According to the Department of Labor, the average woman in 1998 was bringing home less than $25,000 a year. For every dollar that a man makes, a woman makes between 50 and 75 cents, and that is hardly news. But what you may not know is that, quietly and steadily, the number of women making six figures or more is rapidly increasing. Currently, over fifteen million women make $100,000 or more, and the number continues to rise at a rate faster then for men. And these women come from every industry - psychologists, dot com founders, consultants, freelance writers, and even part-timers. What makes these particular women able to do so well in the workplaceFueled by curiosity, Barbara Stanny, author of Price Charming Isn't Coming: How Women Get Smart About Money (Viking Penguin), set out to research this phenomenon. What she discovered was that, though the high-earning women she interviewed came from different backgrounds and had had greatly different work experiences, they all had certain characteristics in common. Secrets of Six Figure Woman: Surprising Strategies of the Successful High Earners will be a ground breaking book for high earners who want to ensure their wealth, enhance their success, and learn from others who are in the same boat. It will also offer inspiration, guidance, and motivation to those who aspire to make more.

Playing With The Big Boys -- And Beating Them At Their Own Game! From Meg Whitman of eBay to Marcy Carsey of Carsey-Warner and Oxygen Media, today's leading businesswomen show how to make it in the notorious boys' club of corporate America.Gone are the days when men called the shots. More and more women have replaced men or excelled over rivals in male-dominated industries because they possess the qualities of leadership that top firms are seeking today. Esther Wachs Book introduces the new Female Leader and reveals the seven key, and uniquely female, qualities of leadership that are turning the world around -- and allowing more women to achieve success.Filled with compelling insights gleaned from the country's highest-ranking businesswomen, Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman reveals how these exceptional women have soared to the top and captures their strategies for success.

Do you feel that if you could get rid of some of the chaos in your work life, you could take your performance to a greater levelDo you stay late at the office many nights, trying to empty an inbox that never seems to diminishDo you have difficulty dealing with cantankerous bosses or passive-aggressive coworkersDo you find yourself checking your BlackBerry almost against your will during dates, family dinners, or your children's soccer gamesIf you've answered yes to any of the above, chances are you feel fragmented, pulled in too many directions at once, frustrated. Your work life has taken over your personal life.In The One-Life Solution, Dr. Henry Cloud, consultant, bestselling author of the Boundaries series and Integrity, and clinical psychologist, examines the workplace. He demonstrates how our failure to maintain a unified life with good boundaries at the office not only blurs the line between the professional and the personal, but leaves us less equipped to deal with the problems of today's workplace: stress, heavy workload, and a blistering pace. As a result, we are overworked, overstressed, and unhappier than ever. Through real-world examples from years of working with leaders at companies large and small, Dr. Cloud shows us how to construct and enforce better boundaries against the technological devices, bullying bosses, and distracting coworkers who invade our time and space.From conducting an audit of your time, to developing a policy of who you are and what you stand for, to learning how to overcome a paralyzing inability to say no, Dr. Cloud provides invaluable strategies and *s for moving toward a more unified, coherent sense of self and a life that fully encompasses work, family, and spirituality. In a clear, conversational voice, he will help you develop the ability to: contain self-destructive behavior and keep it from spreading. define yourself and know who you are. set limits when needed. communicate effectively. learn how to improve your performance at the office and outside it. By starting to do what's best for you, you'll find the key to living the one happy, fulfilling life that only you can live.

Douglas Rushkoff was one of the first social commentators to identify the new culture around the internet. He has spent nearly a decade advising companies on the ways they can re-orient their businesses to the transformations the internet has caused. Through his speaking and consulting, Rushkoff has discovered an important and unrecognized shift in American business. Too many companies are panicked and operating in survival mode when the worst of the crisis has already passed. Likening the internet transformation to the intellectual and technological ferment of the Enlightment, Rushkoff suggests we have a remarkable opportunity to re-integrate our new perspective with the work we actually do. Instead of running around trying to "think out of the box," Rushkoff demonstrates, now is the time to "get back in the box" and improve the way we do our jobs, run our operations and drive innovation from the ground up. Combining stories gleaned from his consulting with a thrilling tour of history's dramatic moments and clever readings of cultural shift we've just experienced, Rushkoff offers a compelling vision of the simple and effective ways businesses can re-invigorate themselves.

