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Good feedback is essential to helping employees perform better at work. It lets people know when they are meeting or exceeding expectations, and when they need to get back on the right track. This practical guide shows managers how to develop and refine this necessary skill.

Most managers coach employees by giving them feedback and evaluating their performance, right? Wrong. Coaching differs markedly from other managerial functions. With its tips, worksheets, and self-assessments, this guide shows managers how to use coaching - not only to strengthen direct reports' skills but also to rev up their performance.

Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop.Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them.In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture:The people-the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resourcesThe opportunity-what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fastThe context-the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fateRisk and reward-what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respondTimely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.

Why do good teams fail? Very often, argue Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman, it is because they are looking inward instead of outward. Based on years of research examining teams across many industries, Ancona and Bresman show that traditional team models are falling short, and that whats needed--and what works--is a new brand of team that emphasizes external outreach to stakeholders, extensive ties, expandable tiers, and flexible membership.The authors highlight that X-teams not only are able to adapt in ways that traditional teams arent, but that they actually improve an organizations ability to produce creative ideas and execute themincreasing the entrepreneurial and innovative capacity within the firm. Whats more, the new environment demands what the authors call distributed leadership, and the book highlights how X-teams powerfully embody this idea.

Why do businesses consistently fail to execute their competitive strategies? This book presents six imperatives that enable you to do the right strategic projects and do those projects right including, Ideation, Nature, Vision, Engagement, Synthesis, and Transition.

Why are your smartest and most successful employees often the worst learners? Likely, they haven't had the opportunities for introspection that failure affords. So when they do fail, instead of critically examining their own behavior, they cast blame outward-on anyone or anything they can. In Teaching Smart People How to Learn, Chris Argyris sheds light on the forces that prevent highly skilled employees for learning from mistakes and offers suggestions for helping talented employees develop more productive responses. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice-many of which still speak to and influence us today. The HBR Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each volume contains a groundbreaking idea that has shaped best practices and inspired countless managers around the world-and will change how you think about the business world today.

If your company is like most, it has a handful of people who generate disproportionate quantities of value: A researcher creates products that bankroll the entire organization for decades. A manager spots consumer-spending patterns no one else sees and defines new market categories your enterprise can serve. A strategist anticipates global changes and correctly interprets their business implications.Companies' competitiveness, even survival, increasingly hinge on such "e;clever people."e; But the truth is, clever people are as fiercely independent as they are clever-they don't want to be led. So how do you corral these players in your organization and inspire them to achieve their highest potential?In Clever, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones offer potent insights drawn from their extensive research. The authors explain how to:-Identify your clever people and their motivations-Shelter your "e;clevers"e; from political distractions that can inhibit their productivity-Help clevers generate even more value by creating clever teams-Manage the unique tensions that can arise when clevers work togetherLeading clever people can be enormously challenging, yet doing so effectively is the key to your organization's sustained success. Lively and engaging, this book provides the ideas, practices, and examples you need to create an environment where your most brilliant people can flourish.

Widely regarded as an innovative, successful biotech firm, Amgen led its industry in revenue and sales growth in 2007. This book reveals the highs and lows it experienced in the race to develop drugs. It takes readers from the time Amgen had just three months of capital in the bank and no viable products in the pipeline to its success.

Business and political leaders talk about what their respective countries must do to compete in the world economy. But what does it really mean for a country to compete, and how do they do this successfully? This book shows how governments set direction and create the climate for a nation's economic development and profitable private enterprise.

Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sellor how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering's (and a company's) authenticity as much asif not more thanprice, quality, and availability. In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that to trounce rivals companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, nonprofit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers' perception of authenticity by: recognizing how businesses "e;fake it;"e; appealing to the five different genres of authenticity; charting how to be "e;true to self"e; and what you say you are; and crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity. The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers' intensifying demand for the real deal.

As an HR manager, you're expected to use financial data to make decisions, allocate resources, and budget expenses. But if you're like many human resource practitioners, you may feel uncertain or uncomfortable incorporating financials into your day-to-day work.Using the groundbreaking formula they introduced in their book Financial Intelligence: A Manager's Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean, Karen Berman and Joe Knight present the essentials of finance specifically for HR experts.Drawing on their work training tens of thousands of managers and employees at leading organizations worldwide, the authors provide a deep understanding of the basics of financial management and measurement, along with hands-on activities to practice what you are reading. You'll discover: Why the assumptions behind financial data matter What your company's income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement really reveal Which financials may be needed when you're developing a human capital strategy How to calculate return on investment Ways to use financial information to better support your business units and do your own job How to instill financial intelligence throughout your teamAuthoritative and accessible, Financial Intelligence for HR Professionals, empowers you to "e;talk numbers"e; confidently with your boss, colleagues, and direct reports -- and understand how the financials impact your part of the business.

