Bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman & Cary Cherniss reveal practical methods for applying the principles of EI to more readily enter an optimal state of high performance and satisfaction, offering a roadmap to being at your best, every day.

There are moments when we achieve peak performance: an athlete plays a perfect game; a business has a quarter with once-in-a-lifetime profits. But these moments are often fleeting, and for every amazing day, we may have a hundred ordinary and even unsatisfying ones. Fulfillment doesn’t come from isolated peak experiences, or elusive ‘flow’ states, but rather from many consistent good days. So how do we sustain performance, while avoiding burnout and maintaining balance?

In Optimal, Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss reveal how emotional intelligence can help us have a great day, any day. They explain how to set a realistic, attainable goal of feeling satisfied that you’ve had a productive day — to consistently work at your ‘optimal’ level. Based on research of how hundreds of people build the inner architecture of having a good day, they sketch what an optimal state feels like, and show how emotional intelligence holds the key to our best performance.

Optimal is the culmination of decades of scientific discoveries bearing on emotional intelligence. Enhanced emotional intelligence pays off in improved engagement, productivity and more satisfying days. In this book, you’ll find the keys to competence in emotional intelligence, and practical methods for applying this skill set more readily. It will equip you to become a highly effective leader and enable you to build an organizational culture that empowers workers to sustain high performance.

This dynamic change management offering from a Robben Island freedom fighter-turned Berlin architect and a leading global change management expert is a how-to-guide for South African business and organisational leaders on how to manage diverse people in ways most beneficial for aims, that move both organisations and the country forward.

Luyanda and Klaus combine decades of professional knowledge and experience as individuals and as a team to provide critical insight into a changing world.

Change is the distinguishing characteristic of the business environment across the world and it affects how contemporary organisations operate. While organisations need to do more with less, they also have to satisfy the needs of their customers who, with more exposure to local and global markets, have higher expectations relating to the cost, quality, speed and innovation of the services and products they purchase from these organisations. In response to the changes in their business environment, organisations are becoming flatter, networked, global, more flexible and diverse and managers have to acquire the skills to face the challenges associated with these features.

The contemporary management principles offered in this publication integrates discussions on vital managerial competencies and skills with information on traditional and essential managerial concepts that have been effective in the past and are still relevant. The first part of the book deals with the evolution of management theory, the management process, and the features of contemporary organisations.

The next six chapters deal with the internal environment of contemporary business organisations, including a discussion on the composition of the management environment; managing change, corporate culture, power, politics conflict resolution and negotiation; business ethics; CSR and corporate governance; and workforce diversity. The rest of the chapters focus on the management functions of planning, organising, leading and control. An additional chapter deals with the role of management in the implementation of project management and a second chapter provides an overview of organisational value chains and the impact of electronic media and e-business on organisational efficiency and effectiveness.

The authors of Contemporary Management Principles are experienced lecturers in the field of business management from various universities in South Africa and Africa.

One of America’s foremost experts on leadership, Dr. John C. Maxwell believes that people need to master skills in four areas if they want to be successful. In this new edition of The 4 Pillars of Success, these four areas are called the four pillars, because they are key features of attaining success.

The four pillars are:

• Mentoring – help others achieve the next level
• Self-improvement – improve your life, improve yourself
• Success – overcome obstacles that keep you from success
• Teamwork – talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships

The 4 Pillars of Success will show you exactly what success looks like and will help you on your way to significant growth in all four these areas. The books asks some key questions about these 4 pillars, and the answers to these questions will show you how positive, goal-oriented leadership can make you stand out in your organization, and how your leadership skills will help you to go all the way to the top.

Entrepreneurship is a dynamic process constantly evolving through innovation, in that entrepreneurs devise profitable products and services that did not previously exist. This process requires entrepreneurs to have major skills in different business areas.

This book is about entrepreneurship in the South African business environment, and about the entrepreneurial process. It highlights three main aspects, namely: the entrepreneurial part of starting and running a business; the marketing of products and services; and the financial aspects of a profitable and sustainable business.

Key Aspects:

• Entrepreneurship
• Marketing
• Finance

In a practical and accessible way, this book describes how entrepreneurs should arrange resources and activities in order for the potential business to operate as profitably as possible. The two aspects of marketing and finance are the most important functions of business that every entrepreneur needs to know in order to be sustainable both as a start-up enterprise and for the longer term.

Dynamics of Entrepreneurship is aimed at undergrad students in the field as well as anyone planning to enter the world of entrepreneurship.