Newly revised and updated, Leadership and the One Minute Manager teaches leaders the world-renowned method of developing self-reliance in those they manage: Situational Leadership II.In Leadership and the One Minute Manager, you'll learn why adapting leadership styles to team members based on their key goals and tasks is so important and why knowing when to delegate, support, or direct is critical. By consistently using Situational Leadership II's proven model and powerful techniques, leaders can develop and retain competent, motivated, confident employees. This remarkable, easy-to-follow book is a priceless guide to personalized leadership that elicits the best performance from your team and the best bottom line for any business.

Filling your ranks with exceptional employees has never been more important or more challenging. Hiring People, a comprehensive and essential resource for any manager on the run, shows you how.Learn to: Attract, find, and retain top performers Conduct an effective talent search Get the most out of interviews Craft an irresistible offer Use recruiters effectively Build a referral network you can depend on The Collins Best Practices guides offer new and seasoned managers the essential information they need to achieve more, both personally and professionally. Designed to provide tried-and-true advice from the world's most influential business minds, they feature practical strategies and tips to help you get ahead.

Filled with the kind of contagious energy and upbeat attitude that has made Frank Pacetta one of America's most popular motivational speakers, this unique book is for anyone who wants a difference in the workplace. Whatever the occupation, organization, or industry, here are tried and tested solutions, techniques, rules and tactics that get the job done right. Whether you're a manager fed up with your worker's ho-hum attitude or an individual who can't seem to live up to your potential no matter how hard you try, this book will give you ideas that can put into immediate action -- a no-fail formula for ending the whining and instilling in yourself and your employees a winning spirit.

When industry giants such as GE, Toyota, and Sharp and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are making multibillion-dollar investments in clean technology, the message is clear. Developing clean technologies is no longer a social issue championed by environmentalists; it's a moneymaking enterprise moving solidly into the business mainstream. In fact, as the economy faces unprecedented challenges from high energy prices, resource shortages, and global environmental and security threats, clean tech technologies designed to provide superior performance at a lower cost while creating significantly less waste than conventional offerings promises to be the next engine of economic growth.In The Clean Tech Revolution, authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder identify the major forces that have pushed clean tech from back-to-the-earth utopian dream to its current revolution among the inner circles of corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street trading floors, and in government offices around the globe. By highlighting eight major clean-tech sectors solar energy, wind power, biofuels and biomaterials, green buildings, personal transportation, the smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration they uncover how investors, entrepreneurs, and individuals can profit from this next wave of technological innovation. Pernick and Wilder shine the spotlight on the winners among technologies, companies, and regions that are likely to reap the greatest benefits from clean tech and they show you why the time to act is now.Groundbreaking and authoritative, The Clean Tech Revolution is the must-read book to understand and profit from the clean technologies that are reshaping our fast-changing world.

Between 1968 and 1976, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs launched three companies that would define the world of high technology, create more than a trillion dollars in value, and transform our lives. How did they realize these incredible achievementsStrategy Rules examines these three individuals collectively for the first time their successes and failures, comonalities and differences revealing the business strategies and practices they pioneered while building their firms.Eminent business professors David Yoffie and Michael Cusumano have studied these three leaders and their companies for nearly thirty years, while teaching business strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management. In this enlightening guide, they show how Gates, Grove, and Jobs became masters of strategy. As CEOs, each approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways yet markedly differently from their erstwhile competitors keeping their focus on five rules: Look Forward, Reason Back: They determined where they want their companies to be in the future and could reason back to identify the moves that would take them there. Make Big Bets, Without Betting the Company: All three men made enormous strategic bets but rarely took gambles that put the financial viability of their companies at undue risk. Build Platforms and Ecosystems: Technology leaders have to create industry platforms that enable other firms to create complementary products and services that make the platforms increasingly valuable. Exploit Leverage and Power: Gates, Grove, and Jobs often turned opponents strengths into weaknesses and used enormous resources (once they had them) to dominate competitors. Shape the Company around Your Personal Anchor: From Gates understanding of software to Grove's devotion to process discipline and Jobs obsession with design, all three built their companies around their personal strengths while compensating for their weaknesses. Strategy Rules brings together the best practices in strategic management and high-tech entrepreneurship, providing unique insights for start-up executives as well as the heads of modern multinationals.

