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Are you at the top of your gameor still trying to get there? Take your cues from the short, powerful 9 Things Successful People Do Differently, where the strategies and goals of the worlds most successful people are on displaybacked by research that shows exactly what has the biggest impact on performance. Heres a hint: accomplished people reach their goals because of what they do, not just who they are. Readers have called this a gem of a book. Get ready to accomplish your goals at last.

DON'T LET YOUR FEAR OF FINANCE GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR SUCCESSCan you prepare a breakeven analysis? Do you know the difference between an income statement and a balance sheet? Or understand why a business that's profitable can still go belly-up? Has your grasp of your company's numbers helped-or hurt-your career?Whether you're new to finance or you just need a refresher, this go-to guide will give you the tools and confidence you need to master the fundamentals, as all good managers must.The HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers will help you:Learn the language of financeCompare your firm's financials with rivals'Shift your team's focus from revenues to profitsAssess your vulnerability to industry downturnsUse financial data to defend budget requestsInvest smartly through cost/benefit analysis

IS YOUR WORKLOAD SLOWING YOU-AND YOUR CAREER-DOWN?Your inbox is overflowing. You're paralyzed because you have too much to do but don't know where to start. Your to-do list never seems to get any shorter. You leave work exhausted but have little to show for it.It's time to learn how to get the right work done.In the HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done, you'll discover how to focus your time and energy where they will yield the greatest reward. Not only will you end each day knowing you made progress-your improved productivity will also set you apart from the pack.Whether you're a new professional or an experienced one, this guide will help you:Prioritize and stay focusedWork less but accomplish moreStop bad habits and develop good onesBreak overwhelming projects into manageable piecesConquer e-mail overloadWrite to-do lists that really work

Increase your marketing impact and deliver competitive advantage. These definitive Harvard Business Review articles will help you build relationships with profitable customers, distinguish your offerings from others, and coordinate fruitfully with your partners in sales.

Assemble and steer teams that get results. These ten essential Harvard Business Review articles will help you ramp up your team's performance, rally the troops and keep them accountable, fight constructively, and set goals everyone can agree on.

Express your ideas clearly and with impact-no matter what the situation. These ten definitive Harvard Business Review articles on communication will help you connect with even the toughest crowds, gain influence and credibility, and neutralize stressful conversations.

Take your business into the future-the right way. In these ten definitive Harvard Business Review articles, the world's foremost authorities on innovation demonstrate how to place the right bets when picking ideas to pursue, tweak new ventures through experimentation, and tailor your efforts to meet customers' most pressing needs.

I wrote this book because I believe that there is a serious gap in what has been written and communicated about cross-cultural management and what people actually struggle with on the ground.From the IntroductionWhat does it mean to be a global worker and a true citizen of the world today? It goes beyond merely acknowledging cultural differences. In reality, it means you are able to adapt your behavior to conform to new cultural contexts without losing your authentic self in the process. Not only is this difficult, its a frightening prospect for most people and something completely outside their comfort zone.But managing and communicating with people from other cultures is an essential skill today. Most of us collaborate with teams across borders and cultures on a regular basis, whether we spend our time in the office or out on the road. Whats needed now is a critical new skill, something author Andy Molinsky calls global dexterity.In this book Molinsky offers the tools needed to simultaneously adapt behavior to new cultural contexts while staying authentic and grounded in your own natural style. Based on more than a decade of research, teaching, and consulting with managers and executives around the world, this book reveals an approach to adapting while feeling comfortablean essential skill that enables you to switch behaviors and overcome the emotional and psychological challenges of doing so.From identifying and overcoming challenges to integrating what you learn into your everyday environment, Molinsky provides a guidebookand mentoringto raise your confidence and your profile. Practical, engaging, and refreshing, Global Dexterity will help you reach across culturesand succeed in todays global business environment.

