New and expanded edition. An International Bestseller - Over One Million Copies Sold! Shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Since Aristotle, we have fought to understand the causes behind everything. But this ideology is fading. In the age of big data, we can crunch an incomprehensible amount of information, providing us with invaluable insights about the what rather than the why. We're just starting to reap the benefits: tracking vital signs to foresee deadly infections, predicting building fires, anticipating the best moment to buy a plane ticket, seeing inflation in real time and monitoring social media in order to identify trends. But there is a dark side to big data. Will it be machines, rather than people, that make the decisions? How do you regulate an algorithm? What will happen to privacy? Will individuals be punished for acts they have yet to commit? In this groundbreaking and fascinating book, two of the world's most-respected data experts reveal the reality of a big data world and outline clear and actionable steps that will equip the reader with the tools needed for this next phase of human evolution.

The past two decades were among the most prosperous in history, with over a billion people lifted out of extreme poverty. Then 2020 hit, and, along with it, the coronavirus pandemic. The effect on economies will be extreme. What can small businesses do to survive the Covid-19 crisis? Business coach and author Douglas Kruger provides actionable answers, with a list of 50 practical ways your business can survive – and even thrive – during this time of uncertainty.

Business survival entails a simple formula. You must achieve and maintain profits over costs. There are a remarkable number of creative things you can do to stay on the right side of this equation, provided you don’t lose your head. Do these things well and you’ll be able to keep your staff employed, continue to serve your customers, grow awareness of your brand, and even come out of this difficult period positioned for growth.

Right now, owners of small businesses need every smart-cut they can find. Virus-proof Your Small Business provides no fewer than 50, including how to manage and safeguard your cash flow; get your head around the size of the challenge and begin thinking in productive ways; cut costs without cutting employment; use different channels to deliver the same offering; ensure that those who supply you, and those you serve, stay open too.

An absolutely essential read for any small business owner in this challenging time.

Quantitative Methods for Business has been thoroughly revised and updated for this 5th edition, and continues to provide a simple and practical introduction to an area that students can find difficult. The book takes a non-threatening approach to the subject, avoiding excessive mathematics and abstract theory. It shows how to apply quantitative ideas to the real problems faced by managers.

The book includes numerous exercises and examples that help students understand the relevance of quantitative ideas to business. Assuming no previous knowledge, the text provides complete coverage for a first course in quantitative methods.

Encouraging efficiency, clarity, and disciplined thinking, A3 Problem Solving identifies a problem, describes the objective, and summarizes fact finding and action steps, all on a single A3-sized piece of paper. This approach provides all employees at all levels with a method to quickly identify a problem, analyze it to root cause, select appropriate countermeasures, and communicate necessary actions to decision makers. The A3 Workbook: Unlock Your Problem-Solving Mind is designed to teach A3 Problem Solving to workers at every level of an organization. Uniquely qualified to author this workbook, Daniel Matthews is an expert trainer with 30 years of training experience including Lean implementation and Training within Industry (TWI). Fourteen of those years he spent with the Toyota Company, which created and made use of the A3 as a core component of continuous quality improvement. This workbook provides a practical tool for solving specific problems or for making a specific proposal, while also encouraging the development of a corporate culture that empowers all employees to support continuous improvement. The workbook follows the progression of a basic A3 Problem Solving format, offering instructions every step of the way. To reinforce learning, it includes: * Case studies that readers can use to complete A3s * Tips on how to improve the readability of A3s * Examples of Problem Solving A3s, and a Proposal A3 * Exercises to reinforce what's learned * Worksheet templates that can be reproduced for future problem solving An effective problem-solving process is a critical part of implementing efficient business practices and a problem-solving culture is a fundamental component of empowering employees to support business improvements. Both of these components, taken together, can help any organization make continuous improvements on the long journey to creating a more productive and profitable business.