Change or Die. What if you were given that choiceIf you didn't, your time would end soon a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change matters mostThis is the question Alan Deutschman poses in Change or Die, which began as a sensational cover story by the same title for Fast Company. Deutschman concludes that although we all have the ability to change our behavior, we rarely ever do. From patients suffering from heart disease to repeat offenders in the criminal justice system to companies trapped in the mold of unsuccessful business practices, many of us could prevent ominous outcomes by simply changing our mindset.A powerful book with universal appeal, Change or Die deconstructs and debunks age-old myths about change and empowers us with three critical keys relate, repeat, and reframe to help us make important positive changes in our lives. Explaining breakthrough research and progressive ideas from a wide selection of leaders in medicine, science, and business (including Dr. Dean Ornish, Mimi Silbert of the Delancey Street Foundation, Bill Gates, Daniel Boulud, and many others), Deutschman demonstrates how anyone can achieve lasting, revolutionary changes that are positive, attainable, and absolutely vital.

The gripping story of Helena Rubinstein, Eugne Schueller, and the dark side of the beauty business they helped to create Helena Rubinstein and L'Oral's Eugne Schueller both started out in the beauty business during the first years of the twentieth century, and, by the time World War II broke out, had come to dominate it. However, their motivations could not have been more different. Rubinstein, a Polish Jew, claimed the world of paid work for women, and working women's enthusiasm for her products made her the first self-made female millionaire. Schueller, a French conservative in the Henry Ford mold, thought women belonged in the home, and during the Nazi Occupation he used his company as a source of cash to buy economic and political influence.Schueller eventually won the long fight for supremacy: in 1988 his company swallowed Rubinstein's. But the victory cost him his reputation when, in the wake of the takeover, he was exposed as a Nazi collaborator. Deepening the scandal, his wartime activities were shown to have been abetted and condoned by a cadre of young men who, by the time the news broke, had scaled the peaks of wealth and power in postwar France.By then Schueller and Rubinstein were both long dead. But cultural historian and biographer Ruth Brandon argues that the battle they began continues to this day. She examines their conflict to ask important contemporary questions about beauty standards and the often murky intersection of individual political aims and the role of business. Filled with remarkable twists, turns, and larger-than-life characters, Ugly Beauty is a riveting true story about what lies beneath the flawless exterior of the cosmetics industry.

A groundbreaking book that sheds new light on the vital importance of teams as the fundamental unit of organization and competition in the global economy. Teams—we depend on them for both our professional success and our personal happiness. But isn't it odd how little scrutiny we give themThe teams that make up our lives are created mostly by luck, happenstance, or circumstance—but rarely by design. In trivial matters—say, a bowling team, the leadership of a neighborhood group, or a holiday party committee—success by serendipity is already risky enough. But when it comes to actions by fast-moving start-ups, major corporations, nonprofit institutions, and governments, leaving things to chance can be downright dangerous. Offering vivid reports of the latest scientific research, compelling case studies, and great storytelling, Team Genius shows managers and executives that the planning, design, and management of great teams no longer have to be a black art. It explores solutions to essential questions that could spell the difference between success and obsolescence. Do you know how to reorganize your subpar teams to turn them into top performersCan you identify which of the top-performing teams in your company are reaching the end of their life spanDo you have the courage to shut them downDo you know how to create a replacement team that will be just as effective—without losing time or damaging moraleAnd, most important, are your teams the right size for the jobThroughout, Rich Karlgaard and Michael S. Malone share insights and real-life examples gleaned from their careers as journalists, analysts, investors, and globetrotting entrepreneurs, meeting successful teams and team leaders to reveal some "new truths": The right team size is usually one fewer person than what managers think they need. The greatest question facing good teams is not how to succeed, but how to die. Good "chemistry" often makes for the least effective teams. Cognitive diversity yields the highest performance gains—but only if you understand what it is. How to find the "bliss point" in team intimacy—and become three times more productive. How to identify destructive team members before they do harm. Why small teams are 40 percent more likely to create a successful breakthrough than a solo genius is. Why groups of 7 (± 2), 150, and 1,500 are magic sizes for teams. Eye-opening, grounded, and essential, Team Genius is the next big idea to revolutionize business.

Being an NFL coach is the ultimate high-pressure job. Every Sunday a coach makes split-second decisions that will not only decide the fate of a game, but also his team's season and, ultimately, his own job.Meet Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden, John Fox, Andy Reid, and Mike Sherman -- top NFL head coaches whose careers rest on their ability to lead other men to win in the fiercely competitive world of professional football.In this extraordinary collaboration with their agent Bob LaMonte, each of these five coaches shares his leadership principles. LaMonte takes you behind the scenes, where you'll be a fly on the wall as these men reveal how to win beyond the X's and O's. You will see how these successful leaders communicate with different personalities, develop vision, build trust in their people, and win loyalty, as well as overcome adversity and adapt to change.Through their colorful and motivational anecdotes, you'll gain unprecedented insights into the minds of some of the best coaches today and valuable lessons on what it means to be a leader and a champion.

