Think of the toughest problems in your organization or community. What if they'd already been solved and you didn't even know it? In The Power of Positive Deviance, the authors present a counterintuitive new approach to problem-solving. Their advice? Leverage positive deviants--the few individuals in a group who find unique ways to look at, and overcome, seemingly insoluble difficulties. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change. With vivid, firsthand stories of how positive deviance has alleviated some of the world's toughest problems (malnutrition in Vietnam, staph infections in hospitals), the authors illuminate its core practices, including: * Mobilizing communities to discover "invisible" solutions in their midst * Using innovative designs to "act" your way into a new way of thinking instead of thinking your way into a new way of acting * Confounding the organizational "immune response" seeking to sustain the status quo Inspiring and insightful, The Power of Positive Deviance unveils a potent new way to tackle the thorniest challenges in your own company and community.

Imagine, if you can, the world of business - without corporate strategy. Remarkably, fifty years ago that's the way it was. Businesses made plans, certainly, but without understanding the underlying dynamics of competition, costs, and customers. It was like trying to design a large-scale engineering project without knowing the laws of physics. But in the 1960s, four mavericks and their posses instigated a profound shift in thinking that turbocharged business as never before, with implications far beyond what even they imagined. In The Lords of Strategy, renowned business journalist and editor Walter Kiechel tells, for the first time, the story of the four men who invented corporate strategy as we know it and set in motion the modern, multibillion-dollar consulting industry: Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting Group Bill Bain, creator of Bain & Company Fred Gluck, longtime Managing Director of McKinsey & Company Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor Providing a window into how to think about strategy today, Kiechel tells their story with novelistic flair. At times inspiring, at times nearly terrifying, this book is a revealing account of how these iconoclasts and the organizations they led revolutionized the way we think about business, changed the very soul of the corporation, and transformed the way we work.

Robotic Process Automation will continue its exponential growth over the next five years. With more than 54 vendors, different kinds of tools, generic applicability and as a cognitive and AI platform, RPA has fast become an opportunity that is too good to miss. So, how do you leverage the massive potential business value? Based on four years of research into over 420 business deployments, this book identifies the distinctive leading practices of front-runners, and a Total Value of Ownership (TVO) framework to drive out value across the RPA life-cycle. This book brings a new focus on RPA's strategic potential: the innovations made possible and how to deliver through effective sourcing stakeholder-buy-in, governance, change management, and capability development practices. RPA as a platform, linking with cognitive and AI technologies as part of digital transformation is highlighted. The central messages - think and behave strategically, start right, institutionalize fast, and innovate continuously - are demonstrated, with multiple client experiences, trials and lessons. From dealing with old world process and IT challenges, RPA is now being applied towards building the new digital world and becoming strategic in its application. * Based on extensive new research by world renowned authors * Comprehensive market overview * A systematic set of action principles across the RPA life-cycle * Challenges, and where value is being left on the table * A focus on metrics and Total Value of Ownership * Multiple client case studies * RPA as a foundation for cognitive and AI

"The Slight Edge" is a way of thinking, a way of processing information that enables you to make the daily choices that will lead you to the success and happiness you desire. Learn why some people make dream after dream come true, while others just continue dreaming and spend their lives building dreams for someone else. It's not just another self-help motivation tool of methods you must learn in order to travel the path to success. It shows you how to create powerful results from the simple daily activities of your life, by using tools that are already within you.
In this 8th anniversary edition you'll read not only the life-changing concepts of the original book, but also learn what author Jeff Olson discovered as he continued along the slight edge path: the Secret to Happiness and the Ripple Effect.
This edition of "The Slight Edge" isn't just the story, but also how the story continues to create life-altering dynamics--how a way of thinking, a way of processing information, can impact daily choices that will lead you to the success and happiness you desire. "The Slight Edge" is "the key" that will make all the other how-to books and self-help information that you read, watch and hear actually work.

