Strategy

Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. The story of Alex's fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas, which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC), developed by Eli Goldratt.

More than a decade ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the Balanced Scorecard into action.

Now, using their ongoing research with hundreds of Balanced Scorecard adopters across the globe, the authors have created a powerful new tool--the "strategy map"--that enables companies to describe the links between intangible assets and value creation with a clarity and precision never before possible. Kaplan and Norton argue that the most critical aspect of strategy--implementing it in a way that ensures sustained value creation--depends on managing four key internal processes: operations, customer relationships, innovation, and regulatory and social processes. The authors show how companies can use strategy maps to link those processes to desired outcomes; evaluate, measure, and improve the processes most critical to success; and target investments in human, informational, and organizational capital. Providing a visual "aha!" for executives everywhere who can't figure out why their strategy isn't working, Strategy Maps is a blueprint any organization can follow to align processes, people, and information technology for superior performance.

A series of closely interrelated essays on game theory, this book deals with an area in which progress has been least satisfactory—the situations where there is a common interest as well as conflict between adversaries: negotiations, war and threats of war, criminal deterrence, extortion, tacit bargaining. It proposes enlightening similarities between, for instance, maneuvering in limited war and in a traffic jam; deterring the Russians and one's own children; the modern strategy of terror and the ancient institution of hostages.

The greatest managers in the world seem to have little in common. They differ in sex, age, and race. They employ vastly different styles and focus on different goals. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They do not hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They do not believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They do not try to help people overcome their weaknesses. They consistently disregard the golden rule. And, yes, they even play favorites. This amazing book explains why.
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive in-depth study of great managers across a wide variety of situations. Some were in leadership positions. Others were front-line supervisors. Some were in Fortune 500 companies; others were key players in small, entrepreneurial companies. Whatever their situations, the managers who ultimately became the focus of Gallup's research were invariably those who excelled at turning each employee's talent into performance.

In today's tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. No matter how generous its pay or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer.

Buckingham and Coffman explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations for him or her -- they define the right outcomes rather than the right steps; how they motivate people -- they build on each person's unique strengths rather than trying to fix his weaknesses; and, finally, how great managers develop people -- they find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder. And perhaps most important, this research -- which initially generated thousands of different survey questions on the subject of employee opinion -- finally produced the twelve simple questions that work to distinguish the strongest departments of a company from all the rest. This book is the first to present this essential measuring stick and to prove the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover.

There are vital performance and career lessons here for managers at every level, and, best of all, the book shows you how to apply them to your own situation.

This collectible edition of "The Art of War by Sun Tzu" presents these timeless instructions regarding military strategy and managing conflict in two complete versions, with over 260 pages of content.

A modern introduction, tracing the origins of "The Art of War" and its historical and cultural importance, firmly grounds the reader in the context with which the oldest book on military strategy has survived the ages, as well as contemporary examples of its continued use.

The first section of this collectible edition contains "The Art of War" in English, without notes or commentary. This allows the reader to understand the teachings of Sun Tzu, without the distraction of footnotes or excessive comments.

The second section contains the complete annotated translation by Lionel Giles, restored by Sian Kim, along with Giles' translation notes, definitive critical commentary, and supplemental information from a broad range of sources. Written during the Victorian era, Giles' 1910 "Introduction" has also been included, containing the legend of "Sun Tzu and The Army of Concubines".

Although written in the 6th century BC, the teachings of Sun Tzu are still found today in the martial arts, legal doctrine, military schools, management seminars and pervasively throughout popular culture.

Decorated Navy SEAL, successful businessman and world-renowned speaker Brent Gleeson shares his revolutionary approach to navigating and leading change in the workplace—with a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Owen.

Inspired by his time as a Navy SEAL and building award-winning organizations in the business world, Brent Gleeson has created a powerful roadmap for today’s existing and emerging business leaders and managers to improve their ability to successfully navigate organizational change. Over the past ten years since leaving the SEAL Teams, Gleeson has become a well-respected thought leader and expert in business transformation. He has spoken to and consulted with hundreds of organizations across the globe and inspired thousands of business leaders through his highly insightful philosophies on leadership, culture and building high-performance teams that achieve winning results.

In TakingPoint, Gleeson shares his ten-step program that he has implemented in his own companies and for his high-profile clients—giving leaders and managers actionable insights and a framework for successful execution. TakingPoint brilliantly captures the structures, behaviors and mindsets required to build successful twenty-first century organizations. With a strong emphasis on communication, culture, engagement, accountability, trust, and resiliency, Gleeson’s methods have helped hundreds of companies around the world transform the way they think about change, and can help yours do the same.

For the last five years, Gleeson has shared his philosophies through his weekly columns on Forbes and Inc. And now, for the first time ever, they are captured in this entertaining and highly prescriptive book.

Steps include:

-Culture: The Single Most Important Enabler
-Trust: Fueling the Change Engine
-Accountability: Ownership at All Levels
-Mindset: Belief in the Mission
-Preparation: Gathering Intelligence and Planning the Mission
-Transmission: Communicating the Vision
-Inclusion: The Power of Participation and Acceptance
-Fatigue: Managing Fear and Staying Energized
-Discipline: Focus and Follow-Through
-Resiliency: The Path of Lasting Change

Never has change been more consistent and disruptive as it is now. Business leaders and managers at all levels can’t just react to change. They have to lead change. They have to take point.