In October 1985, at age twenty-seven, Danny Meyer, with a good idea and scant experience, opened what would become one of New York City's most revered restaurants Union Square Cafe. Little more than twenty years later, Danny is the CEO of one of the world's most dynamic restaurant organizations, which includes eleven unique dining establishments, each at the top of its game. How has he done itHow has he consistently beaten the odds and set the competitive bar in one of the toughest trades around?In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he's learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls "enlightened hospitality." This innovative philosophy emphasizes putting the power of hospitality to work in a new and counterintuitive way: The first and most important application of hospitality is to the people who work for you, and then, in descending order of priority, to the guests, the community, the suppliers, and the investors. This way of prioritizing stands the more traditional business models on their heads, but Danny considers it the foundation of every success that he and his restaurants have achieved. Some of Danny's other insights: Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts for and to express it all. Context, context, context, trumps the outdated location, location, location. Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it's theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business. Err on the side of generosity: You get more by first giving more. Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it. When you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit. Full of behind-the-scenes history on the creation of Danny's most famous restaurants and the anecdotes, advice, and lessons he has accumulated on his long and ecstatic journey to the top of the American restaurant scene, Setting the Table is a treasure trove of innovative insights that are applicable to any business or organization.

The world has changed in the seventeen years since the controversial initial publication of Paul Hawken's Ecology of Commerce, a stirring treatise about the perceived antagonism between ecology and business. Yet Hawken's impassioned argument that business both causes the most egregious abuses of the environment and, crucially, holds the most potential for solving our sustainability problems is more relevant and resonant than ever.Containing updated and revised material for a new audience, The Ecology of Commerce presents a compelling vision of the restorative (rather than destructive) economy we must create, centered on eight imperatives: Reduce energy carbon emissions 80 percent by 2030 and total natural resource usage 80 percent by 2050. Provide secure, stable, and meaningful employment to people everywhere. Be self-organizing rather than regulated or morally mandated. Honor market principles. Restore habitats, ecosystems, and societies to their optimum. Rely on current income. Be fun and engaging, and strive for an aesthetic outcome.

Why do some projects deliver under budget and ahead of schedule, while others cost more and take longer than expectedMore important, which products work better: the quick and thrifty or the slow and expensive?In a story-filled blend of quirky pop culture and practical engineering insight, Dan Ward's F.I.R.E. answers those questions and more. Ward's extensive research and firsthand experience show how the world's top technologists consistently deliver best-in-class results on shoestring budgets and cannonball schedules, and using skeleton crews.This remarkable book will make you laugh, make you think, and equip you to leverage the power of constraints. Discover the secrets of F.I.R.E. and learn how to:Build strategies for speed that enhance accountability and ensure your products are well aligned with the market's needs.Design your organizations, products, and processes with thrift in mind, solving problems with intellectual capital, not financial capital.Unleash the power of small budgets and small teams, using short schedules, short meetings, and short documents.Streamline your designs and cut through unnecessary, unproductive layers of bureaucracy.But this is not just a book about how to win. With unflinching candor, Ward shows how the F.I.R.E. method, even when followed wisely and well, can result in a flop. Taking a deep look at several negative outcomes, he shows how to make failures optimal rather than epic.F.I.R.E. provides strategic concepts for leaders, decision-making principles for managers, and practical tools for people working on anything from spacecraft and fighter jets to websites and children's toys. Technology professionals and curious amateurs alike will come away with a deeper understanding of effective product design. Plus, there's a funny story about a dishwasher that just may change the way you buy major appliances.

