A provocative user's guide to a world where the only thing that doesn't change is change itself "Before I die," Albert Einstein once said, "I hope someone will clarify quantum physics for me. After I die, I hope God will explain turbulence to me." Einstein might have been more confused today: Turbulence, in all its manifestations, is on the rise. Financial markets gyrate. Commodity prices zig and zag. New technologies disrupt long-standing businesses and entire industries. Scientific discoveries overturn historical truisms. Dirty bombs and pension busts, natural disasters and flu pandemics, add to the tumult. We live in a world beset by turbulence.We often respond to turbulence by accelerating activities that worked in the past. We lapse into inertia when we should adapt with agility, and we cling to rigid dogmas when we should improvise. But throughout history, volatility has not only dethroned incumbent leaders, it has also created untold possibilities to create economic value. Turbulence has an upside, and companies that seize the opportunities arising out of seething markets will become tomorrow's champions. Based on more than a decade of research, The Upside of Turbulence draws lessons from companies that have consistently spotted and exploited opportunities that rivals have missed. The book explores realms ranging from improvisational comedy to the U.S. Marine Corp's combat doctrine. The result is a series of provocative insights that defy conventional wisdom. The book also introduces practical tools, which have been field-tested by executives around the world, to wrestle triumph out of turmoil.

In Boundaries for Leaders, clinical psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Henry Cloud leverages his expertise of human behavior, neuroscience, and business leadership to explain how the best leaders set boundaries within their organizations--with their teams and with themselves--to improve performance and increase employee and customer satisfaction. In a voice that is motivating and inspiring, Dr. Cloud offers practical advice on how to manage teams, coach direct reports, and instill an organization with strong values and culture. Boundaries for Leaders: Take Charge of Your Business, Your Team, and Your Life is essential reading for executives and aspiring leaders who want to create successful companies with satisfied employees and customers, while becoming more resilient leaders themselves.

A road-tested formula for improving your performance, from one of the business world's most successful and productive executives. Robert C. Pozen taught a full course load at Harvard Business School while serving as the full-time chairman of a global financial-services firm. He's written six books and hundreds of articles, raised a family with his wife of more than four decades, and served on many boards of local charities and public companies. Pozen is a prince of productivity, a man who has worked smarter and faster than almost everyone around him for more than forty years.In Extreme Productivity, Pozen reveals the secrets to workplace productivity and high performance. His book is for anyone feeling overwhelmed by an existing workload facing myriad competing demands and multiple time-sensitive projects. Offering antidotes to a calendar full of boring meetings and a backlog of e-mails, Extreme Productivity explains how to determine your highest priorities and match them with how you actually spend your time. Pozen shows that in order to be truly productive, professionals must make a critical shift in their mind-set: from hours worked to results produced. He helps people at all stages of their careers read, write, and make presentations quicker and more effectively. He provides professionals with practical tips on how to efficiently use their time in the office while leading full and productive personal lives as well.

From Randi Zuckerberg, social media and technology expert and former marketing executive at Facebook, comes a welcome, essential guide to understanding social media and technology and how they influence and inform our lives online and off.Technology and social media have changed, enhanced, and complicated every facet of our lives from how we interact with our friends to how we elect presidents, from how we manage our careers to how we support important causes, from how we find love to how we raise our children.The technology revolution is not going away. We can't hide from it or pretend that it's not changing our lives in a thousand different ways. So how do we dealIn Dot Complicated, Randi Zuckerberg shows us. Through first hand accounts of her time at Facebook and beyond, where Zuckerberg witnessed this remarkable shift, she details the opportunities and obstacles, problems and solutions, to this new online reality. In the process, she establishes rules to bring some much-needed order and clarity to our connected, complicated, and constantly changing lives online.The Internet, social networks, and smartphones,Zuckerberg writes, have given us amazing new tools and ways of communicating, collaborating, and living with one another. We can use new technology to understand and solve some very old challenges that individuals and communities around the world have faced since long before Facebook, or anything like it, existed.Invaluable, timely, and engaging, Dot Complicated reveals how to make it through your life online in one piece from the etiquette of unfriending and the power of crowdsourcing to the perils of photo tags and the importance of teaching your kids how to be tech savvy.

