The media coach and Emmy Award-winning correspondent Bill McGowan shares his secrets of pitch-perfect communications, showing readers how to communicate with confidence.During the pivotal moments of our lives, results are often determined not only by our actions but by our words as well. Saying the right thing the right way can make the difference between sealing the deal or losing the account, advancing your career or suffering a demotion. During these moments, it's important to be pitch perfect to use precisely the right tone to convey the right message to the right person at the right time. Such pitch-perfect moments are crucial in our personal and professional journeys. In Pitch Perfect, the renowned media coach Bill McGowan shows you how to craft just the right message. Along the way, McGowan lays out his Seven Principles of Persuasion, including: The Scorsese Principle: Hold your audience's attention with visual images. Direct the film that plays in your listener's mind. The No-Tailgating Principle: Avoid verbal fender-benders and career-wrecking moments by maintaining a safe talking distance. When in doubt, stop talking and listen. The Pasta-Sauce Principle: Cure boredom by boiling down your message, making it as rich and brief as possible. In Pitch Perfect, you'll learn how to overcome all these communication pitfalls. The Seven Principles of Persuasion are as easy to learn, implement, and master as they are effective. The right language both verbal and nonverbal can make you more confident, persuasive, and certain. It can stir people to listen closely to your every word and to remember you long after you've left the room.

Too many leadership failures. Too many career derailments. Too many toxic workplaces filled with disengaged, distrustful employees. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the author of Power, offers an incisive dissection of the multibillion-dollar leadership industry and presents ways to fix its many problems.In Leadership BS, Jeffrey Pfeffer pulls back the curtain, showing how leadership really works and why so many leadership development efforts fail. In this forthright and persuasive critique, Pfeffer argues that much of the oft-repeated wisdom about leadership is based more on hope than reality, on wishes rather than data, on beliefs instead of science. In an age when transparency is considered a virtue, Pfeffer makes the case that strategic misrepresentation isn't as harmful as you think, that breached agreements are a part of business, that immodesty is frequently a path to success, and that relying on the magnanimity of your boss is a bad bet.Using research findings from social psychology, sociology, and sociobiology, and filled with practical, actionable advice, Leadership BS encourages readers to finally stop accepting sugar-laced but toxic potions as cures and to understand the realities of organizations and human behavior.To make real change, Pfeffer argues, we need to get beyond the half-truths and self-serving stories that are so prominent in the mythology of leadership. In calling BS on so much conventional wisdom, Leadership BS offers both a provocative, scientific examination of how leadership actually works and how it doesn't and a pre*ion for leaders future and present.

Building upon the concepts introduced in Good to Great, Jim Collins answers the most commonly asked questions raised by his readers in the social sectors. Using information gathered from interviews with over 100 social sector leaders, Jim Collins shows that his "Level 5 Leader" and other good-to-great principles can help social sector organizations make the leap to greatness.

Dan Ariely's three New York Times bestselling books on his groundbreaking behavioral economics research, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, are now available for the first time in a single volume.

Throughout the 20th century, American corporations were governed by autocratic, almost unaccountable chief executives. Their word was law and the only check on their power was a board of directors composed of their friends and allies.Then, in a stunning reversal, a momentous series of firings deposed the heads of some of the world's best-known companies: AIG, Morgan Stanley, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard and Pfizer, just to name a few. Formerly unchallenged CEOs found themselves under fire, often from their own handpicked boards. The number of deposed executives is astonishing. In 2004, the leaders of 600 companies were asked to leave. That number more than doubled in 2005 and reached 1,400 companies in 2006.Flexing new muscles, directors are assuming new and unfamiliar responsibilities. In Revolt in the Boardroom, Alan Murray reveals the inner workings of the new seat of power. Using the access afforded to him by his influential Wall Street Journal column, Murray tells the story of three seminal board revolts the now-famous Hewlett-Packard drama, the ousting of Boeing's Harry Stonecipher and the end of the reign one of the world's most autocratic executives, Hank Greenberg at AIG.Murray goes further to chart the history of the corporation, the rise of governance and the effects of the new power gained by outside institutions like hedge funds and interest groups. Through it all, Murray shows how the job of chief executive has rapidly and permanently changed. Leaders like A. G. Lafley and Jeff Immelt govern instead of rule, build alliances and support instead of dictating direction and pay careful attention to a broader range of stakeholders than ever before.Revolt in the Boardroom is the first look at the new world of corporate power and the last word on the transformational events of the last two years.

