leverage (lev'r ij) The power to act or influence.ditch (dich) Slang, to get rid of; discard.Finally, you hold in your hands a powerful tool that will show you how to take full advantage of -- Leverage! -- your strengths and most positive qualities, while at the same time discarding or getting around -- Ditch! -- whatever gets in your way.Scott Blanchard and Madeleine Homan, co-founders of Coaching.com, share their groundbreaking program, honed by fourteen years of high-level executive coaching and consulting. They offer new perspectives on how to spend your precious and limited resources, time, emotions, passions, and energy to generate the best results.The three-part process begins with a twenty-five-question self-assessment, then moves on to the Three Perspectives -- major life queries that focus on how you are perceived, your own self-image, and self-imposed limitations. The final step, the Seven Leverage Points, offers fresh insight into the choices you make and how you conduct yourself in business and in life. You will find immediately applicable tools to appraise and manage your work environment and personal gifts. You will be guided to make tiny but crucial shifts in getting needs met and drawing boundaries.Leverage Your Best, Ditch the Rest eliminates the stupid stuff that distracts you and gets in your way. It shows you how to capitalize on what you've got going for you and how to invest in yourself like a hot new stock.*****In addition, we have built a Web site, www.leverageyourbest.com, for those who have made a commitment to their own coaching journey. Coaching is a dynamic tool and you are a work in progress---technology makes it easy to track growth. Leverage Your Best readers can use the Web site, the first of its kind, to work through exercises in the book electronically, keep a personal record of progress, communicate with other readers in an online coaching experience, and give feedback to the authors. A collaborative effort, the Web's online coaching community defines the www.leverageyourbest.com site experience, adding new dimensions to professional development...all for the price of the of the book . Visit the world's only online coaching Web experience and see what has people everywhere jumping in their cubicles. Enjoy!

If you're loosing sleep over your financial worries, help is here at last.Whether you're fretting over a mortgage that's been denied; a loan that's delayed; a marriage settlement that seems unfair; or a business that's struggling, this extraordinary book will not only help you rest easy, it will show you how to turn adversity into success.Here you'll learn the Pollan method for turning no into yes: how to determine your problem; how to make sure you're dealing with only one problem at a time; and how to create an environment of trust. With literally hundreds of scenarios to illustrate it's success, this unique and practical method will make you feel like you've got a coach, strategist, and motivator at your beck and call -- and will help you sleep well, knowing you're on the way to getting what you want.

Every era has its merger every era has its story. For the New Media age it was an even bigger disaster: the AOL-Time Warner deal. At the time AOL and Time Warner were considered a matchless combination of old media content and new media distribution. But very soon after the deal was announced things started to go bad and then from bad to worse. Less than four years after the deal was announced, every significant figure in the deal -save the politically astute Richard Parsons has left the company, along with scores of others. Nearly a $100 billion was written off and a stock that once traded at $100 now trades near $10.What happenedWhere did it all go wrongIn this deeply sourced and deftly written book, Nina Munk gives us a window into the minds of two of the oddest men to ever run billion-dollar empires. Steve Case, the boy wonder who built AOL one free floppy disk at a time, was searching for a way out of the New Economy. Meanwhile Jerry Levin, who'd made his reputation as a visionary when he put HBO on satellite distribution, was searching for a monumental deal. These two men, more interested in their place in history than their personal fortunes, each thought they were out-smarting the other.

Disasters happen every day. Are your investments preparedThe investor who knows how to anticipate historically significant or earth-shattering events who is prepared to act when others are frozen with fear will always have a substantial advantage. By closely analyzing potential global threats and the opportunities they present, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Investing in the Apocalypse offers investors the key to finding a silver lining in almost any cataclysm. Even if the catastrophic does not occur, the strategies here can pay huge dividends even under more mundane circumstances.The Wall Street Journal Guide to Investing in the Apocalypse provides readers with valuable information for investment success: the ability to see opportunity where others see peril. Whether a global disaster is natural or man-made, environmental or financial, every fearsome scenario contains the seeds of profit for the investor who stays calm and thinks rather than panics and runs.

The measure of the executive, Peter Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results. Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned: Management of time Choosing what to contribute to the practical organization Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect Setting up the right priorities And Knitting all of them together with effective decision making Ranging widely through the annals of business and government, Peter Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.

The groundbreaking and premier work on nonprofit organizations.The nonprofit sector is growing rapidly, creating a major need for expert advice on how to manage these organizations effectively. Management legend Peter Drucker provides excellent examples and explanations of mission, leadership, resources, marketing, goals, and much more. Interviews with nine experts also address key issues in this booming sector.