Are You Considering Early Retirement?Do You Know Someone Who Is Considering This Momentous DecisionWith Retire EarlyMake the SMART Choices, Steven Silbiger, CPA, offers a short guide to the big issues of retirement planning packed on every page with detailed, step-by-step advice. Choosing when to retire is one of the most important and overlooked decisions we will make about our lives. Silbiger, author of The Ten-Day MBA, has written the first guide that untangles the complicated issues surrounding early retirement, based on careful research about the money pitfalls retirees and near-retirees face. He delivers an understandable roadmap that demystifies the confusion about Social Security benefits, and clarifies the choices for anyone considering when and how to retire.Are you thinking about getting the early Social Security checkIt can be tempting, but for many this can be a foolhardy decision. For others, it makes perfect sense. Making the smart choice about when to retire can make a $100,000 difference for an individual and $200,000 for a couple. Silbiger guides readers through the key variables that affect the decision to elect early Social Security retirement benefits: What are your early benefits and penaltiesHow's your healthAre you marriedAre you planning on working while retiredWhat are your cash needs during retirementBy getting a grip on how to manage our investments, cash flow, and real estate, Silbiger shows how we can put thousands of dollars more into our pockets every year. He addresses vital questions about money and retirement that include: Tapping your nest egg for retirement how to make ends meetWhich retirement investments are for youAre you prepared to fend off scam artistsThrough it all, you'll meet everyday people who have faced the early retirement question and learned how to make the smart choices. Silbiger provides the tools, worksheets, and assessments to avoid costly mistakes, take charge of your financial future, and choose the path to a secure, happy retirement.

New Ideas from Dead CEOs uncovers the secrets of success of great CEOs by giving readers an intimate look at their professional and personal lives. Why did Ray Kroc's plan for McDonald's thrive when many burger joints failedAnd how, decades later, did Krispy Kreme fail to heed Kroc's hard-won lessonsHow did Walt Disney's most dismal day as a young cartoonist radically change his careerWhen Estée Lauder was a child in Queens, New York, the average American spent $8 a year on toiletries. Why did she spot an opportunity in selling high-priced cosmetics, and why did she pound on Saks's doorsHow did Thomas Watson Jr. decide to roll the dice and put all of IBM's chips on computing, when his father thought it could be a losing ideaWe learn about these CEOs' greatest challenges and failures, and how they successfully rode the waves of demographic and technological change.New Ideas from Dead CEOs not only gives us fascinating insights into these CEOs' lives, but also shows how we can apply their ideas to the present-day triumphs and struggles of Sony, Dell, Costco, Carnival Cruises, Time Warner, and numerous other companies trying to figure out how to stay on top or climb back up. The featured CEOs in this book were not candidates for sainthood. Many of them knew "god" only as a prefix to "dammit." But they were devoted to their businesses, not just to their egos and their personal bank accounts and yachts. Extraordinarily fresh and deeply thoughtful, Todd G. Buchholz's New Ideas from Dead CEOs is a truly enjoyable and fun yet serious and realistic look at what we still have to learn and absorb from these decomposing CEOs.

A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology companies to offer essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems business schools don't cover. His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, including demoting (or firing) a loyal friend; whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them; if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company; how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you; what to do when smart people are bad employees; why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one; whether you should sell your company, and how to do it. Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.

In this penetrating work of investigative and historical journalism, Eamon Javers explores the dangerous and combustible power spies hold over international business.Today's global economy has a dark underbelly: the world of corporate espionage. Using cutting-edge technology, age-old techniques of deceit and manipulation, and sheer talent, spies act as the hidden puppeteers of globalized businesses. They control markets, determine prices, influence corporate decisions, and manage the flow of data and information of some of the world's biggest corporations. In his gripping and alarming book, Eamon Javers takes the reader inside this hidden global industry. Readers meet the spies who conduct surveillance operations, satellite analysts who peer down on corporate targets from the skies, veteran CIA officers who work for hedge funds, and even a Soviet military intelligence officer who now sells his services to American companies.This industry has tentacles in almost every industry in almost every corner of the globe. Intelligence companies and the spies they employ are setting up fake Web sites to elicit information, trailing individuals and mirroring travel itiner-aries, Dumpster-diving in household and corporate trash, using ultrasophisticated satellite surveillance to spy on facilities, acting as impostors to take jobs within companies or to gain access to corporations, concocting elaborate schemes of fraud and deceit, and hacking e-mail and secure computer networks. The work of this industry can be ingenious, but it also raises crucial moral and legal questions in a world where global conflicts are as likely to be corporation versus corporation as they are to be nation versus nation.This globalized industry is not a recent phenomenon, but rather a continuation of a fascinating history. The story begins with Allan Pinkerton, the nation's first true "private eye," and extends through the annals of a rich history that includes tycoons and playboys, presidents and FBI operatives, CEOs and accountants, Cold War veterans and military personnel. Built on exclusive reporting and unprecedented access, this book features accounts of Howard Hughes's private CIA, the extensive spying that took place in a battle between two global food companies, and interviews with some of the world's top corporate surveillance experts.