Turn team members into innovatorsMost organizations approach innovation as if it were a sideline activity. Every so often employees are sent to Brainstorm Island: an off-site replete with trendy lectures, creative workshops, and overenthusiastic facilitators. But once they return, its back to business as usual.Innovation experts Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg suggest a better approach. They recommend that leaders at all levels become innovation architects, creating an ecosystem in which people engage in key innovation behaviors as part of their daily work.In short, this book is about getting to a state of innovation as usual, where regular employeesin jobs like finance, marketing, sales, or operationsmake innovation happen in a way thats both systemic and sustainable.Instead of organizing brainstorming sessions, idea jams, and off-sites that rarely result in success, leaders should guide their people in what the authors call the 5 + 1 keystone behaviors of innovation: focus, connect, tweak, select, stealthstorm, (and the + 1) persist: Focus beats freedom: Direct people to look only for ideas that matter to the business Insight comes from the outside: Urge people to connect to new worlds First ideas are flawed: Challenge people to tweak and reframe their initial ideas Most ideas are bad ideas: Guide people to select the best ideas and discard the rest Stealthstorming rules: Help people navigate the politics of innovation Creativity is a choice: Motivate everyone to persist in the five keystone behaviorsUsing examples from a wide range of companies such as Pfizer, Index Ventures, Lonza, Go Travel, Prehype, DSM, and others, Innovation as Usual lights the way toward embedding creativity in the DNA of the workplace.So cancel that off-site. Instead, read Innovation as Usualand put innovation at the core of your business.

No matter your field, industry, or specialty, as a leader you make a series of crucial decisions every single day. And the harsh truth is that the majority of decisionsno matter how good the intentions behind themare mismanaged, resulting in a huge toll on organizations, the people they employ, and even the people they serve.So why is it so hard to make sound decisions? In Think Twice, now in paperback, Michael Mauboussin argues that we often fall victim to simplified mental routines that prevent us from coping with the complex realities inherent in important judgment calls. Yet these cognitive errors are preventable.In this engaging book, Mauboussin shows us how to recognize and avoid common mental missteps. These include misunderstanding cause-and-effect linkages, not considering enough alternative possibilities in making a decision, and relying too much on experts.Through vivid stories, the author presents memorable rules for avoiding each error and explains how to recognize when you should think twicequestioning your reasoning and adopting decision-making strategies that are far more effective, even if they seem counterintuitive. Armed with this awareness, you'll soon begin making sounder judgment calls that benefit (rather than hurt) your organization.

Moving beyond the process of changeWhy is change so hard? Because in order to make any transformation successful, you must change more than just the structure and operations of an organizationyou need to change peoples behavior. And that is never easy.The Heart of Change is your guide to helping people think and feel differently in order to meet your shared goals. According to bestselling author and renowned leadership expert John Kotter and coauthor Dan Cohen, this focus on connecting with peoples emotions is what will spark the behavior change and actions that lead to success. Now freshly designed, The Heart of Change is the engaging and essential complement to Kotters worldwide bestseller Leading Change.Building off of Kotters revolutionary eight-step process, this book vividly illustrates how large-scale change can work. With real-life stories of people in organizations, the authors show how teams and individuals get motivated and activated to overcome obstacles to changeand produce spectacular results. Kotter and Cohen argue that change initiatives often fail because leaders rely too exclusively on data and analysis to get buy-in from their teams instead of creatively showing or doing something that appeals to their emotions and inspires them to spring into action. They call this the see-feel-change dynamic, and it is crucial for the success of any true organizational transformation.Refreshingly clear and eminently practical, The Heart of Change is required reading for anyone facing the challenges inherent in leading change.

Why are group decisions so hard?Since the beginning of human history, people have made decisions in groups-first in families and villages, and now as part of companies, governments, school boards, religious organizations, or any one of countless other groups. And having more than one person to help decide is good because the group benefits from the collective knowledge of all of its members, and this results in better decisions. Right?Back to reality. We've all been involved in group decisions-and they're hard. And they often turn out badly. Why? Many blame bad decisions on "e;groupthink"e; without a clear idea of what that term really means.Now, Nudge coauthor Cass Sunstein and leading decision-making scholar Reid Hastie shed light on the specifics of why and how group decisions go wrong-and offer tactics and lessons to help leaders avoid the pitfalls and reach better outcomes. In the first part of the book, they explain in clear and fascinating detail the distinct problems groups run into:They often amplify, rather than correct, individual errors in judgmentThey fall victim to cascade effects, as members follow what others say or doThey become polarized, adopting more extreme positions than the ones they began withThey emphasize what everybody knows instead of focusing on critical information that only a few people knowIn the second part of the book, the authors turn to straightforward methods and advice for making groups smarter. These approaches include silencing the leader so that the views of other group members can surface, rethinking rewards and incentives to encourage people to reveal their own knowledge, thoughtfully assigning roles that are aligned with people's unique strengths, and more.With examples from a broad range of organizations-from Google to the CIA-and written in an engaging and witty style, Wiser will not only enlighten you; it will help your team and your organization make better decisions-decisions that lead to greater success.

