Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Management & Leadership

The only lasting way to enhance your productivity and growth is to focus on a handful of basic concepts and repeat them week after week - and teach your staff to do the same. This audiobook explains how to tune up virtually every area of your business systematically, with just a little disciplined focus. Spend an hour per week on each "impact area" of your business, and you will be astonished at how much you can accomplish.

W. Edwards Deming details the system of transformation that underlies the "14 Points for Management" presented in Out of the Crisis. The "Deming System of Profound Knowledge", as it is called, consists of four parts: appreciation for a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. Describing the prevailing management style as a prison, Deming describes how applying the System of Profound Knowledge increases productivity, quality, and people's joy in work and joy in learning.

In 1999 Joseph Pine and James Gilmore offered readers the idea of the experience economy as a new way to connect with customers and secure their loyalty. As a result, their book The Experience Economy is now a classic, embraced by listeners and companies worldwide and available in more than a dozen languages. Though the world has changed in many ways since then, the way to a customer’s heart has not.

This is the first book to present innovation and entrepreneurship as a purposeful and systematic discipline. It clearly explains and analyzes the challenges and opportunities of America's new entrepreneurial economy. Peter Drucker, the most influential and widely-read thinker and writer on modern organizations, gives us a superbly practical book that explains what established businesses, public service institutions, and new ventures have to know, have to learn, and have to do in today's economy and marketplace.

Imagine a world where personal and professional growth are combined, where improving your relationships and owning your strengths at work translate directly into the rest of your life. Creating a company culture like that is not a dream. Through personal stories and real-life conversations, Jonathan Raymond takes you into the room with managers and employees where real culture change happens and shows you a new kind of employee mentoring where each person gets the real-time feedback, support, and clear boundaries we all need.

With a deep understanding of both strategy and human nature, this military treatise illustrates the fine craft of knowing one’s enemy and oneself. From military officers to CEOs to those simply looking to be more powerful in their own life, The Art of War has become required reading for anyone seeking a path of success through the modern world.

An expert in dignity studies, Donna Hicks contributes a specific, practical guide to achieving a culture of dignity. Most people know very little about dignity, and when leaders fail to respect the dignity of others, conflict and distrust ensue. She highlights three components of leading with dignity: what one must know in order to honor dignity and avoid violating it; what one must do to lead with dignity; and how one can create a culture of dignity in any organization.

The employer-employee relationship is broken, and managers face a seemingly impossible dilemma: the old model of guaranteed long-term employment no longer works in a business environment defined by continuous change, but neither does a system in which every employee acts like a free agent. The solution? Stop thinking of employees as either family or free agents. Think of them instead as allies.

It's not enough to build a company full of people with leadership skills. The Performance Pipeline digs deep into the real work of executing business results at each leadership layer. It is filled with lessons and examples from the author's 40 years of experience, and explains how to set performance standards, make sure the right work is being done, and remove performance barriers.

Whether you are moving up, moving on, or just starting out, America's top career coach, Robin Ryan, offers proven, easy-to-learn techniques for mastering the job interview and landing the job of your dreams. This brief, compact book, newly updated in 2008, is packed with useful tips such as: how to establish a career identity or personal brand in the opening minutes of an interview using the 60 Second Sell¿, answers to more than 100 of the toughest interview questions.

Best selling author Jack Trout doesn't beat around the bush. He takes marketers to task for taking the easy route too often, employing high-tech razzle-dazzle and sleight of hand when they should be working to discover and market their product's uniquely valuable qualities. He examines successful differentiation initiatives and outlines the many ways you can achieve differentiation.

The benefits of the levity effect are not conjecture but are built on extensive research and case studies from some of the world's most successful organizations. New York Times best-selling authors Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher provide powerful examples from Boeing, Nike, KPMG, Yamaha, Enterprise, Zappos, and dozens of others, showing how lightening up can drive real business results.

Jay Levinson is the author of eight volumes in the Guerrilla Marketing series. More small businesses use his techniques than any other.

Does the mere thought of selling cause you to break out in a cold sweat? Is a great salesperson something you desperately want to become, but struggle with overcoming fear, being pushy, or being seen as "that guy/girl" who people avoid like the plague? If this sounds like you, breathe easy, you aren't alone. Hope is here! Selling is littered with many potential land mines; however, you can learn the exact sales skills needed to build greater levels of sales confidence and sell like a pro. Building sales confidence involves being real with yourself and having a proven road map.

Here is a bold new history of economics, the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built a rigorous social science without peer.

Kim Kristensen has been in some of the most demanding situations a leader can experience. As an officer he led soldiers into battle many times, where making decisions was literally a matter of life and death. Later he applied his experiences of leadership to the worlds of business, local government, and diplomacy as well as at the Danish royal house, where he currently serves as master of ceremonies.

It can be messy and overwhelming to figure out how to solve thorny problems. Where do you start? How do you know where to look for information and evaluate its quality and bias? How can you feel confident that you are making a careful and thoroughly researched decision? Whether you are deciding between colleges, navigating a career decision, helping your aging parents find the right housing, or expanding your business, Problem Solved will show you how to use the AREA Method to make complex decisions.

Did Wall Street cause the mess we are in? Should Washington place stronger regulations on the financial industry? Can we lower unemployment rates by controlling the free market? Answer: no. Not only is free-market capitalism good for the economy, it is our only hope for recovery. As the nation’s longest-serving CEO of one of the top 25 financial institutions, John Allison has had a unique inside view of the events leading up to the financial crisis.

Like Miller's previous books, this one follows the life, learning, and influence of Debbie Bruster. Here she finds herself mentoring Blake Brown, the son of her former mentor. Rather than answer Blake's questions about leadership directly, Debbie introduces him to other leaders, each of whom shares a unique perspective on what really makes a leader successful. As Blake puts the pieces together, he discovers his problem is not one of skills but of character - that leadership is more about the heart of the leader than the head or hands.

This is a history of the transformation of Verizon and the telecommunications industry told through the eyes of founding CEO Ivan Seidenberg and his leadership team, with highlights and commentary from best-selling global leadership guru Ram Charan.