Going Wireless delivers the unexpected by showing how wireless is transforming every type of enterprise from micro-businesses to multi-national conglomerates.Award-winning technology journalist Jaclyn Easton begins with an in-depth look at owning your customers and clients through mobile commerce whether your company focuses on consumers or business-to-business.From there you will learn about the advantages of wirelessly fortifying your mobile workforce of itinerant executives, sales personnel, and field service technicians as well as how wireless is dramatically redefining customer service, marketing, and advertising.Going Wireless also delves deep inside the corporation. First you'll find out why most companies are "handsizing" in addition to deploying wireless technology to rejuvenate warehouses, supply chains, procurement procedures, data collection, competitive intelligence, and much more.The best part is that these scenarios are supported by over 40 brand-name success stories, including: How Sears saves millions by wirelessly enabling 100 percent of their appliance repair technicians; How the Gap proved that by sewing wireless technology in their clothing they could reduce labor distribution costs by 50 percent; How McKessanHBOC a Fortune 40 corporation used mobile technology to entirely eliminate all their manifest imaging costs. While most people associate wireless with cell phones and Palm handhelds, you'll also learn that wireless has been around for over 100 years and has spawned mobile options you've never heard of and is being used in ways you've never imagined.This makes Going Wireless the perfect book for executives and managers who need a comprehensive overview of the wireless options that can make their companies more competitive, more productive, and more profitable.

You are not alone. Finally, here is a book that gets to the heart of what professional women want. You've probably been loath to admit it, but like most of us, you have had enough of the sixty-hour workweeks, the day-care dash, and the vacations that never get taken. You don't want to quit, you want to work but on your own terms and in ways that make it possible to have a life as well.Women have power. In Womenomics, journalists Shipman and Kay deal in facts, not stereotypes, providing a fresh perspective on the largely hidden power that women have in today's marketplace. WhyCompanies with more women managers are more profitable. Women do more of the buying. A talent shortage looms. Younger generations want to work flexibly, too. It all adds up to a workplace revolution that is great news for professional women not to mention men and businesses as well. As Brenda Barnes, CEO of Sara Lee, notes: Companies need to recognize that this kind of flexibility offers employees the ability to manage and balance their own careers and lives, which in turn improves productivity and employee morale.This new way of thinking and working is all the more valuable in a recession, as companies begin offering flexible schedules, four-day workweeks, and extended vacations as a way to avoid layoffs, save costs, and still reward employees. It is personal. Womenomics does more than marshal the evidence of this historic shift. It also shows women how to redefine success, be productive, and build satisfying careers that don't require an all-or-nothing lifestyle. Most appealing are the candid personal anecdotes from Shipman's and Kay's own experiences and the stories they have gathered from professional women around the country who are coping with the same issues.It is possible. Shipman and Kay don't waste time on what women can't do or can't have. Instead, they show women how to chart an empowering, exhilarating course to a richer life. Inspiring, practical, and persuasive, Womenomics offers a groundbreaking blueprint for changing the way you live and work with advice, guidance, and fact-based support that proves you don't have to do it all to have it all.

For more than twenty years, Stanley Bing has peerlessly explained corporate culture and strategy with wit and insight. Now he brings us this engaging and instructive book of white-collar fables that have charmed generations of businesspeople since Greece was glorious and Rome was grand, brilliant gems of wisdom flowing from the pen of the mysterious, legendary author known throughout the ancient corporate world by a single name: Bingsop. Bingsop's Fables is animated by a cast of archetypal characters that are as iconic and representative of human nature as were the jackdaw, the dull, the snake, the hare, the lion, the horse, and all the rest of the birds and beasts that populated the stories of that other fabulist, Aesop. The Stupid Investor, the Miserable Misery Mogul, the Ill-Tempered PR Person, and the Potentially Generous CEO each struts and frets his hour upon the stage and, in the end, presents us with a moral that rings so true it would hurt if we were not also laughing. Festooned with provocative, witty illustrations by New Yorker artist Steve Brodner, this lean, muscular edition will equally be at home on the shelves of aspiring hedge fund managers hoping to kill their elders as on the credenzas of those beleaguered executives who hear the next generation coming up fast from behind. No business library should be considered complete without it.