The foundational and wildly popular go-to resource for influence and persuasion-a renowned international bestseller, with over 5 million copies sold-now revised adding: new research, new insights, new examples, and online applications. In the new edition of this highly acclaimed bestseller, Robert Cialdini-New York Times bestselling author of Pre-Suasion and the seminal expert in the fields of influence and persuasion-explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings. Using memorable stories and relatable examples, Cialdini makes this crucially important subject surprisingly easy. With Cialdini as a guide, you don't have to be a scientist to learn how to use this science. You'll learn Cialdini's Universal Principles of Influence, including new research and new uses so you can become an even more skilled persuader-and just as importantly, you'll learn how to defend yourself against unethical influence attempts. You may think you know these principles, but without understanding their intricacies, you may be ceding their power to someone else. Cialdini's Principles of Persuasion: Reciprocation Commitment and Consistency Social Proof Liking Authority Scarcity Unity, the newest principle for this edition Understanding and applying the principles ethically is cost-free and deceptively easy. Backed by Dr. Cialdini's 35 years of evidence-based, peer-reviewed scientific research-including a three-year field study on what leads people to change-Influence is a comprehensive guide to using these principles to move others in your direction.

Leadership is not a destination. Leadership is an odyssey. A voyage of discovery, marked by changes of fortune and circumstances, informed by successes and failures. Defined by how you behaved and who you have become.

The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories is a unique opportunity to catch a breath, step back, and take a long, hard, reflective look at who you are as a leader and where your odyssey will take you. Powered by experience, informed by the reality of operating in today’s harsh realities, and leveraging the insights gained from many leadership victories and defeats, each essay creates an opportunity for reflection, introspection and personal growth.

The book spans almost every aspect of leadership, including the journey towards that mythical corner office, the agility and flexibility of styles required for sustained success, the art of crisp, concise communication and the need for an internal compass to guide you on your journey. Ian Russell draws on his 30 years of leadership experience from around the world, using his irreverent, light-hearted but thought-provoking prose to land key leadership messages. Further diverse and powerful leadership insights come from a number of contributing writers on politics, large corporate life and entrepreneurial start-ups.

The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories is an investment of your time into your leadership odyssey. This is not an opportunity you can pass by. So pick up a copy, settle down and enjoy.

Foundations of Business Management in South Africa helps students build the solid foundation they need to succeed in today's competitive business world, in a South African context. Up-to-date coverage presents forms of business ownership, management tasks and organisation, human resources management, operations, purchasing and supply, marketing, social media and e-business, information systems, and financial management. Students study how the business environment and the economy affect both individuals and business, ethics and social responsibility, small business and entrepreneurship, and the global environment. In addition, new cutting-edge topics examine the impact of social media on business, international business, green and socially responsible business, sustainability and diversity.

STOP TELLING STORIES. START SELLING THEM!

The world is rightly obsessed with the incredible power of a good story. Unfortunately too many of us take that to mean that it is our own story that’s important. It’s not. The magic happens not when we tell our customers the story of our past, but when we sell them a new story of their future. One in which we play a part.

As a salesperson (and make no mistake, you are a salesperson) you have two jobs. Job No. 2 of the storyseller is to help your clients and customers slay their dragon. Job No. 1 of the storyseller is to help them see their dragon.

You are in the dragon hunting business, but dragon hunting ain’t easy – there’s work to be done. In this short and highly practical book, renowned speaker Richard Mulholland shares with you how to use powerful stories to change minds, drive sales, and solve problems.

Here Be Dragons isn’t just a how-to book, it is far more a why-to, and mostly a what-to-do book.

'Amy Edmondson shows us how we can make room for failure, recognising that our emotions and personal needs are part of the solution. Right Kind of Wrong will inspire you to do your boldest work.' Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and author of Creativity, Inc. We all fail sometimes. Now, a world-leading Harvard professor reveals how these failures can lead us to happier, more successful lives - provided we know how to learn from them. We used to think of failure as a problem, to be avoided at all costs. Now, we're often told that failure is desirable - that we must 'fail fast, fail often'. The trouble is, neither approach distinguishes the good failures from the bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well. Here, Amy Edmondson - the world's most influential organisational psychologist - reveals how we get failure wrong, and how to get it right. She draws on a lifetime's research into the science of 'psychological safety' to show that the most successful cultures are those in which you can fail openly, without your mistakes being held against you. She introduces the three archetypes of failure - simple, complex and intelligent - and explains how to harness the revolutionary potential of the good ones (and eliminate the bad). And she tells vivid stories ranging from the history of open heart surgery to the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, all to ask a simple, provocative question: What if it is only by learning to fail that we can hope to truly succeed?

