Leadership Problems

Good problem-solving skills are not something you're born with.... They’re something you can master. If your struggle is not coming up with solutions, but coming up with the best solution, look no further.

Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, the school teacher next door who amassed a million-dollar fortune.... Did these people succeed because they were more motivated or because they were more disciplined? The answer to both questions is yes - but not in the ways you might think. Anyone can achieve extraordinary things. The secret is setting goals that test the very limits of your abilities. In Hard Goals, Mark Murphy, the acclaimed author of Hundred Percenters, explains the science behind getting from where you are to where you want to be in your career, business, and life.

What does our desire for certainty and control have to do with our decision-making? According to behavioral economics pioneer Peter Atwater, the answer is simple: everything. In The Confidence Map, Atwater explores the hidden role of confidence in the choices we make, and why events described as being unprecedented are often entirely predictable—if we know what to look for. Using compelling stories from the past and present, Atwater shows listeners how to apply the same tools he teaches to help them make sense of complex situations and optimize strategy.

Self-made millionaire Harvey Mackay knows about life at the top--and knows what it takes to stay there. Now, he tells you how to get there too, with dozens of common-sense lessons from all walks of life. Whether you're selling, managing, or punching the clock, you'll find the questions and the answers you need to questions like: Do you do what you love? (The Mackay self-inventory test will help you find out.); Do you love what you do? Do you deliver more than you promise?

Despite all the effort through the years to understand what it takes to be an effective leader, the challenges of leadership remain enormously difficult and elusive. Drawing on the distilled wisdom, stories and lessons from hundreds of chief executives to show how every aspiring leader can master these challenges and lead like a CEO, The CEO Test is the authoritative, no-nonsense insider's guide to navigating leadership's toughest challenges, brought to you by authors uniquely qualified to tell the stories.

If you read (or listen to) nothing else on inspiring and executing innovation, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you innovate effectively.

Much of our business thinking is shaped by delusions that distort our understanding of the real reasons for a company's performance. The most pervasive delusion is the Halo Effect. When a company's sales and profits are up, people often conclude that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary leader, capable employees, and a superb corporate culture. When performance falters, they conclude the opposite. In fact, little may have changed.

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.

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.

This comprehensive guide to training your brain to do more for you presents a pragmatic set of tools to apply critical-thinking techniques to everyday business issues. Think Smarter is filled with real-world examples that demonstrate how the tools work in action, in addition to dozens of practice exercises applicable across industries and functions. Think Smarter is a versatile resource for individuals, managers, students, and corporate-training programs.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization's products or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

In Bet on You, Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch reveal hard-earned, real-world insights that will help you realize your potential by enacting risk in ways most meaningful to you. The author’s risk-taking guidance has been embraced by the world’s best businesses: Google, Boston Scientific, FedEx, and Oracle. Their insights are the secret sauce behind any transformative journey to a success-filled life.

Are you a good boss - or a great one? Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing People (Vol. 2). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you master the innumerable challenges of being a manager.

For creators, getting that promotion to management is exciting but can also be scary. The skills that made them so successful may not translate to the skill required to be a great manager, and this gets even more complicated when managing other creatives who often don’t thrive under traditional management procedures. Creative Directions is a management masterclass in which you attend lectures and seminars as you learn from some of the best in the business.

Drawing on the latest research in social psychology, Dr Connson Chou Locke will look at why we are prone to miscommunicate and how to overcome these barriers. This practical guide, based on her hugely popular Guardian Masterclass, will help you hone your personal style and enhance your presence and influence with ease.

Decision Making for Dummies is a candid resource that helps leaders understand the impact of their choices, not only on business, but also on their credibility and reputation. Designed for managers, business owners, and anyone else who makes tough decisions on a daily basis, this guide helps you figure out if the decisions you're making are the right ones.

The availability of big data, low-cost commodity hardware, and new information management and analytics software has produced a unique moment in the history of business. The convergence of these trends means that we have the capabilities required to analyze astonishing data sets quickly and cost-effectively for the first time in history. These capabilities are neither theoretical nor trivial. They represent a genuine leap forward and a clear opportunity to realize enormous gains in terms of efficiency, productivity, revenue and profitability.

Are you a Simplifier or a Multiplier? Every great entrepreneur is primarily one or the other, and identifying which you are adds deeper insight and meaning to the way you instinctively create value. Once you know who you are, you can find the perfect collaborator: your opposite. Simplier-Multiplier collaborations lead to unprecedented breakthroughs and results, and give you the freedom to focus exclusively on what you do best.

Enjoy figuring out creative solutions to real-world problems that have led to important inventions, discoveries, and innovations throughout history! The problems in this audiobook are related to erudition in fundamental areas - nature, technology, business, science, how things work, or why things are made in a certain way. But, unlike in trivia or jeopardy, you most probably do not know the answer. Instead, logic, out-of-the-box thinking, or intuition leap should be added to your knowledge to puzzle out the correct solution.

The biggest threat facing modern business is the sheer complexity of an uncertain future. That, and the fact that everyone is busy. Too busy for progress. Workplace cultures have become cursed with efficiency. And so when it comes to developing strategy, we default to our defaults. We favor quick fixes, easy templates, and familiar approaches, developing 'robust plans' that do little to mitigate strategic risk or generate new value. The result? The future comes, and businesses die.