Renowned playwright George Bernard Shaw once said "e;The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."e; By this definition, some of today's entrepreneurs are decidedly unreasonable--and have even been dubbed crazy. Yet as John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan argue in The Power of Unreasonable People, our very future may hinge on their work.Through vivid stories, the authors identify the highly unconventional entrepreneurs who are solving some of the world's most pressing economic, social, and environmental problems. They also show how these pioneers are disrupting existing industries, value chains, and business models--and in the process creating fast-growing markets around the world.By understanding these entrepreneurs' mindsets and strategies, you gain vital insights into future market opportunities for your own organization. Providing a first-hand, on-the-ground look at a new breed of entrepreneur, this book reveals how apparently unreasonable innovators have built their enterprises, how their work will shape risks and opportunities in the coming years, and what tomorrow's leaders can learn from them.Start investing in, partnering with, and learning from these world-shaping change agents, and you position yourself to not only survive but also thrive in the new business landscape they're helping to define.

An organisation's fate hinges on its CEOright? Not according to the authors of Senior Leadership Teams. They argue that in today's world of neck-snapping change, demands on leaders in top roles are rapidly outdistancing the capabilities of any one person - no matter how talented. Result? Chief executives are turning to their enterprise's senior leaders for help. Yet many CEOs stumble when creatinga leadership team. One major challenge is that senior executives often focus more on their individual roles than on the top team's shared work. Without the CEO's careful attention to setting the team up correctly, these high-powered managers often have difficulty pulling together to move their organisation forward. Sometimes they don't even agree about what constitutes the right path forward.The authors explain how to determine whether your organisation needs a senior leadership team. Then, drawing on their study of 100+ top teams from around the world, they explain how to create a clear and compelling purpose for your team, get the right people on it, provide structure and support, and sharpen team members' competencies - and your own. Timely and practical, this book enables you to create and sustain a leadership team whose members learn from one another while collaborating to pursue your company's objectives.

Offers examples - from Hewlett Packard to Microsoft to British Petroleum - of companies whose shareholders have wielded their control in ways that were unimaginable.

Illustrates what's wrong with the mainstream thinking that we should sacrifice our lives to make a living. This book advices readers to make work pay not just in cash, but in experience, satisfaction, and joy.

Even world-class companies, with powerful and proven business models, eventually discover limits to growth. That's what makes emerging high-growth industries so attractive. Although they lack a proven formula for making a profit, these industries represent huge opportunities for the companies that are fast enough and smart enough. But constructing tomorrow's businesses while simultaneously sustaining excellence in today's, demands a delicate balance. It is a quest fraught with contradiction and paradox. Until now, there has been little practical guidance. Based on an in-depth, multiyear research study of innovative initiatives at ten large corporations, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble identify three central challenges: forgetting yesterday's successful processes and practices; borrowing selected resources from the core business; and learning how the new business can succeed. The authors make recommendations regarding staffing, leadership roles, reporting relationships, process design, planning, performance assessment, incentives, cultural norms, and much more. Breakthrough growth opportunities can make or break companies and careers. Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators is every leader's guide to execution in unexplored territory.

The blockbuster best seller Primal Leadership introduced us to "e;resonant"e; leaders--individuals who manage their own and others' emotions in ways that drive success. Leaders everywhere recognized the validity of resonant leadership, but struggled with how to achieve and sustain resonance amid the relentless demands of work and life. Now, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee provide an indispensable guide to overcoming the vicious cycle of stress, sacrifice, and dissonance that afflicts many leaders. Drawing from extensive multidisciplinary research and real-life stories, Resonant Leadership offers a field-tested framework for creating the resonance that fuels great leadership. Rather than constantly sacrificing themselves to workplace demands, leaders can manage the cycle using specific techniques to combat stress, avoid burnout, and renew themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. The book reveals that the path to resonance is through mindfulness, hope, and compassion and shows how intentionally employing these qualities creates effective and enduring leadership. Great leaders are resonant leaders. Resonant Leadership offers the inspiration--and tools--to spark and sustain resonance in ourselves and in those we lead.

Three experts in Human Resources introduce a measurement system that convincingly showcases how HR impacts business performance. Drawing from the authors' ongoing study of nearly 3,000 firms, this book describes a seven-step process for embedding HR systems within the firm's overall strategy--what the authors describe as an HR Scorecard--and measuring its activities in terms that line managers and CEOs will find compelling. Analyzing how each element of the HR system can be designed to enhance firm performance and maximize the overall quality of human capital, this important book heralds the emergence of HR as a strategic powerhouse in today's organizations.

The Internet, globalization, and hypercompetition are dramatically reshaping markets and changing the way business is done. This work describes the next transformational imperative for marketing. It calls for a fundamental rethinking of corporate strategy to enable the ongoing creation and delivery of superior value for customers.

