Data have almost no value in and for themselves. What's important is how they are used to create the information one needs to make informed decisions, and this is particularly true in making marketing decisions. Thus, Samli's new book dwells on the art and science of information generation and on how to convert it to practical knowledge. Without information and knowledge, says Samli, the firm faces great risk in the marketplace and its survival probabilities in the long run are very low. Samli explains, first, the various data generating procedures, with special emphasis on data analysis, and second, the procedures for creating information out of data -- all in a clear, systematic presentation that marketing managers will understand and benefit from immediately. Their MIS colleagues, whose goal should be to make data and information decision-maker friendly, will also benefit. A unique, valuable book for both.

The problem is not information overload as some contend, says Samli, but data overload. Data have almost no value in and for themselves. What's important is how data are used to create the information marketers need in order to make knowledgeable decisions. Thus, Samli's newest book dwells on the art and science of information generation and on how to convert it to practical knowledge. Without information and knowledge -- and another essential ingredient, wisdom -- the firm faces great risk in the marketplace and its survival probabilities in the long run are very low, says the author.

Samli starts by presenting the key elements that contribute to an information gap in the use of data for marketing decisions. He describes the evolution of information in decision making, the distinction between data and information, and the reasons why data gathering and processing have become so sophisticated and difficult to use. Samli goes on to discuss data collecting techniques, the dimensions and uses of internal data and their parameters, and identifies the best but most underrated data gathering method: observation. Surveys, experimentation, and research are covered next, including attitude and motivation research, with a careful analysis of how the research operation, as well as its products, should be managed. He goes on to explain how information is elicited from data and how it should be used; then, the various control mechanisms for information systems overall, and ends with his own agenda for the improvement of the entire information-driven marketing decision process. A clear, systematic presentation that marketing managers, and their MIS colleagues (who appreciate the need to make data and information decision-maker friendly), will find valuable and immediately beneficial.

A comprehensive, up-to-the-minute approach to time management to help you stop feeling overwhelmed—and spend more time on the things that matters most Good time management skills have always been an important factor in professional success, but between ever-evolving collaboration apps and the more recent pandemic-related workplace shifts, the tools and even the principles behind them have changed. In Time Management Essentials, you'll get the comprehensive, up-to-date information you need to manage your time with a values-based approach. With years of experience in crisis communication and a dedication to helping clients stop feeling overwhelmed so they can spend time on what matters most, time management coach Anna Dearmon Kornick provides a step-by-step roadmap to taking charge of your time. In Part I: The Essentials, she covers everything from task batching and time blocking to avoiding common productivity pitfalls. In Part II: The Essentials Applied, she delivers practical advice on understanding values, creating ideal work weeks and establishing effective planning sessions. Finally, in Part III: Beyond the Essentials, you'll find practical tips to help you get organized, energized, focused and recharged. Filled with assessments, tool kits, actionable advice and more, you'll walk away from Time Management Essentials feeling fully prepared to put your skills into action right away. Key concepts you'll discover include: Time management doesn't begin on the pages of your calendar; it begins with getting clear on what matters to you An ideal week is "ideal" for a reason. It's not the end goal; it’s a way to create the best possibility for success How weekly planning sessions enable you to spot obstacles before they happen, identify possible solutions, catch communication breakdowns, and win your week before it starts

This is a collection of short but extraordinarily powerful essays as to how Coach K of Duke inspires, motivates, and teaches his basketball players about the game of life, both on and off the court. For Mike Krzyzewski, the legendary head coach of the Duke University men's basketball team, certain words have special importance and force. Coach K used them every day to energize, motivate, and teach his players how to be winners on the court and in every aspect of their lives. Now, in Beyond Basketball, he offers 40 short, hard-hitting essays-each centered on an important keyword and illustrated with anecdotes from his personal experience-that will educate and inspire.

THE NEW QUESTION Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and his colleague, Morten Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times. THE NEW STUDY Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins's prior work by its focus not just on performance, but also on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today. With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness - beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years - in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control. The research team then contrasted these "10X companies" to a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments. THE NEW FINDINGS The study results were full of provocative surprises. Such as: * The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons; they were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. * Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card in a chaotic and uncertain world; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline. * Following the belief that leading in a "fast world" always requires "fast decisions" and "fast action" is a good way to get killed. * The great companies changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies. The authors challenge conventional wisdom with thought-provoking, sticky, and supremely practical concepts. They include 10Xers; the 20 Mile March; Fire Bullets then Cannonballs; Leading above the Death Line; Zoom Out, Then Zoom In; and the SMaC Recipe. Finally, in the last chapter, Collins and Hansen present their most provocative and original analysis: defining, quantifying, and studying the role of luck. The great companies and the leaders who built them were not luckier than the comparisons, but they did get a higher Return on Luck. This book is classic Collins: contrarian, data driven, and uplifting. He and Hansen show convincingly that, even in a chaotic and uncertain world, greatness happens by choice, not by chance.

