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Books > Business & Economics > General
The ultimate guide to data visualization and information design for business. Making good charts is a must-have skill for managers today. The vast amount of data that drives business isn't useful if you can't communicate the valuable ideas contained in that data—the threats, the opportunities, the hidden trends, the future possibilities. But many think that data visualization is too difficult—a specialist skill that's either the province of data scientists and complex software packages or the domain of professional designers and their visual creativity. Not so. Anyone can learn to produce quality "dataviz" and, more broadly, clear and effective information design. Good Charts will show you how to do it. In this updated and expanded edition, dataviz expert Scott Berinato provides all you need for turning those ordinary charts kicked out of a spreadsheet program into extraordinary visuals that captivate and persuade your audience and for transforming presentations that seem like a mishmash of charts and bullet points into clear, effective, persuasive storytelling experiences. Good Charts shows how anyone who invests a little time getting better at visual communication can create an outsized impact—both in their career and in their organization. You will learn: A framework for getting to better charts in just a few minutes Design techniques that immediately make your visuals clearer and more persuasive The building blocks of storytelling with your data How to build teams to bring visual communication skills into your organization and culture This new edition of Good Charts not only provides new visuals and updated concepts but adds an entirely new chapter on building teams around the visualization part of a data science operation and creating workflows to integrate visualization into everything you do. Graphics that merely present information won't cut it anymore. Make Good Charts your go-to resource for turning plain, uninspiring charts and presentations into smart, effective visualizations and stories that powerfully convey ideas.
Climate- and ESG-competent boards are in high demand by investors and
other stakeholders. In fact, climate change and other environmental,
social, and governance (ESG) issues have become some of the biggest
challenges faced by 21st-century board directors.
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
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'.
Following Einstein's sentence: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough," this book puts a spotlight on the complex marketing ecosystem from a physicist's point of view. Today's marketing world is overcomplex; CMOs face the challenge to transform their current target operating models towards a 100% customer-centric and data-driven way of working. A journey from good old mad-men toward math-men marketing. This book consists of three parts: The first part strips down the complexity of the marketing universe to the leanest frame of reference and then brings back the complexity, step by step, in single dimensions. Part two and three just follow these thoughts and provide a detailed description of 56 small atoms that can be used in a maturity assessment of your marketing. How to use them in a broader transformation concludes the book. In summary: An end-2-end guideline how to pursue and master the transformation from mad-men towards a math-men marketing operating model.
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.
Everyone deserves to feel a sense of respect and belonging. And we all want our coworkers to feel safe, heard, and free to be their authentic selves at work. But being an inclusive colleague doesn't always come naturally. This book will teach you how to be more empathetic, accepting, and socially aware, so you can create a more inclusive work environment—starting with yourself. This volume includes the work of: Ella F. Washington DDS Dobson-Smith Selena Rezvani Stacy A. Gordon How to be human at work. The HBR Emotional Intelligence Series features smart, essential reading on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review. Each book in the series offers proven research showing how our emotions impact our work lives, practical advice for managing difficult people and situations, and inspiring essays on what it means to tend to our emotional well-being at work. Uplifting and practical, these books describe the social skills that are critical for ambitious professionals to master.
A GLOBE & MAIL BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic forced an unprecedented experiment that reshaped white-collar work and turned remote work into a kind of "new normal." Now comes the hard part. Many employees want to continue that normal and keep working remotely, and most at least want the ability to work occasionally from home. But for employers, the benefits of employees working from home or hybrid approaches are not so obvious. What should both groups do? In a prescient new book, The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face, Wharton professor Peter Cappelli lays out the facts in an effort to provide both employees and employers with a vision of their futures. Cappelli unveils the surprising tradeoffs both may have to accept to get what they want. Cappelli illustrates the challenges we face by in drawing lessons from the pandemic and deciding what to do moving forward. Do we allow some workers to be permanently remote? Do we let others choose when to work from home? Do we get rid of their offices? What else has to change, depending on the approach we choose? His research reveals there is no consensus among business leaders. Even the most high-profile and forward-thinking companies are taking divergent approaches:Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies say many employees can work remotely on a permanent basis. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and others say it is important for everyone to come back to the office.Ford is redoing its office space so that most employees can work from home at least part of the time, and GM is planning to let local managers work out arrangements on an ad-hoc basis. As Cappelli examines, earlier research on other types of remote work, including telecommuting offers some guidance as to what to expect when some people will be in the office and others work at home, and also what happened when employers tried to take back offices. Neither worked as expected. In a call to action for both employers and employees, Cappelli explores how we should think about the choices going forward as well as who wins and who loses. As he implores, we have to choose soon.