What is the elusive factor that will elevate the impact of your most important work? You are an expert inyour field whose clients love what your business does. Business is good,yet your intuition tells you that something is missing. You could domore and Build Better Business, but how? Mastery is the key. Mastery has a remarkable power. Mastery defines who you are rather than just what you do. The insights you develop focus your knowledge, skills and experience and inspire trust. Mastery unleashes the power of word of mouth and your influence spreads far beyond your work. Mastery frees you to create the business you have always aspired to lead.

There’s something sucking the life out of audiences everywhere, transforming them from the very people who can change your business into the disengaged masses. It’s called The Boredom … and your job is to slay it!

Whether you’re a seasoned public speaker, or getting ready for your first company presentation, this candid and practical guide by renowned global speaker and presentation coach Richard Mulholland will give you key insights into:

• Grabbing and keeping an audience’s attention
• Structuring talks that command fees and change companies
• Dispelling the myths around public speaking that are getting in the way of that standing ovation
• Speaking like a true leader

It’s time to fight back. It’s time to save the world ... one bored audience at a time.

The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Find out why Adam Grant says "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place."

Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.”

Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others’ time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now, so they feel less threatening, to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.

Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up).

Future Purpose introduces a five-dimensional model designed to help mid to senior-level executives make better career decisions by helping them gain a deeper understanding of the major influences that drive these decisions. It presents a professional analysis of career change and growth that will inspire executives to take a deeply holistic view of themselves and their executive career development.

The Author’s “Five Dimensions of Influence” model, on which the book is based, provides a framework that holds together the challenges of managing our careers in an ever more complex and shifting world. This more holistic view of the individual executive’s career choices and career transitions sets this book apart from any other in this genre and takes the reader into a unique and deeply researched journey of discovery that presents the new world of work as a massive opportunity for new leaders to develop and participate in what van Melle Kamp refers to as the early stages of the “second renaissance”. Unlike many books that address leadership and change from an organisational perspective, this book provides individual executives with deep insights into how they can take charge of their own careers on a journey to the C-Suite in pursuit of purpose and meaningfulness.

Future Purpose is written in a narrative style in which the author “talks” to the reader, building a bond of under-standing as the model unfolds across the chapters. The style is supportive of the reader, helpful and deeply engaging as he takes us through his thinking and the complex scope of our career journeys. The book is peppered with stories and examples of individuals’ experiences in building their executive careers and how they managed through huge transitions on their “route to the top.” He weaves through the book valuable golden threads of knowledge and deep experience that reflect a combination of future-focused strategic insights, practical application and inspirational anecdotes.

Broad in its scope but deep in its application, the Five Dimensions of Influence model is a powerful road map for every senior executive on a journey to the C-Suite and in search of Future Purpose.

This innovative textbook provides a systematic approach to developing practices of perception, reflection and inquiry to facilitate sound ethical action in organizational settings. Now in its second edition, Donna Ladkin's Mastering Ethics in Organizations invites readers to reflect and experiment on ethical behaviours with targetted activities in unique organizational contexts. Key features of the second edition include: A step-by-step approach to developing ethical astuteness Brand new case studies on companies including Volkswagen, Amazon and Boeing Art-based pedagogical material, including unique storytelling approaches through mythology and film Guided and informed discussions about contemporary ethical issues concerning the use of social media, artificial intelligence and human-centred design. Offering curated contextualized insights into the field, this textbook will be ideal reading for MBA business ethics courses, as well as Masters courses in leadership. It will also benefit Continuing Professional Development audiences dealing with ethical situations.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Tripp Mickle, the dramatic, untold story inside Apple after the passing of Steve Jobs by following his top lieutenants—Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer, and Tim Cook, the COO-turned-CEO—and how the fading of the former and the rise of the latter led to Apple losing its soul.

Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his “spiritual partner at Apple.” The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs’s spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone. In the wake of his close collaborator’s death, the chief designer wrestled with grief and initially threw himself into his work designing the new Apple headquarters and the Watch before losing his motivation in a company increasingly devoted more to margins than to inspiration.

In many ways, Cook was Ive’s opposite. The product of a small Alabama town, he had risen through the ranks from the supply side of the company. His gift was not the creation of new products. Instead, he had invented countless ways to maximize a margin, squeezing some suppliers, persuading others to build factories the size of cities to churn out more units. He considered inventory evil. He knew how to make subordinates sweat with withering questions.

Jobs selected Cook as his successor, and Cook oversaw a period of tremendous revenue growth that has lifted Apple’s valuation to $3 trillion. He built a commanding business in China and rapidly distinguished himself as a master politician who could forge global alliances and send the world’s stock market into freefall with a single sentence.