Major players in the information and communication technology industries have used corporate venture capital, alliances, acquisitions, or spin-offs to achieve remarkable strategic self-renewal. Keil's succinct and readable account shows how. In-depth empirical research clarifies and emphasizes the role that external corporate venturing plays in the acquisition of knowledge and the advancement of corporate strategic capabilities. Keil explores the ways in which external corporate venturing creates access to other means of renewal, controls critical resources, and accelerates the overall growth of organizations.

Keil conceptualizes two main elements of the external venturing process. First, the creation of a shared context bridges the gap between the corporation and the community in which it resides, supporting knowledge transfer and the formation of cognitive intra-corporate frameworks. The second element is the efficient execution of relationships, which allows a rapid development of venturing opportunities. With case studies and lucid explanations, Keil shows how other corporations create and use a variety of connected learning processes to build their own venturing capabilities.

At last! A comprehensive guide to the art, craft, and business of consulting with nonprofits and community groups . . . Nonprofit consulting requires specialized skills and knowledge of how the sector works. This guide gives you the resources and tools to help you provide quality assistance throughout your career: experienced consultants will find it an invaluable reference; new consultants will get oriented to the sector and find step-by-step guidance through the entire process; technical specialists will gain insights into the larger processes that shape nonprofit organizations; for-profit consultants and business sector volunteers will discover how to shift their expertise to match the unique culture of nonprofit and community work; students in public administration, organization development, and nonprofit management will find it a useful guide for fieldwork, service projects, or future career search. With this illustrated guide you get: an overview of the nonprofit sector and unique elements of consulting with nonprofits; the six-stage process of consulting with concrete steps and challenges in each stage; the art of consulting, including roles, dynamics, and ethics; lessons from the field—stories from thirty skilled consultants offering sage advice on common challenges from setting up contracts to cross-cultural consulting to choosing a consulting role that matches the client's needs; when team consulting makes sense; key differences between internal and external consulting; how to run your business; marketing your services; setting fees, estimating costs, and billing; managing your career growth; working with funders; nine worksheets, sample proposals, professional standards, annotated bibliography; and much more!

Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market

Traditionally, funders expect evaluation to show that resources are being used wisely. But evaluation can be a much more powerful tool--for both funders and nonprofits. Forward-looking grantmakers and grantees are leveraging their evaluations, ensuring that the time and money spent ultimately improves effectiveness for everyone. This book shows how they're doing it, including - How the ""evaluative learning"" approach furthers ongoing improvement via collaborative, stakeholder influenced evaluations - How to bridge the differences in what funders and nonprofits need from evaluation - How evaluation builds four critical capacities--leadership, adaptive capacity, management, and technical capacity - Seven steps a funder can take to build the evaluative learning capacity in nonprofits - Thirteen specific evaluative learning strategies that funders can support Worksheets and assessment tools will help funders 1) assess their readiness to implement evaluative learning; 2) develop a logic model; 3) uncover grantees' current evaluation efforts and preparedness for evaluative learning; and 4) use resources wisely when selecting an evaluative learning support strategy. When the funding community supports evaluative learning, nonprofits and funders together can figure out how to strengthen programs, better allocate resources, and share successful models.

How to find, test, and launch a successful nonprofit venture Venture Forth! The Essential Guide to Starting a Moneymaking Business in Your Nonprofit Organization is the most complete step-by-step guide on the topic. Building on the experience of many organizations, this handbook gives you a time-tested approach for finding, testing, and launching a successful nonprofit business venture. Whether your organization is large or small, the book's seven steps guide you through the entire process-from idea to complete business plan. Examples, tips, timelines, and reproducible worksheets help you assess the strengths and weaknesses of venture ideas to find the most promising ones; determine which ideas fit your mission, resources, and skills; make solid decisions based on data rather than impressions; prepare a complete-and reassuring-financial analysis showing your breakeven point and future profitability; write a compelling, detailed business plan and get it approved; and get ready to start the new business! Nonprofits with established ventures will find these steps useful for evaluating, expanding, or improving their business. Even if you don't intend to earn a dime in venture income, you can use the book's process to improve the financial health of your current programs. Lower your risk and increase your chance of success with Venture Forth! and start generating earned-income while reducing your dependence on grants.