In this candid memoir, A. Alfred Taubman explains how a dyslexic Jewish kid from Detroit grew up to be a billionaire retailing pioneer, an intimate of European aristocrats and Palm Beach socialites, a respected philanthropist and, at age 78, a federal prisoner. With a unique blend of humor and genius, Taubman shows how selling fine art and antiques really isn't that different from marketing root beer or football, and offers penetrating insights into that quintessential palace of commerce, the luxury shopping mall. Alfred Taubman may not have invented the modern shopping center but, in the words of The New Yorker, "he perfected it."Taubman's life has been a storybook success, with its share of unique challenges. A pioneer builder and innovative real estate developer, he was also a brilliant land speculator, operator of a quick-serve restaurant chain, and owner of a major department store company. But what seemed like the pinnacle of his career, buying and reinventing the venerable art auction house Sotheby's, would lead to his conviction in an international price fixing scandal.Despite the twists and turns, Taubman's life and business philosophy can be summed up in one evocative phrase: Threshold Resistance. Understanding and defeating that force breaking down the barriers between art and commerce, between shoppers and merchandise, between high culture and popular taste has been his life's work.

"It began with a promising cancer drug, the brainchild of a gifted researcher, and grew into an insider trading scandal that ensnared one of America's most successful women. The story of ImClone Systems and its "miracle" cancer drug, Erbitux, is the quintessential business saga of the late 1990s. It's the story of big money and cutting-edgescience, celebrity, greed, and slipshod business practices; the story of biotech hype and hope and every kind of excess.At the center of it all stands a single, enigmatic figure named Sam Waksal. A brilliant, mercurial, and desperate-to-be-liked entrepreneur, Waksal was addicted to the trappings of wealth and fame that accrued to a darling of the stock market and the overheated atmosphere of biotech IPOs. At the height of his stardom, Waksal hobnobbed with Martha Stewart in New York and Carl Icahn in the Hamptons, hosted parties at his fabulous art-filled loft, and was a fixture in the gossip columns. He promised that Erbitux would "change oncology," and would soon be making $1 billion a year.But as Waksal partied late into the night, desperate cancer patients languished, waiting for his drug to come to market. When the FDA withheld approval of Erbitux, the charming scientist who had always stayed just one step ahead of bankruptcy panicked and desperately tried to cash in his stock before the bad news hit Wall Street.Waksal is now in jail, the first of the Enron-era white-collar criminals to be sentenced. Yet his cancer drug has proved more durable than his evanescent profits. Erbitux remains promising, the leading example of a new way to fight cancer, and patients and investors hope it will be available soon.

The Simplicity Cycle is an engaging and accessible field guide that equips readers with practical tools to produce elegant, effective designs. It takes a deep but lighthearted look at the way complexity enhances or diminishes the things we make and use, from PowerPoint presentations and pizzas to spacecraft and software, and shows readers why simplicity is the key to innovation and good design whether you're creating new products, services, or consumer experiences.

The workplace is constantly in flux, and even now there are new opportunities open to women. But to take advantage of these possibilities, it's essential to know the current rules for corporate success. This isn't your father's or your mother's workplace anymore! Whether it's the CEO seat, an executive manager slot, or a more intrapreneurial position, women who follow Career GPS will have what it takes to gain their professional goals.Dr. Ella L. J. Edmondson Bell, Ph.D., an authority on career development, has worked with women across a variety of fields and in different kinds of corporations, from Fortune 500s to start-ups. Here she offers guidelines to help women forge their own pathways to professional ascent, providing tips for maximizing a review, networking in a relevant way, and much more. According to Dr. Bell: Think working hard is enough to be recognizedIt's not enough to assume your effort will speak for itself. You have to socialize with the decision makers. It might not mean you have to pick up the golf clubs, but you do have to figure out what works in your own organization. Parlez-vous Fran?isLearning MandarinIf you work for a global company and aspire to an extreme job or higher, make it known that you would take an overseas assignment to advance your career. Nowhere to go right nowEven in hard times there are options. Learn a lateral skill such as accounting so when the company is firing on all engines again, you will impress through the breadth of your knowledge. Drawing from her work as a consultant to some of the country's most prestigious Fortune 100 companies, Dr. Bell helps readers succeed at every level in a dynamic corporate marketplace. Career GPS combines Dr. Bell's academic knowledge and expertise with dozens of heartfelt first-person stories from smart women who rose through the ranks. Here is a book that will guide women of all cultures, ages, and levels of experience to their career goals.

