'The way that Ricardo Semler runs his company is impossible; except th at it works, and works splendidly for everyone. I relish this book. It revived my faith in human beings and my hope for business everywher e' Charles Handy--Workers make the decisions previously made by their bosses--Managerial staff set their own salaries and bonuses--Everyone has access to the company books--No formality - a minimum of meetings, memos and approvals--Internal walls torn down--Shopfloor workers set their own productivity targets and schedulesResu lt - Semco is one of Latin America's fastest-growing companies, acknow ledged to be the best in Brazil to work for, and with a waiting list o f thousands of applicants hoping to join it. This book offers the chanc e to learn Ricardo Semler's secrets and let some of the Semco magic ru b off on you and your company

Where should I live? Is it time to get a new job? Which job candidate should I hire? What business strategy should I pursue? We spend the majority of our lives making decisions, both big and small. Yet, even though our success is largely determined by the choices that we make, very few of us are equipped with useful decision-making skills. Because of this, we often approach our choices tentatively, or even fearfully, and avoid giving them the time and thought required to put our best foot forward. In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa--experts with over 100 years of experience resolving complex decision problems--offer a proven, straightforward, and flexible roadmap for making better and more impactful decisions, and offer the tools to achieve your goals in every aspect of your life. Their step-by-step, divide-and conquer approach will teach you how to: * Evaluate your plans * Break your potential decision into its key elements * Identify the key drivers that are most relevant to your goals * Apply systematic thinking * Use the right information to make the smartest choice Smart Choices doesn't tell you what to decide; it tells you how. As you routinely use the process, you'll become more confident in your ability to make decisions at work and at home. And, more importantly, by applying its time-tested methods, you'll make better decisions going forward. Be proactive. Don't wait until a decision is forced on you--or made for you. Seek out decisions that advance your long-term goals, values, and beliefs. Take charge of your life by making Smart Choices a lifetime habit.

Imagine a world with great leadership. What would that world be like? Would it be a better world or a worse one? Now ratchet great leadership up to exceptional leadership and suddenly we have cause for optimism. But how do we design exceptional leadership, and would we even know it if we saw it? Traditional paradigms of leadership have celebrated decisive top-down control and analytical decision-making. But times are changing. The world is more connected, complex, fluid and interdependent. This book debunks the myth that leaders need to be creative like designers to apply Design Thinking. Applying design approaches and practices to organizational leadership is not just about its leaders becoming more creative. It is definitely not about the person at the top coming up with the grand answer. Design thinking starts with the 'pain point' related to the problem you are trying to solve. You get to the heart of the issue. It is a collaborative effort that neatly leads stakeholders and representatives affected by the problem to design novel leadership solutions that actually work. This collection of stories, examples and narratives about exceptional leadership by design provides readers of all levels of experience with tangible, real, and heartfelt examples of how the design process can be applied to leadership. It will show how we: Inform great leadership with design Strengthen our own leadership by design Redesign hero leadership for more inclusivity Redesign organizations for Fe+Male leadership synergy Design leadership for a VUCA world Design flow-based leadership Design organizations that build resilient leadership Design leadership for innovation Design culturally intelligent leadership Build leadership into our spaces and places

"Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world s most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know." Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania, USA.
"If anyone can make it Operations Research] understandably readable and positively interesting it is Stafford Beer everyone in management ..should be grateful to him for using clear and at times elegant English and even elegant diagrams." The Economist
In Brain of the Firm and The Heart of Enterprise Stafford Beer worked out the scientific laws that govern any viable system. They constitute the basis for this book which is concerned solely with the application of those laws to the understanding of any particular enterprise. In the form of a Handbook or Manager s Guide, Diagnosing the System deals with the fundamental problem of management how to cope with complexity itself. It shows you how to design (or redesign) an enterprise in conformity with the laws of viability, and will help you to diagnose faults in your organizational structure.