With the right mindset and insight, anyone can become a millionaire. Are you tired of just paying bills until you die? Are you wasting your life at a job that doesn't make you fulfilled or financially secure? Then Future Proofing You: Twelve Truths for Creating Opportunity, Maximizing Wealth, and Controlling Your Destiny in an Uncertain World is for you. In this life-changing book, celebrated author and entrepreneur Jay Samit, who's worked with such visionaries as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Reid Hoffman, and hundreds of successful entrepreneurs, shares the key understandings and step-by-step process for becoming rich and never needing another job again. To prove the power of his 12 Truths, Samit also details the journey of how he mentored a broke millennial with these principles and empowered him to go from being on welfare to becoming a self-made millionaire in one year. Building upon the principles in his internationally acclaimed book Disrupt You, Samit explains: How to identify an idea and market to start your business How to build a virtual company with little or no capital The latest free software tools for managing your business Ways to get a piece of a trillion-dollar opportunity bigger than mobile How to harness the three primary fears of others to generate more sales Strategies for finding the right mentors to accelerate your success Techniques to structure any deal for creating recurring revenue and lasting wealth This book is perfect for anyone who is tired of jobs with no security, hopes to truly realize their professional and personal potential, and is looking for a way to build a better life for them and their family. Future Proofing You also belongs on the bookshelves of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs everywhere who hope to inspire their teams to become something greater than what they already are.

Business acumen has emerged as a critical competency for communicators. But if you're a public relations, advertising or communication professional that didn't go to business school, how can you make sure you have the abilities and skills to evolve along with your role? Business Acumen for Strategic Communicators is the book for you. Offering a critical primer for the world of business, Ragas and Culp equip you with the must-have business know-how needed to understand everything from the language and thinking of C-suites and boardrooms, to organizational agility, business models, rules and regulations, the money and the numbers, and even how to read financial statements and reports. Written for communicators by communicators, the concepts in each chapter are illustrated by expert insight essays written by a diverse group of senior communications leaders, and packed full of case studies, interviews, key terms and cutting-edge research. Brands profiled include Aflac, Costco, CVS Health, Levi Strauss, Mayo Clinic, Southwest Airlines, Target and YMCA of America. With these critical business literacy skills in hand, you will be set to serve with success as strategic counselors to the organizational leaders that are your colleagues, clients, and business partners.

"The Great Game of Business" started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement.
The revised and updated edition of "The Great Game of Business" lays out an entirely different way of running a company. It wasn't dreamed up in an executive think tank or an Ivy League business school or around the conference table by big-time consultants. It was forged on the factory floors of the heartland by ordinary folks hoping to figure out how to save their jobs when their parent company, International Harvester, went down the tubes.
What these workers created was a revolutionary approach to management that has proven itself in every industry around the world for the past thirty years--an approach that is perhaps the last, best hope for reviving the American Dream.

NGO managers in the developing world play a crucial role in reaching diverse high-risk groups. Yet to date there has been no empirical study of what makes these managers effective. Here Farhad Analoui and Shehnaz Kazi present the first qualitative, empirical insights into this key question. Focusing specifically on managers of HIV/AIDS NGOs in India - one of the world's largest developing nations - this book considers how such managers are perceived by outsiders, how their work is or could be influenced by government-level intervention or international-policy-level drivers such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and how such managers perceive issues that influence their ability to manage their organisations effectively. Through individual, collective, and focus-group interviews with managers and staff at four NGOs, the authors build a startlingly rich picture of aid workers' and managers' fears and hopes. From this data, the authors confirm eight parameters of effectiveness, three interrelated contextual factors, and discover a culturally adjusted new framework for analysis of the NGO managers behaviour at work. For its wealth of qualitative empirical data with broad-ranging implications for all developing countries, Managing NGOs in the Developing World is a must-read for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in the intersections between human resource management, international development, and sustainable development.

In a time when the world is facing significant challenges, leaders who work for justice and equity for all people are necessary. Transformative Leadership in Action: Allyship, Advocacy, and Activism challenges the reader to do the essential self-work required of a 21st century leader, and provides the road map to developing the skills necessary to take on increasing public leadership roles to support causes related to justice and equity. Shining a light on unexplored, yet crucial, components of the discussion around the apex of leadership and social justice, Bruce and McKee first investigate the tie between social justice work and leadership competencies grounded in theory. Second, they put forward a pedagogical guide in teaching at this apex-engaging both the instructor and student(s) in unique learning journeys. Offering insight for educators, current leaders, and future leaders, this book is a crucial resource - providing go-to support for engaging in allyship, advocacy, and activism for justice and equity. If you want your learners to be leaders and not just think about leadership, this is the book you need.

