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.

The Art of Strategic Decision-Making will teach you to seize control of your life and make sure your decisions aren’t making you. This book cites years of research and scientific studies about what constitutes a great decision and the factors that will inevitably lead you there. It is an in-depth look at human nature and psychology and why we make decisions in the way we do - for better or for worse. This book is packed with theory, but it is all practical and actionable. Use these mental models and pieces of analysis on your decisions today.

In Wise Decisions: A Science-Based Approach to Making Better Choices, a team of accomplished industry experts delivers an evidence- and research-based blueprint for making the best decisions you can with the information you have. You'll learn to make the targeted, repeated investment of energy required to turn your decision-making process into one informed by reason, emotion, intuition, and science.

A powerful yet simple approach to positive change, a solutions focus approach to people problems explores what works in a given situation and aims do more of it. The Solutions Focus is the definitive guide to this revolutionary yet practical alternative to conventional wisdom. It demonstrates how the unique SIMPLE method of working sidesteps the search for the causes of trouble and heads directly for the solution. Today national solutions focus associations around the world from Sweden to Australia, base their training on the methods explained here.

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.

Today, organizations are grappling with ambiguity, volatility, and paradox surrounding the challenges they face. This is complexity. But too many leaders approach complexity the wrong way - they push their people harder and harder and tackle problems one at a time over months, sometimes even years and nearly always in a linear fashion. It’s like setting a pot of water on “low” and waiting for it to boil. In this book, the authors share their proven formula for dramatically shortening the process and solving an organization’s toughest challenges in mere days.

Based on his work at some of the world's largest companies, including Ford, Adidas, and Chanel, Christian Madsbjerg's Sensemaking is a provocative stand against the tyranny of big data and scientism, and an urgent, overdue defense of human intelligence. Christian Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings.

Tired of making decisions that seem to only work against you? It starts with understanding your brain and the decision-making process. Cognitive biases and heuristics have developed over thousands of years of evolution and can lead to serious damages in multiple areas of life if you don’t recognize them and stop them dead in their tracks. How Our Brains Betray Us has everything you need to know with examples, tools, and strategies to identify the most powerful cognitive biases that impair all types of decisions, how to avoid them and also use them to your advantage.

In this life-changing book, you’ll discover Noah’s iconic 7-Figure Life Formula that enables his coaching clients to make more in just 12 weeks than they did in the previous 12 months, while winning back 1-3 hours per day and 4-8 weeks per year.

Our personal experience is key to who we are and what we do. We judge others by their experience and are judged by ours. Society venerates experience. From doctors to teachers to managers to presidents, the more experience the better. It's not surprising then, that we often fall back on experience when making decisions, an easy way to make judgements about the future, a constant teacher that provides clear lessons. Yet, this intuitive reliance on experience is misplaced.

Edited by John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, Thinking presents original ideas by today's leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who are radically expanding our understanding of human thought.

Beyond Integrity offers a balanced approach to a number of concrete ethical issues. Readings from a wide range of sources present competing perspectives on each issue, and real-life case studies further help the listener grapple with ethical dilemmas. The authors want to help the listener arrive at his or her own conclusions. To this end, they provide a decision-making model. They also present, in addition to several views on each topic, a distinctly Christian perspective on each issue under discussion.

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.

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.

The Five Tool Negotiator stands apart in a category saturated with breezy, self-help volumes as a highly researched must-have for anyone looking to improve their bargaining skills. Nationally renowned UCLA law professor Russell Korobkin distills insights drawn from his decades of studying and teaching the keys to successful negotiations into five simple-yet-sophisticated strategies: Bargaining Zone Analysis, Persuasion, Deal Design, Power, and Fairness Norms.

Success coach Dr. Tim Ursiny shows us that conflict can be a good thing, and facing up to it can lead to fantastic results. Interactive exercises will coach and motivate you to effectively deal with all types of conflict situations, with results that empower and really work!

If a leader creates negativity or makes wrong decisions, it always comes back in some shape or form. The Science of Protection is a six-step journey that helps ensure your achievement is based on the firm and universal foundation of protection, which helps protect you and your progress without suffering.

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to.

CEO, executive wellness coach, and thought leader Naz Beheshti distills the most valuable lessons she learned from her first boss and mentor, Steve Jobs, into a holistic method to live your best life. Presenting the highly effective framework that Beheshti has used with clients for over a decade, this book empowers you to fulfill your highest business, personal, and social potential.

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives. In The Random Factor, Mark Robert Rank draws from a wealth of evidence, including interviews and research, to explain how luck and chance play out and reveals how we can use these lessons to guide our personal lives and public policies.