Business Problem Solving

Speed has gotten a bad name in business, much of it deserved. When Facebook made "Move fast and break things" an informal company motto, it fueled a widely held belief that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. That a certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for inventing the future. Leadership experts Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that this belief is deeply flawed—and that it keeps you from building a great company.

The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand. This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world.

Research and experience demonstrate two areas with which many new managers are completely unfamiliar: delegating tasks and work and making decisions. Some struggle with this for years. But it doesn't have to be hard. 151 Quick Ideas for Delegating and Decision Making combines 50 years' experience of two managers and the experiences of other managers who have been interviewed and observed. And even if you are already in a supervisory position, this book can help you do a more effective and efficient job at managing people and tasks.

Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York's skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.

Written by the former Executive Creative Director of Creations at Cirque du Soleil, this audiobook shows you how to step up your game, flex your creativity, and make big things happen. Whether you work independently or as part of a team, whether you're self-employed or part of an organization, and even if you think creativity isn't a part of the work that you do - this book gives you the perspective, courage, and kick-start you need to think differently about the things you do every day.

This audiobook comes from the dynamic team of award-winning educator Carl Spetzler and his colleagues, Hannah Winter and Jennifer Meyer. This trio has helped shape the decision quality profession over the years - in the field and in the classroom. They've also worked with leaders around the world, across industries, to elevate the quality of their decisions. That same expertise is now available to you.

What if the process of turning raw data into meaningful insights didn't have to be so painful, time-consuming, and frustrating? What if there were a better way to do analytics? Fortunately, you're in luck. Analytics: The Agile Way demonstrates how progressive organizations such as Google, Nextdoor, and others approach analytics in a fundamentally different way. They are applying the same Agile techniques that software developers have employed for years. They have replaced large batches in favor of smaller ones, and their results will astonish you.

I wrote this book to help you respond to anyone who tries to engage you with hostile emails, texts, Facebook postings, vicious rumors, or just plain difficult behavior. But before I explain how to write a BIFF response, I want to give you a brief understanding of how HCPs think.

The HBR Guide to Collaborative Teams provides practical tips and advice to help you collaborate more effectively. Whether you're leading your own direct reports or building a talented group from disparate parts of your organization, you'll discover how to align others' goals and skills so you can solve problems as a team and deliver great results.

Howard Marks, the chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management, is renowned for his insightful assessments of market opportunity and risk. After four decades spent ascending to the top of the investment management profession, he is today sought out by the world's leading value investors, and his client memos brim with insightful commentary and a time-tested, fundamental philosophy. The Most Important Thing explains the keys to successful investment and the pitfalls that can destroy capital or ruin a career.

For more than 40 years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside.

In Quit, Duke teaches you how to get good at quitting. Drawing on stories from elite athletes like Mount Everest climbers, founders of leading companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and top entertainers like Dave Chappelle, Duke explains why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em, that will save you time, energy, and money.

Change comes most readily when you understand what's standing between you and success and tailor your solution to that roadblock. If you want to work out more but find exercise difficult and boring, downloading a goal-setting app probably won't help. But what if, instead, you transformed your workouts so they became a source of pleasure instead of a chore? Turning an uphill battle into a downhill one is the key to success.

Best-selling author and scholar Michael Roberto presents a thorough investigation of organizational obstacles to creative thought. Highly relevant to the growth crises many enterprises face in today's economic landscape, this book examines how to break barriers to spark creativity and foster new ideas.

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.

The meteoric rise of Johnny Wimbrey is one of the great rags-to-riches/tragedy-to-triumph tales of our time. By seizing control of his life and developing a brand-new mindset, Wimbrey gave up the hardcore streets and a world of drugs, created a business that's now worth more than nine figures, and is presently living the life of a multimillionaire with his family. Now, in Building a Millionaire Mindset, he provides the knowledge, tools, and insights you need to achieve your dreams - life-changing advice you can take to the bank.

The ability to make sound and timely decisions is the mark of a good leader. But when leaders with otherwise strong track records suddenly begin making poor decisions - as seen in the recent corporate scandals that rocked the business world - the impact can be widespread. In The Stress Effect, leadership expert Henry L. Thompson argues that stress is often the real culprit behind this leadership failure.

Every year, managers at companies large and small are finding it harder to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are stealing their customers and cornering every conceivable market and service. There is, however, a way for companies to survive - and win - in this era of digital behemoths. Choose Your Customer is a powerful customer-targeted guide that can help managers level the playing field against their biggest competitors.

Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell show how the usually beneficial processes of the human mind can become traps when we face big decisions. The authors show how the shortcuts our brains have learned to take over millennia of evolution can derail our decision making. Think Again offers a powerful model for making better decisions, describing the key red flags to watch for and detailing the decision-making safeguards we need.

What do you do when you're faced with a big decision? If you're like most people, you probably make a pro and con list, spend a lot of time obsessing about decisions that didn't work out, get caught in analysis paralysis, endlessly seek other people's opinions to find just that little bit of extra information that might make you sure, and finally go with your gut.