Inspired by the Simple Sabotage Field Manual released by the Office of Strategic Services in 1944 to train European resistors, this is the essential handbook to help stamp out unintentional sabotage in any working group, from major corporations to volunteer PTA committees. In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the predecessor of today’s CIA—issued the Simple Sabotage Field Manual that detailed sabotage techniques designed to demoralize the enemy. One section focused on eight incredibly subtle—and devastatingly destructive—tactics for sabotaging the decision-making processes of organizations. While the manual was written decades ago, these sabotage tactics thrive undetected in organizations today: Insist on doing everything through channels. Make speeches. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Refer all matters to committees. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. Haggle over precise wordings of communications. Refer back to matters already decided upon and attempt to question the advisability of that decision. Advocate caution and urge fellow-conferees to avoid haste that might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. Be worried about the propriety of any decision. Everyone has been faced with someone who has used these tactics, even when they have meant well. Filled with proven strategies and techniques, this brief, clever book outlines the counter-sabotage measures to detect and reduce the impact of these eight classic sabotage tactics to improve productivity, spur creativity, and engender better collegial relationships.

Want freedom from management, mediocrity and moronsEver wonder what the best bosses know that you don'tDo you want to have great employees, people who don't need to be managed and who make everyone around them work harder and raise the department to a higher standardThe Gifted Boss is management guru Dale Dauten's classic yet revolutionary guidebook on teaching managers how to spot and court talent and how to give great employees what they want and need. This is a comprehensive system full of valuable insight and lessons aimed at creating the best work environment for the best people. Throughout The Gifted Boss, Dale Dauten defines his different breed of leader as one who is able to shape a business environment and culture that is a magnet for self-motivated employees. Dauten's starting point is a powerful fact about hiring great employees: the best ones are almost never in the job market. His system also includes a discussion of "ideal turnover" and how the great managers employ "the secret skill" of "de-hiring" to gracefully move mediocre employees up or out. Throughout his discussions, Dauten incorporates priceless knowledge gained from an exhaustive search for America's best bosses. The wisdom he acquired was startling, and it pertained to every type of organization: "Different isn't always better, but better is always different." The Gifted Boss has already earned itself a cult following. Now, based on conversations with hundreds of readers, Dauten has revised his work by adding a quick-start guide to help his audience get fast results and a discussion guide to help executives share the book with their teams. Though new technology continues to bring new changes to communication in the workplace, The Gifted Boss still remains the essential guide to maneuvering the tricky world of managing the modern employee. It belongs on every businessperson's desk.

Wall Street is a funny business. All you have is your reputation. Taint it and someone else will fill your shoes. Longevity comes from maintaining that reputation. Ask Jack Grubman, the All-Star telecom analyst from Salomon Smith Barney; uber-banker Frank Quattrone at CS First Boston; Morgan Stanley's Mary "Queen of the Net" Meeker; or Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget.Well, they probably won't tell you anything. But have I got some great stories for you. Successful hedge fund manager Andy Kessler looks back on his years as an analyst on Wall Street and offers this cautionary tale of the intoxicating forces loose in the world of finance that overwhelmed sober analysis.

William Ury, coauthor of the classic bestseller on negotiation Getting to Yes, has taught tens of thousands of people from all walks of life managers, salespeople, students, parents, lawyers, and diplomats how to become better negotiators. Over the years, Ury has discovered that the greatest obstacle to successful agreements and satisfying relationships is not the other side, as difficult as they can be. The biggest obstacle is actually ourselves our natural tendency to react in ways that do not serve our true interests.But this obstacle can also become our biggest opportunity, Ury argues. If we learn to understand and influence ourselves first, we lay the groundwork for understanding and influencing others. In this indispensable prequel to Getting to Yes, Ury draws deeply on his personal and professional experience negotiating conflicts around the world to present a practical method to help you get to yes with yourself first, dra-matically improving your ability to get to yes with others. Extraordinarily useful and elegantly simple, Getting to Yes with Yourself is an essential guide to achieving the inner satisfaction that will, in turn, make your life better, your relationships healthier, your family happier, your work more productive, and the world around you more peaceful.