In this follow-up to You Can't Win a Fight with Your Boss, Tom Markert returns to provide clever, timeless advice on how to offer exceptional service. The most important ruleYou can't win a fight with your client! As American companies large and small have shifted their focus from manufacturing to providing services, keeping clients satisfied has become critical to the survival of every business. Yet, very few people have mastered the art of managing clients successfully. In You Can't Win a Fight with Your Client, Tom Markert argues that the secret to great service lies in understanding and applying a few fundamentals. In fifty small doses, he provides practical advice on how to manage your relationships with your clients and ensure they receive the kind of service that will keep them coming back for more.A perfect resource for anyone working with clients at any level, You Can't Win a Fight with Your Client is the no-nonsense, straightforward guide to keeping clients happy in today's hypercompetitive and demanding business environment.

Whether we love our jobs or not, the amount of work on our plate has reached unsustainable levels. We start each workday anxious about how we will get it all done, and which important tasks will have to be sacrificed again so we can keep our heads above water. We often respond to our out-of-control to-do lists by focusing on being more efficient trying to get more done in less time.According to Josh Davis, Ph.D., we're going about it the wrong way. The answer is not to get more done faster, but rather to create the conditions for at least two awesome hours of peak productivity each day.Neuroscience and psychology research is revealing what those conditions are. Drawing on this research, Davis explains that our minds operate according to complex factors that, when leveraged the right way, can make us truly effective. Davis shows us five deceptively simple strategies to create the conditions for incredible productivity and to restore sanity and balance to our lives: Maximize the moments in our day when we are between tasks, intentionally choosing what to tackle next Schedule tasks based on their cognitive and emotional demands Learn how to direct attention Feed and move our bodies for short-term benefit Identify how our environment affects our focus and alertness We are capable of impressive feats of comprehension, motivation, and performance when our psychological and biological systems are functioning optimally. Two Awesome Hours will show us how to be our most productive every day.

All too often our best efforts to accomplish the things we want most to do our jobs well, to make meaningful contributions at home and at work, to have satisfying relationships with loved ones, friends, neighbors, and coworkers are built on bad habits that sabotage us. We feel overwhelmed by our increasingly large to-do list, so we automatically multitask to get more done and end up more stressed and more overloaded. We say something with the hopes of impressing the other person, but instead of end them then spend days trying to repair the damage. We give what we think is a pep talk to our team but they walk away demotivated.How can we be most effective and productive in a world that moves too fast and demands so much of us?In Four Seconds, Peter Bregman shows that the answer is to pause for as few as four seconds the length of a deep breath to replace bad habits and reactions with more productive behaviors. In his trademark style of blending personal anecdotes with practical advice, Bregman reveals some of our most common counter-productive tendencies and describes counter-intuitive strategies for acting more intentionally, including: Why setting goals can actually harm your performance How to use strategic disengagement to recover focus and willpower Why listening not arguing is the best strategy for changing someone's mind How taking responsibility for someone else's failure can actually help you succeed Drawn from Bregman's hugely popular Harvard Business Review blog, this engaging and wise book provides simple solutions to create the results you want without the stress.

IBM is one of the greatest sales and marketing organizations ever assembled. Established over seventy years ago, it now employs 400,000 people and generates $50 billion a year in revenue. Yet it operates more like a cottage industry than a huge multinational organization.How does IBM do itThat's what even the most successful companies want to know. Now Buck Rodgers, the man who has personified "the IBM way," describes for the first time the reasons behind its extraordinary achievements. He has not written a company history, or an expose, or a book on management theory. He has written a book about everything that makes IBM IBM, as only an insider could.

*Author will be named after the final show is aired in Australia*The winner of the hit TV show, The Apprentice, shows how anyone can become their own personal success in both business and life, using his or her own experiences as a self-made entrepreneur,his or her work ethic, top business strategies, and lessons learned competing on the show, working for Donald Trump and winning the most talked about reality shows in years.Foreword by Donald Trump.