In the era of e-commerce and digitalization, new commercial patterns and opportunities are emerging. For example, in addition to traditional reselling marketing channels, manufacturers can easily open direct channels using a variety of digital marketing strategies. These new marketing channels will cause conflict and competition between manufacturers and resellers. This raises the important question of how to make optimal decisions for multiple players in dual-channel supply chain contexts. Within changing and uncertain operation environments, business enterprises must face tougher challenges than before to survive in competitive markets. This book aims to address representative decision-making problems in dual-channel supply chains with risk-averse channel members. The most recently developed risk assessment technique, Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), will be adopted as the predominant criterion to measure the risk-averse attitude. Based on game theory, important issues such as channel selection, pricing, order quantity, manufacturer encroachment, greening strategy, consumer return policies, financing strategies, channel coordination, contract design, information asymmetry, and capacity constraint will be modeled and analyzed. This book will help readers better understand operations management in dual-channel supply chain contexts with risk-averse behaviors, and will also provide effective techniques and tools for researchers and offer managerial insights for practitioners.

The aim of this short book is to understand which countries do well on key indicators and why. After a short philosophical and historical survey of the literature to put the book into context, the Better-Place Index is developed. This is subsequently tested against a number of policy variables, such as levels of taxation, immigration, and democratic institutions, and other measures. The book provides statistical evidence that these factors are correlated with higher scores on the Better Place Index.

Truly effective crisis management is--or should be--proactive. Burnett uses this guiding concept to offer managers in organizations of all types and sizes a system for handling crises more soundly, and with greater dexterity. He puts crises on a continuum, with minor events at one end and catastrophes at the other, creating a universal matrix that can be overlaid onto businesses of any kind.

Burnett's methods of crisis management are already well recognized and are analogous to other types of management processes. This book focuses on managing crises proactively, but also includes the more common reactive strategies. Burnett begins by discussing the history and traditional concepts of crisis management, offering a rationale for adopting his own notions of proactive strategy. Chapters provide readers with a set of tools for classifying crises in any type of company. This book will add a new dimension to our understanding of what crises really are, how to evaluate them, and ultimately how to respond to and cope with them more successfully.

This book is for the many men and women who find themselves in leadership roles, not necessarily at the top of their organisation - where a lot of the attention tends to go - but nevertheless responsible for orchestrating and coordinating the work of people. There have been many 'cookbooks' on leadership, academic treatises, case studies of successful leaders, and so forth, but this book tells leaders what most treatises on leadership don't tell them - that there are no easy recipes or models which actually work. Letters to a Leader addresses the problem of why 'pulling the levers' does not seem to work and of why it is often so difficult to 'get the message' through to people. Letters to a Leader places emphasis on the primacy of human interaction, and on the beneficial effects of an inclusive leadership style - liberating the leader from the burden of having to appear to know all the answers, and the risk of single-handedly making all the important decisions. Other books fail to address the inherent complexity and unpredictability of organisational life and tend to offer models and frameworks to minimise this uncertainty. This book proposes a leadership practice of accepting, responding and acting into uncertainty. The book combines theory and practice, with five principles each being translated into some implied lessons for practice. Overall, the book challenges many of the conventional ideas about the way we think about organisations, and consequently about leadership. The book constitutes, overall, a guide to thoughtful and ethical leadership, and what it means, in practice, to be 'emotionally intelligent'.

Conventional ways of selling are becoming outdated. Learn what it takes to go from the traditional sales mindset to a tech-enabled sales superhero. In tough markets and with more people working remotely, creating a quality sales pipeline in traditional ways is more challenging than ever. As sales technologies continue to evolve and advance, developing technical quotient (TQ) is an essential element of sales success. Record-setting sales expert Justin Michael and bestselling sales leadership author Tony Hughes combine to provide practical guidance on how professional sellers can maximize results with an effective sales tech-stack to increase sales effectiveness for outstanding results. In Tech-Powered Sales, Michael and Hughes share helpful advice that: Reveal the techniques that enable you to break through with difficult to reach buyers Teach you how sales technologies can be employed for maximum benefit by raising your TQ Enable you to make the jump from being a beginner to a superuser within your sales team Show you how to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution to leverage technology rather than be at risk of being replaced by it Tech-Powered Sales delivers evidence-based strategies salespeople can use to create more opportunities than ever before. If you want to learn how to maximize your abilities to develop new business, this is the book for you!