Leading pricing expert Rafi Mohammed shows businesses how to reap a financial windfall and foster growth using the underutilized and often overlooked strategy of setting prices. The 1% Windfall reveals how modest incremental changes to an everyday business practice pricing can yield significant rewards. Illustrating the power of pricing, a study of the Global 1200 found that if companies raised prices by just 1%, their average operating profits would increase by 11%. Using a 1% increase in price, some companies would see even more growth in percentage of profit: Sears, 155%; McKesson, 100%; Tyson, 81%; Land O'Lakes, 58%; and Whirlpool, 35%.The good news is that better pricing is more than simply raising prices. Instead, the key is to offer customers a variety of pricing options. This strategy is win-win: profits to companies and choices for consumers. But how do executives and managers set the right priceUnderpinned by sound empirical research and real-life anecdotes, The 1% Windfall addresses this fundamental question. This book offers guidelines that any company whether a multinational conglomerate, a small business, or even a nonprofit can follow to create a comprehensive pricing strategy for any product or service. In addition, these versatile techniques and tools provide solutions to avert a slump in a recession, offset the impact of inflation, or battle a new competitor. The result is a mind-opening, clear blueprint for com-panies to price for profit and growth.

The first book to explain the new world of alternative investing, showing how anyone can use nontraditional options to significantly increase returns and lower risksThe world's elite investors have long relied on alternative investments to produce superior returns. Until now, these strategies were the exclusive purview of institutions and the superwealthy, but today any informed investor can play the same game. A rainbow of investment options timber, start-ups, master limited partnerships (MLPs), hedged strategies, managed futures, infrastructure, peer-to-peer lending, farmland, and dozens of other nontraditional strategies can provide dramatically better gains, with less total risk, than the standard choices. In The Alternative Answer, Bob Rice, Bloomberg TV's Alternative Investments Editor, leads an entertaining and easy- to-understand tour of this world, and suggests specific alternative investments for all four key of a portfolio: safely generating more current income, decreasing risks of economic shocks, significantly increasing long-term profits, and protecting purchasing power over time.Regardless of experience or net worth, readers will learn exactly how to substantially improve investment performance in the same way that the world's best investors already do. Stocks and bonds alone aren't nearly enough. Investors need an alternative answer and now they have it.

Drawing on his experience as a leader in some of the nation's largest corporations, Baum issues a convincing call for honest, ethical, "transparent" dealing throughout the business world. Baum outlines the management techniques he uses within and without the company to get outstanding results without skirting the rules or bending the truth. Baum maintains that by fostering trust, integrity and accountability at all levels within the corporation, managers can stop the erosion of employee loyalty, restore consumer trust in brands, products, and American business. Baum teaches executives fresh ways of managing Wall Street analysts, communicating with shareholders, and wading through the complex maze of social responsibility issues.As a member of six corporate boards, Baum offers unique insight into transparent leadership, including the advantages and pitfalls of corporate governance, and the pressures executives face in reporting earnings. He also discusses the importance of setting standards for ethical business practices, yet highlights the dangers of government regulations that may result in excessive compliance costs at the expense of shareholders, creative risk taking, and innovation.

Why is medical care in the United States so expensiveFor decades, Americans have taken it as a matter of faith that we spend more because we have the best health care system in the world. But as costs levitate, that argument becomes more difficult to make. Today, we spend twice as much as Japan on health care—yet few would argue that our health care system is twice as good. Instead, startling new evidence suggests that one out of every three of our health care dollars is squandered on unnecessary or redundant tests; unproven, sometimes unwanted procedures; and overpriced drugs and devices that, too often, are no better than the less expensive products they have replaced. How did this happenIn Money-Driven Medicine, Maggie Mahar takes the reader behind the scenes of a $2 trillion industry to witness how billions of dollars are wasted in a Hobbesian marketplace that pits the industry's players against each other. In remarkably candid interviews, doctors, hospital administrators, patients, health care economists, corporate executives, and Wall Street analysts describe a war of "all against all" that can turn physicians, hospitals, insurers, drugmakers, and device makers into blood rivals. Rather than collaborating, doctors and hospitals compete. Rather than sharing knowledge, drugmakers and device makers divide value. Rather than thinking about long-term collective goals, the imperatives of an impatient marketplace force health care providers to focus on short-term fiscal imperatives. And so investments in untested bleeding-edge medical technologies crowd out investments in information technology that might, in the long run, not only reduce errors but contain costs. In theory, free market competition should tame health care inflation. In fact, Mahar demonstrates, when it comes to medicine, the traditional laws of supply and demand do not apply. Normally, when supply expands, prices fall. But in the health care industry, as the number and variety of drugs, devices, and treatments multiplies, demand rises to absorb the excess, and prices climb. Meanwhile, the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service system reward health care providers for doing more, not less. In this superbly written book, Mahar shows why doctors must take responsibility for the future of our health care industry. Today, she observes, "physicians have been stripped of their standing as professionals: Insurers address them as vendors ('Dear Health Care Provider'), drugmakers and device makers see them as customers (someone you might take to lunch or a strip club), while . . . consumers (aka patients) are encouraged to see their doctors as overpaid retailers. . . . Before patients can reclaim their rightful place as the center—and indeed as the raison d'être—of our health care system," Mahar suggests, "we must once again empower doctors . . . to practice patient-centered medicine—based not on corporate imperatives, doctors' druthers, or even patients' demands," but on the best scientific research available.

