ensured that humans no longer think for themselves. Using rewards, punishment, and feedback undermines not just our personal growth, but the very fabric of life and living systems. Award-winning author and business disruptor Carol Sanford proposes a smarter, faster, and deeper key to unlock a future of profound creativity and success. This guide allows you to challenge prevailing theories, promote a holistic understanding of education and change, and redefine the way we approach our work and the results we seek.

This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world. David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks.

Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Sheena Iyengar's award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound.

Bina Venkataraman sees the way forward. A journalist and former adviser in the Obama White House, she helped communities and businesses prepare for climate change, and she learned firsthand why people don’t think ahead - and what can be done to change that. In The Optimist’s Telescope, she draws from stories she has reported around the world and new research in biology, psychology, and economics to explain how we can make decisions that benefit us over time.

If you want to impress people with your critical-thinking skills, then check out this comprehensive audiobook with two manuscripts in one: Critical Thinking and Logical Fallacies.

In the early 1980s, Harley-Davidson was on the verge of bankruptcy. In the general public's opinion, quality was substandard - of both motorcycles and riders. Harleys leaked oil and were often broken down. Riders were roughnecks, out to raise hell. The Harley-Davidson brand was tarnished. What s more, the charges were true.By the mid-1980s, Harley couldn't produce enough bikes to keep the public happy. Dealers were selling bikes off the showroom floor, struggling to assuage customers frustration.

We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you combat new competitors and define the best strategy for your company. With insights from leading experts including Michael E. Porter, A. G. Lafley, and Clayton M. Christensen, this book will inspire you to: choose a strategy that meets the demands of your competitive environment; identify the signals of disruption and take steps to avoid it; understand lean methodology and how it is changing business; and more.

Why do we lose money? It's easy to blame the economy or the financial markets - but the real trouble lies in the decisions we make. As a financial planner, Carl Richards grew frustrated watching people he cared about make the same mistakes over and over. They were letting emotion get in the way of smart financial decisions. He named this phenomenon - the distance between what we should do and what we actually do - "the behavior gap". He found that once people understood it, they started doing much better.

We typically work most directly with a small group of no more than 10 people, and in that team, we have a high degree of influence. Charlie Gilkey, an internationally known thought leader on productivity, planning, strategy, and leadership for creative people, explains how changing our team's habits can change our company's culture since that culture is always just an aggregation of its various teams' work habits.

Costumamos acreditar que trajetórias excepcionais, como a dos gênios que revolucionam o mundo dos negócios, das artes, das ciências e dos esportes, devem-se unicamente ao talento. Mas neste livro você verá que o universo das personalidades brilhantes esconde uma lógica muito mais fascinante e complexa do que aparenta.

Ask better questions, and you will get better results. Top business coach Mark Moses has identified four critical questions every business leader should explore on their journey to business and life success.