The definitive account of Wall Street's stunning collapse From critically acclaimed investigative journalist and CNBC personality Charles Gasparino comes a sweeping examination of the most recent volatile, anxiety-ridden era in our nation's socioeconomic history. The Sellout traces the implosion of the financial services business back to its roots in the late 1970s when Wall Street embraced a new business model predicated on taking enormous risks. It shows how a backwater business involving the trading of risky bonds packed with mortgages showered countless billions in profits on the financial industry but sowed the seeds of its ultimate demise. Gasparino walks readers through Wall Street's three-decades' love affair with risk, revealing a trail of culpability from the government bureaucrats who crafted housing policies that encouraged homeownership, to the Wall Street firms that underwrote and invested in risky debt, to the mortgage sellers who handed out loans to people without the financial wherewithal to pay them back, to the homeowners who became convinced they could afford mansions on blue-collar wages. The ongoing tumult in financial markets and the global economy began when some of our most esteemed financial institutions, our government, and even average citizens abdicated their collective responsibilities, eventually selling out investors and selling off the American Dream itself. In the spirit of classics such as Barbarians at the Gate and Liar's Poker, this page-turning narrative captures how avarice, arrogance, and sheer stupidity eroded Wall Street's dominance and profoundly weakened the financial security of millions of middle-class Americans. Eye-opening and engrossing, The Sellout provides the most thorough investigation to date of this latest gilded era.

Middle-class couples are working harder than ever. So why are they finding it more difficult to finance their homes, send their kids to college, and save toward retirement?Couples who are strapped for time and weighed down by costly fixed expenses need more than a personal finance pep talk: They need a plan. In The Big Payoff, CNBC correspondent Sharon Epperson lays out a nuts-and-bolts program that couples of all ages can use to realize their financial dreams. From stretching your budget and investing wisely in your home to protecting your family's money and building wealth over the years, The Big Payoff offers a concise bounty of precious information and practical steps toward financial wellness.Epperson begins by showing couples how to communicate better about money. She helps them realize that the same qualities needed to create a lasting relationship understanding, compromise, and patience are vital when it comes to building a secure financial future. Every important decision couples make, whether it's buying a home, having kids, changing jobs, or preparing for retirement, will inevitably involve a discussion about money, and Epperson teaches them how to handle finances with a cool hand while keeping the marriage vibrant and healthy. In addition, she empowers couples to take money matters into their own hands and shows them that by taking control of their finances, they can stop fretting about cash and start focusing on the important things in life.Each of the following chapters is designed to get partners talking and thinking about their financial life together. In eight easy-to-understand steps, Epperson unpacks the various options for saving money; creating emergency, retirement, and college savings plans; investing in a home; choosing the right life and health insurance; and drafting an estate plan. A wife and mother of two herself, Epperson knows a thing or two about the pitfalls of financial planning and doses her advice with plenty of humorous anecdotes, hard-earned experience, and down-to-earth language. Additionally, through helpful worksheets and exercises, The Big Payoff helps readers customize a plan that will work best for them and reap the most payback.It's never too late or too early to start, and now is the best time to start planning. Whether you are newlyweds or fast-approaching retirement, just starting a family or soon to be empty-nesters, this book is for you. After working hard to provide for your family, the reward of discovering your financial strength will be the peace of mind to enjoy your marriage, your family, and the rest of your lives together.

Whether it was a Ginsu knife, George Foreman Grill, Tony Robbins' motivational book, kitchen device by Ron Popeil, or any of the countless other famous products that have been marketed on infomercials over the years, admit it: you or someone you know has bought one and you're not alone. Last year, one out of every three Americans picked up the phone and ordered a product from a television infomercial or home shopping network, and in But Wait . . . There's More! journalist (and infomercial addict) Remy Stern offers a lively, behind-the-scenes exploration of this enormous business one that markets the world's most outrageous products using the most outrageous tactics. Don't let the kitschy exterior fool you: behind the laughable demonstrations, goofy grins, and cheesy dialogue lies an industry larger than the film and music industries combined. The first book of its kind, But Wait . . . There's More! exposes the never-before-told story of the infomercial and home shopping phenomenon in all its excessive glory and its meteoric rise to become one of the most profitable businesses in America. Along the way, Stern details the history behind the classic products and introduces readers to some of the most famous (and infamous) pitchmen and personalities in the business, including Tony Robbins, Billy Mays, Ron Popeil, Tony Little, Suzanne Somers, Kevin Trudeau, and Joe Francis. He also presents an in-depth look at the business behind the camera the canny sales strategies, clever psychological tools, and occasionally questionable tactics marketers have used to get us to open up our wallets and spend, spend, spend.Stern's eye-opening account also offers a penetrating look at how late-night television conquered the American consumer and provides insight into modern American culture: our rampant consumerism, our desire for instant riches, and our collective dream of perfect abs, unblemished skin, and gleaming white teeth. Both a compelling business story and a thoroughly entertaining piece of investigative journalism (with a touch of muckraking and social satire), But Wait . . . There's More! will ensure that you never look at those too-good-to-be-true deals the same way again.