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Crush siloes by connecting teams, data, and technologies with a new systems-based approach to growth. Growing a business in the 21st Century has become a capital intensive and data-driven team sport. In Revenue Operations: A New Way to Align Sales and Marketing, Monetize Data, and Ignite Growth, an accomplished team of practitioners, academics, and experts provide a proven system for aligning revenue teams and unlocking growth. The book shows everyone how to connect the dots across an increasingly complex technology ecosystem to simplify selling and accelerate revenue expansion. With Revenue Operations, you'll understand what it takes to successfully transition to the new system of growth without killing your existing business. This practical and executable approach can be used by virtually any business - large or small, regardless of history or industry - that wants to generate more growth and value. By reading this book you will find: Real-world case studies and personal experiences from executives across an array of high technology, commercial, industrial, services, consumer, and cloud-based businesses. The six core elements of a system for managing your commercial operations, digital selling infrastructure, and customer data assets. Nine building-blocks that connect the dots across your sales and marketing technology ecosystem to generate more consistent growth and a better customer experience at lower costs. The skills and tools that next generation growth leaders will need to chart the roadmap for a successful career in any growth discipline for the next 25 years. An indispensable resource for anyone who wants to get more from their business - board members, CEOs, business unit leaders, strategists, thought leaders, analysts, operations professionals, partners, and front-line doers in sales, marketing, and service - Revenue Operations is based on over one thousand surveys of and interviews with business professionals conducted during 2020 and 2021. It also includes a comprehensive analysis of the sales and marketing technology landscape. As a perfectly balanced combination of academic insight and data-driven application, this book belongs on the bookshelves of anyone responsible for driving revenue and growth.
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.
Ask any established business owner to identify his or her toughest challenge when just starting out, and you'll likely get this answer: raising capital. Most aspiring entrepreneurs know far too little about the sources of money that can help start a business or fuel its growth. Where do you get capital? What are investors looking for? How do you ask for money in a way that gets results? This book answers these and many other critical questions. Even more important, entrepreneur and consultant David Nour shows how to develop long-term relationships with financial partner--the people who can help keep a business humming throughout its life. "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Raising Capital," designed to help entrepreneurs navigate the money-raising maze, shows how to attract financing to fund the start-up and growth phases any business moves through. It answers the most common--and the most perplexing--questions entrepreneurs have about financing a business: How do I put together a credible request for funds? How do I choose wisely from among the plethora of financial and strategic investors, consultants, investment bankers, and other intermediaries? How do I identify and avoid the risks associated with various sources of capital? How do I plan for the right kind, amount, and source of smart capital as the business evolves? How do I get the highest return on invested capital? How do I avoid the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when raising capital? This book provides real-life, pragmatic advice from entrepreneurs who have raised money from friends, family, angel investors, and banks, as well as institutional investors such as venture capitalists and private equity firms. It details the process from start to finish while spotlighting the danger spots and ways to avoid them. It will be especially useful to those who are uncomfortable making important financial decisions, and to those who are confused by all the conflicting opinions offered by advisors--both well meaning and otherwise. By showing readers the financing ropes, Nour removes a major source of stress for budding entrepreneurs and moves them closer to their dream come true: a successful business.
Public policy makers and managers in public administration operate under a unique set of circumstances that differ significantly from those in the private sector. Collaboration through networks is a feature of both sectors, but in the private sector it is often characterized by partnerships and alliances meant to benefit a particular company or industry, whereas collaboration through networks in the public sector involve disparate organizations working toward a common goal and not merely to enhance the performance of one among them. Therefore, much of the work that has been published in the business management literature on collaboration through networks does not apply wholesale, without revisions, to the public sector. Mandell and her contributors fill that gap by bringing together academic and practitioner perspectives into a coherent, holistic examination of the operative processes in public-sector networks and network structures. Networks and network structures by definition imply interactions among many organizations, individuals, or interest groups. The definition is broadened here to include collaborative efforts that take place within different countries as well as those that cross national borders. Going beyond the usual emphasis on the opportunities and promises of collaboration through networks, Mandell and her contributors take a hard look at such pitfalls and constraints as those involving power conflicts between individual and organizational commitments, the dichotomy between the need for flexibility and the need for rules and procedures, the difference between the needs and expectations of a national public and a local public, and accountability issues that arise from the need to satisfy outside regulators as well as the goals of the network. In addition to these unique contributions to the literature on networks and network structures, Mandell addresses the important but often overlooked behavioral (micro) issues--e.g., motivation, change, and communication--that tend to be drowned out by the overriding emphasis in the literature on structural (macro) issues. Reflects the latest thinking in the field and explores up-to-the-minute innovations currently being developed. |
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