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

In this remarkable New York Times bestseller, Joel Osteenoffers unique insights and encouragement that will help readersovercome every obstacle in their lives.

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

Technological advances and the global marketplace are changingthe way we live and work. Doing the work you love is the critical factor to personal fulfillment and economic success. Noone understands this more than Laurence G. Boldt, whose Zen andthe Art of Making a Living helped many carve out new andrewarding career paths. But how do you find the courage to startthe search for a new career? And how do you tap into your own bestresources to discover what you want to do and what you’re good at?This remarkable guide offers simple yet profound strategies to helpyou answer those questions by focusing on four key elements to besought in any life’s work: Integrity, Service, Enjoyment, andExcellence. Boldt has reduced the quest for meaningful work to itsessence and will lead you to an understanding of what you could andshould be doing with your life.

Get Rich, Don't Bitch Today, more than ever before, wealth is something every woman hasthe power to create. Yet Jean Chatzky constantly hears all theexcuses why women can’t and don’t master their money. Now, shereveals the secrets and the strategies she created to take controlof her own money–strategies through which she gained her “moneyconfidence.” It’s time for you to find yours! In Make Money, Not Excuses Jean shares these valuablelessons: ? Where to start ? How to get over your “I’m not smart enough to deal with money”feelings ? Why being a “good-enough investor” will make more money for youin the long-term (while trying to be a “great investor” will driveyou crazy) ? How (and where) to save your money ? Why women make better investors––and higher returns––thanmen ? How to track where you’re overspending ? How to pay off your debt Jean is unsurpassed in her ability to explain money and investingin

Three years after the events of The Golem's Eye, the youngmagician Nathaniel is an established member of the BritishGovernment. But he faces unprecedented problems: foreign wars aregoing badly and Britain's enemies are mounting attacks close toLondon. Increasingly distracted, he is treating Bartimaeus worsethan ever: the long-suffering djinni is growing weak from too muchtime in this world, and his patience is at an end. Meanwhile,undercover in London, Kitty has been stealthily completing herresearch into magic and Bartimaeus' past. She hopes to break theendless cycle of conflict between djinn and humans - but will shebe able to get anyone to listen? Before any of these problems canbe resolved, disaster strikes London from an unexpected source andthe destinies of Bartimaeus, Nathaniel, and Kitty are throwntogether once more. They have to face treacherous magicians, along-fermented conspiracy, and an enemy from 'The Other Place' thatthreatens London and the world. Worst of all, they must somehowcope wit

Tom Hopkins carries the standard as a master sales trainer andis recognized as the world’s leading authority on sellingtechniques and salesmanship. Over 3,000,000 people on five continents have attended Tom’shigh-energy live seminars. Tom personally conducts 75 seminars eachyear traveling throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, NewZealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines. Tom Hopkins is a distinguished charter member of the NationalSpeakers Association and was among the first to receive itsprestigious Council of Peers Award for Excellence. Tom’s talent ofteaching in a creative and entertaining style has brought him atremendous following, as well as constant demand for appearances atregional and national conventions each year. Tom Hopkins has been the subject of countless articles inpublications such as U.S. News and World Report, The New YorkTimes, The Los Angeles Times, Personal Selling Power, Peoplemagazine, Selling magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, and TheWashington Post.

Practical ideas from the best brains in Business A sharp, jargon-free guide to the core curriculum of an MBAprogram, MBA in a Book shows how to master the big ideas ofbusiness and use them in a practical way to build and enhancecareer success. “In the world of business, ideas matter. . . . Some of the sharpestminds in the business world give perceptive looks into innovation,marketing, finance, strategy, and leadership, providingstimulating, useful perspectives on these core topics.” —Larry Bossidy, retired chairman and CEO of Honeywell Internationaland coauthor of Execution: The Discipline of Getting ThingsDone Great business thinkers such as Michael Porter, Rosabeth Kanter,and Bill George of Harvard Business School; Paul Argenti of theTuck School at Dartmouth; Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale; Peter Sengeof MIT; the entrepreneur and inventor Dean Kamen; and the financialinnovator Michael Milken are just a few of the best brains inbusiness, providing the intellectual nourishment that will help youplay

