Showing results by publisher "Ascent Audio" in Business & Careers

Get heard by being clear and concise. The only way to survive in business today is to be a lean communicator. Busy executives expect you to respect and manage their time more effectively than ever. You need to do the groundwork to make your message tight and to the point. The average professional receives 304 emails per week and checks their smartphones 36 times an hour and 38 hours a week. This inattention has spread to every part of life. The average attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight in 2012. So, throw them a lifeline and be brief.

One of the world's most respected leaders, former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty overcame childhood and financial struggles to embark on a groundbreaking career that took her from entry-level engineer to eight years as the first woman CEO of an iconic global company. Forty years in business and public advocacy taught Rometty the transformative power of leadership that blends authenticity, relationships, and curiosity with vision, rigor, and conviction. In her personable yet direct voice, Rometty reveals experiences that taught her how to orchestrate change for clients, companies, and communities.

It's your responsibility as a manager to ensure that your work—and the work of your team—aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. But when you're faced with competing projects and limited time, it's difficult to keep strategy front of mind. How do you keep your eye on the long term amid a sea of short-term demands? The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list.

In this book, author Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive roles: measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy."

A global pandemic, Depression-level unemployment, civil and political unrest - it feels as if the world as we know it is faltering. Through it all, our spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it's imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion.

The Outward Mindset presents compelling true stories to illustrate the gaps that individuals and organizations typically experience between their actual inward mindsets and their needed outward mindsets. And it provides simple yet profound guidance and tools to help bridge this mindset gap.

Agile, say its enthusiasts, can transform your company, catapulting you to the head of the pack. Not so fast. In this clear-eyed and indispensable audiobook, Sarah Elk and Steve Berez provide a much-needed reality check. They dispel the myths and misconceptions that have accompanied agile's growth - the idea that it can reshape your organization all at once, for instance, or that it should be used in every function and for all types of work.

This comprehensive guide to training your brain to do more for you presents a pragmatic set of tools to apply critical-thinking techniques to everyday business issues. Think Smarter is filled with real-world examples that demonstrate how the tools work in action, in addition to dozens of practice exercises applicable across industries and functions. Think Smarter is a versatile resource for individuals, managers, students, and corporate-training programs.

With Peter Drucker's five essential questions and the help of five of today's thought leaders, this little book will challenge readers to take a close look at the very heart of their organizations and what drives them. A tool for self-assessment and transformation, answering these five questions will fundamentally change the way you work, helping you lead your organization to an exceptional level of performance.

Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success details one of the largest and most formidable transformations in corporate history: to shift the foundations of work for IBM's nearly 400,000 employees and thousands of interdisciplinary teams across 180 countries and help...

What is most important to your success as a sales or business professional? Is it education, experience, product knowledge, job title, territory, or business dress? Is it your company's reputation, product, price, marketing collateral, delivery lead times, in stock ratios, service guarantees, management strength, or warehouse location? Is it testimonials, the latest Forbes write up, or brand awareness? Is it the investment in the latest CRM software, business 2.0 tools, or social media strategy?

Originally published in 1922, Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion caused a stir throughout the scientific and religious communities. Émile Coué's assertions that the repetition of certain phrases, or mantras, can have a positive effect on the health and happiness of an individual challenged the existing reliance on chemicals and clergy. However, his theories, which are laid out in straightforward detail in his work, were solidly based on his firsthand experiences with patients, including such stalwart methods as conditioning therapy and the placebo effect.

While you might have the appearance of absolute success in everything you do, scratch below the surface the reality is that you are freaking out, even just a little. You have so many balls in the air that the juggle is becoming increasingly hard to sustain. You need to start doing things differently because trying to do it all represents a huge risk to your ongoing success and well being. This book teaches you how to successfully juggle your two lives and to be guilt-free, with a proven five-step process to help you identify and harness hours of lost time on the home front.

Healthy communities strive for their members to support one another, share their passions, and achieve personal growth. This book will help you learn to be connected and defeat loneliness by understanding where and how we belong. No matter the kind of organization, company, or social group, this book is a guide for leaders seeking to build a community or strengthen the ones they already have.

In the first edition of this landmark book, business loyalty guru Fred Reichheld revealed the question most critical to your company’s future: “Would you recommend us to a friend?” By asking customers this question, you identify detractors, who sully your firm’s reputation and readily switch to competitors, and promoters, who generate good profits and true, sustainable growth.You also generate a vital metric: your Net Promoter Score.

In a world crying out for change, Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems is your guidebook for action. Adam Kahane, the bestselling author of Collaborating with the Enemy and a global authority on solving tough problems, delivers game-changing advice for anyone ready to make a difference. This is a manifesto for world-changers. Drawing on decades of work with leaders from national and organizational presidents to front-line managers and grass-roots activists, Kahane distills seven potent habits that enable ordinary citizens to become extraordinary agents of transformation.

Communication is essential in a healthy organization. But all too often when we interact with people - especially those who report to us - we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry. Ed Schein defines Humble Inquiry as "the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person."

On Board: The Modern Playbook for Corporate Governance is the ultimate guide for corporate directors, executives, governance professionals, and students navigating today's fast-evolving business landscape. Written by a seasoned corporate director, investment banker, and expert witness in corporate litigation, this essential resource delivers a historical perspective, data-driven insights and stories from inside boardrooms on board leadership, fiduciary duties, CEO issues, regulatory compliance, and governance best practices.

Excellent communicating skills have always been crucial to success in leadership and management roles—and that's one of the reasons the first edition of this book has been an international bestseller taught at universities and referred to by leading CEOs. What's changed in the last ten years? Well, nothing—and everything. Mastering Communication at Work, Second Edition features an essential new chapter on remote team communication along with additional content on equitable leadership and updated case studies.

They Ask You Answer is a straightforward guide to fixing your current marketing strategy. Regardless of your budget, you are almost certainly overspending on television, radio, and print ads, yet neglecting the number-one resource you have at your disposal: the Internet. Content marketing is no longer about key word-stuffing and link-building; in fact, using those tactics today gets your webpage shuffled to the bottom of the heap.