More than 250,000 public sector managers in the United States take on new positions each year and many more aspire to leadership. Each will confront special challengesfrom higher public profiles to a greater number of stakeholders to volatile political environmentsthat will make their transitions even more challenging than in the business world.Now Michael Watkins, author of the bestselling book The First 90 Days, applies his proven leadership transition framework to the public sector. Watkins and coauthor Peter Daly address the crucial differences between the private and public sectors that go to the heart of how success and failure are defined, measured, and rewarded or penalized.This concise, practical book provides a roadmap that will help new government leaders at all levels accelerate their transitions by overcoming nine transition challenges, ranging from clarifying expectations to defining goals to building a team to managing personal stress. The authors also offer detailed strategies for avoiding major transition traps.Zeroing in on the challenges faced by new government leaders, The First 90 Days in Government is the indispensable guide for anyone seeking to lead and succeed in the public sector.

On the heels of a decade of scandals and the new pressures brought on by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, corporations expect far more from their CFOs than simply managing the numbers. They expect decision-making support and performance insights that can improve bottom-line results. Unfortunately, the complexity and detail inherent in CFOs jobs keep them shackled to budgeting and transaction-processing systems that leave little time for value-adding activities. Jeremy Hope says its time to redefine the role of CFOs in todays organizations, liberating them from ineffective number-crunching responsibilities and enabling them to focus on helping managers improve performance. Grounded in extensive research, Reinventing the CFO outlines seven critical rolesfrom streamlining redundant processes to regulating risk to identifying a few key measuresthat CFOs must take on in order to successfully transform the finance operation.Challenging many of the finance fields accepted practices and systems, this bold book revolutionizes the role of financial managers and frees them to make smart, ethical, strategic decisions that add real value to the firm.

Helps managers identify, manage, and prevent potential crises. Containing tips and tools on how to prepare an emergency list and how to utilize pre-crisis resources, this book shows managers how to shepherd their team from crisis to success.

Tushman and O'Reilly examine how leadership, culture, and organizational architectures can be both important facilitators of innovation and, not uncommonly, formidable obstacles. They demonstrate how to clarify today's critical managerial problems, use culture and commitment to promote innovation and implement strategy, and deal with changing innovation requirements as organizations evolve.

Aims to issue a challenge to HR professionals: define the value you create and institute measures for your performance, or face the inevitable outsourcing of your function. This book provides hands-on tools that show HR professionals how they can operate in all four areas simultaneously.

A handbook on the fundamentals of strategy. It helps managers zero in on the choices that lie at the heart of innovative strategies. It explains how to overcome the obstacles to innovation so that even well-established companies can innovate by breaking the rules of the game. It also reveals how creative thinking leads to strategic innovation.

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 "e;strategy map"e;--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 "e;aha!"e; 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.

All companies must grow to survive--but only one in five growth strategies succeeds. In Profit from the Core, strategy expert Chris Zook revealed how to grow profitably by focusing on and achieving full potential in the core business. But what happens when your core business provides insufficient new growth or even hits the wall? In Beyond the Core, Zook outlines an expansion strategy based on putting together combinations of adjacency moves into areas away from, but related to, the core business, such as new product lines or new channels of distribution. These sequences of moves carry less risk than diversification, yet they can create enormous competitive advantage, because they stem directly from what the company already knows and does best. Based on extensive research on the growth patterns of thousands of companies worldwide, including CEO interviews with 25 top performers in adjacency growth, Beyond the Core 1) identifies the adjacency pattern that most dramatically increases the odds of success: "e;relentless repeatability;"e; 2) offers a systematic approach for choosing among a range of possible adjacency moves; and 3) shows how to time adjacency moves during a variety of typical business situations. Beyond the Core shows how to find and leverage the best avenues for growth--without damaging the heart of the firm.

Argues that boards are being pressed to perform unrealistic duties given their traditional structure, processes, and membership. This book proposes a strategic redesign of boards - making them attuned to their oversight, decision-making, and advisory roles - to enable directors to meet twenty-first century challenges.

Most of us think of leaders as courageous risk takers, orchestrators of major events. In a word: heroes. Although such figures are inspiring, Joseph Badaracco argues that their larger-than-life accomplishments are not what makes the world work. What does, he says, is the sum of millions of small yet consequential decisions that individuals working far from the limelight make every day. Badaracco calls them "e;quiet leaders"e;--people who choose responsible, behind-the-scenes action over public heroism to resolve tough leadership challenges. Quiet leaders don't fit the stereotype of the bold and gutsy leader, and they don't want to. What they want is to do the "e;right thing"e;--for their organizations, their coworkers, and themselves--but inconspicuously and without casualties. Drawing from extensive research, Badaracco presents eight practical yet counter-intuitive guidelines for situations in which right and wrong seem like moving targets. Compelling stories illustrate how these "e;nonheroes"e; succeed by managing their political capital, buying themselves time, bending the rules, and more. From the executive suite to the office cubicle--Leading Quietly shows how patient, everyday efforts can add up to a better company and a better world.

Explains what strategy is, how to put together a strategic plan, what tools and resources are necessary to execute it, and how to measure results.