The workplace guide to putting "I wish I'd said" moments in the past Ever wish that you could have a "do over" after a conversation at workDo you often find yourself regretting what you've said to a coworker or kicking yourself for not saying something better, stronger, or more preciseIf so, you're like most people, and in Comebacks at Work, management professor and consultant Kathleen Kelley Reardon, Ph.D., provides the tips and tools you need to know what to say and how to say it better next time.In this compelling, entertaining book, Reardon argues that we are responsible for 75 percent of the way we're treated at work, and our success or failure at the workplace depends largely on how we handle ourselves in conversation with our colleagues. To break free of the stale *s and expected actions that allow politically astute people to manipulate us, we must increase our conversational awareness and effectively employ what Reardon calls "comebacks." Comebacks at Work provides a game plan for doing so and explains: Why some comebacks work, while others fall flat; Why our mind goes blank when we are confronted, and how to overcome that response; How to determine which comebacks work, and when to use them. Every conversation is different, and while many situations are common, one set of comebacks isn't enough. Offering a personalized repertoire of comebacks and a plan for using them strategically as well as the skills you will need to package them for maximum effect, Comebacks at Work will prepare you for any difficult conversation that comes your way.

An inspiring exploration of how unorthodox business practices and the freedom to experiment can fuel innovationWe're at a crossroads. Many iconic American companies have been bailed out or gone bankrupt; others are struggling to survive as digitization and globalization remake their industries. At the same time, the tectonic forces disrupting U.S. corporations ubiquitous bandwidth and computing power, cheap manufacturing and distribution have enabled large organizations to foster new innovations and products through experiments that are at once more aggressive and less risky than they would have been twenty years ago. At companies such as Google, employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects they're personally interested in. Almost half of Google's new product launches have originated from this policy, including Gmail and AdSense. Now other companies have adopted the concept, providing them a path to innovation and profits at a time of peril and uncertainty and offering employees creative freedom when many are feeling restless.The 20% Doctrine is about goofing off at work, and how that goofing off can drive innovation and profit. Here Ryan Tate examines the origins and implementation of 20% time at Google, then looks at how other organizations such as Flickr, the Huffington Post, and even a school in the Bronx have adapted or reinvented the same overall concept, intentionally and serendipitously. Along the way, he distills a series of common themes and lessons that can help workers initiate successful 20% style projects within their own organizations. Only through a new devotion to the unhinged and the ad hoc can American businesses resume a steady pace of development and profitability.

Renowned business gurus Al and Laura Ries give a blow-by-blow account of the battle between management and marketing and argue that the solution lies not in what we think but in how we think There's a reason why the marketing programs of the auto industry, the airline industry, and many other industries are not only ineffective, but bogged down by chaos and confusion.Management minds are not on the same wavelength as marketing minds.What makes a good chief executiveA person who is highly verbal, logical, and analytical. Typical characteristics of a left brainer.What makes a good marketing executiveA person who is highly visual, intuitive, and holistic. Typical characteristics of a right brainer. These different mind-sets often result in conflicting approaches to branding, and the Ries' thought-provoking observations culled from years on the front lines support this conclusion, including: Management deals in reality. Marketing deals in perception. Management demands better products. Marketing demands different products. Management deals in verbal abstractions. Marketing deals in visual hammers. Using some of the world's most famous brands and products to illustrate their argument, the authors convincingly show why some brands succeed (Nokia, Nintendo, and Red Bull) while others decline (Saturn, Sony, and Motorola). In doing so, they sound a clarion call: to survive in today's media-saturated society, managers must understand how to think like marketers and vice versa. Featuring the engaging, no-holds-barred writing that readers have come to expect from Al and Laura Ries, War in the Boardroom offers a fresh look at a perennial problem and provides a game plan for companies that want to break through the deadlock and start reaping the rewards.