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

With a new Afterword by the author and a new Foreword by MarkCuban In this commanding big-picture analysis of what went wrong incorporate America, Alex Berenson, a top financial investigativereporter for The New York Times, examines the common threadconnecting Enron, Worldcom, Halliburton, Computer Associates, Tyco,and other recent corporate scandals: the cult of the number. Every three months, 14,000 publicly traded companies report salesand profits to their shareholders. Nothing is more important inthese quarterly announcements than earnings per share, the lodestarthat investors—and these days, that’s most of us—use to judge thehealth of corporate America. earnings per share is the number forwhich all other numbers are sacrificed. It is the distilled truthof a company’s health. Too bad it’s often a lie. Alex Berenson’s The Number provides a comprehensiv, brutallyfactual overview of how Wall Street and corporate America losttheir way during the great bull market tha

An Apple Store customer asks for the latest iPhone in blackbut suddenly changes to white when he sees others choosing it. Acitizen of a former communist country picks~ a drink at random;soda is soda, he says. A young man and woman decide tomarry--knowing that they'll meet for the first time on theirwedding day. In THE ART OF CHOOSING, Columbia University profes- sor SheenaIyengar, a leading expert on choice, asks fascinating questions:Are our choices innate or created by culture? Why do we sometimeschoose against our best interests? How much control do we reallyhave? What's the relationship between choice and freedom? Drawingon her award-winning, discipline: spanning research, thisremarkable book illuminates the joys and challenges ofchoosing--and shows us how we can choose better, one choice at atime.

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

John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader,spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing thebest--and the brainiest--bond arbitrage group in the world. Amysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group ofPh.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotionand fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in the wake of a scandalinvolving one of his traders, Meriwether abruptly resigned. For twoyears, his fiercely loyal team--convinced that the chief had beenunfairly victimized--plotted their boss's return. Then, in 1993,Meriwether made a historic offer. He gathered together his formerdisciples and a handful of supereconomists from academia andproposed that they become partners in a new hedge fund differentfrom any Wall Street had ever seen. And so Long-Term CapitalManagement was born. In a decade that had seen the longest and most rewarding bullmarket in history, hedge funds were the ne plus ultra ofinvestments: discreet, private clubs limited to those

Do you think it's possible to truly enjoy your job? No matterwhat it is or where you are? Timothy Gallwey does, and in thisgroundbreaking book he tells you how to overcome the innerobstacles that sabotage your efforts to be your best on thejob. Timothy Gallwey burst upon the scene twenty years ago with hisrevolutionary approach to excellence in sports. His bestsellingbooks The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game ofGolf , with over one million copies in print, changed the way wethink about learning and coaching. But the Inner Game that Gallweydiscovered on the tennis court is about more than learning a betterbackhand; it is about learning how to learn, a critical skill that,in this case, separates the productive, satisfied employee from therest of the pack. For the past twenty years Gallwey has taken hisInner Game expertise to many of America's top companies, includingAT T, Coca-Cola, Apple, and IBM, to teach their managers andemployees how to gain better access to their own internalresourc

What is that makes urban myths so persistent but many everydaytruths so eminently forgettable? How do newspapers set aboutensuring that their headlines make you want to read on? And why dowe remember complicated stories but not complicated facts? In thecourse of over ten years of study, Chip and Dan Heath haveestablished what it is that determines whether particular ideas orstories stick in our minds or not, and "Made to Stick" is thefascinating outcome of their painstaking research.Packed full ofcase histories and thought-provoking anecdotes, it shows, amongother things, how one Australian scientist convinced the world he'ddiscovered the cause of stomach ulcers by drinking a glass filledwith bacteria, how a gifted sports reporter got people to watch afootball match by showing them the outside of the stadium, and howhigh-concept pitches such as 'Jaws on a spaceship' ("Alien") and'Die Hard on a bus' ("Speed") convince movie executives to investvast sums of money in a project on the basis of almost noinformati

Bestselling author Harvey Mackay reveals his techniques forthe most essential tool in business--networking, the indispensableart of building contacts. Now in paperback, Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is HarveyMackay's last word on how to get what you want from the worldthrough networking. For everyone from the sales rep facing acareer-making deal to the entrepreneur in search of capital, DigYour Well explains how meeting these needs should be no more than afew calls away. This shrewdly practical book distills Mackay'swisdom gleaned from years of "swimming with sharks," including:

The Profit Zone, a Business Week Top Ten Book of the Year,examines 12 of today's great success stories--from GE toSwatch--and reveals how vital adaptations kept these companies onthe edge of the ever-changing profit zone. Charts graphsthroughout.

