Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Management & Leadership

Master the power of influence and persuasion to achieve more in work and life. For business leaders and managers, as well as those who work in sales, the power of influence can be a potent advantage. The ability to persuade others based on what you know about them is the first step to convincing someone to buy your product or buy into your business vision.

Professional service firms face a serious challenge. Their clients increasingly need them to solve complex problems - everything from regulatory compliance to cybersecurity, the kinds of problems that only teams of multidisciplinary experts can tackle. Yet most firms have carved up their highly specialized, professional experts into narrowly defined practice areas, and collaborating across these silos is often messy, risky, and expensive.

Seeing What's Next is a framework for predicting industry winners and losers. Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data, and can lead to costly errors in judgment. Internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth, present this guide for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry.

A "brilliant, fun, and wise" (Cass R. Sunstein) tour of nine common business decision-making traps - and practical tools for avoiding them - from a professor of strategic thinking.

When Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558, England was the laughing stock of Europe. Economic, political, and religious calamities were numerous, and Elizabeth endured constant criticism. But by the end of her 45-year reign, England was one of the world's mightiest nations. Axelrod uses the legendary Queen's life as a model for modern leadership, and a powerful example of how one person can make an extraordinary difference. Elizabeth I CEO is an indispensable guide for today's business managers and leaders. It is also an inspiring listen for those taking their first steps up the corporate ladder, or those who simply love history. Nelson Runger's narration gives a renewed energy to Elizabeth's lessons, which are as relevant today as they were four centuries ago.

The lesson seems so basic. Yet time after time, good companies stumble and lose their stride - just when they were poised for rapid growth. Why? Because their leaders treated hiring as a tedious chore. They posted an ad hoc ad. Took the first person with the right skills. Hired for immediate needs, rather than future flourishing. In Hire Smart from the Start, Dave Carvajal distills lessons gained from 20 years in the trenches, building out and staffing two enormously successful Internet startups and helping firms like Tumblr, and Shutterstock land the talent they need to reach their greatest potential.

Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don't have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors.

As a former Super Bowl-winning coach, Tony Dungy is an expert at building and bringing out the best in a team. Drawing on his experiences from years of coaching and working with other leaders, this football fable lays out four essential principles practiced by truly effective teams. Whether you aspire to be a better leader or a stronger team player, The Soul of a Team will show you how to contribute to a stronger, healthier, more productive team destined for success.

Leadership in Christian Perspective brings the best of leadership theory and research together with biblical reflection and examples of leadership in action. Organized around "nine empowering practices," it integrates solid research in leadership studies with biblical and theological reflection on the leadership ideas that are most compatible with Christian faith, making it an important resource for professors and students in leadership and pastoral theology courses, pastors and church leaders, and Christian business leaders.

Conventional wisdom today says that to survive, companies must move beyond incremental, sustaining innovation and invest in some form of radical innovation. "Disrupt yourself or be disrupted!" is the relentless message company leaders hear. The Power of Little Ideas argues there's a third way that is neither sustaining nor disruptive.

Will Africa be the world's next hub of manufacturing? China is answering in the affirmative and investing accordingly. This book dispels the notion that this crucial story is merely about China's exploitation of Africa's resources, illuminating deep questions about our own Western approach to development and the implications for the future of manufacturing. The fact that China sees Africa not for its poverty but for its potential wealth is a striking departure from the attitude of the West, in particular the United States.

Should we even expect to be fulfilled and happy at work? Yes, we should, says Annie McKee, coauthor of the best-selling Primal Leadership. In her new transformative book, she makes the most compelling case yet that happiness - and the full engagement that comes with it - is more important than ever in today's workplace, and she sheds new light on the powerful relationship of happiness to individual, team, and organizational success.

The Don: 36 Rules of the Bosses is the fascinating culmination of author RJ Roger’s extensive research into the Italian-American Cosa Nostra. Analyzing more than 100 years of underworld history, Roger has distilled the behavior of the bosses of the five New York Mafia families—the most powerful in the United States—into 36 rules. Unwritten until codified in The Don, these rules were the foundation of the bosses’ success for over a century.

About 97 percent of a rocket's fuel is used in the first three feet of its launch. The same is true in launching a new business, product, or service. Those first few steps are absolutely critical. Scott Duffy has developed a practical approach for turning your big idea into a thriving venture by focusing on the crucial period immediately before, during, and after opening your doors (literally or online). His approach is based on his experiences working with top entrepreneurs like Tony Robbins and Richard Branson, who taught him how to balance the two key sides of entrepreneurship.

There's an 80 percent chance you're poor. Time poor, that is. Four out of five adults report feeling that they have too much to do and not enough time to do it. These time-poor people experience less joy each day. They laugh less. They are less healthy, less productive, and more likely to divorce. In one study, time stress produced a stronger negative effect on happiness than unemployment. How can we escape the time traps that make us feel this way and keep us from living our best lives?

In this indispensable new book, Andrew Winston provides 10 crucial strategies for leaders and companies ready to move boldly forward and win in this new reality. With concrete advice and tactics, and new stories from companies like British Telecom, Diageo, Dow, Ford, Nike, Unilever, Walmart, and many others, The Big Pivot will help you, and all of us, create more resilient businesses and a more prosperous world. This book is the blueprint to get you started.

After speaking to companies such as Merck, Land O'Lakes, and Cargill, and 2,000 audiences across the world, Damian Mason, successful businessman, agriculturalist, podcaster, and writer, wants to help you achieve your entrepreneurial goals and live a better life. While other business books claim to tell you how to reach success, they fall short because they don't address the fact that success is different for each of us. Do Business Better helps you define success on your terms, then shows you how to achieve it.

Being a pastor is a complicated calling. Pastors are often pulled in multiple directions and must "become all things to all people" (1 Cor. 9:22). What does the New Testament say (or not say) about the pastoral calling? And what can we learn about it from the apostle Paul? According to popular New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, pastoring must begin first and foremost with spiritual formation, which plays a vital role in the life and ministry of the pastor. As leaders, pastors both create and nurture culture in a church.

From two pioneers in business analytics, an update of the classic book on how analytics and business intelligence are transforming competition and how leading organizations build and compete on an analytical capability. Leading companies are doing more than just collecting and storing data in large quantities - they're now driving their competitive strategies based on data-driven insights. In Competing on Analytics, Davenport and Harris explain how analytics are transforming the basis of competition in industry after industry.

Scott Page, a leading thinker, writer, and speaker whose ideas and advice are sought after by corporations, nonprofits, universities, and governments around the world, makes a clear and compellingly pragmatic case for diversity and inclusion. He presents overwhelming evidence that teams that include different kinds of thinkers outperform homogenous groups on complex tasks, producing what he calls "diversity bonuses".