Budding entrepreneurs face a challenging road. The path is not made any easier by all the cliches they hear about how to make a startup succeed-from platitudes and conventional wisdom to downright contradictions. This witty and wise guide to the dilemmas of entrepreneurship debunks widespread misconceptions about how the world of startups works and offers hard-earned advice for every step of the journey. Instead of startup myths-legends spun from a fantasy version of Silicon Valley-Rizwan Virk provides startup models-frameworks that help make thoughtful decisions about starting, growing, managing, and selling a business. Rather than dispensing simplistic rules, he mentors readers in the development of a mental toolkit for approaching challenges based on how startup markets evolve in real life. In snappy prose with savvy pop-culture and real-world examples, Virk recasts entrepreneurship as a grand adventure. He points out the pitfalls that appear along the way and offers insights into how to avoid them, sharing the secrets of founding a startup, raising money, hiring and firing, when to enter a market and when to exit, and how to value a company. Virk combines lessons learned the hard way during his twenty-five years of founding, investing in, and advising startups with reflections from well-known venture capitalists and experts. His candid advice makes Startup Myths and Models an ideal guide for those readers just embarking on the startup life and those looking for their next adventure.

There is NO SUCH THING as a mindless doodle What did Einstein, JFK, Edison, Marie Curie, and Henry Ford have in common? They were all inveterate doodlers. These powerhouse minds knew instinctively that doodling is deep thinking in disguise-a simple, accessible, and dynamite tool for innovating and solving even the stickiest problems. Sunni Brown's mission is to bring the power of the Doodle to the rest of us. She leads the Revolution defying all those parents, teachers, and bosses who say Stop doodling! Get serious! Grow up! She overturns misinformation about doodling, demystifies visual thinking, and shows us the power of applying our innate visual literacy. She'll teach you how to doodle any object, concept, or system imaginable, shift habitual thinking patterns, and transform boring text into displays that can engage any audience.

This book presents the breakthrough discovery of a new business performance metric that enables global enterprises to finally answer the important question: How well does it use information to improve business? The Information Orientation (10)^TM metric measures 'business intelligence' by showing how effective management of information and IT, and people's behaviour with information are directly linked to business performance.
'Information is a forceful weapon in creating competitive advantages to increase customer satisfaction, employee morale and shareholder value'. — Puis Baschera, CEO, Hilti Corporation, Liechenstein
'The technology and processes to capture and analyze information are available to us all. However, this book vividly demonstrates the link between information capabilities and business performance and provides valuable guidance to unlock the potential.' — John S. Boardman, CEO, Dubai Aluminium Company, United Arab Emirates
'By applying the Information Orientation framework and guidelines to our business and improving our information, people and IT capabilities for customers, we have demonstrable proof that established basic industry companies can excel at growth and innovation and leverage e-business opportunities in a developing market. A recommended read for senior managers getting their companies "e-business ready" in practice, not just in theory.' — Paul Hugentobler, Vice Chairman, Siam City Cement Company, Thailand
'The ability to visualize the relation between Information, People and IT is a key factor for improving business performance in order to maintain competitive strength.' — Göran Lenkel, Managing Director, Skandiabanken, Sweden
'The IT industry is now representing a global $1.4 trillion marketplace - it is about time that we start to look at real performance and pay back of IT investments.' — Peter Ohnemus, Co-Founder and Vice Chairman, The Fantastic Corporation, Switzerland

This is how it’s done. This is why it’s done this way. This is the result you can expect if you do it.

These three pieces of information inform a conclusion about every part of each of our lives. Yet it is these three pieces of information that most often set an insidious trap—a trap that has held the imaginations of generations captive to the belief that because they are doing the best they can do, they are accomplishing the best that can be done. And while each of these three statements are true, not one of them is the truth.

Dive deeper with bestselling author Andy Andrews as he shares his unique philosophy regarding foundational thinking. Through his unique and captivating storytelling, Andy helps you search for the reality that lies beyond the boundaries established in the name of “best practices,” “industry standards,” or “the way things are done.” For it’s at the bottom of the pool that you discover a pathway to extraordinary results that most people in your position do not even know are possible.

