Leadership Problems

Talking to people about your designs might seem like a basic skill, but it can be difficult to do well. In many cases, how you communicate with stakeholders, clients, and other non-designers may be more important than the designs themselves. Because if you can't get their support, your work will never see the light of day - no matter how good it is. This practical guide focuses on principles, tactics, and actionable methods for presenting your designs.

With The Essential Deming, Fordham University professor and Deming expert Joyce Orsini draws on a wealth of previously unavailable material to present the legendary thinker's most important management principles in one indispensable volume. The book is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming's overriding message: Quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has to be designed so that the worker can perform well.

Snipers are exceptional. The trained sniper is a complex fusion of hard skills such as weapons knowledge, situational awareness, knowledge of ballistics and physics, and soft skills such as emotional stability, empathy, and a stoic acceptance of the hardships associated with a particular set of circumstances. There are countless instances where a single sniper, embarking on a secret mission, would have to improvise, operate beyond any hope of support, and yet still manage to carry out the mission and get back home unharmed.

“Coaches rely far too much on asking open-ended questions,” says Marcia Reynolds. But questions only seek answers — inquiry provides insight. When, instead of just questions, clients hear their thoughts, opinions, and beliefs spoken by someone else, it prompts them to critically consider how their thinking affects their goals. Reynolds cites the latest brain science to show why reflective inquiry works and provides techniques, tips, and structures for creating breakthrough conversations.

In his latest engrossing work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings. And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary.

Using stories from his time at Netscape, Apple, and Slack, Michael Lopp presents a series of small but compelling practices to help you build leadership skills. You’ll learn how to create teams that are highly productive, highly respected, and highly trusted. The essays in this book examine the practical skills Lopp learned from exceptional leaders - as a manager at Netscape, a senior manager and director at Apple, and an executive at Slack. You’ll learn how to apply these lessons to your own experience.

Managing the Unexpected, third edition, is a thoroughly revised text that offers an updated look at the groundbreaking ideas explored in the first and second editions. Revised to reflect events emblematic of the unique challenges that organizations have faced in recent years, including bank failures, intelligence failures, quality failures, and other organizational misfortunes, often sparked by organizational actions, this critical book focuses on why some organizations are better able to sustain high performance in the face of unanticipated change.

Whether you're a chronic second-guesser or just eager for new ways to look at your world, Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler will teach you how to improve your understanding of the dilemmas you face and how to make better decisions every day. Taught in MBA courses and elsewhere, The Decision Book contains classics like the Swiss cheese model for reviewing mistakes and the personal performance model for testing whether or not to switch jobs. This revised edition includes a model for identifying cognitive biases and the expectation model to help you choose a life partner.

As the cofounder of Waze—the world's leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date, and which Google acquired in 2013 for $1.15 billion—Levine is committed to spreading entrepreneurial thinking so that other founders, managers, and employees in the tech space can build their own highly valued companies. Levine offers an inside look at the creation and sale of Waze and his second unicorn, Moovit, revealing the formula that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike.

With Peter Drucker's five essential questions and the help of five of today's thought leaders, this little book will challenge readers to take a close look at the very heart of their organizations and what drives them. A tool for self-assessment and transformation, answering these five questions will fundamentally change the way you work, helping you lead your organization to an exceptional level of performance.

How to Stop Yourself Before You Make Another Costly Decision - No one intentionally makes bad decisions. Yet we make them all the time. In fact, some of the worst disasters in recent history - the collapse of major investment banks, the global financial meltdown - were the result of seemingly reasonable decisions made by a lot of smart people. How does this happen? Michael J. Mauboussin argues that the correct process for deciding well - especially when the stakes are high - conflicts with how our minds naturally work.

Have you ever come up with an idea for a new product or service, but didn't take any action because you thought it would be too risky? Or at work, have you had what you thought could be a big idea for your company - perhaps changing the way you develop or distribute a product, provide customer service, or hire and train your employees? If you have, but you haven't known how to take the next step, you need to understand what the authors call the innovator's method.

A practical four-step methodology for any leader or manager facing a tough choice, and for creating integrative solutions to big, complex, and pressing problems. Stimulating and practical, Creating Great Choices blends storytelling, theory, and hands-on advice to help any leader or manager facing a tough choice.

Christian leaders face challenges. But God works with us and through us to accomplish his purposes. Available here for the first time in English is John Stott's practical wisdom for younger leaders. Speaking personally from his own experience, Stott addresses issues of discouragement, self-discipline, relationships and youth.

The Theory of Constraints (TOC) has been successfully applied in almost every area of human endeavor. And while Eli Goldratt is indeed a scientist, an educator and a business leader, he is first and foremost a philosopher. He is a thinker who provokes others to do the same. Dr. Goldratt exhorts his readers to examine and reassess their lives and business practices by cultivating a different perspective. In his latest book, The Choice, Goldratt once again presents his thought provoking approach.

"New Ideas for Old Problems: A Human Performance Approach to Sustainable Change" focus is on applying innovative ideas to long-standing challenges in safety and operational reliability, emphasizing the importance of Human Performance in making meaningful and lasting changes.

In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help listeners tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide listeners through each step in the process.

The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to "think outside the box": to brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but it’s a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), a method that systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. SIT requires thinking "inside the box", working in one’s familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems.

It can be messy and overwhelming to figure out how to solve thorny problems. Where do you start? How do you know where to look for information and evaluate its quality and bias? How can you feel confident that you are making a careful and thoroughly researched decision? Whether you are deciding between colleges, navigating a career decision, helping your aging parents find the right housing, or expanding your business, Problem Solved will show you how to use the AREA Method to make complex decisions.

Scott knows firsthand what it’s like to go from out-of-touch boss to team-growing leader. In Management Mess to Leadership Success, you’ll find 30 leadership challenges, honed by FranklinCovey through years of research, instructional programs, and executive consultancy, and illustrated with real-life experiences shared by someone who’s lived these challenges.