You never dreamed being the boss would be so hard. You're caught in a web of conflicting expectations from subordinates, your supervisor, peers, and customers. You're not alone. As Linda Hill and Kent Lineback reveal in Being the Boss, becoming an effective manager is a painful, difficult journey. It's trial and error, endless effort, and slowly acquired personal insight. Many managers never complete the journey. At best, they just learn to get by. At worst, they become terrible bosses. This new book explains how to avoid that fate, by mastering three imperatives: Manage yourself: Learn that management isn't about getting things done yourself. It's about accomplishing things through others. Manage a network: Understand how power and influence work in your organization and build a network of mutually beneficial relationships to navigate your company's complex political environment. Manage a team: Forge a high-performing "we" out of all the "I"s who report to you. Packed with comp

From the man the Wall Street Journal hailed as "theguru of Revenue Management" comes revolutionary ways to recoverfrom the after effects of downsizing and refocus your business ongrowth. Whatever happened to growth? In Revenue Management, RobertG. Cross answers this question with his ground-breaking approach torevitalizing businesses: focusing on the revenue side of the ledgerinstead of the cost side. The antithesis of slash-and-burn methodsthat left companies with empty profits and dissatisfiedstockholders, Revenue Management overturns conventionalthinking on marketing strategies and offers the key to initiatingand sustaining growth. Using case studies from a variety of industries, smallbusinesses, and nonprofit organizations, Cross describes no-tech,low-tech, and high-tech methods that managers can use to increaserevenue without increasing products or promotions; predict consumerbehavior; tap into new markets; and deliver products and servicesto customers effectively and efficiently

Most of us think of leaders as courageous risk takers,orchestrators of major events-in a word, heroes. Yet while suchfigures are inspiring and admirable, Harvard Business SchoolProfessor Joseph Badaracco argues that their larger-than-lifeaccomplishments are simply not what makes the world work. Whatdoes, he says, is the sum of millions of small yet consequentialdecisions that men and women working far from the limelight makeevery day: how a line worker for a pharmaceutical company respondswhen he discovers a defect in a product's safety seal; how amanager deals with a valued employee suspected of stealing; how atrader handles a transaction error that will cost a clientmoney.Badaracco calls them "quiet leaders"-people who chooseresponsible, behind-the-scenes action over public heroism toresolve tough leadership challenges. These individuals don't fitthe stereotype of the bold and gutsy leader, and they don't wantto. What they want is to do the "right thing" for theirorganizations, their coworkers, and t

Companies have long engaged in head-to-head competition insearch of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought forcompetitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled fordifferentiation. Yet in today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on resultsin nothing but a bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over ashrinking profit pool. In a book that challenges everything youthought you knew about the requirements fro strategic success, W.Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne contend that while most companiescompete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasinglyunlikely to create profitable growth in the future. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more then ahundred years and thirty industries, Kim and Mauborgne argue thattomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battlingcompetitors, but by creating “blue ocean” of uncontested marketspace ripe for growth. Such strategies moves—termed “valueinnovation”-create powerful leaps in value for both th

The book that shows how to get the job done and deliverresults . . . whether you’re running an entire company or in yourfirst management job Larry Bossidy is one of the world’s most acclaimed CEOs, a manwith few peers who has a track record for delivering results. RamCharan is a legendary advisor to senior executives and boards ofdirectors, a man with unparalleled insight into why some companiesare successful and others are not. Together they’ve pooled theirknowledge and experience into the one book on how to close the gapbetween results promised and results delivered that people inbusiness need today. After a long, stellar career with General Electric, Larry Bossidytransformed AlliedSignal into one of the world’s most admiredcompanies and was named CEO of the year in 1998 by Chief Executivemagazine. Accomplishments such as 31 consecutive quarters ofearnings-per-share growth of 13 percent or more didn’t just happen;they resulted from the consistent practice of the discipline ofexe

Often managers need to assess both financial and non-financialperformance. What process would you use to measure things that arenot easily quantifiable?

Making persuasive presentations isn't just amatter of charisma and fancy charts: it requires concrete skillsthat are vital to keeping your audience engaged and involved. Thishandy guide contains key information on how to customize yourpresentations to keep people focused and produce the results youwant.

The annual budgeting process is a trap. Pressured by fixedtargets and performance incentives, managers focus on making thenumbers instead of making a difference, meeting set goals insteadof maximizing potential. With their compensation at stake, managersoften resort to deceitful-even unethical-behavior. In the end,everybody loses-the employee, the company, and ultimately thecustomer.Now, finance experts Jeremy Hope and Robin Fraser revealthe results of an intensive study aimed at fixing the brokenbudgeting process. They argue that companies must abandontraditional budgeting contracts in favor of a radical new modelthat links performance measurement to evolving competitivebenchmarks-and shifts the firm's focus from controlling employeebehavior to delivering customer value. The Beyond Budgeting modelis built on the best practices of companies that have successfullyrevised their centralized planning and budgeting processes. Itcombines a leadership vision that devolves more authority tooperating managers a

This book challenges the way we think about both leadershipdevelopment and ourselves as leaders. Leadership developmentprograms are meant to help people become better leaders at work.But, as author Stew Friedman knows through years of working withthousands of executives, people improve their performance asleaders only when they enhance their performance in other domainsof their life at the same time. People are most successful in theirleadership roles in organisations when they are also leaders oftheir own lives; that is, when they increase their capacity toinfluence everything they care about most in life, including work,family, the broader community, and their own sense of self. This iswhat Friedman calls Total Leadership and has been teaching to MBAsand Executive Education students at Wharton and to executives inseveral companies like Ford, Booz Allen Hamilton, and LehmanBrothers for several years.