Although competitive intelligence and contemporary marketing research evolved from different intellectual traditions, both are indebted to qualitative methods of research and analysis. Walle shows that by merging their strategies in relevant ways, both fields grow even more robust and responsive to the needs of business clients and decision makers. Written by a noted humanist/social scientist with a wide ranging background in competitive intelligence and marketing research, this book can be viewed as a breakthrough. It is the first book to juxtapose, compare, and integrate the qualitative methods of marketing research with those of competitive intelligence. Among its many important features is a discussion of how to conduct a qualitative audit that assesses the degree to which an organization is able to take full advantage of qualitative analytic techniques.

Walle reminds us that the qualitative social sciences and humanities have a strong tradition within intelligence, one that dates back to World War II. Although innovations from the qualitative social sciences and humanities were developed 50 years ago, they were allowed to atrophy as the principle researchers of the time re-entered civilian life. Walle updates and revives them, and shows readers how to do it themselves for their own business purposes. The book reintroduces the World War II-era culture at a distance method that applied qualitative social sciences and humanities to intelligence, but updates them in terms of advances that have taken place since then. It also provides useful means to merge competitive intelligence and contemporary marketing research in ways that will result in collaboration and mutual understanding. Finally, Walle provides an appendix that discusses how to recruit and motivate researchers, whose training comes out of the humanities but whose contributions to business will prove of exceptional value. This is an important new resource for marketing practitioners and graduate level students and their teachers.

Is your company spending too much time on strategy development—with too little to show for it?

If you read nothing else on strategy, read these 10 articles (featuring “What Is Strategy?” by Michael E. Porter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you catalyze your organization's strategy development and execution.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy will inspire you to:

• Distinguish your company from rivals
• Clarify what your company will and won't do
• Craft a vision for an uncertain future
• Create blue oceans of uncontested market space
• Use the Balanced Scorecard to measure your strategy
• Capture your strategy in a memorable phrase
• Make priorities explicit
• Allocate resources early
• Clarify decision rights for faster decision making

Fowles asserts that the appeals of mass advertising reflect the motivational state of the targeted audience and that these motivational states anticipate socio-cultural change. Using advertising of 1950, 1960, and 1970, Fowles determined that the unsatisfied motives of Americans do vary over time. From this data, he constructs a forecast of our socio-cultural state in 1980 and predicts an increasingly isolationist U.S.

Today's rapidly evolving information-based society demands that public libraries implement planned, proactive, and innovative change to meet patron needs. Rapid, widespread, and substantive change and innovation in public librarianship depends on the ability of public librarians to share in the exchange of new ideas, regardless of the size of their communities. This book explores how managerial innovations are generated and disseminated among public librarians.

To examine how new ideas are created and spread among public librarians, the volume focuses on the case of the dissemination of a particular innovation, a set of techniques developed and promoted by a national professional association, which allows public librarians to engage in user-oriented planning, community-specific role setting, and self-evaluation of library performance. This case study is placed within a larger context of classical models of the diffusion process and the literature on organizational change and innovation. Drawing on her findings, the author offers suggestions to facilitate public library change.

Filled with help on making working from home work for you, including setting up your workspace, working as part of a virtual team, managing professional relationships, and dealing with feelings of isolation. The pandemic and the resulting lockdowns have reshaped the way that many people work. From commuting to an office on a daily basis, many companies are now adopting more hybrid ways of working - with the result that many more of us are working from home on a much more regular basis. Work Well From Home can help you to target problem areas and build the most effective work patterns that will boost your productivity while also protecting your mental health. Filled with help on making working from home work for you, this book covers a range of essential issues, including setting up an efficient workspace, being an effective member of a virtual team, managing professional relationships, dealing with feelings of isolation, and monitoring your physical and mental well-being. It contains: a quiz to assess strengths and weaknesses, step-by-step guidance and action points, top tips to bear in mind for the future, common mistakes and advice on how to avoid them, and summaries of key points.

Ignite Online Events and Virtual Training with the Use of Well-Designed and Facilitated Activities Creating outstanding virtual meetings, webinars, and training programs has always been challenging for novice and experienced instructional designers and facilitators alike. Virtual learning experts Kassy LaBorie and Tom Stone understand that the need to interact and engage is more important than ever, as online collaboration becomes the norm rather than the exception. In this new, updated edition of Interact and Engage!, the authors offer more than 75 activities as well as tips and strategies to help you create effective online learning and masterful meetings and webinars. Activities range from warmups and icebreakers to closers and celebrations, and everything in between. LaBorie and Stone cover advanced features and techniques and guide you on how to convert or create your own online activities, no matter what technology you are using now or in the future. An appendix presents two capability models for the positions of virtual facilitator and producer.

