""Top Teaming is about the conversations and practices that extraordinary leaders and their teams have that differentiate them from usual "high-performing" teams, and make them exceptional, high-caliber Top Teams. Simply put, it is about how good teams get even better to become great teams in an increasingly complex world.""

-Marshall Goldsmith

In today's complex and volatile world, the importance of building executive teams that understand how to manage the "Now, the New, and the Next" is perhaps the most important criterion in achieving both operational success and strategic advantage.

This guidebook is written from the viewpoint of an experienced practitioner-someone who has been a trusted advisor to CEOs and executive leadership teams for twenty years across a wide range of industries and geographies. Larry understands how great leaders develop and thus develop their Top Teams. Profit from Levin's experience and learn:

how to harness the "power of a collective future" how to create "trust over peace" to address the issues that matter most how to drive the "fierce urgency of now" how to navigate the critical intersections in any organization how to build key teams 1-3 levels down how to move beyond classical "high performing teams" to become a Top Team

By learning from the case studies and insights in Top Teaming, you'll drive the alignment, collective intelligence, and focus needed to influence your company's direction, mindset, and performance.

Whether you're seeking to make a struggling team good or a good team great, you'll find the guidance you need in "Top Teaming: A Roadmap for Leadership Teams Navigating the Now, the New, and the Next. "

The most significant obstacle to teams achieving breakthrough results is the inability of people to believe that achieving the breakthrough results is possible. The most significant failure of a leader is letting them get away with that attitude. This author is convinced that unless the leader clearly, unequivocally, and passionately, makes the statement that the organizational culture will be one in which breakthrough thinking will be the only acceptable standard, the organization will never take on that attitude and exhibit the behaviors necessary to drive breakthrough results. Moreover, if the leader fails to get other leaders in the organization to firmly believe and support a breakthrough thinking environment, and not just talk about it, then the concept of breakthrough will be unsuccessful. Without the leader's relentless commitment, it will become the management "buzz-word" of the month, doomed to meet the same fate that so many other management fads have. Breakthrough thinking is more than that. It is real. The results that can be achieved are real, and anyone who says it can't be done in our organization because our processes or products are "different," is wrong. Breakthrough Thinking is not about products or processes. It's about leader's behaviors and the environment they create. It is also about the team member's attitudes, beliefs, and the behaviors that result from these.

Presenting a clear and instructive toolkit for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students to successfully understand and analyse foreign operation methods, this revised second edition brings up to date its unparalleled coverage with new theoretical and empirical research and the latest company case material. As experts in the field, the authors share their wealth of international knowledge to give the book a strong cross-cultural appeal. New to this edition:? an extended analysis using new and relevant case studies for students to explore foreign operation methods in the full range of small, large and multinational firms updated strategic analyses of emerging concerns, such as mode combination, flexibility and development over time a thorough overview of theoretical perspectives to encourage better understanding of the 'why, what and how' of mode decisions an updated mode strategy section which allows you to challenge existing perspectives and research. Influenced by the needs of the next generation of international business, management and marketing students, this second edition provides the most comprehensive coverage of foreign operation methods in current literature, and will be an excellent introduction to the nature and range of mode options available to companies as they internationalise.

The volume is based on the presentations and discussions from the Fifth European Conference on Management Consulting sponsored by the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management, which took place June, 2011 at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The conference theme - Exploring the Professional Identity of Management Consultants - attempted to capture the highly ambiguous social status of this young and emerging profession. Management consulting does not have professional standards or accreditation criteria like those found in medicine or law, there are low barriers to entry, and a broad range of tasks are undertaken in the name of consulting. As a result, a crucial aspect of what constitutes such a loosely defined profession is the identity of its members. The professional identity of management consultants is continuously developing through the interplay of how consultants are seen and valued by clients as well as in the larger society, and how consultancy firms and consultants identify and position themselves. This theme includes a variety of topics, ranging from the interaction between consultants and their clients, consultant rhetoric and self-presentation, and the plethora of books, media and public discourse on consulting, to human resource policies and practices, knowledge development activities of consultancy firms, career and life stories of consultants and consultancies, and consulting associations, accreditation bodies, and education programs. All of these factors contribute, either directly or indirectly, to identity construction in the field of management consulting.

'A very valuable resource for busy leaders to dip in and out of as time allows.' - Dr Mark Pegg, Chief Executive, Leadership Foundation for Higher Education 'Clear and concise with great anecdotes and oozing with experience.' -Dr K. D. Akabusi, MBE, MA, FPSA, Executive Director, The Akabusi Company Coaching, motivating, team building and influencing are all essential tools for getting the most out of the people around you. Commonly described as 'soft skills', there's nothing soft about the impact they will have on your business performance. This book is your toolkit for managing yourself, facilitating team performance and surviving and thriving in times of change. Step up your management skills now to get the business results you need.

