Every business should introduce new technologies to improve their performance? The only way to innovate is to think outside of the box? And obviously, having a Chief Strategy Officer is a guarantee of success. Really? The reality is that there are no magic recipes for success. If there were, every company would use them, and no single company would be outstanding. Business strategy is messy, requires hard graft and is difficult to get right. And yet the world of strategy is dominated by management consultants and business gurus making sweeping generalizations, oversimplifying business thinking and peddling their own unfounded ideas. But do these methods actually work? Myths of Strategy debunks thirty of these most common strategy sagas, cutting through consultant hyperbole and provide you with tried and test business ideas that will make your company more successful. About the Business Myths series... The Business Myths series tackles the falsehoods that pervade the business world. From leadership and management to social media, strategy and the workplace, these accessible books overturn out-of-date assumptions, skewer stereotypes and put oft-repeated slogans to the test. Entertaining and rigorously researched, these books will equip you with the insight and no-nonsense wisdom you need to succeed.

This is a major, and deeply thoughtful, contribution to understanding uncertainty and risk. Our world and its unprecedented challenges need such ways of thinking! Much more than a set of contributions from different disciplines, this book leads you to explore your own way of perceiving your own area of work. An outstanding contribution that will stay on my shelves for many years. Dr Neil T. M. Hamilton, Director, WWF International Arctic Programme This collection of essays provides a unique and fascinating overview of perspectives on uncertainty and risk across a wide variety of disciplines. It is a valuable and accessible sourcebook for specialists and laypeople alike. Professor Renate Schubert, Head of the Institute for Environmental Decisions and Chair of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology This comprehensive collection of disciplinary perspectives on uncertainty is a definitive guide to contemporary insights into this Achilles heel of modernity and the endemic hubris of institutional science in its role as public authority. It gives firm foundations to the fundamental historic shift now underway in the world, towards normalizing acceptance of the immanent condition of ignorance and of its practical corollaries: contingency, uncontrol, and respect for difference. Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University Bammer and Smithson have assembled a fascinating, important collection of papers on uncertainty and its management. The integrative nature of Uncertainty and Risk makes it a landmark in the intellectual history of this vital cross-disciplinary concept. George Cvetkovich, Director, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University Uncertainty governs our lives. From the unknowns of living with the risks of terrorism to developing policies on genetically modified foods, or disaster planning for catastrophic climate change, how we conceptualize, evaluate and cope with uncertainty drives our actions and deployment of resources, decisions and priorities. In this thorough and wide-ranging volume, theoretical perspectives are drawn from art history, complexity science, economics, futures, history, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, statistics and theology. On a practical level, uncertainty is examined in emergency management, intelligence, law enforcement, music, policy and politics. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty.

A New York Times bestseller * A New York Times Notable Book "The tale of how Konnikova followed a story about poker players and wound up becoming a story herself will have you riveted, first as you learn about her big winnings, and then as she conveys the lessons she learned both about human nature and herself." -The Washington Post It's true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn't even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point the following year's World Series of Poker. But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like "How one writer's book deal turned her into a professional poker player." She even learned to like Las Vegas. But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.

Investment in any new project invariably carries risk but the construction industry is subject to more risk and uncertainty than perhaps any other industry. This guide for construction managers, project managers and quantity surveyors as well as for students shows how the risk management process improves decision-making. Managing Risk in Construction Projects offers practical guidance on identifying, assessing and managing risk and provides a sound basis for effective decision-making in conditions of uncertainty. The book focuses on theoretical aspects of risk management but also clarifies procedures for undertaking and utilising decisions. This blend of theory and practice is the real message of the book and, with a strong authorship team of practitioners and leading academics, the book provides an authoritative guide for practitioners having to manage real projects. It discusses a number of general concepts, including projects, project phases, and risk attitude before introducing various risk management techniques. This third edition has been extended to recognize the reality of multi-project or programme management and the risks in this context; to highlight the particular problems of risk in international joint ventures; and to provide more coverage of PFI and PPP. With case studies and examples of good practice, the book offers the distilled knowledge of over 100 man-years of experience in working on all aspects of project risk, giving sound practical guidance on identifying, assessing and managing risk.

Unleash the transformative power of face to face groups

The third edition of this ground-breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well-facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole.

This fully updated edition of The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making guides readers through the struggle and the satisfaction of putting participatory values into practice, helping them to fulfill the promise of effective group decision-making. With previous editions already embraced by business and community leaders and consulting professionals around the world, this new book is even more insightful and easy to use.