After an eleven-year-old Kimberly Guilfoyle lost her mother to leukemia, her dad wanted her to become as resilient and self-empowered as she could be. He wisely taught her to build a solid case for the things she wanted. Creating a strong logical argument was the best way to ensure she could always meet her needs. That childhood lesson led her to become the fearless advocate and quick-thinking spitfire she is today. In Making the Case, Guilfoyle interweaves stories and anecdotes from her life and career with practical advice that can help you win arguments, get what you want, help others along the way, and come out ahead in any situation.Learning how to state your case effectively is not just important for lawyers it's something every person should know how to do, no matter what stage of life they are in. From landing her dream job right out of school, switching careers seamlessly midstream, and managing personal finances for greater growth and stability to divorcing amicably and teaching her young child to advocate for himself, Guilfoyle has been there and done it. Now she shares those stories, showing you how to organize your thoughts and plans, have meaningful discussions with the people around you, and achieve your goals in all aspects of your life. You'll also learn the tips and strategies that make the best advocates so successful, some of which come directly from courtroom scenarios where the stakes are highest.Told in her winning and humorous voice, Guilfoyle's experiences and the wisdom drawn from them are a ready guide to help you reach your potential and live a fulfilling and happy life at work and at home.

Michael Gerber, the world's top business guru and bestselling author, shows would-be entrepreneurs how to get started, operationalize their winning idea, and design a business that will thrive. Got a great idea to start a businessSo now whatThe E-Myth Enterprise explores the requirements that any new business must meet: the satisfaction of its four primary influencers its employees, customers, suppliers, and investors through four fundamental categories visual, emotional, functional, and financial. Together these form the twin strategies every entrepreneur must use to design a business. The latest book in the Gerber franchise, The E-Myth Enterprise, fits neatly into a training program all entrepreneurs can use to fulfill their dreams. The E-Myth Enterprise is an indispensable follow-up to Awakening the Entrepreneur Within, as it shows would-be entrepreneurs how to put a promising idea to work. Next, readers can turn to The E-Myth Revisited for tried-and-true advice about avoiding the pitfalls that prevent most small business owners from succeeding. Following this, The E-Myth Manager provides essential guidance for the management of any business. Finally, for advice on how to take an existing business to the next level of growth and opportunity, there's E-Myth Mastery. In The E-Myth Enterprise, Gerber completes the E-Myth series, to help transform every entrepreneur's dream into a reality.

The epic story of a publishing giantIn 1817 four young brothers opened a printing shop in downtown Manhattan. Two centuries later, their small enterprise has grown into one of the world's largest and most successful publishing houses. The Harper brothers and their sons and successors created a grand cultural institution that has become a cornerstone of America's literary heritage.Eugene Exman's classic history, published in 1967, The House of Harper is the fascinating account of the birth and growth of a magnificent literary empire. Richly detailed, it is filled with portraits of dynamic publishers and editors, with remarkable anecdotes about the legendary artists and authors whose works they championed and brought to the general public Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Winslow Homer, Henry James, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Thomas Wolfe, and Aldous Huxley, to name but a few. More than the enthralling saga of a successful business venture, it is a story of the shaping of American literature and culture.