This guide takes you on a tour of the “home of the brick,� the official LEGO® House, so you can experience it for yourself at home! With photos, interviews, essays, and art from the LEGO archives, The Secrets of LEGO House explores the visual wonders and the themed “zones�—yellow for emotions, blue for problem solving, green for social interaction, and red for creativity—within the iconic LEGO House in Billund, Denmark. The Secrets of LEGO House offers an insider’s look at the creative philosophy behind the iconic brand. On each page, discover the true “secret� hidden among the 25 million LEGO bricks—that everything in the house is purposefully designed around nine core principles of learning through play. A joy for those who aren’t able to visit in person, and just as exciting for those who have, The Secrets of LEGO House is a bright, colorful celebration of the endless experiences possible with LEGO bricks. •    EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: This book is a perfect gift or self-purchase for avid collectors and super fans seeking new, never-before-published content. •    BROAD APPEAL: This book is not only perfect for longtime LEGO collectors, but also a broader audience of fans looking to explore the history of the toy they know and love. •    BELOVED BRAND: For decades, the LEGO brand has inspired billions of people to stretch the limits of their imaginations. This book captures the creativity and joy at the heart of the LEGO brand, taking readers behind the scenes to reveal the brand’s core ethos and ideals.

Optimization is the act of obtaining the "best" result under given circumstances. In design, construction, and maintenance of any engineering system, engineers must make technological and managerial decisions to minimize either the effort or cost required or to maximize benefits. There is no single method available for solving all optimization problems efficiently. Several optimization methods have been developed for different types of problems. The optimum-seeking methods are mathematical programming techniques (specifically, nonlinear programming techniques). Nonlinear Optimization: Models and Applications presents the concepts in several ways to foster understanding. Geometric interpretation: is used to re-enforce the concepts and to foster understanding of the mathematical procedures. The student sees that many problems can be analyzed, and approximate solutions found before analytical solutions techniques are applied. Numerical approximations: early on, the student is exposed to numerical techniques. These numerical procedures are algorithmic and iterative. Worksheets are provided in Excel, MATLAB(R), and Maple(TM) to facilitate the procedure. Algorithms: all algorithms are provided with a step-by-step format. Examples follow the summary to illustrate its use and application. Nonlinear Optimization: Models and Applications: Emphasizes process and interpretation throughout Presents a general classification of optimization problems Addresses situations that lead to models illustrating many types of optimization problems Emphasizes model formulations Addresses a special class of problems that can be solved using only elementary calculus Emphasizes model solution and model sensitivity analysis About the author: William P. Fox is an emeritus professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. He received his Ph.D. at Clemson University and has taught at the United States Military Academy and at Francis Marion University where he was the chair of mathematics. He has written many publications, including over 20 books and over 150 journal articles. Currently, he is an adjunct professor in the Department of Mathematics at the College of William and Mary. He is the emeritus director of both the High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling and the Mathematical Contest in Modeling.

A radical vision for a better future: an economy that works for us, rather than the other way around. As this major German bestseller reports, our world is at a tipping point, and we feel it every day. Costs are rising, the gap between the rich and poor is increasing, natural resources are depleted, and the effects of climate change are starting to take hold. We are under increasing social and environmental stress. But, as leading economist Maja Göpel argues here, there is another path forward. She invites us to imagine what we want our future to look like, and offers solutions that will help us to get there. It’s time to question our principles, set new goals, and re-evaluate our priorities. Time to rethink our world and find new ways of living that don’t drain our planet any further. We need a fair distribution of wealth, and a way to reconcile the social with the ecological. We need to work smarter, not harder. Critical, yet full of encouragement, Maja Göpel chooses surprising and enlightening examples to illustrate how we can leave behind our familiar ways of living to achieve a better future.