New for this edition: 60 pages of brand new skills and toolsMany new case examplesMajor expansion and reorganization of the advanced sections of the book.New chapter: Teaching A Group About Group DynamicsDoubled in size: Classic Facilitator Challenges.Substantially improved: Designing Realistic Agendas - now three chapters, with wise, insightful answers to the most vexing questions about meeting design.

Andy Garlick's book explores the role of quantitative techniques in modern risk management. Risk management has grown in importance in most organisations in the last 20 years, but in many remains simply a matter of processing lists of risks and actions. The author argues that this fails to make the most of the techniques available and that organisations can improve their risk decision making by using risk models. His book describes a broad range of modelling techniques, all illustrated by business-relevant examples. The role of the models in decision making is also discussed, with particular emphasis on what the risk premium - the price people charge for accepting risk - is and should be. In order to provide a self contained account the underpinning material from probability and decision theory is also included, so that the book will provide a handy reference guide for all practitioners. The discussion is consistently informal, and the book provides a critical view of the accepted wisdom in risk management. This book will enable managers and their specialist advisors to improve their approach to risk whilst removing the mystique.

There is an increasing dissatisfaction about how risk is regulated, leading to vivid debates about the use of 'risk assessment' and 'precaution'. As a result, academics, government officials and industry leaders are calling for new approaches and fresh ideas. This book provides a historical and topical perspective on the alternative concept of 'Tolerability of Risk' and its concrete regulatory applications. In the UK, Tolerability of Risk has been developed into a sophisticated framework, particularly within the health and safety sectors. It is expected to guide decision-makers when applying their legal obligation of keeping risks as low as practically reasonable. Could Tolerability of Risk become a wider source of inspiration across the full scope of risk analysis and management? Written by leading academics and risk practitioners from industry and government, The Tolerability of Risk presents a summary of theoretical perspectives on risk approaches, providing a detailed elicitation of the methods and approaches used to build the Tolerability of Risk framework and examining the prospect of universal application of that framework. From nuclear power to environmental pollution, climate change and drug testing, the Tolerability of Risk framework may offer a workable, pragmatic solution for balancing risks against the costs involved in controlling them, as well as developing the institutional capacity to make effective decisions in all jurisdictions worldwide.

Inflation is here. Do you know how it's impacting your company? It's not just a matter of rising costs. Inflation eats cash, squeezes margins, threatens working capital, and throws all your great forecasts and plans into question. Its effect is cumulative and pervasive. Yet this period of economic discontinuity is a huge opportunity to come out stronger for those who know how to lead in the face of inflation and a looming recession. Ram Charan has guided hundreds of companies through many tough business challenges. In the early 1980s, he helped GE preserve its teetering credit rating in the face of double-digit inflation. Now, in Leading Through Inflation, he brings the same common sense and wisdom that made his book Execution, coauthored with Larry Bossidy, a long-time New York Times bestseller. This book will be your guide to avoiding the hazards of inflation while positioning your company to thrive when the business cycle stabilizes. It provides Ram's down-to-earth recommendations and real-world examples to help you navigate a landscape that may be new to you. As you learn to lead through inflation, you will be better prepared for recession and stagflation as well. You will know how to protect your cash, your customers, and your capital investments. Your psychology will shift from anxiety and fear to optimism and excitement as you define the path to a reimagined future.

This book is about meetings and providing a new perspective from behavioural economics called nudging to make meetings more productive and enjoyable. Nudging hacks into the fast, automatic, subconscious system in human reasoning to breed success in every get-together. Once you know the foundations of focus, orientation, involvement, and commitment, the advantages of nudging are evident. The authors provide an explanation of nudge theory and 6 principles of how nudging affects our behavior. Examples from the actions and choices of the Dalai Lama, Ray Dalio, and Barack Obama demonstrate how nudging can make a difference. Based on theory, the book also gives 100 very practical nudges to improve meeting productivity that can be used by any meeting leader or participant.