Drawing on the experiences of six expatriate leaders who, collectively, had more than 78 years of experience managing United States Agency for International Development (USAID) international development projects in 26 countries around the world, this book provides a scholarly analysis of their stories, identifies factors expatriate leaders experienced managing projects, then integrates the factors into a theory that explains and helps define the success, or lack thereof, they achieved, and provides recommendations on how to deal with and overcome the issues. For decades, international development projects have played a crucial role in the delivery of U.S. foreign aid and yet, while considerable attention has been given to policymakers' foreign aid decisions concerning which countries receive U.S. foreign aid and how much each country receives, scant attention has been given to understanding the challenges encountered by the expatriate leaders recruited to manage the implementation of these international development projects, which unfold within a confluence of diverse multi-organizational contexts and culturally complex developing country environments. Even less is known about what factors these expatriate leaders experience that could explain, and help define, the success, or lack thereof, they achieve managing the implementation of these projects. This book is essential reading for international development leaders, practitioners, and scholars, as well as foreign aid policymakers, as they seek to improve international development.

This book outlines the creative process of making environmental management decisions using the approach called "Structured Decision Making." It is a short introductory guide to this popular form of decision making and is aimed at environmental managers and scientists. ""This is a distinctly pragmatic label given to ways for helping individuals and groups think through tough multidimensional choices characterized by uncertain science, diverse stakeholders, and difficult tradeoffs. This is the everyday reality of environmental management, yet many important decisions currently are made on an ad hoc basis that lacks a solid value-based foundation, ignores key information, and results in selection of an inferior alternative. Making progress - in a way that is rigorous, inclusive, defensible and transparent - requires combining analytical methods drawn from the decision sciences and applied ecology with deliberative insights from cognitive psychology, facilitation and negotiation. The authors review key methods and discuss case-study examples based in their experiences in communities, boardrooms, and stakeholder meetings. The goal of this book is to lay out a compelling guide that will change how you think about making environmental decisions.

Visit www.wiley.com/go/gregory/sdm to access the figures and tables from the book.

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.

Clearly, concisely, and with many examples from public and private enterprise, Upgrading Leadership's Crystal Ball shows why predictions are usually wrong and presents a better way to look at the future-forecasting. This book is essential-reading for anyone who needs to make the best possible strategic decisions for moving an organization forward in today's rapidly changing environment. Dr. Bauer supplies an insightful comparison of the two mainstream approaches for looking ahead. Although predicting and forecasting are usually used as synonyms for a single process, they are conceptually and methodologically quite different. He explains why everyday failure to operationalize these differences robs us of power to envision and pursue good futures, especially when we are headed in the wrong direction. Readers will learn the real-world value of distinguishing between predicting (extrapolating historical trends) and forecasting (estimating the probabilities of possibilities). Following a description of predictive modeling and a discussion of five reasons why it fails so often in current applications, Dr. Bauer explains the superiority of forecasting and how to do it. To complete readers' understanding of the many compelling reasons for making the shift from predicting to forecasting, Upgrading Leadership's Crystal Ball presents a practical approach to strategic planning in unpredictable times. It concludes with an analysis of the future of big data and its likely impact on the future. Dr. Bauer is uniquely qualified to write this important book; he is trained in both predicting (economics) and forecasting (meteorology). Author of more than 250 publications, he is internationally recognized not only for long-term success in foretelling the future of medical science and health care, but also for successful innovations to create a better delivery system. This book distills the lessons garnered over his 40 year career as economist and futurist into a guide that other leaders can use to avoid problems and create better options in any realm. The book includes a foreword by Dr. Stan Gryskiewicz, author of Positive Turbulence.

This book provides a detailed examination of the complex negotiation processes surrounding intergovernmental conferences in the European Union. Since the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) and its 'appendix', the Treaty of Nice in 2002, any reform of the constitutional framework of the European Union experiences formidable difficulties. By presenting an extensive study of the Intergovernmental Conference of 1996/7 prior to the Treaty of Amsterdam, the authors argue that these negotiations reveal major challenges of European integration. They contend that multi-level negotiations require an appropriate coordination of informal administrative networks and the empowerment of administrative leadership, with these factors significantly shaping the dynamics and outcomes of negotiations. Through these findings, this book lays down the foundation for future evidence-based support and evaluation of multilateral negotiations, and delivers new insights on decision-making within the European Union. It draws on advanced statistical methods and network analysis. European Union Intergovernmental Conferences will be of interest to students and researchers of political science, sociology, administrative science, business and management studies, international law and European law.