Money can Buy You HappinessIn Die Broke Stephen Pollan introduced a new radical new strategy for spending, saving, and investing money in today's financial market.In Live Rich, he now concentrates on the earning side--with the compelling observation that living rich has less to do with net worth and everything to do with freedom. You can live the life you want by adhering to the four tenets of the Live Rich philosophy: Make Money Too many of us have been fed the line that "work isn't necessarily about making money." Tell that to Visa next time they send you a bill. Don't Grow, Change Be ready to change your work paradigm on a moment's notice, to morph from career to career several times as conditions--and you--change. Take Charge In the twenty-first century, you must become proactive and start taking measured risks. Become a Mercenary Think for yourself as a free agent, responsible for your own security and always on the lookout for the next great job. Live Rich With Stephen Pollan's revolutionary workplace ideals, as well as a detailed action plan, you can apply this philosophy to every facet of your life and truly Live Rich.

Ken Blanchard, Ph.D., is the Chief Spiritual Officer of the Ken Blanchard Companies, and a highly sought-after author, speaker, and business consultant. His perennial international bestsellers include The One Minute Manager, Raving Fans, Gung Ho!, and Whale Done!. He lives in California. One of the first employees of Twitter, Claire Diaz-Ortiz is an author, speaker, and businesswoman. She lives in Argentina.

Make the right decisions about your products and services by listening effectively to the people that matter – your customers About This Book ? Understand the core components, processes and technologies available for a VOC initiative ? Structure effective VOC programs and turn VOC into actionable product success ? A handy guide to help you identify the hidden needs of your customers and strengthen your relationship with them Who This Book Is For The book is for anyone who needs to get to know their customer, how they feel and what they think about a certain subject. If you are a stakeholder in any project responsible for customer relationships, this book will help you immensely. An awareness of VOC as a topic would be useful, although not essential. What You Will Learn ? Understand different unarticulated needs of your customers ? Deploy effective VOC in your organizations ? Identify and understand the different tools and processes to set up a successful VOC program ? Integrating your findings about your customers into successful products ? Effectively utilize VOC for a successful launch of your product In Detail This book is all about getting to know your customers – what they want and need, what they like and don’t like. Voice of the Customer is one of the most popular forms of market research combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. This book shows you how to engage with customers and understand their wants and needs, likes and dislikes – something which is becoming more in more important with the rise of an increasingly connected world. The book addresses the problem of understanding your customer and engaging with those customers. It also targets people who want to know how to do an effective VOC capture and analysis. As with any engagement/research based initiative, there is also a concern with the ROI. This book shows you how to overcome this problem as well. By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of the relevant stages of a VOC project. It will show you how to devise an effective plan, direct the project to their objectives, and then show you how to collect the voice of the customer, with examples and templates for interviewing and surveying. Style and approach This book is a perfect blend of concepts and real-world use-cases which will help the businesses understand and therefore serve the customers better. Written in a very engaging manner, this book ensures you are able to grasp the theory and apply it in your business seamlessly.

Mind Maps at Work takes a fresh and exuberant look at how Mind Maps can keep you one step ahead of your colleagues at work. Full of practical tips, exercises and inspiring casestudies of people from all career backgrounds, it will help you unlock your reservoirs of creativity and find the fulfilment at work you know you deserve.

Otegha Uwagba is the founder of Women Who, a platform that connects and supports creative working women worldwide, and an endeavour inspired by her time working at some of London’s top ad agencies and cult youth brand Vice Media. She was included on Forbes European 30 Under 30 list. Besides running Women Who, she is also a freelance writer, speaker, and brand consultant. She lives in London. www.oteghauwagba.com www.womenwho.co

The career management secrets that experts and top professionals use. Get results fast with this quick, easy guide to the fundamentals of Career Management. Includes how to: ? Assess your career goals ? Create and follow an exciting career plan ? Make yourself visible for your ideal job ? Deliver the perfect interview ? Get yourself noticed and promoted, or go it alone

The finance basics that experts and top professionals understand. Get results fast with this quick, easy guide to the fundamentals of Finance. Includes how to: ? Analyse a business from its financial reports ? Understand a Profit and Loss account ? Make sense of accounting jargon ? Build a financially sound business plan ? Deal with revenue, profit and cashflow