... an impassioned work ... - Social and Environmental Accounting Journal Vol. 26 Issue 1 || Mr Waddell synthesizes the lessons from ... examples and provides guidance on how other organizations can move away from an adverserial approach and adopt the philosophy that "we're all in it together". - The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 29 September 2005 || By taking a stakeholder engagement and issue/opportunity-centric strategy, the book aims to make it easier to solve differences. It does so by identifying sources of tension and opportunity and describes the processes of building relationships that can produce mutual rewards. - Sustainability Radar, August 2005 || SLC is a brave and timely step forward, showing us that we can create solutions through enhanced engagement and the re-framing of issues for the common good. www.publish.csiro.au/ecos. Read the full review - ECOS: Australia's magazine on Sustainability - Sophie Constance || A readable book full of valuable insights. - Long Range Planning Vol. 39 (2006)

... an impassioned work ... - Social and Environmental Accounting Journal Vol. 26 Issue 1 || Mr Waddell synthesizes the lessons from ... examples and provides guidance on how other organizations can move away from an adverserial approach and adopt the philosophy that "we're all in it together". - The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 29 September 2005 || By taking a stakeholder engagement and issue/opportunity-centric strategy, the book aims to make it easier to solve differences. It does so by identifying sources of tension and opportunity and describes the processes of building relationships that can produce mutual rewards. - Sustainability Radar, August 2005 || SLC is a brave and timely step forward, showing us that we can create solutions through enhanced engagement and the re-framing of issues for the common good. www.publish.csiro.au/ecos. Read the full review - ECOS: Australia's magazine on Sustainability - Sophie Constance || A readable book full of valuable insights. - Long Range Planning Vol. 39 (2006)

This Element synthesizes the current state of research on organizational learning from performance feedback and develops a new perspective that deals with the influence of multiple goals. In keeping with the centrality of motives in Cyert & March's influential model, this new perspective rests on a foundation of individual level behaviors that are responsive to mechanisms at the organizational and environmental level of analysis. A key aim is to lay out an agenda for a new wave of empirical research on the interconnections of decision-makers, organizations, and the environment that influence organizational responses to performance.

This book is about meetings and providing a new perspective from behavioural economics called nudging to make meetings more productive and enjoyable. Nudging hacks into the fast, automatic, subconscious system in human reasoning to breed success in every get-together. Once you know the foundations of focus, orientation, involvement, and commitment, the advantages of nudging are evident. The authors provide an explanation of nudge theory and 6 principles of how nudging affects our behavior. Examples from the actions and choices of the Dalai Lama, Ray Dalio, and Barack Obama demonstrate how nudging can make a difference. Based on theory, the book also gives 100 very practical nudges to improve meeting productivity that can be used by any meeting leader or participant.

Challenged by stringent regulations, vigorous competition, and liability lawsuits, medical device manufactures must develop safe, reliable, and cost-effective products, and managing and reducing risk is a vital element of reaching that goal. These guidelines focus on Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and its application throughout the life cycle of a medical device. It outlines the major U.S. and E.U. standards and regulations and provides a detailed yet easy-to-read overview of risk management and risk analysis methodologies, common FMEA pitfalls, and FMECA-Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis.

Guidelines for Failure Modes and Effects Analysis for Medical Devices is written as a practical guide to achieving corporate consistency while dramatically cutting the time required for studies. It will help you prevent patient injuries, costly product recalls, and production department down-time.

Discover how the FMEA methodology can help your company achieve a more cost-effective manufacturing process by improving the quality and reliability of your products. This new FMEA manual from the experts at Dyadem is the ultimate resource for you and your colleagues to learn more about Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and then teach others at your facility. This comprehensive manual is sure to become a standard reference for engineering professionals.