Everything a first-time manager needs to know about leading and managing other people. It's great to find yourself with a new promotion and to suddenly have fresh challenges at work. But managing other people can be a daunting responsibility when it's your first time - particularly if you find yourself as the boss of former colleagues or friends. Packed with practical advice, Succeed as a New Manager will help you sail through issues such as getting to know your team, dealing with internal politics, the rise of hybrid and remote working, motivating others, and celebrating success. Whatever your new job, Succeed As a New Manager will help you find your feet and get great results along the way. This book also includes a quiz, step-by-step action points, common mistakes and advice on how to avoid them, top tips, and summaries of key points.

Foreword by Ciara In this breakthrough book, the author of Wall Street Journal bestseller It Takes What It Takes provides life-changing, step-by-step guidance on how to successfully navigate adversity and defeat negativity by downshifting to neutral thinking. It's easy to be positive when everything is coming up roses. But what happens when life goes sideways? Many of us lapse into a self-defeating negative spiral that makes it hard to accomplish anything. Getting to Neutral is a step-by-step guide that shows readers how to use mental conditioning coach Trevor Moawad's innovative motivational system to defeat negativity and thrive. Neutral thinking is a judgment-free, process-oriented approach that helps us coolly assess situations in high-pressure moments. Moawad walks readers through how to downshift to neutral no matter how dire the situation. He shows us how to behave our way to success, how to determine and practice our values in a neutral framework, and how to surround ourselves with a team that helps us to stay neutral. Filled with raw, inspiring stories of how Trevor navigated health challenges with neutral thinking as well as insights drawn from some of the world's best athletes, coaches, and leaders, Getting to Neutral will help readers learn to handle even the most complex and turbulent situations with calm, clarity, and resolve.

Plenty of books offer useful advice on how to get better at making quick-thinking, intuitive choices. But what about more consequential decisions, the ones that affect our lives for years, or centuries, to come? Our most powerful stories revolve around these kinds of decisions: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. Full of the beautifully crafted storytelling and novel insights that Steven Johnson's fans know to expect, Farsighted draws lessons from cognitive science, social psychology, military strategy, environmental planning, and great works of literature. Everyone thinks we are living in an age of short attention spans, but we've actually learned a lot about making long-term decisions over the past few decades. Johnson makes a compelling case for a smarter and more deliberative decision-making approach. He argues that we choose better when we break out of the myopia of single-scale thinking and develop methods for considering all the factors involved. There's no one-size-fits-all model for the important decisions that can alter the course of a life, an organization, or a civilization. But Farsighted explains how we can approach these choices more effectively, and how we can appreciate the subtle intelligence of choices that shaped our broader social history.

Games, or contexts of strategic interaction, pervade and suffuse our lives and the lives of all organisms. How are we to make sense of and cope with such situations? How should an agent play? When will and when won't cooperation arise and be maintained? Using examples and a careful digestion of the literature, Agents, Games, and Evolution: Strategies at Work and Play addresses these encompassing themes throughout, and is organized into four parts: Part I introduces classical game theory and strategy selection. It compares ideally rational and the "naturalist" approach used by this book, which focuses on how actual agents chose their strategies, and the effects of these strategies on model systems. Part II explores a number of basic games, using models in which agents have fixed strategies. This section draws heavily on the substantial literature associated with the relevant application areas in the social sciences. Part III reviews core results and applications of agent-based models in which strategic interaction is present and for which design issues have genuine practical import. This section draws heavily on the substantial literature associated with the application area to hand. Part IV addresses miscellaneous topics in strategic interaction, including lying in negotiations, reasoning by backward induction, and evolutionary models. Modeled after the authors' Agents, Games, and Evolution course at the University of Pennsylvania, this book keeps mathematics to a minimum, focusing on computational strategies and useful methods for dealing with a variety of situations.

Scale at Speed gets your business over the hump of doing fine to triple revenue in two years. Unlike other business growth books, this is a how-to guide, matching theory with easily actionable steps. Scale at Speed has helped founders, entrepreneurs and business leaders: - Chart a clear route to business transformation - Build enthusiastic and talented support for your vision - Uncover your unique value proposition - Introduce processes and KPIs - Untangle yourself from the day-to-day - Become a market leader while reducing marketing costs - Achieve the best exit price Written in a clear, honest and engaging style by Felix Velarde, founder of the 2Y3X growth accelerator, which has been helping businesses scale since 2016. Velarde founded one of the world's first web design consultancies, before spending a twenty-year career creating, growing and selling digital marketing's highest-profile businesses.