The advertised benefits and those being touted from numerous Lean factories today are just too great to ignore. Not only can companies save time and money and increase market share, but they can achieve product differentiation from their competitors, which is the single best reason for implementing Lean. Applied Lean Business Transformation was written for manufacturers who have taken the initiative to implement a Lean operating system but haven't achieved the expected results, and for those convinced of the benefits of Lean but don't know how to go about achieving a successful Lean transformation. Often, fear of a new system causes a guarded, conservative, safe, minimum-to-low risk approach to be taken. An approach to business transformation so safe that no traditional systems are challenged will no doubt result in few benefits being achieved. This valuable guide is presented in three parts. Part One explains the decision-making process for determining whether a Lean business transformation is a good solution for your enterprise. Part Two explains the mechanics of the Lean transformation process. Part Three discusses the need to change goals to support the Lean operating system with new performance measurements to re-enforce Lean throughout the enterprise. This unique book also includes the means for estimating realistic operational benefits, return on investment, and potential increased product or service market share. - Presents a set of business tools for mathematically determining whether a transformation to a Lean operating system would be a good financial decision for your organization. - Provides a functional set of tools for designing, maintaining, improving, and operating a Lean system, and objectively deriving and reporting results. - Describes how to redesign service, transactional, and administrative processes into multi-process cells to complete tasks in the sum of their work content time, and how to start and operate a Lean line on a daily basis. - Explains how traditional planning methods and goals must be modified to work in concert with a Lean operating system. - WAV offers downloadable standard work and operation definition templates, a Lean line control board, a line start-up checklist, and other aids - available from the Web Added Value (TM) Download Resource Center at www.jrosspub.com

Das Unternehmen des Informationszeitalters muss vom Kundenprozess ausgehen, die Starken verschiedener Online- und Offline-Absatzkanale kombinieren und Echzeit-Prozesse mit seinen Supply-Chain-Partnern organisieren. Um zum Netzwerk- oder Echtzeit-Unternehmen zu werden, ist ein Vorgehen in kleinen, wohluberlegten Schritten erfolgversprechender als "der grosse Wurf." Jeder Schritt benotigt eine Geschaftslosung, einen Kooperationsprozess zwischen Unternehmen und eine offene Infrastruktur. Dazu hat die Universitat St. Gallen gemeinsam mit neun namhaften Unternehmen eine Architektur erarbeitet, die eine Ausgestaltung der Schritte auf den Ebenen Strategie, Prozess und System unterstutzt. Anhand dieser Architektur werden verschiedene marktgangige Produkte und Technologien eingeordnet. Eine aus der Praxis abgeleitete Projektmethode fasst abschliessend die Erfahrungen zusammen und schlagt ein allgemeines Vorgehen vo

Dr. Brown's thesis not only makes sense, but his identification of the "sense-making" processes that yield strategic decisions is profound, and it can be used both internally as a planning approach, and as a tool for competitive analysis. And he has the research to back up his insights. STS is truly an operating system for 21st century business. Jonathan Salem Baskin, author, Tell The Truth: Honesty is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool, & Branding Only Works on Cattle Dr. Brown has accomplished a rare feat with his book-he has taken the overused and often misunderstood notion of organizational strategy and provided a clear and practical definition coupled with a pragmatic model grounded in systems thinking that offers a potential roadmap for firms to better leverage their organic capabilities and gain a competitive advantage in the business landscape. The book reads well and can be readily utilized by planners and leaders in today's workplace. Tim Goodly, PhD Senior Vice President Human Resources Fortune 100 Company Dr. Brown provides a very insightful analysis of what it takes to formulate a successful organizational strategy that ensures sustainable competitive advantage. The cornerstone of his reasoning is that much like other systems, strategy should take into consideration competitive, capabilities, and customer focused approaches toward strategy making and that can be only be fully realized through organizational sense-making processes. The "Systems Thinking Strategy" has many lessons to offer on strategy formulation for contemporary organizations. I recommend this as a "must read book" for all interested in organizational strategy formulation and practice. Ramkrishnan (Ram) V. Tenkasi Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Professor of Organization Change PhD Program in Organization Development and Change Benedictine University

From motivating a team and developing star talent to controlling budgets and fostering innovation, The Financial Times Guide to Management is your authoritative guide to becoming an effective manager.

Full of practical tips and advice, this defi nitive handbook offers solutions to the everyday challenges of:

• Managing yourself
• Developing communication skills and emotional intelligence
• Managing others
• Setting strategic direction
• Managing change
• Managing money, resources and technology

Security metrics is the application of quantitative, statistical, and/or mathematical analyses to measuring security functional trends and workload. In other words, tracking what each function is doing in terms of level of effort (LOE), costs, and productivity. Security metrics management is the managing of an assets protection program and related security functions through the use of metrics. It can be used where managerial tasks must be supported for such purposes as supporting the security professional's position on budget matters, justifying the cost-effectiveness of decisions, determining the impact of downsizing on service and support to customers, etc.
Security Metrics Management is designed to provide basic guidance to security professionals so that they can measure the costs of their assets protection program - their security program - as well as its successes and failures. It includes a discussion of how to use the metrics to brief management, justify budget and use trend analyses to develop a more efficient and effective assets protection program.
- Over 100 checklists, flowcharts, and other illustrations depict examples of security metrics and how to use them
- Drawings, model processes, model procedures and forms enable the reader to immediately put concepts to use in a practical application
- Provides clear direction on how to meet new business demands on the Security Professional