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNAHow can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatnessThe Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiorityAnd if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to greatThe Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How greatAfter the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was differentWhy did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only goodOver five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. Some of the key concepts discerned in the study, comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Dig deep and you will find the most compelling argument for working together: Happiness. In business there are always unique individual achievers, but pull down the veil and you'll often find someone alongside them. Michael Eisner does just that in Working Together. Using his own collaboration with Frank Wells at Disney as a launching point for examining other famously successful partnerships, Eisner offers us an intimate and deeply personal look at some of the most rewarding business partnerships, uncovering what makes them tick and offering unconventional wisdom and unexpected insights. In this essential book for businesspeople everywhere, Eisner shines a light on these startlingly long-lasting and enriching partnerships, weaving together ten separate narratives from investment gurus to entertainment impresarios, from fashion designers to big-box retailers into a larger story about the true nature of achievement in life and in business.Ten Stories, Ten Magical Partnerships:Michael D. Eisner and Frank Wells (Disney)Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (Berkshire Hathaway)Bill and Melinda Gates (The Gates Foundation)Brian Grazer and Ron Howard (Imagine Entertainment)Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti (Valentino)Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell (Studio 54)Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus (The Home Depot)Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken (restaurateurs)Joe Torre and Don Zimmer (New York Yankees)John Angelo and Michael Gordon (finance) Collectively, the stories you're about to read form a blueprint for building partnerships that matter, that last, and that allow each of us to do our very best work.

Josh Altman, one of the stars of Bravos hit TV series Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles, has achieved extraordinary success in a traditional industry and in the most competitive real estate market in the country all without being discovered or catching the proverbial big break. He worked for it. He figured it out. He failed. He learned. He wrote his own *.The key to his successConfidence informed, intelligent, calculated confidence. Calculated confidence means training yourself in your chosen field, knowing it so well that you can trust your gut instincts to guide you toward the best possible option. When key opportunities present themselves, you are ready to seize them.In It's Your Move, Altman shares his method for building calculated confidence and trusting your gut to outsmart the competition:You have to be READY. Life is short. To get what you want, you have to be prepared to make big choices.You have to FIRE. Life is about making decisions. When an opportunity presents itself, don't waste time make a move.You have to AIM. Life is about course correcting. If you trust your gut and something goes wrong, don't freeze up: learn from your mistakes and recalibrate your aim so you don't make the same mistakes again.Altman draws on his experiences negotiating multimillion dollar deals and offering impeccable service to celebrity and high-profile clients, and shares tips and street-smart strategies for turning this method into action.Grounded in a positive approach to life and relationships, It's Your Move will show you all the right moves to help you become better, stronger, and more effective whatever your profession or ambitions.

Going against conventional wisdom, Absolute Value reveals what really influences customers today and offers a new framework the Influence Mix for thinking about consumer decision making, which should help managers develop more effective marketing strategies.How people buy things has changed profoundly yet the fundamental thinking about consumer decision making and marketing has not. Most marketers still believe that they can shape consumers' perceptions and drive their behaviors. In this provocative book, Stanford professor Itamar Simonson and best-selling author Emanuel Rosen show why current mantras about branding and loyalty are losing their relevance. When consumers base their decisions on reviews from other users, easily accessed expert opinions, price comparison apps, and other emerging technologies, everything changes. Contrary to what we frequently hear, consumers will (on average) make better choices and act more rationally. Absolute Value answers the pressing question of what influences customers in this new age. Simonson and Rosen identify the old-school marketing concepts that need to change and explain how a company should design its communication strategy, market research program, and segmentation strategy in the new environment. Filled with deep analysis, case studies, and cutting-edge research, this forward-looking book provides an entirely new way of thinking about marketing.

Do you exude confidence and credibilityCan you command a roomSylvia Ann Hewlett, one of the world's most influential business thinkers, cracks the code of Executive Presence (EP) for men and women intent on winning the next plum assignment and doing something extraordinary with their lives.You might have the qualifications to be considered for your dream job, but you won't get far unless you can signal that you're "leadership material" and that you "have what it takes." Professionals are judged on presence as well as on performance. Using a wealth of hard data including a new nationwide survey and dozens of focus groups Hewlett reveals EP to be a dynamic mix of three things: how you act (gravitas), how you speak (communication), and how you look (appearance). She also draws on in-depth interviews with a wide selection of admired leaders to reveal how they embody and deploy key elements of EP.This book is immensely practical. Hewlett teases out tactics that can help you raise your game and close the gap between merit and success. She offers the unvarnished advice you won't get from supportive friends and tackles head-on such touchy subjects as too-tight clothing and too-shrill voices. She shows how the standards for EP vary for men, women, multicultural, and LGBT employees, and she shares how to get meaningful feedback from politically correct bosses intent on avoiding the real issues.The good news is that EP is eminently teachable. You can learn how to "show teeth" while remaining likable, and you can teach yourself how to dress appropriately while staying true to yourself. You don't have to be born with the voice of James Earl Jones or the looks of Angelina Jolie to hurdle the EP bar. With hard facts and vivid examples, Hewlett shows you how to ace EP and fully realize your unique potential no matter who you are, no matter where you work.