Management Problem Solving

A major investor is on line one, CNN is on line two, and social media is exploding in anger. When you're a "leader under fire", the next few moments can be an incredible opportunity...or they can destroy your career. In the past, companies prepared for crisis with expensive, static crisis communications plans. The pace was slower. You had time to process and plan a response with your senior team and lawyers. But those old-school plans don't work anymore.

Why do some companies consistently win in the consumer and capital markets while others struggle from crisis to crisis?The answer, says Noel Tichy, is that winning companies possess a "Leadership Engine" - a proven system for creating dynamic leaders at every level. To get ahead and stay ahead, a company needs agile, flexible, innovative leaders who can anticipate change and turn on a dime. Fortunately, says Tichy, just as everyone has untapped athletic potential, everyone has untapped leadership potential that can be developed.

What do the Dyson vacuum cleaner, Starbucks, Instagram, GoPro, Facebook, and Lululemon yoga pants have in common? Every one of them was the result not of data-driven analytics or corporate brainstorming sessions but a hunch - the intuitive understanding of a deep unmet need. Anxiety over "being more innovative" leads entrepreneurs to create solutions in search of problems. But what if you could use your intuition to identify an existing problem that's begging for a solution?

What makes a successful business? How can we work most effectively as a team? What are the keys to being a great leader? Best-selling authors Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge address these questions in Working with Presence. From the importance of harmonized thinking to the role that tacit knowledge plays in every organization, they discuss how companies can transform themselves into learning organizations.

Through the exploration of robust cases and stories packed with deep insight and vital science, this extraordinary collection explores how we can adapt our notions of value, markets, and models of cooperation and collective action to create a world where economies and businesses excel, all people thrive, and nature flourishes.

No one understands better than Joseph Michelli how businesses create and leverage world-class customer experiences. In The Airbnb Way, he shows how innovative leaders have managed to build an unique brand by inspiring and engaging a community of hospitality entrepreneurs - a feat unparalleled in the shared economy.

Written for leaders, aspiring leaders, and anyone who makes a difference in the lives of others, author and leadership expert Tim Irwin, PhD, examines how failures of character common to even the most capable individuals—including deficits in authenticity, humility, self-management, and courage—repeatedly lead to downfall.

With magazines such as Computerworld, PCWorld, and Macworld, Patrick McGovern's company, International Data Group (IDG), quickly became a global powerhouse with information technology publications in nearly 100 countries. The story of IDG's astonishing success has been a source of inspiration for entrepreneurs all around the world. Future Forward shows you how to apply McGovern's principles to your own organization.

Curating your life means selecting those activities that are most important, meaningful, and joyful for you and fiercely focusing your energy on those endeavors. It also means putting a whole bunch of stuff in the back room, to be reconsidered at another time. Curating your life means sorting your activities into three categories: the things you are not going to do, at least not right now; the things you will be mediocre at; the things you will be great at. This is not simple. But the payoff is amazing. Living a well-curated life is doable.

In Solving Your Money Problems, Pastor David Crank simplifies the scary and unleashes the new of way of thinking about money. Teaching the nuts and bolts of finances, he outlines easy and accessible ways to budget, eliminate debt, increase savings, and give generously.

Creativity, new ideas, innovation - in any age they are keys to success. Yet, as Stanford Professor Robert Sutton explains, the standard rules of business behaviour and management are precisely the opposite of what it takes to build an innovative company. We are told to hire people who will fit in; to train them extensively; and to work to instil a corporate culture in every employee. In fact, in order to foster creativity, we should hire misfits, goad them to fight and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture.

One of the nation's leading psychologists asks why today's corporate leaders desire but reject creative solutions - and finds some surprising conclusions.

Work With Me is the timely collaboration of two of the world's foremost authorities on gender relations. Barbara Annis, world-renowned expert on gender issues in the workplace, and John Gray, author of the number-one relationship book of all time, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, team up to resolve the most stressful and confusing challenges facing men and women at work.

This book will help you to navigate conflict and make better decisions. As author Christi Scarrow points out, all of us have the opportunity to make decisions that count, whether in our professional or personal lives. To do so, we must become what Scarrow calls “Truth Warriors”. We must believe in ourselves, yet question our most firmly held assumptions and beliefs. We must know when to speak up and when to be quiet. In the end, says Scarrow, “making better decisions is about making your voice about our voice and your truth about our truth. Only then can we change the world.”

It has never been harder to see what's happening around us, interpret information efficiently, and develop strategies that are executed in a successful way. This is partly down to the speed of change and also down to the mindset about change that is common amongst large and small companies. To them, change is seen as the enemy. This book proposes a role reversal and gives people a brand new methodology as a practical guide in how to use change as a fueling mechanism to generate outstanding business success.

For decades, Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn have championed simplicity as a competitive advantage and a consumer right. Consulting with businesses and organizations around the world to streamline products, services, processes and communications, they have achieved dramatic results.

Hailed as "the female Jerry Maguire" by CNN, sports-agent-turned-entrepreneur Molly Fletcher reveals the winning secrets of fearless world-class achievers. Molly Fletcher knows a thing or two about making trades. As a sports agent, she's negotiated on behalf of champions such as Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz and seven-time PGA TOUR winner Matt Kuchar. As a top-tier speaker and consultant, she's helped energize companies worldwide.

Everybody hates meetings. And why shouldn't they? Most meetings are poorly led, counterproductive, and time-wasting. Based on decades of practice and research, best-selling authors Weisbord and Janoff have come to the conclusion that most people lead meetings incorrectly. They, instead, propose 10 contrarian principles that actually get things done.

A New York Times best-selling author reveals how to find the right words for every situation. Whether you are making a budget request, interviewing for a job, ending a relationship, or talking to children about divorce, the crux of success in those and other crucial situations is planned, effective communication.

Most problems are fairly easy: they have a few likely potential root causes. The most important problems often have hundreds or thousands of potential root causes within very complex systems. Such problems are hard problems, and are highly resistant to guessing, brainstorming, or problem-solving methodologies that require conjuring a list of possible causes. Great problem-solvers are armed with a set of behaviors that allows them to avoid guessing.