Conversation-powered leadershipHow can leaders make their big or growing companies feel small again? How can they recapture the magicthe tight strategic alignment, the high level of employee engagementthat drove and animated their organization when it was a start-up? As more and more executives have discovered in recent years, the answer to this conundrum lies in the power of conversation.In Talk, Inc., Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind show how trusted and effective leaders are adapting the principles of face-to-face conversation in order to pursue a new form of organizational conversation. They explore the promise of conversation-powered leadershipfrom the time-tested practice of talking straight (and listening well) to the thoughtful adoption of social media technology. And they offer guidance on how to balance the benefits of open-ended talk with the realities of strategic execution.Drawing on the experience of leaders at diverse companies from around the world, Talk, Inc., offers provocative insights and user-friendly tips on how to make organizational culture more intimate, more interactive, more inclusive, and more intentionalin short, more conversational.

An argument for simplicity from the bestselling authors of Profit from the CoreIs radical reinvention the key to winning in todays fast-paced world? Not judging by the results of some of the worlds best-performing companies.In Repeatability, Chris Zook and James Allenleaders of Bain & Companys influential Strategy practicewarn that complexity is a silent killer of profitable growth. Successful companies endure by maintaining simplicity at their core. They dont stray from, or regularly discard, their business model in pursuit of radical renovation. Instead, they build a “repeatable business model” that produces continuous improvement and allows them to rapidly adapt to change without succumbing to complexity.Based on a multiyear study of more than two hundred companies, the book stresses the value of repeatability in business, showing how the “big idea” today is really made up of a series of successful smaller ideas driven by a simple and repeatable business model. Zook and Allen show how some of the worlds best-known firms combine a core differentiation model with speed, adaptability, and simplicity to land them at the top for long periods of time. These firms include: Apple, Danaher, DaVita, IKEA, Nike, Olam, Tetra Pak, Vanguard, and others.CEOs, senior executives, managers, and investors all need to read this book. Its the new blueprint for reaching the topand staying there.

Why Everyone Needs Analytical SkillsWelcome to the age of data. No matter your interests (sports, movies, politics), your industry (finance, marketing, technology, manufacturing), or the type of organization you work for (big company, nonprofit, small start-up)your world is awash with data. As a successful manager today, you must be able to make sense of all this information. You need to be conversant with analytical terminology and methods and able to work with quantitative information. This book promises to become your quantitative literacy"e; guidehelping you develop the analytical skills you need right now in order to summarize data, find the meaning in it, and extract its value. In Keeping Up with the Quants, authors, professors, and analytics experts Thomas Davenport and Jinho Kim offer practical tools to improve your understanding of data analytics and enhance your thinking and decision making. Youll gain crucial skills, including: How to formulate a hypothesis How to gather and analyze relevant data How to interpret and communicate analytical results How to develop habits of quantitative thinking How to deal effectively with the quants in your organizationBig data and the analytics based on it promise to change virtually every industry and business function over the next decade. If you dont have a business degree or if you arent comfortable with statistics and quantitative methods, this book is for you. Keeping Up with the Quants will give you the skills you need to master this new challengeand gain a significant competitive edge.

India is back! With the countrys general elections in 2014 resulting in a government formed by a new political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by a business-friendly prime minister, Narendra Kumar Modi, the worlds largest democracy is once again on the minds of business leaders the world over. The renewal of interest in India is all the greater because of whats happening in neighboring China. For over thirty years, China was the growth engine for many Western multinational companies, but the combination of a slowing economy, rising wages, and increasing political risk has most companies looking for the next China. No other country is better positioned to play that role than India. In the short term, though, India will remain a challenging market, with a well-deserved reputation for corruption, uncertainty, and stultifying bureaucracy. Those hurdles are unlikely to go away soon. Yet India may be on the verge of unprecedented growth. Can you afford to wait or should you plunge into this complex market today? What does it really take to win there? How do executives deal with Indias volatility, uncertainty, and intense competitionand even prosper from it? Ravi Venkatesan, the former Chairman of Microsoft India and Cummins India, offers expert advice on how your company can overcome the unique challenges of the Indian market. He argues that India is in fact an archetype for most developing nations, many of which present similar challenges. Succeeding in India is important not just because it is a big market but also because it is a litmus test for your corporations ability to succeed in other emerging markets. If you can win in India, you should be able to win anywhere. Hard as these frontier markets are, Venkatesan argues, the bigger hurdle may well be the internal culture and mind-set at a multinationals headquarters. The unwillingness to make a long-term commitment or to adequately trust local leadership, combined with the propensity to rigidly replicate the products, business models, and operating systems that have worked at home, drives many companies into a midway trap. That often results in India remaining an irrelevantly small contributor to the companys global growth and profits. Combining personal experience and in-depth interviews with CEOs and senior leaders at dozens of companiesincluding Microsoft, GE, JCB, Dell, Honeywell, Volvo, Bosch, Deere, Unilever, and NestlVenkatesan shows you how to tackle political changes, policy uncertainty, and corruption and thrive in India. He proves that you can break through, but it takes a very different type of leadership, both locally and at corporate headquarters. If you want to succeed in the twenty-first century, you must succeed in emerging markets. This practical book, written by one of Indias most respected CEOs, gives you the keys to win in India, other emerging markets, and, indeed, globally.