Carefully review the decision-making process of business leaders today and discover common threads behind ethical challenges in Jennings' best-selling BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS, 10E. The latest cases, new examples and intriguing readings drawn from pop culture, business and history introduce today's ethical issues, the consequences and societal costs. You learn how to recognize and resolve ethical issues to become a stronger business leader. Probing questions prompt you to evaluate situations like actions of the NBA in China or the NFL’s Taking-a-Knee issue. You learn how specific behaviors can lead to ethical or legal breaches as you work through real examples of business decisions gone awry. You study patterns and choices in examples such as how behaviors have changed during the pandemic, how employees gamed fitness devices for insurance discounts or how parents cheated to get their children into top universities.

Studies show that nearly 90% of managers and executives in North America alone are seeking ways to integrate ethical and spiritual values into their organizations--while remaining skeptical of New Age thinking, dogmatic religions, cults, and moralizing intolerance. Pauchant's book emerges from a forum on International Management, Ethics, and Spirituality, the first of its kind to be held at an internationally recognized business school, and represents the thinking of six CEOs and six scholars of ethics and spirituality from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Switzerland.

With case studies from five organizations in banking, food, health, education, and municipal governance, as well as dialogues culled from the remarks of 200 academic and business practitioners, this book proves that there is a true search for meaning in today's organizations, one which inevitably leads to a search for ethics and spirituality. Managers in search of these desiderata need help. This book suggests that a model proposed by Ken Wilber provides that help. Direct, concrete, theoretically and scientifically rigorous, and with an openness to inter-religious and non-religious viewpoints alike, the book is a compelling, non-didactic contribution to a vital discussion, long-needed but seldom found in a world as governed by economic values as our own.

For nearly three decades, the ANC has held South Africa’s politics in an iron grip. With the party seemingly at war with itself and President Ramaphosa battling to rein in corrupt cadres, Ralph Mathekga predicts the ANC will fall below the critical 50 per cent threshold before the end of the decade.

The decline of the ANC could bring political reform, but also uncertainty.

If the ANC loses power, who will be in charge? Who or what will come after the ANC, and how will this affect South Africa?

Tomer integrates economic analysis with behavioral and humanistic perspectives into a discussion of a new economic concept: organizational capital. The volume fills an important void in the economic literature and provides additional insights into how internal organizational structures and relationships affect economic as well as social outcomes. . . . All in all, must reading for both economic scholars and behaviorists. "Choice"

Traditionally, internal organizational relationships have not been linked with the orthodox theory of the firm or with explanations for economic growth. "Organizational Capital" integrates organizational behavior with economic theory and offers a new unifying economic concept: organizational capital. Tomer shows how organizational capital contributes to economic growth, behavior, and the productivity of the firm. Companies investing in organizational capital are creating better functioning organizations, ones with improved structures and cultures. These improvements are embodied in the organization's relationships, its members, and its repositories of information. The author also explains how the organization can function as a guide for formulating better governmental policies with respect to economic growth. Moreover, he believes the concept of organizational capital can help us understand how institutional arrangements contribute to economic as well as social outcomes. This book will help business professionals understand how the features of organizations relate to organizational performance and productivity. It facilitates understanding of the organizational reasons for the successes of leading Japanese companies, Mondragon cooperatives, and excellent U.S. companies.

To cope with the chaotic new business environment, organizations must find ways to manage the problems of change--but also the process of change itself. Yesterday's solutions are obsolete. Innovative solutions are rare, yet even the best require not only the efforts of individuals but other agents as well. Sims sees change agents throughout any organization and at all levels--line and staff people, human resource specialists, and those who have hitherto had little reason to tackle such tasks and have not been accountable for their outcomes. Unique models are presented for change interventions, along with techniques and tools that executives need to accomplish them. The result is a book that experienced executives will understand and utilize, but also one that will bring novices up to speed, providing new ways to use their own instincts and capabilities for innovation.

Sims and his contributors challenge the traditional prescription for creating change, providing a compelling critique of accepted approaches to change management, highlighting the strengths of these approaches and emphasizing what can be extracted to foster change. Each author provides insights into the competencies, skills, and values required for the rapid and successful creation of lasting change. In doing so, they also reemphasize that there is no universal approach to change management, and that the need for innovation, flexibility, and adaptability remains dominant.