Author Tripp Mickle spoke with more than 200 current and former Apple executives, as well as figures key to this period of Apple’s history, including Trump administration officials and fashion luminaries such as Anna Wintour while writing After Steve. His research shows the company’s success came at a cost. Apple lost its innovative spirit and has not designed a new category of device in years. Ive’s departure in 2019 marked a culmination in Apple’s shift from a company of innovation to one of operational excellence, and the price is a company that has lost its soul.

To effectuate is to engage in a specific type of entrepreneurial action. It has special importance for situations where the future is truly unknowable or human agency is of primary importance. In this new and updated edition of the bestselling Effectuation, Saras Sarasvathy explores the theory and techniques of non-predictive control for creating new firms, markets and economic opportunities. Using empirical and theoretical work done in collaboration with Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon, the author employs methods from cognitive science and behavioral economics to develop the notion of entrepreneurial expertise and effectuation. Supportive empirical evidence is provided by the author's study of 27 entrepreneurs as well as other independent studies. The book then traces the consequences of effectuation for business management, economics and social philosophy. The author finds that effectuators generate constraint-satisfying solutions rather than searching for optimal ones, make rather than find opportunities, and in a deep sense, convert 'as-if' propositions into 'even-if' ones. The way they accomplish this is the central discussion of the book. Students and scholars of entrepreneurship will find this path-breaking research of great value. The book's conclusions will also be of interest to those in the fields of behavioral and evolutionary economics, cognitive science and management. Praise for the first edition: 'The concept of effectuation is as subtle as it is profound. On the one hand, it challenges long held beliefs about the nature of cause and effect in social science. On the other hand, it generates a host of new insights about social phenomena. This concept is particularly well suited to analyzing entrepreneurial behavior - behaviors undertaken in settings where the relationship between cause and effect is understood, at best, very poorly.' - Jay B. Barney, The Ohio State University, US 'Things rarely turn out as we expected or intended. Neither rational choice between well-defined prospects nor commitment to a vision, which can be realised by will power or persuasion, offers a credible representation of much human activity - even the activities of entrepreneurs. But although uncertainty (or unknowledge) is inescapable it may be productively managed. If we understand our present circumstances and some of its possibilities, build constructive relationships with others, and be ready to adjust both our objectives and the means of achieving them in order to take advantage of new contingencies, then we can at least participate in shaping our own future. By taking this perspective Saras Sarasvathy makes entrepreneurship a natural human activity, expressing the limitations and potential of human motivation and human intelligence.' - Brian J. Loasby, University of Stirling, UK 'In Effectuation Saras Sarasvathy presents a carefully researched and reasoned view of entrepreneurial behavior that both challenges and extends prevailing wisdom in the field. There is little doubt that these ideas will serve as an important foundation for anyone desirous of stimulating positive action in the world. With Effectuation we are equipped to provide a generation of students and managers with the methods to make and find opportunities that create value. . . everywhere.' - Leonard A. Schlesinger, President, Babson College, US

First, Atomic Habits transformed your behaviour. Now, Clear Thinking transforms your mind.

We all want to see the world clearly. The trouble is, we're never taught how.

Join Shane Parrish - 'the former spy who helps Wall Street mavens think smarter' (New York Times) - for a masterclass in the art of clear thinking. Drawing on examples ranging from the evolutionary origins of our 'emotion default' to the secret history of the Challenger disaster, Parrish offers powerful mental models to make sense of any situation. And he reveals a simple, actionable method for smarter decision-making, starting today.

Along the way, he shows that the secret to mental clarity lies not in how we approach the most high-stakes moments - but in our tiniest, most everyday decisions.

It's a simple idea with startling implications: if you clear your head today, you change your life tomorrow.

The phenomenal international number one bestseller with exclusive interviews with Richie McCaw, Steve Hansen, Beauden Barrett and Dan Carter, The Jersey is the definitive story behind the greatest sports team on the planet.

With a better winning record than any other sports team in history, they stand head and shoulders above their nearest rugby rivals. How did a country of just 4.8 million people conquer the world?

Peter Bills, who has reported on international rugby for more than forty years, was given exclusive access to all the key figures in New Zealand rugby as he set out to understand the secrets behind the All Blacks success. Peter talked at length with ninety people, both in New Zealand and around the world, with intimate knowledge of what makes the All Blacks tick.

The Jersey goes to the heart of the All Blacks success. It is also an epic story of not just a rugby team but a nation, whose identities are inextricably linked.