In The Little Black Book of Innovation, long-time innovation expert Scott D. Anthony draws on stories from his research and field work with companies like Procter & Gamble to demystify innovation. Anthony presents a simple definition of innovation and illuminates its vital role in organizational success and personal growth. Anthony also provides a powerful 28-day program for mastering innovation's key steps: finding insight, generating ideas, building businesses, and strengthening capabilities.With its wealth of illustrative case studies from around the globe, this engaging and potent playbook is a must-read for anyone seeking to turn themselves or their companies into true innovation powerhouses.

Trying to get your message heard? Build an iconic brand?Welcome to the battlefield.The story wars are all around us. They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behaviorgreat stories.With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes readers into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity. Youll discover how: Social media tools are driving a return to the oral tradition, in which stories that matter rise above the fray Marketers have become todays mythmakers, providing society with explanation, meaning, and ritual Memorable stories based on timeless themes build legions of eager evangelists Marketers and audiences can work together to create deeper meaning and stronger partnerships in building a better world Brands like Old Spice, The Story of Stuff, Nike, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street created and sustained massive viral buzzWinning the Story Wars is a call to arms for business communicators to cast aside broken traditions and join a revolution to build the iconic brands of the future. It puts marketers in the role of heroes with a chance to transform not just their craft but the enterprises they represent. After all, success in the story wars doesnt come just from telling great stories, but from learning to live them.

Meeting the new standard for leadership.Higher Ambition is required reading for every leader who refuses to compromise between people and performance. Choosing one or the other may have worked in the past, but it wont work now. As global competition stiffens and businesses face increased public scrutiny and renewed government regulation, leaders must win on all frontswith their people, their customers, their communities, and their shareholders. In short, they must deliver superior economic and social value. Brimming with powerful stories and thoughtful advice from CEOs themselves, Higher Ambition equips leaders with the practical insights they need to meet this new and higher standard. The authors, an international team of experts from leading business schools and consultancies, offer a unique view into the minds of some of the most successful and insightful leaders of our time: CEOs from vanguard companies around the world that have demonstrated the distinctive ability to do good while also doing well. These organizations are as diverse as Standard Chartered Bank, Infosys, Volvo, Cummins, IKEA, the Tata Group, and Campbells Soup. Readers will learn the principles and practices these pioneering leaders are using to: Build enduring enterprises that simultaneously solve for people and profits Forge winning strategies that leverage their companies unique cultural and human capabilities Dramatically raise the aspirations and ambitions of their people Energize and align their diverse global firms Relentlessly upgrade leadership capabilities throughout their organizationsDrawing on the author teams extensive research and in-depth interviews with successful leaders from around the globe, this provocative new book is poised to become a management classic in the tradition of In Search of Excellence and Built to Last.

As a manager, you're shouldering more and more responsibilities--from maximizing your team's performance to increasing your company's market share to building profitable customer relationships. On top of all that, you need to orchestrate your own time and keep your career on track.The challenges are stacking up--but you've got less and less time to figure out how to tackle them.How are you supposed to resolve this dilemma? Happily, help is on the way: the new Management Tips from the Harvard Business Review.This concise, handy guide is packed with quick tips on a broad range of topics, organized into three major skills every manager must master:Managing yourselfManaging your teamManaging your businessDrawing from HBR's popular Management Tip of the Day, the book puts the best management practices and insights, from top thinkers in the field, right at your fingertips. Pick it up any time you have a few minutes to spare, and you'll have a fresh, powerful idea you can immediately put into action.You may not be able to do much about being time-starved. But with Management Tips from the Harvard Business Review as your guide, you'll stand the best chance of succeeding in your role as a manager.