Spanning a variety of disciplines, theories, and methods, the editors and the contributors to this uniquely cross- and interdisciplinary volume explore the factors that provoke emotions in the workplace, their effects, and how they should be managed. Among the propositions they examine are: emotions are not just effects in organizations but contribute to their structure; by examining emotions we learn more about certain organizational dynamics that may seem unemotional; the display of emotions may not be harmful; and leadership is actually about emotion management. An important, far-reaching exploration for specialists and academics in organizational behavior, psychology, and other fields in the social and behavioral sciences and for their executive counterparts in management.

The editors and their contributors start from the premise that organizations are emotional places, that they use emotions to motivate employees to perform and customers to buy. Using quantitative as well as qualitative methods, and theoretical as well as methodological approaches, they show how events in organizations create emotions--how it is that we come to experience a sense of satisfaction or outrage. They explore how our sense of organizational identity is connected to how we feel; how rules about the display of emotions act as organizing forces within organizations, creating organizational structure and shaping behavior; how emotions can harm employees, how they react to pressures to feel, and how emotions are essential to inspirational leadership. Not just for theoreticians and academicians, the volume is also a rich source of advice for organizational management and for those who wish to influence how management is practiced.

Trust is the fuel for all of life. We are wired biologically, neurologically, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically to trust. Trust is the currency that drives every relationship, beginning with the foundational bond between infants and their mothers, extending to the trust networks that undergird every human endeavour - art, science, commerce - and binding together every relationship we have ever had or ever will have. Nothing in our world works without trust. It is tempting to think that trust is simple, that we should be able to spot a lack of trustworthiness relatively easily. But we all have our stories about misplaced trust. We either missed clear or subtle warning signs or there just were not any warning signs to see. Everything looked good on the surface, and maybe it was. But we got burned anyway. And sometimes we struggle to earn and keep the trust of those around us when trust bonds fail to form or are broken. When trust breaks down, so does our ability to move forward. Dr. Cloud explores the five foundational aspects of trust that must be present for any relationship to function successfully and helps us to understand how to implement them. He also guides us through the difficult process of repairing trust when it has been violated and broken, even when restoring trust feels impossible. Rich with wisdom drawn from decades of experience in clinical practice, business consulting and research, Trust is the ultimate resource for managing this most complex and fundamental of human bonds, allowing us to experience more fruitful and rewarding relationships in every area of our lives.

Inspire people to perform at their best in any workplace environment Coaching & Mentoring For Dummies is the playbook to help supervisors change their role from doer/manager to coach/mentor. Leadership and coaching expert Leo MacLeod, shares the secrets of motivating employees to find purpose in their work and grow as independent problem solvers—without micromanaging them. Written for today’s changing workplace, the book provides guidance on leading diverse teams, working with younger generations and working remotely. Business is built on relationships, especially in today’s global economy. Coaching and mentoring are more important than ever. This readable guide provides you with the skills to strengthen connections and pass on useful knowledge that will help teams elevate their productivity and quality of work. Gain or improve the coaching skills that drive employee performance and commitment in diverse workforces Encourage colleagues to deliver results and guide employees to think for themselves Motivate teams both in person and virtually, and navigate intergenerational issues Be a sounding board for others and get the best out of your teams Foster mentoring relationships that help employees grow and stay engaged in their careers. This is the perfect Dummies guide for anyone who wants to learn the best practices of coaching and mentorship in today’s diverse, digital world.

'A must read for anyone interested in the 4-day week' - Heejung Chung, professor at the University of Kent and author of The Flexibility Paradox 'This invaluable book offers a clear way forward: we don't need to burn ourselves out, we can work less and get more done' - Rebecca Seal, author of SOLO: How To Work Alone (And Not Lose Your Mind) The 4-day week is no longer just an idea. Following successful trials in countries as far apart as New Zealand and the United Kingdom (where nearly all companies involved opted to continue beyond the pilot), research now shows that a shorter workweek benefits both companies and employees, increasing productivity, wellbeing and staff retention. Work Less, Do More offers a practical framework for making the 4-day week a reality in your business, whatever its sector and size. Top expert and Silicon Valley-based consultant Alex Pang helps you: -Identify the best pattern for your company -Assemble your team -Define what success looks like -Think through worst-case scenarios and troubleshoot potential difficulties -Put your plan into action So whether you are a founder who wants to make the 4-day week a reality, an employee who needs to make the case for a shorter working pattern to your board, or a manager who wonders whether this could give your team an extra edge, this is the only book you need to make the 4-day week work for you.