Have you ever wondered why most newspapers are so large? Or why management consultants work such long hours? Or why hotels still insist on having check-in desks? Ask anyone in these industries, and their answer will be the same: "That's the way we've always done it."

"Best practices" may be widespread, but that doesn’t mean they're effective. In many instances the opposite is true: best practices can be outdated, harmful, and a hindrance to innovation. These bad practices are all too common in organizations, and managers and executives can be blind to their pernicious effects. Since they've worked in the past, or have been adopted with success by other firms, their purpose or effectiveness is rarely questioned. As a consequence, these practices spread and persist.

In Breaking Bad Habits, Freek Vermeulen, a strategist with a keen eye for the absurd, offers the tools to identify these practices and rid them from your organization. And, most of all, he presents a compelling case for how eliminating popular but outworn ideas, processes, and strategies can create new opportunities for innovation and growth.

Brimming with examples of norm-defying organizations in an eclectic range of industries--including IVF clinics, hotels, newspapers, and a famous London theater--Breaking Bad Habits will make you rethink your long-held beliefs about industry norms while encouraging you to reinvigorate your business by breaking out of the status quo.

'A compelling guide for leaders grappling with the pandemic' Financial Times 'A remarkable book telling business leaders what to do when disaster strikes' The Times AN INSPIRING STORY OF RESILIENT LEADERSHIP IN THE TOUGHEST OF TIMES Louai Al Roumani was head of finance and planning at one of the largest banks in Syria, when the war broke out in 2011. In Lessons from a Warzone, Al Roumani shares his very personal account of coping with the day-to-day realities of leading an organization in dangerous and hostile conditions. His story shows how inspiration can come from the unlikeliest of places - from the timeless wisdom of merchants in ancient souks to the changing patterns of military checkpoints. During that time, not only did the bank remain robust when others faltered - it thrived and became the undisputed leading bank as people's trust in its capability to safeguard their life-long savings strengthened. In this book, Al Roumani distils the knowledge and skills he and his colleagues developed while steering the bank through four impossible years into ten lessons applicable to any leader facing a crisis today. His valuable, and often counterintuitive, advice - ranging from resisting over-planning to hacking your own IT department to cutting costs (but not morale) - will help anyone understand how to be resilient even in the most challenging of times.

Risk Analysis: A Quantitative Guide is a comprehensive guide for eh risk analyst and decision maker. based on the author's extensive experience in solving real-world risk problems, this book is an invaluable aid to the risk analysis practitioner. by providing the building blocks of risk-based thinking the author guides the reader through the steps necessary to produce a realistic risk-based thinking the author guides the reader through the steps necessary to produce a realistic risk analysis and offers general and specific techniques to cope with most common and challenging risk modelling problems. A wide range of solved examples is used to illustrate these technique and how they can be put together to make the best possible risk-based decisions.

The third edition of this highly regarded text has been thoroughly updated and expanded considerably with five new chapters for the risk manager, including how to plan and assess the quality of risk analysis, as well as new chapters for this risk analysis, as well as new chapters for the risk analysis modeller on summation of random variables, causality, optimization, insurance and finance modelling, forecasting, model validation and common errors, capital investment and microbial risk assessment. This new edition provides a greater focus on business and includes applications in a wide range of different settings.

Key Features: Breaks down techniques into types of modelling issues (like distribution fitting, correlation and time series forecasting) and then applies them with easy-to-follow examples. Explains powerful and proven Monte Carlo simulation and numerical techniques for dealing with uncertainty. Includes recent innovations inmodelling like fast Fourier transforms and copulas. Over 150 examples models and over 400 illustrations. Written in an informal manner with a practical rather than academic focus. Discusses the planning, uses and abuses of risk analysis. Includes a compendium of almost eighty distribution types and their uses.

