Career Strategy

Planning a Profitable Business for Dummies explains how to build a business with profit in mind, using smart pricing techniques and clear-eyed strategic planning. Whether you're just getting started in business or still recovering from lockdown losses, this book points to where extra profits might lie.

More than 20 years ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the balanced scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the balanced scorecard into action.

We all know a visionary leader when we see one. They're bold and prophetic and at the same time pragmatic. They don't just promote change - they drive it, while inspiring and mobilizing others to do the same. Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos possess a host of innate qualities that make them extraordinary, but what truly sets them apart is their ability to turn vision into action. Here, Innosight's Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz introduce a new way of thinking and managing, called "future-back", that enables any manager to become a practical visionary.

Jeff Bezos is a dreamer who turned a bold idea into the world’s most influential company, a brand that likely touches your life every day. As a student of leadership and communication, he learned to elevate the way Amazonians write, collaborate, innovate, pitch, and present. He created a scalable model that grew from a small team in a Seattle garage to one of the world’s largest employers. The Bezos Blueprint by Carmine Gallo reveals the communication strategies that Jeff Bezos pioneered to fuel Amazon’s astonishing growth.

Do the leaders in your company work together towards a common goal? Do they trust one another? Are they accountable not only individually but as a team? These are just a few traits found in community-minded leaders, the kind of leaders essential to grow your organization. With his new book, Community of Leaders, New York Times bestselling author Vince Molinaro breaks down why having a strong leadership culture in your organization is critical, how to build it, and how to sustain it for long term success.

Construction Genius logically breaks down complex concepts into small components so any construction leader understands how to be more effective. Construction Genius covers topics as broad as how to structure a meeting so you reach an agreement on how to solve problems every time, to how to have tough conversations without ruining relationships, to how to build better teams that deliver profitable projects . . . and the one question that will save you $1 million, guaranteed.

Born over 2,400 years ago, warrior, thinker, and leader Sun Tzu lived during a time of great internecine conflict in China. A classic of Chinese literature, Art of War reveals the strategies, tactics, and insights that lead to success. Mastery of warfare and the maintenance of power are the most important values in Sun's philosophy, without which there can be no peace or life.

The HBR Guide to Leading Through Change provides the practical tips, research, stories, and advice you need to understand, communicate, and implement change effectively, no matter the size or scale of the challenge you're facing. You'll learn how to improve your odds of success; communicate a shared vision; keep going, even amid lags and setbacks; deal with naysayers and roadblocks; build trust and resilience on your team; and make a lasting impact.

A lean strategy is about gaining a competitive edge by offering better quality products at competitive prices and making a sustainable profit by eliminating waste through engaging employees in discovering deeper ways to think about their own jobs and smarter ways of working together. In its current form, lean has been radically effective, but its true powers have yet to be harnessed. The Lean Strategy harnesses that power and delivers a new way of creating value from lean.

If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female. If the business world had a sex, it would be male. And therein lies the pickle. Women are the engine of the global economy, driving nearly 80 percent of consumer household spending in the United States alone. They hold the purse strings, and when they've got a tight grip on them as they do now, companies must be shrewder than ever to win them over.

Businesses, organizations and society-at-large are all subject to unforeseeable events and incidents that often have a dramatic impact upon prosperity and profit. Due to their unpredictable nature, business leaders and executive teams are unable to prepare for these specific events. But, through innovation, strategizing and an open-minded approach, they can restructure their organization and practices in order to mitigate (or even take advantage of) the impact of such events.

Bestselling author and futurist Mark Schaefer explains why community is a vastly overlooked marketing opportunity for most organizations. He explains how three major trends are colliding in a way that makes brand communities the future of marketing strategy.

If leaders aren't integrating their digital offerings into a philosophy of customer success, they will be defeated in the next decade because technical excellence and other traditional competitive advantages are becoming too easy to imitate. The Customer Success Economy offers examples and specifics of how companies can transform. It addresses the pains of transforming organizational charts, leadership roles, responsibilities, and strategies so the whole company works together in total service to the customer.

The Shibumi Strategy is a little book about a big breakthrough. It tells the story of a hardworking family man who finds himself in crisis when his company closes. Through his struggle, and guidance from unlikely sources, he learns subtle lessons in the form of "personal zen" principles, coming to understand that it is often the involuntary challenge, the setbacks, that harbor the power to transform. When approached as an opportunity - no easy task when simple survival is the first order of business - unforeseen trials can sometimes result in an altogether new lease on life.

Struggling with social media marketing for business? Feeling overwhelmed or don't even know where to begin? This is the book for you! 500 Social Media Marketing Tips is your complete guide to social media success for business, featuring hundreds of the actionable strategies for success on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, and more!

Managing complex projects can stretch you to the limits. But with a book full of experts coaching you each step of the way, you'll never be baffled, blocked, or misdirected again. Packed with essays and insights from the field's top professionals, The AMA Handbook of Project Management is the resource professionals and students rely on for its practical guidance and big picture overview of the entire field. Whether you need advice keeping projects on track or help preparing for certification, this new edition explains every principle, process, and development.

This all-time classic is still perhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world, as eagerly studied in Asia by modern politicians and executives as it has been by military leaders since ancient times. As a study of the anatomy of organizations in conflict, The Art of War applies to competition and conflict in general, on every level from the interpersonal to the international. Its aim is invincibility, victory without battle, and unassailable strength through understanding the physics, politics, and psychology of conflict.

Objectives and Key Results is the first full-fledged reference guide on Objectives and Key Results, a critical-thinking framework designed to help organizations create value through focus, alignment, and better communication. Written by two leading OKRs consultants and researchers, this audiobook provides a one-stop resource for organizations looking to quantify qualitative goals. You'll learn how OKRs came to be and how leading companies use them every day to help teams and employees stretch their thinking about what's possible.

Whether you're marketing innovative technological products or managing the people who do, this guide will help you maximize your company's success and profits. Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm explained the gap in the "Technology Adoption Life Cycle" products must cross before reaching the mainstream market.

Algorithms, machine learning, generative AI. With the latest advancements in technology, data is taking center stage in organizations. But without a clear plan for how you're storing, integrating, and gaining value from that information, your company will be at risk—and fall behind. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on setting a data strategy in your organization, listen to these ten articles.