Beat the Pros at Their Own Game All too often, you learn about good stocks far too late to profit from the information. By the time you actually buy a stock, professional investors have already been there, bought the stock, driven up the price, and are just waiting to unload it at an inflated price.All That's About to Change. . . .In Ahead of the Market, Mitch Zacks shows investors how they can spot stocks that are poised to take off long before the rest of the crowd learns about them. HowBy unlocking the gems of priceless information buried in Wall Street's often self-serving research. Ahead of the Market is the first book, ever, that enables you to profitably use the analyst stock research for which Wall Street firms pay more than one billion dollars annually. Many investors have rightly felt misled in the past by analysts who continued to hype stocks as prices plummeted. You may have even concluded that Wall Street research is totally worthless. But it's not.In Ahead of the Market, Mitch Zacks shows that analysts actually provide a wealth of market-moving information that can generate exceptional returns if interpreted correctly.The key is to use the research produced by Wall Street analysts the same way the professional money managers do.Pioneered by the firm Zacks Investment Research and based on more than twenty years of intensive analysis, the investment strategies revealed in this book are indeed the same ones used by successful professional investors everywhere.In these pages you will learn how to form an investment plan by locating stocks that are poised for price appreciation and avoiding stocks heading for a fall. Zacks shows how you could have prevented being burned when the recent bubble burst, if you had known how to use analyst research correctly and teaches you the rules of the research game so you will not fall victim the next time around. In sum, this book is your guide to picking the right stock at the right time.Mitch Zacks's groundbreaking research provides new insights and new strategies to: Use revisions to analysts' earnings estimates to predict the rise and fall of stock prices Interpret the real meaning behind analysts' stock recommendations Employ the "cockroach" phenomenon and other methodologies to predict earnings surprises before they occur Determine how to react when a company reports earnings and how to profit from "post-earnings announcement drift" Understand and profit from "analyst creep" the reason that earnings estimate revisions occur incrementally over time Avoid being duped by the games that companies play with their earnings reportsWhether the economy is healthy or stalled, whether the market is up or down, by focusing on the strategies contained in this book you will always come out ahead. Well-picked individual stocks will always carry the day. Now with Ahead of the Market, you will finally have the same tools institutional investors have and will be able to find great stocks in any market environment.

Take an ordinary business. A bike shop. An auction company. An ice cream parlor. A sock manufacturer. In thoroughly mundane businesses like these, an entrepreneur must outsmart the multitudes of competitors, leap to the head of the pack, and become a dominant Alpha Dog.Exactly how does an everyday company distinguish itself in the marketplace, generate much higher sales than its competitors, and earn the lasting loyalty of customers and employeesIs it cutting-edge productsBrilliant serviceIngenious branding?Donna Fenn, a twenty-year veteran of Inc. magazine, has discovered the people who have the answers. In a personal and probing style, she introduces you to eight Alpha Dogs. These men and women share their solutions and insights on how to rise to the top, despite multiple competitors, from Chinese manufacturers to Wal-Mart.Readers will meet: Chris Zane, an intense, ambitious father of three boys. His Branford, Connecticut, retail bike shop has flourished among Wal-Mart, Sports Authority, and independent bike stores. He's done it by seeking out new markets and perfecting the art of customer service. Deb Weidenhamer, a tough woman in a male-dominated industry who transformed a traditional auction company with cutting-edge technology. While her competitors were still fretting about eBay, she was using the online auction giant as a training ground for her own innovative Web site. Amy Simmons, a former premed student who fell in love with the ice cream business in Boston and then founded her own ice cream parlor in Austin, Texas. With twelve Amy's Ice Creams stores in Austin, Amy's is the Austin hometown favorite, despite her deep-pocketed rivals, Ben Jerry's and Cold Stone Creamery. In accessible, conversational style, Donna Fenn tells each entrepreneur's personal story, shares their winning formulas, and offers nuts-and-bolts advice and practical tips. Alpha Dogs is a lively handbook for every current and aspiring entrepreneur.

All In: Poker Night Lessons for Winning Big at Your Career goes beyond any of the other bestselling poker books on the market and at last tells you how to put your poker playing skills to use in the business world. What if the rules and strategies of poker were the same as those More...you use in your real lifeWhat if your real life were an exciting game filled with challenging opponents and chances to win bigWhat if your job was as much fun as your weekly poker gameWell, it can be - and All in will show you how. With this book you'll learn how to: know the rules and know your opponent; define your playing style and leave your emotions at the door; make the most out of a great hand and minimize your mistakes; know when and how to bluff, and know when you're beat; and always keep them guessing, and know when to go all in! The modern-day world of corporate politics is very similar to poker. It's a game where anticipating your opponent's next move and making educated guesses at the cards they hold in their hand is just as important as knowing how to play your own hand and having a strategy for how you want to be perceived by others. All you have to know are the basic rules of the game to benefit from this book. Its theories and ideas can be applied to all facets of the business world. From the student to the CEO, anyone who is looking for a way to take control of their career and have fun while doing it will benefit from this book.