How to Resolve the Really Hard ProblemsEvery manager makes tough callsit comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the gray areassituations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, youve done the best analysis you can, and you still dont know what to do. But you have to make a decision. You have to choose, commit, act, and live with the consequences and persuade others to follow your lead. Gray areas test your skills as a manager, your judgment, and even your humanity. How do you get these decisions right?In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems. Picking up where conventional tools of analysis leave off, this book provides tools for judgment in the form of five revealing questions. Asking yourself these five questions provides a simple yet profound way to broaden your thinking, sharpen your judgment, and develop a fresh perspective. What makes these questions so valuable is that they have truly stood the test of timetheyve guided countless men and women, across many centuries and cultures, to resolve the hardest questions of work, responsibility, and life.You can use the five-question framework on your own or with others on your team to help you cut through complexities, understand critical trade-offs, and develop workable solutions for even the grayest issues.

Pleasing Wall Street used to be easy for executives. Not anymore. The stock market is an uncertain place, and every day executives have to figure out what investors really want. There are right ways and wrong ways to do this. Get it wrong, and you risk alienating investors as well as employees, consumers, and supplierswhich can erode your earnings and stock price.In Winning Investors Over, Baruch Lev draws on his own and other finance scholars research to present authoritative, often surprising instructions for dealing intelligently with Wall Streetand boosting your companys earnings and stock price. Through rigorous data analysis and real-life cases, Lev shows how to: Understand and address investors concerns to secure ongoing funding and support from the capital markets Deliver disappointing news effectively to investors Build, rebuild, and maintain credibility on Wall Street Buy time for your companys recovery from activist shareholders and hedge fund raiders Structure your compensation to win shareholders supportWinning Investors Over demonstrates that despite the uncertainty that characterizes Wall Street today, you can still craft a mutually beneficial, long-term partnership with investors.

Successful leaders know that leadership is less often about having all the answers-and more often about asking the right questions. The challenge lies in being able to step back, reflect, and ask the key questions that are critical to your performance and your organization's effectiveness.In What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, leadership expert Robert Kaplan presents a process for asking the big questions that will enable you to diagnose problems, change course if necessary, and advance your career. He lays out areas of inquiry, including questions such as:Do I clearly articulate my vision and top priorities to my employees and key constituencies?Does the way I spend my time enable me to achieve my top priorities?Do I give subordinates timely and direct feedback they can act on? Do I actively seek feedback myself?Have I developed a succession roadmap?Is my organization's design aligned with the achievement of its objectives?Is my leadership style still effective, and does it reflect who I truly am?Packed with real-life situations, this highly readable and practical guide helps you learn to ask the right questions-and work through the answers in ways that are right for you. By asking these questions, you can tackle the inevitable challenges of leadership as you craft new strategies for staying on top of your game.

Meet John Downs. He's a new MBA graduate who's landed a job with a strategy consultancy. His engagement team is on a mission: help HGS Inc., a specialty chemicals firm, define and execute a strategy for exploiting a textile technology the company developed.John and his team deploy state-of-the-art strategy tools to analyze the attractiveness of potential markets for the technology. But they soon realize the tools don't help them grapple with the human side of strategy--including political forces swirling within HGS. Everyone involved in the engagement is biased and insecure, brilliant and hardworking, selfish and lazy, loyal and dedicated.John and his cohorts aren't "e;real"e;--What I Didn't Learn in Business School is a business novel. But they're realistic: they're just like us. Their story reveals the limitations of strategy tools and demonstrates tactics for navigating the messy, human dynamics that can make or break a company's strategy efforts.This engaging book uses the power of story to present potent lessons for anyone seeking to excel at strategy management. It's a compelling read--whether you're an MBA grad struggling to apply what you learned or in the fray and eager to see what MBAs get wrong when they land in the real world.