The authors present important research showing thatcorporatist institutions generate smaller non-competitive wagedifferentials than a decentralized system. A theoreticalexplanation is developed based on the hold-up problem ininvestments, arguing that corporatist institutions solve theproblem by specifying ex ante nominal contracts that remove thenecessity of ex post bargaining over the surplus of an employmentrelationship. The authors also argue that such institutions allowsufficient flexibility to accommodate aggregate shocks, even moreso than decentralized systems. Corporatism or Competition? is thefirst book to bring together the mass of research on comparativewage differences, wage movements and employment behaviour indifferent countries with different institutional frameworks, in anorganized and coherent fashion.

In Take on the Street , Arthur Levitt--Chairman of theSecurities and Exchange Commission for eight years under PresidentClinton--provides the best kind of insider information: the kindthat can help honest, small investors protect themselves from thedeliberately confusing ways of Wall Street. At a time when investor confidence in Wall Street and corporateAmerica is at an historic low, when many are seriously questioningwhether or not they should continue to invest, Levitt offers thebenefits of his own experience, both on Wall Street and as itschief regulator. His straight talk about the ways of stockbrokers(they are salesmen, plain and simple), corporate financialstatements (the truth is often hidden), mutual fund managers(remember who they really work for), and other aspects of thebusiness will help to arm everyone with the tools they need toprotect—and enhance—their financial future.

Jesus Built an Inspired Team. You Can, Too. Laurie Beth Jones has given hundreds of thousands of businessreaders insight into how the ideas of Jesus can be used to enhanceperformance. In Teach Your Team to Fish , Jones focuses onone of the most critical areas for anyone in business: teamwork.Leaders today face their greatest challenges not only in definingstrategies and getting updated information but also in gettingdiverse human beings to pull together without falling apart. Jesus is a role model for team leaders everywhere. Teach YourTeam to Fish offers dozens of stories from the Bible, showinghow Jesus managed his team of disciples and other followers, withsuggestions for how to apply these lessons to real-worldteambuilding and management problems. It offers guidance andinspiration on: ? How to excite your team members in order to motivate them ? How to ground them so they’ll be realistic about what can beachieved ? How to transform them into a truly well-functioning team ? How to release them int

From experts at McKinsey Company's world-renowned growthpractice comes a highly practical, field-tested approach toinitiating and sustaining growth in companies of all sizes. .Growth unleashes benefits beyond the economic. It revitalizesorganizations and invigorates the people in them, creating energy,a sense of purpose, and the glow of being on a winning team. Likethe alchemy of old, it seeks to transform the everyday into theexalted by means that seem little short of magical. Yet growth isoften elusive, achieved at unacceptable costs, or managed in fitsand starts. Based on over three years of research and applicationat high-performing companies around the world, The Alchemy ofGrowth is a comprehensive, practical approach to initiating,achieving, and sustaining profitable growthtoday and tomorrow. Asthe book shows, the secret is to manage business opportunitiesacross three time horizons at once: extending and defending corebusinesses, building new businesses, and seeding options for thefuture. The Alchemy

Does free information mean free people? At the start of thetwenty-first century we were promised that the internet wouldliberate the world. We could come together as never before, andfrom Iran's 'twitter revolution' to Facebook 'activism',technological innovation would spread democracy to oppressedpeoples everywhere. We couldn't have been more wrong. In "The NetDelusion" Evgeny Morozov destroys this myth, arguing that 'internetfreedom' is an illusion, and that technology has failed to helpprotect people's rights. Not only that - in many cases the internetis actually helping authoritarian regimes. From China to Russia toIran, oppressive governments are using cyberspace to stifledissent: planting clandestine propaganda, employing sophisticateddigital censorship and using online surveillance. We are all beingmanipulated in more subtle ways too - becoming pacified by the net,instead of truly engaging. This book is a wake-up call. It shows ushow our misplaced faith in cyber-utopia means the West risksmissin

Go from being a good manager to an extraordinary leader. If you read nothing else on leadership, read these 10 articles.We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articleson leadership and selected the most important ones to help youmaximize your own and your organization's performance. HBR's 10 Must Reads On Leadership will inspire you to: - Motivate others to excel - Build your team's self-confidence in others - Provoke positive change - Set direction - Encourage smart risk-taking - Manage with tough empathy - Credit others for your success - Increase self-awareness - Draw strength from adversity