The New One Minute Manager offers a way for you to succeed sooner with less stress in changing times both at work and at home.Based on the original book The One Minute Manager that helped millions of people around the world in organizations large and small, this new version of the classic story deals with a new world.The book will help you find meaning in your work and inspire you to discover new ways to help your organization adapt and prosper.The New One Minute Manager is a concise, easily read story that reveals three very practical secrets: One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Re-Directs, the new third secret.The story is based on studies in the behavioral sciences and medicine that support why these apparently simple methods work so well with so many people. And by the book's end, you will know how to apply what you discover to your own situation and enjoy the benefits.

The workplace around the world is changing growing increasingly multicultural, female, and younger. Experts often tell CEOs and managers what not to do, and corporate diversity programs can often appear to be like defensive measures against lawsuits and harassment charges. While technology has connected all of us as a global workforce, it has not equipped us with the capability to interact genuinely with people. In order to be successful in this new global business environment, we need to rethink the way we lead others.Flex offers a new approach a proactive strategy for managers to understand and leverage difference effectively in this new global economy.Flex shows managers how to understand the power gap the social distance between you and those in the workplace of different cultures, ages, and gender; stretch your management style and bridge the gap with more effective communication and feedback tools; and multiply the effect by teaching these skills to others and closing the power gap with clients, customers, and partners to create innovative solutions. Creating flex in a company's management style will affect all aspects of developing existing leaders, attracting future talent, and building relationships with customers in this competitive marketplace. Flex shows you how.

Why do some workplace cultures inspire energy and innovation, while others fuel anxiety, boredom, or cynicismUntil now, such legendary cultures have seemed like magic beyond our control. However, behind every culture is a surprisingly elegant science. Primed to Perform proves that the highest-performing cultures are built on a simple truth: why people work affects how well they work. Great organizations inspire the three most powerful motives for work play, purpose, and potential and eliminate the three most destructive emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. They create total motivation (or ToMo, for short). Total motivation cultures create the highest-performing employees and the most adaptive organizations.Authors Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor show that extraordinary performance at companies like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Apple, and Whole Foods comes from cultures that inspire total motivation. They describe how investment professionals, salespeople, teachers, and CEOs perform better when driven by total motivation. And, most important, they share how you can build a culture that inspires total motivation in every moment of every day.Primed to Perform builds on over a century of academic thinking as well as the authors' original research into how ToMo drives performance at iconic companies. It introduces the authors' highly predictive new measurement tool, the total motivation factor, which allows leaders to measure the strength of their culture and understand how it changes over time. It gives leaders the tools to transform their own workplaces.High-performing cultures can't be left to chance; organizations must create systems that shape and maintain them. Whether you're a five-person team or a start-up, an elementary school or a university, a nonprofit or a mega-institution, Primed to Perform shows you how.

How to afford kids and teach them about moneyWe all want to raise smart children. But somewhere between the reading, writing, and arithmetic, one of life's most important lessons is too often overlooked: personal finances. As adults, we interact with money every day, whether by saving, investing, spending, or giving it, but we often forget that kids also face these same decisions from their own unique perspective as they mature. How do we teach today what kids really need to know tomorrow to thrive as financially savvy adultsIn Piggybanking, veteran Wall Street Journal personal-finance writer Jeff D. Opdyke provides a clear and effective plan to help parents raise children to be comfortable and confident managing the daily finances of life.But even before kids arrive, parents face a rash of financial decisions. Accordingly, Piggybanking also deals with the essential problems every struggling young family must face, including how to prepare your budget for a child's arrival, how to choose between single- and dual-income lifestyles, and how to plan for funding a college education.With Opdyke's valuable advice, and with his 15 Rules of Kids Money in hand, parents will be well equipped to create a sound financial foundation for their family and a successful financial life for their kids.

Welcome to the world of Martin "Buzzy" Schwartz, Champion Trader--the man whose nerves of steel and killer instinct in the canyons of Wall Street earned him the well-deserved name "Pit Bull." This is the true story of how Schwartz became the best of the best, of the people and places he discovered along the way and of the trader's tricks and techniques he used to make his millions.