Leaders of today must possess potent powers for logic, reason, discernment and strategic forecasting. Yet, they must also be empathic and therefore embodied; grounded and therefore intuitive; present and therefore awake. They must be skilled in mindfulness and deep listening, able to inspire authentic engagement and collaboration, and possess a clear and wholehearted sense of service, mission and purpose - restoring coherence where there is fragmentation and unity where there is division. Nicholas Janni presents this new and necessary leadership style as the Leader as Healer. The book outlines both a theoretical and practical map towards a new form of leadership, one that embodies the 'skill, heart, and wisdom' that the current moment demands. The pathway Janni describes is one of integration and restoration, which is designed to reawaken the innate human capacities - physical and emotional, individual and transpersonal - that were previously discarded and forgotten during our perilous journey towards profit-maximization and "infinite" economic growth. It offers a way to grow ourselves as leaders and to heal our organizations.

The practical guide to go from "drowning in work" to freeing up an extra business day per week for everyone on your team. "There just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done!" Sound familiar? Forget the old concepts of time management and the hustle culture of working until you burn out. You and your entire team can get more done, in far fewer hours, with the right blueprint. Come Up for Air is that blueprint. Through years of building a leading efficiency consulting business, Nick Sonnenberg has discovered the primary reason why so many teams are overwhelmed. It's not because they don't have enough time, managers expect too much of their employees, or there aren't enough people. The problem is that everyone is drowning in unnecessary work and inefficiencies that prevent them from focusing on the work that drives results. In Come Up for Air, you'll discover the CPR (R) Business Efficiency Framework, a proven system for leaders, managers, and teams to maximize their performance and reduce overwhelm by using the right tools in the right way, at the right time. The end result? More output, less stress, happier employees, and the potential to gain an extra full day per week in productivity to use however you'd like. You'll learn the proven empirical strategies from someone who not only turned his company around when it was on the verge of bankruptcy, but has also helped thousands of organizations around the world become more efficient and leverage the right systems and tools for explosive growth. Come Up for Air is the employee manual you never received. Turn to Come Up for Air to: Gain an extra full day per week in productivity for everyone on your team. Reduce stress and burnout by creating a more stable work environment. Eliminate the 58% of employee time per day spent on "work about work" instead of being productive. Improve company culture by empowering your team to spend their time on work that matters. Save an average of two hours per week just by optimizing email with the R.A.D. System. Stop wasting time on the "Scavenger Hunt" of trying to find where information is stored. Increase employee happiness, satisfaction, trust, and retention by making work easier. Stop wasting time in meetings with four proven techniques. Supplement your learning with free content and in-depth instructions at comeupforair.com.

"Much of what we experience in life results from a combination of skill and luck." -- From the Introduction The trick, of course, is figuring out just how many of our successes (and failures) can be attributed to each--and how we can learn to tell the difference ahead of time. In most domains of life, skill and luck seem hopelessly entangled. Different levels of skill and varying degrees of good and bad luck are the realities that shape our lives--yet few of us are adept at accurately distinguishing between the two. Imagine what we could accomplish if we were able to tease out these two threads, examine them, and use the resulting knowledge to make better decisions. In this provocative book, Michael Mauboussin helps to untangle these intricate strands to offer the structure needed to analyze the relative importance of skill and luck. He offers concrete suggestions for making these insights work to your advantage. Once we understand the extent to which skill and luck contribute to our achievements, we can learn to deal with them in making decisions. The Success Equation helps us move toward this goal by: * Establishing a foundation so we better understand skill and luck, and can pinpoint where each is most relevant * Helping us develop the analytical tools necessary to understand skill and luck * Offering concrete suggestions about how to take these findings and put them to work Showcasing Mauboussin's trademark wit, insight, and analytical genius, The Success Equation is a must-read for anyone seeking to make better decisions--in business and in life.