This revised and updated fifth edition of Accounting for Managers builds on the international success of the previous editions in explaining how accounting is used by non-financial managers. Emphasizing the interpretation rather than the construction of accounting information, Accounting for Managers encourages a critical, rather than an unthinking acceptance of accounting techniques. Whilst immensely valuable for planning, decision-making and control, users of accounting information need to recognize the assumptions behind, and the limitations of particular accounting techniques. As in the previous editions, the book links theory with practical examples and case studies drawn from real business situations across a wide range of manufacturing, retail and service industries.

Wiley's new "Handbook of Decision Making" is a vital reference text for all students and professionals of management, organization and decision making. The handbook offers a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches to the understanding of organizational and strategic decisions. Contributors are internationally known experts drawn from North America, Canada and Europe who have spent many years in the study of decision making, and decision making relevant topics. We believe the handbook will become a tour de force in the understanding decision making, offering a wide variety of perspectives, topics, and summative understanding of the field. Chapters in the "Handbook" were prepared by the leading experts in their field and include cutting edge empirical, theoretical, and review chapters. The chapters bring together for the first time a critical mass of writing on decision making as an organizational and research activity. The Editors are two of the leading international experts in decision making and contribute to the "Handbook" with five original Chapters that offer an appraisal of the field and suggestions for research, as well as the current status of decision making practice and suggestion for improvement.

Risk Analysis in Finance and Insurance, Second Edition presents an accessible yet comprehensive introduction to the main concepts and methods that transform risk management into a quantitative science. Taking into account the interdisciplinary nature of risk analysis, the author discusses many important ideas from mathematics, finance, and actuarial science in a simplified manner. He explores the interconnections among these disciplines and encourages readers toward further study of the subject. This edition continues to study risks associated with financial and insurance contracts, using an approach that estimates the value of future payments based on current financial, insurance, and other information. New to the Second Edition Expanded section on the foundations of probability and stochastic analysis Coverage of new topics, including financial markets with stochastic volatility, risk measures, risk-adjusted performance measures, and equity-linked insurance More worked examples and problems Reorganized and expanded, this updated book illustrates how to use quantitative methods of stochastic analysis in modern financial mathematics. These methods can be naturally extended and applied in actuarial science, thus leading to unified methods of risk analysis and management.

Scholarly literature on talent management usually takes a mainstream approach to understanding how and why organizations pursue talent initiatives and to rationalizing their presumed benefits. Indeed, the basic logic of identifying and supporting an organization's most talented employees is, on the surface, quite seductive. Recent conceptual and empirical research, however, shows that talent management brings with it a range of issues that should trouble both academics and practitioners. In response to these concerns, Managing Talent: A Critical Appreciation takes a more critical view of the organizational talent project, to understanding the motives for talent management and to the identification, development and placement of high potential employees. This edited text brings together and explores a range of concerns arising from theory and practice and offers both practical recommendations and implications for further research. The issues and questions examined include: the rhetoric, politics and reality of talent management leadership derailment the social construction of talent gender bias in talent recognition the relevance of research in talent management inclusive talent management the role of line managers and leadership in implementing talent management While stressing academic rigour, each chapter is accessible to both scholars and practitioners who are looking for alternative ways of thinking about talent and alternative perspectives on the often problematic issues arising from managing talent in practice.

Chip and Dan Heath, the bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick, tackle one of the most critical topics in our work and personal lives: how to make better decisions. Research in psychology has revealed that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities: We're overconfident. We seek out information that supports us and downplay information that doesn't. We get distracted by short-term emotions. When it comes to making choices, it seems, our brains are flawed instruments. Unfortunately, merely being aware of these shortcomings doesn't fix the problem, any more than knowing that we are nearsighted helps us to see. The real question is: How can we do better? In Decisive, the Heaths, based on an exhaustive study of the decision-making literature, introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. Written in an engaging and compulsively readable style, Decisive takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from a rock star's ingenious decision-making trick to a CEO's disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions. Along the way, we learn the answers to critical questions like these: How can we stop the cycle of agonizing over our decisions? How can we make group decisions without destructive politics? And how can we ensure that we don't overlook precious opportunities to change our course? Decisive is the Heath brothers' most powerful-and important-book yet, offering fresh strategies and practical tools enabling us to make better choices. Because the right decision, at the right moment, can make all the difference.