Crisis Leadership examines the challenges faced by leaders at each stage of the crisis 'lifecycle', and offers a unique insight into the lessons learned by people in the most challenging of situations. Anyone in a leadership position is only too aware that we live in uncertain times: disaster can strike any business, at any time, and usually without warning. Public institutions, too, face a range of threats - from global recession, resurgent terrorism and a stream of appalling natural disasters. For leaders in such organisations, these crisis situations can present both opportunities and threats. How they lead through such challenging times will propel their careers to new heights - or destroy them completely. Crisis Leadership examines the challenges faced by leaders at each stage of the crisis 'lifecycle', from the instant they learn of the crisis, through to moments of critical decision-making and the final tumultuous days. Tim Johnson offers a unique insight into the lessons learned by people in the most challenging of situations. Blended with operational guidance from the author's extensive experience in crisis management, Crisis Leadership provides an overview of the crisis 'lifecycle', to ensure that readers will come away from this book with a deeper appreciation of the critical nature of each key stage and the leadership challenges they bring - from the first signs of an emerging crisis to dealing with the long-term consequences they can create.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Everyone negotiates. Whenever any person, company, or country needs someone else to accomplish something, they must negotiate. Negotiation is essential for peace and international relations, but also for economically efficient trades and bargains in business, and for problem solving skills in workplaces, families, and interpersonal interactions. This Very Short Introduction provides a comprehensive and accessible review of both conceptual and behavioural approaches to the human process of negotiation. Carrie Menkel-Meadow draws on research in constituent fields of human psychology, diplomacy, law, business, anthropology, game theory, decision making, international relations, sociology, public policy, and economics, suggesting models for creative problem solving to often intractable problems. Considering that most people are tense and frightened of what they perceive to be scarce resource confrontations with opponents and competitors, Menkel-Meadow offers different ways to plan for and approach others to solve human problems and seek solutions that satisfy both parties. Alongside this, Menkel-Meadow summarises recent research on the variations of human behaviour, providing vivid examples from history and current affairs to solve some of the most difficult problems. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Have you ever come up with an idea for a new product or service but didn't take any action because you thought it would be too risky? Or at work, have you had what you thought could be a big idea for your company--perhaps changing the way you develop or distribute a product, provide customer service, or hire and train your employees? If you have, but you haven't known how to take the next step, you need to understand what the authors call the innovator's method--a set of tools emerging from lean start-up, design thinking, and agile software development that are revolutionizing how new ideas are created, refined, and brought to market. To date these tools have helped entrepreneurs, designers, and software developers manage uncertainty--through cheap and rapid experiments that systematically lower failure rates and risk. But many managers and leaders struggle to apply these powerful tools within their organizations, as they often run counter to traditional managerial thinking and practice. Authors Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer wrote this book to address that very problem. Following the breakout success of The Innovator's DNA--which Dyer wrote with Hal Gregersen and bestselling author Clay Christensen to provide a framework for generating ideas--this book shows how to make those ideas actually happen, to commercialize them for success. Based on their research inside corporations and successful start-ups, Furr and Dyer developed the innovator's method, an end-to-end process for creating, refining, and bringing ideas to market. They show when and how to apply the tools of their method, how to adapt them to your business, and how to answer commonly asked questions about the method itself, including: How do we know if this idea is worth pursuing? Have we found the right solution? What is the best business model for this new offering? This book focuses on the "how"--how to test, how to validate, and how to commercialize ideas with the lean, design, and agile techniques successful start-ups use. Whether you're launching a start-up, leading an established one, or simply working to get a new product off the ground in an existing company, this book is for you.

Contents:
1. Introduction The Context in Which Toxic Risk Analysis Takes Place 2. What Risk Management Covers 3. Legal and Organisational Frameworks 4. Philosophical Frameworks for Handling Risk 5. The Importance of Risk Perception and Risk Communication for Toxicological Risk Assessment The Principles and Practice of Toxic Risk Analysis 6. Introduction - Royal Society and National Academy of Science 7. Toxicological Assessment 8. Evaluation of Human Health Effects: Toxicity 9. Evaluation of Human Health Effects: Exposure 10. The Special Case of Major Accident Hazards 11. Evaluation of Effects on the Environment 12. Effects on the Atmosphere

This practical resource shows business professionals how to improve their decision-making skills and enhance their ability to develop effective interpersonal relationships with co-workers and clients. The book covers a wide range of topics -- identifying tastes and preferences, personal skill assessment, cost-benefit analysis, risk and uncertainty, multi-tasking, human resource management, time constraints, data collection, and more. Designed to help busy professionals make the most effective use of time and energy, it will also be useful in the study of organizational behavior and business psychology.

A Practical Guide to Understanding, Managing and Reviewing Environmental Risk Assessment Reports provides team leaders and team members with a strategy for developing the elements of risk assessment into a readable and beneficial report.
The authors believe that successful management of the risk assessment team is a key factor is quality reports. Leadership first clarifies the roles of each participant and the unique technical factors of their respective disciplines. Teamwork is achieved through an emphasis on common language and procedures.
Belluck and Benjamin explore a variety of techniques for creating accurate and useful reports. An example is Proactive Risk Assessment, which breaks a project into discrete parts to be delivered on an interim basis. This method, based on iterative review, drastically increases the chance of detecting errors while they can still be corrected.
The authors emphasize rigorous standards by which reports are audited, evaluated and critiqued. The goal is to create reports that are accurate, useful and, adaptable on an industry-wide basis.

Risk management is considered a vital business tool, and one that is complex and difficult to master. This text is part of a series that examines and applies the principles of risk management to a variety of business operations.