Persuade others to do what you want--for their own reasons.If you need the best practices and ideas for making deals that work--but don't have time to find them--this book is for you. Here are 10 inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place.This collection of HBR articles will help you:- Seal or sweeten a bargain by uncovering the other side's motives- Conquer faulty assumptions to make the right deals- Forge deals only when they support your strategy- Set the stage for a healthy relationship long after the ink has dried- Make promises you can keep- Gain your adversaries' trust in high-stakes talks- Know when to walk away

Offers immediate solutions to the challenges managers face on the job everyday. This features handy tools, self-tests, and real life examples to help you identify strengths and weaknesses and hone critical skills.

As you're well aware, your individual energy ebbs and flows--leading to high and low productivity cycles. Fail to manage your energy correctly, and you risk falling into traps including inertia, complacency, and frenzied, unfocused activity that only erodes the quality of your life.The same holds true for your entire organization. In Fully Charged, Heike Bruch and Bernd Vogel provide tools and strategies to help you manage your company's collective energy.First, diagnose your company's "e;energy state"e; using the Organizational Energy Matrix. By assessing the intensity (high or low) and the quality (positive or negative) of the energy in your enterprise, you discover which of four energy states your company is experiencing. Second, move your company out of dangerous states characterized by complacency, cynicism, aggression, withdrawal, and other perils. By applying practices mastered by companies as diverse as Airbus, Novartis, SAP, and Tata Steel, you can shift your firm into a state of high, positive energy--in which everyone is emotionally engaged, mentally alert, and working swiftly and productively toward critical goals.Practical and backed by extensive research, Fully Charged reveals how to continually refresh your company's energy--so it's always ready to tackle the next period of high demand.

Conventional wisdom on strategy is no longer a reliable guide. In Essential Advantage, Booz & Company's Cesare Mainardi and Paul Leinwand maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with coherence: a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique.Achieving this clarity takes a sharpness of focus that only exceptional companies have mastered. This book helps you identify your firm's blend of strategic direction and distinctive capabilities that give it the "e;right to win"e; in its chosen markets. Based on extensive research and filled with company examples—including Amazon.com, Johnson & Johnson, Tata Sons, and Procter & Gamble—Essential Advantage helps you construct a coherent company in which the pieces reinforce each other instead of working at cross-purposes.The authors reveal:· Why you should focus on a system of a few aligned capabilities· How to identify the "e;way to play"e; in your market· How to design a strategy for well-modulated growth· How to align a portfolio of businesses behind your capability system· How your strategy clarifies growth, costs, and people decisionsFew companies achieve a capability-driven "e;right to win"e; in their market. This book helps you position your firm to be among them.

A manager's job is getting harder to do. But the central question for all managers - the one that separates great managers from the rest- is how to get the most from your people. What do you do when your most talented people fall short of their potential, or worse, fall off their game for awhile? How do you inspire a solid contributor to even more stellar performance? How do you find that spark? And turn it into a burning flame?According to best-selling author and psychiatrist, Ned Hallowell, it's all in the brain. Creating that spark and inspiring someone to perform at their highest levels isn't rocket science; but it is brain science, and it has yet to be codified into a simple and reliable process that all managers can use.Drawing from his expertise helping people reach their full potential and synthesizing the latest research on happiness, brain science, and performance, Hallowell does exactly that -- he offers a five step process that leads to peak performance. Based on the latest findings in the fast-moving field of high performance research and rooted in the work of Martin Seligman, Dan Gilbert, Marcus Buckingham, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, John Ratey, and many other experts in psychology and neuroscience, this book gives managers a simple and coherent framework for getting the best out of people:(1) Selection - how to put people in the right job, and give them the responsbilities that literally make their brains "e;light up;"e;(2) Connection - how to overcome the powerful forces that disconnect us interpersonally in today's workplace, and how to restore the positive connections that fuel superior performance;(3) Play - why play is essential to peak performance, and how managers can get it right;(4) Progress - when the pressure is on, how to challenge the right person at the right time;(5) Recognition - why reward systems always decrease peak performance, and how managers can finally get this rightThe value of the five steps is that each step builds on another. For instance, there's no point in challenging an employee to go beyond their personal best if you haven't bothered to ensure first that you've got them in the right job. And there's no way to successfully get someone to think more creatively if you haven't first established the personal connection with her so that she knows her wild ideas will be taken seriously. And there's no point in demanding more, if you haven't first given employees a chance to engage their imagination and play around with the things that "e;light up their brains."e;Especially in times of mental overload and stress, when invoking people to suck it up or work even harder isn't an effective management tool, managers need a new game plan, like the one in this book, for helping their people perform at their best.