Combining both quantitative and qualitative aspects of management decision-making with a strong interdisciplinary perspective, this book explores the relationship between hard and soft aspects of decision-making. Quantitative tools are shown in context so that the reader can see their relevance to day-to-day decision-making by addressing their philosophical underpinnings. The role of IT in decision-making is also addressed. Examples from the authors' own experiences are used to illustrate issues.

The fourth edition of Cost-Benefit Analysis is an authoritative, market-leading textbook that provides a practical introduction to cost-benefit analysis through problem solving. The text uses a consistent application of a nine-step framework for interpreting a cost-benefit analysis. This edition has been fully revised, updated and re-organized to provide the material more effectively. It presents application over abstract theory and clear discussion over mathematics to appeal to a larger, more diverse audience.

ExpressExec is a unique business resource of one hundred books. These books present the best current thinking and span the entire range of contemporary business practice. Each book gives you the key concepts behind the subject and the techniques to implement the ideas effectively, together with lessons from benchmark companies and ideas from the world's smartest thinkers.

ExpressExec is organised into ten core subject areas making it easy to find the information you need:

01 Innovation
02 Enterprise
03 Strategy
04 Marketing
05 Finance
06 Operations and Technology
07 Organizations
08 Leading
09 People
10 Life and Work

ExpressExec is a perfect learning solution for people who need to master the latest business thinking and practice quickly.

This book enhances the reader's understanding of the nature and presence of risk by raising the organisation's awareness of the risks it faces, and formalising the systems needed to deal with and learn from those risks.While based on the experience of the construction industry, the book also acts as a broader project management text, meeting the needs of project managers and students in many disciplines and professions from architecture and construction through engineering and commerce to IT, finance and banking. Essential for anyone studying or involved in organisational decision-making for projects, this book will help readers to develop confidence in dealing with risk in a systmatic manner.

Why are there so many gaps between what firms know they should do and what they actually do? Why do so many companies fail to implement the experience and insight they've worked so hard to acquire? The Knowing-Doing Gap is the first book to confront the challenge of turning knowledge about how to improve performance into actions that produce measurable results. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, well-known authors and teachers, identify the causes of the knowing-doing gap and explain how to close it. The message is clear--firms that turn knowledge into action avoid the "smart talk trap." Executives must use plans, analysis, meetings, and presentations to inspire deeds, not as substitutes for action. Companies that act on their knowledge also eliminate fear, abolish destructive internal competition, measure what matters, and promote leaders who understand the work people do in their firms. The authors use examples from dozens of firms that show how some overcome the knowing-doing gap, why others try but fail, and how still others avoid the gap in the first place. The Knowing-Doing Gap is sure to resonate with executives everywhere who struggle daily to make their firms both know and do what they know. It is a refreshingly candid, useful, and realistic guide for improving performance in today's business.

Safety is a major concern of society and touches on many areas of human activity. One important component of safety is the reliability of equipment and systems and the actions of the professionals, who design, build and operate them. Modelling methods have been developed to assess the risk associated with taking decisions relating to the design, maintenance or operation of a system. Such models include the element of uncertainty inherent in the behaviour of any given system. There are a number of theories, techniques and methods available, continuously being developed and improved, which evaluate the safety and reliability of systems, ensuring that these are operated and managed in a way as to keep the associated risks within the boundaries of what is considered tolerable or acceptable. These proceedings highlight the theories and methods used to assess safety and reliability, presenting them as powerful tools for decision-making which can be used effectively to manage the daily risks to which modern society is exposed.

In the current climate of terrorism, the facility manager is in a more critical position than ever before. Protecting the organization's infrastructure from cyber-based attacks that are designed to disrupt and/or destroy business operations is becoming increasingly important for facility managers.This book will address cyberterrorism and other forms of terrorist activity including mailroom security, bomb threats and the constant attacks from viruses, hackers and other invasive programs. Known terrorist groups will be identified, discussed and their disruptive techniques described. In addition, this book will also address the necessary steps needed for prevention; the corporation's/ business' assessment of vulnerability; its emergency preparedness, prevention, incident response and recovery. Containing practical, comprehensive and effective guidance and advice, this book is written in plain language and in a reader-friendly format for quick and easy reference and will contain practical ideas and programs that have been used by facility managers and their staffs. There will be examples of ""lessons learned"" and mistakes to avoid. Major aspects of facility management will also be presented.