Showing results by narrator "Christopher Douyard" in All Categories

We're now living in the project economy. As the number of projects initiated in both the public and private sectors skyrockets, project management skills have become essential for all leaders and managers. But despite this project boom, the failure rate remains extremely high. Why? Leaders have too many projects and too little visibility into them, and they lack the project implementation competencies necessary to deliver their projects successfully.

On the day that Roswell K. Doughty graduated from Boston University, he also received a commission as a second lieutenant in the army of the United States of America. It was not until 1942 that he was called to active duty—to face some of the toughest fighting of the Second World War. He subsequently saw action in North Africa, then at the disastrous Salerno landings in Italy - where the Allied divisions involved suffered 4,000 casualties—about which the author reveals that suspected intelligence breaches led to the Allies' plans becoming known to the Germans.

Just a few years ago, people spoke of the US as a hyperpower—a titan stalking the world stage with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, they now faced a "variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict.

For almost four decades, the United States has tried to stop North Korea's attempts to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official, takes listeners to the front lines of nuclear negotiations and to fierce policy debates and secret diplomatic gambits, recounting how perilously close the United States and North Korea have come, on various occasions, to nuclear confrontation.

Where do you get your values and sensibilities from? If you grew up in a Western democracy, the answer is probably liberalism. Conservatives are right about one thing: liberalism is the ideology of our times, as omnipresent as religion once was. Yet, as Alexandre Lefebvre argues in Liberalism as a Way of Life, many of us are liberal without fully realizing it—or grasping what it means.

The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography: “I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.” He was referring to Germany in 1923, a “year of lunacy,” defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Bestselling author Volker Ullrich presents a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced.

The world's most successful businesses leaders understand that creating a shared social identity around their products and services is the most efficient path to scaling revenue, differentiating products, promoting customer success and retention, and seizing category ownership. The Business of Belonging is the playbook for doing just that. CMX founder David Spinks offers advice for creating community strategy, aligning it with your business objectives, and launching and managing a community of end users.

Russia's relationship with its neighbors and with the West has worsened dramatically in recent years. Under Vladimir Putin's leadership, the country has annexed Crimea, begun a war in Eastern Ukraine, used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK, and created an army of Internet trolls to meddle in the US presidential elections. How can we understand this apparent relapse into aggressive imperialism and militarism?

What does it take to have a truly happy retirement? Is it money? An active social life? A long-lasting marriage - or maybe a new one? Finance expert, author, and radio host Wes Moss asked more than 2,000 of the nation's happiest retirees to find out - and their answers may surprise you. Through a series of revealing surveys, Moss noticed a pattern of distinct, recognizable habits that the happiest retirees shared, from the simplest of lifestyle choices to the smartest of financial strategies.

In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns Charles L. Marohn, Jr., delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America's transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities.

Rethink how your organization creates, delivers, and captures value - or risk becoming irrelevant. If you listen to nothing else on business model innovation, listen to these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you reach new customers and stay ahead of your competitors by reinventing your business model.

Anthropology is the organized study of what makes humans human. It takes an objective step back to ask questions like: Given our common characteristics, why aren't all of us exactly the same? And how can knowing the reasons behind our differences - as well as our similarities - teach us useful lessons for the future? The updated edition of Anthropology for Dummies gives you a panoramic view of the fascinating fieldwork and theory that seeks to answer these questions - and helps you view the human world through impartial, anthropological eyes.

A must-have resource for professional and retail investors, Coming Into View is a startlingly insightful and practical guide for anyone seeking to engage with the financial markets as an informed and confident investor.

Historian William Sheehan and astronomer and planetary scientist Jim Bell combine their talents to tell a unique story of what we've learned by studying Mars through evolving technologies. What the eye sees as a mysterious red dot wandering through the sky becomes a blurry mirage of apparent seas, continents, and canals as viewed through Earth-based telescopes.

It is often thought that the story of Tutankhamun ended when the thousands of items discovered by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon were transported to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and put on display. But there is far more to the story. Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World explores the 100 years of research on Tutankhamun that have taken place since the tomb's discovery, from the several objects in the tomb made of meteoritic iron that came from outer space to new evidence that shows that Tutankhamun may actually have been a warrior who went into battle.

Featuring handy tips, tricks, and techniques collected from the best-selling Stuff You Should Know series, Stuff Every Adult Should Know is the adulthood 101 you've been waiting for!

Fight for the Final Frontier uses the concepts associated with irregular warfare to offer new insights for understanding the nature of strategic competition in space. Today's most pressing security concerns are best considered using an irregular warfare lens because incidents and points of potential conflict fall outside the definition of armed conflict. While some universal rules of combat apply across all domains, conflict in space up-ends those assumed standards of understanding.

Is democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country's system of governance is being "tested" or is "under attack." But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. Instead of an epitaph for democracy, they offer a guide for democratic renewal, calling on citizens to recommit to a "civic bargain" with one another to guarantee civic rights of freedom, equality, and dignity.

Personalized is a playbook for delivering true personalization at scale. In this book, Boston Consulting Group's Mark Abraham and Harvard Business School's David C. Edelman describe Five Promises of Personalization. Personalized is a playbook for delivering true personalization at scale. With detailed examples across industries—including retail, health care, banking, technology, and travel—this book will help executives learn how to put personalization at the center of their strategy, accelerate growth, and capture their share of the $2 trillion personalization prize.

A detailed and comprehensive study of the carrier formations of the Pacific War, including their origins, development, and key battles from the Coral Sea, through Midway and Guadalcanal to the battle of the Philippine Sea.