Offers step-by-step expert advice that empowers women to understand and overcome the conflicts they face at work with coworkers and managers. Are you being harassed? Micromanaged? Or just plain annoyed by your gum-chewing, music-playing, lunch-stealing coworker? Are you ready to blow this popsicle stand and move on to a new job? Then let this book guide you through this process. Beginning with 15 common workplace personalities that you have likely encountered, this book helps you to diagnose your situation, and provides empowering strategies for dealing with this situation and preventing future disputes. Based on the latest research in the dispute resolution field, and decades of workplace mediation experience, these stories are based on real-life examples (though names have been changed to protect those who should be ashamed of themselves). Women are finally being given the training and opportunities to succeed in the workplace, but societal norms are still in the stone-age. This book offers concrete suggestions for women to determine their boundaries and strategies for reinforcing those boundaries. Women shouldn’t have to choose between being a baby or a bully. Women have amazing empathic and social skills—so why not build on those skills, armed with years of research and ideas, to create the career you have worked for? Perhaps it’s not just one mansplainer, or one frustrating coworker, but a whole department? Managerial style? Systemic issues? A toxic workplace that is in need of some major rebranding? This book is aimed at the frustrated employee, manager, conflict resolution practitioner, and HR office. There are simple skills to empower any employee. For the management team, learn how to design an effective training, identify red flags, triage employee concerns, and build a healthy workplace. As impossible as that may sound right now, it actually is achievable with some practical suggestions and a bit of work. So buckle up, grab some popcorn, and prepare for some great stories that will help you to take control of your worklife. This is a light-hearted guide for the heavy-hearted employee. This is the only book to take decades of conflict research and workplace examples and brings them to the hands of those who need this information: the workers going through difficult conflicts. The purpose of this book is to empower women in a frustrating office to not just understand the conflict but give them the tools to grow through it. This book takes the numerous academic studies about resolving workplace conflict, as well as experience from the mediation table, and provides a step-by-step guide for employees to resolve their own conflict. It is designed to be relatable, drawing upon numerous personalities, real examples, in a variety of settings, so that the reader can find comfort in knowing that others have worked through similar situations. The book is also humorous, to help ease the anxiety of a tense worker. The goal is to give the average employee the skills to understand and grow through their current workplace conflict. 15 frustrating workplace personalities and situations are described, and then examined from the female viewpoint or response.

Riahi-Belkaoui argues that the multidivisional organizational structure is far superior to the standard, functional form of corporate organization. The M-form overcomes the problems of strategic direction and control implicit in the standard form, among other benefits, and, depending on the diversification strategy employed by the firm before reorganization is contemplated or implemented, it will positively affect a firM's profitability and productivity, while lessening its slack and financial risk. A research-based analysis, the book will be of particular importance to management accountants, professors and graduate students of management and accounting, and corporate staff responsible for organizational planning and development.

Most strategy is, let’s face it, bullsh*t. A bunch of fancy words which mean nothing at all. At best harmless and easy to ignore. At worst confusing and destructive. What if strategy could instead be clear, simple, bold, and even actually useful? That’s what No Bullsh*t Strategy is all about. It sweeps away all the garbled corporate nonsense and dry academic theorising to leave you with pure strategic sauce, which can be actioned right away. It’ll make you see your business in a totally new light, and effortlessly unlock insights you didn’t know you had in you. Even better, it makes strategy fun. Ideal for the young entrepreneur and accessible to anyone, if you're wanting to demystify strategy and apply it instantly, No Bullsh*t Strategy is the book for you.

The Influential School Leader is a unique, accessible guide for any leader seeking to improve their vision and positively influence school communities in the face of adversity. A successful school today requires a nimble learning environment that is supportive, welcoming, and inspiring for teachers, students, and families. Based on numerous contributions from social and organizational psychology, this book provides a dynamic framework that prepares education stakeholders to examine problems from multiple perspectives and dimensions to create durable solutions. An ideal resource for principals, superintendents, department heads, school psychologists, and other educators in positions of leadership, this expansive toolkit is packed with pragmatic strategies and relatable vignettes.