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.

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.

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.

Haven't women gotten everything they wantEconomic powerSocial influenceBusiness cloutYes, but it turns out that these fantastic gains have come at a heavy price, as consumer goods experts Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre discovered in an unprecedented study of 12,000 women in forty countries.That relentless upward climb has left women feeling stressed out, time starved, and overburdened. As a result, they look to products and services that will help them claw back time, juggle multiple roles, and capture a few moments of enjoyment.Women want more much more, in every category of goods and services. And no matter what their age or economic situation or where they live in the world, women will spend trillions of dollars over the next decade on the brands that truly deliver: Home-cleaning products that enable women to do in an hour what used to take a day Financial-services products that recognize that women control half the United States' wealth Food products that help keep the whole family happy and healthy Health care services designed for working-women's hectic schedules In the coming years, women's influence will be so enormous that it will not only help bring us out of the economic downturn but also create one of the most dramatic market opportunities of our lifetime bigger than the rise of China and India; more sustainable than any bailout package.Through quantitative data, profiles of individual women, and stories of winning companies, Women Want More provides business leaders with the understanding and practices they need to capture their share of the rising "female economy."

What happens when a renowned river guide teams up with the CEO of one of the largest and least Earth-friendly corporations in the worldWhen it's former Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott and white-water expert turned sustainability consultant Jib Ellison, the result is nothing less than a green business revolution.Wal-Mart long the target of local businesses, labor advocates, and environmentalists who deplore its outsourced, big-box methods has embraced an unprecedented green makeover, which is now spreading worldwide. The retail giant that rose from Sam Walton's Ozarks dime store is leveraging the power of 200 million weekly customers to drive waste, toxics, and carbon emissions out of its stores and products. Neither an act of charity nor an empty greenwash, Wal-Mart's green move reflects its river guide's simple, compelling philosophy: that the most sustainable, clean, energy-efficient, and waste-free company will beat its competitors every time. Not just in some distant, utopian future but today. From energy conservation, recycling, and hybrid trucks to reduced packaging and partnerships with environmentalists it once met only in court, Wal-Mart has used sustainability to boost its bottom line even in a tough economy belying the age-old claim that going green kills jobs and profits. Now the global apparel business, the American dairy industry, big agriculture, and even Wall Street are following Wal-Mart's lead, along with the 100,000 manufacturers whose products must become more sustainable to remain on Wal-Mart's shelves. Here Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Edward Humes charts the course of this unlikely second industrial revolution, in which corporate titans who once believed profit and planet must be at odds are learning that the best business just may be a force of nature.

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.

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.

From the world leading high-tech strategist comes the definitive road map to help established companies create next-generation growth. Geoffrey Moore now-classic Crossing the Chasm became a must-read book by presenting an innovative framework to address the make-or-break obstacle facing all high-tech companies: how to gain market share from early adopters and from mainstream consumers. Based on twenty years’ experience advising the top leaders of many of the world most successful enterprises, Moore Escape Velocity offers a pragmatic plan to engage the most critical challenge that established enterprises face in the twenty-first-century economy: how to move beyond past success and drive next-generation growth from new lines of business. As he worked with senior management teams, Moore repeatedly found that executives were trapped by short-term performance-based compensation schemes. The result was critical decision-makers overweighting their legacy commitments, an embarrassingly low success rate in new-product launches, and a widespread failure to sustain any kind of next-generation business at scale. In Escape Velocity , Moore presents a cogent strategy for generating future growth within an established enterprise. Organized around a hierarchy of powers category power, company power, market power, offer power, and execution power this insightful work shows how each level of power can be orchestrated to achieve overall success. Moore explains how to use mergers and acquisitions as well as organic innovation to systematically migrate an enterprise portfolio out of lower-growth and into higher-growth categories; how to reallocate resources across an enterprise in deliberately asymmetrical ways to create a powerful and sustainable foundation for a long-term competitive advantage; how to leverage target-market initiatives as accelerants to growth and as stepping-stones to broad overall category success; how to create unmatchable offerings by being swift to neutralize competitors’ innovations and laser-focused on driving in-house innovations to make a business impervious to competitors; how to fundamentally change the execution cadence of an organization, pushing change from innovation to broad deployment, creating an irreversible tipping point along the way. Drawing from thousands of hours spent face-to-face with CEOs and their teams, Moore presents case examples and best practices. While his experience is deeply rooted in the high-tech sector, his models and techniques apply well beyond this arena, including to the public sector. At a time when the world is looking to established enterprises for growth and stability, Moore analysis is penetrating and his pre*ions are right on the mark. Escape Velocity gives executives and their teams a practical way forward to take advantage of the opportunities amid industry and economic disruptions.

A bold, pioneering book that shows how businesses can survive and thrive in the digital media revolution Not so long ago, the business landscape was easier to chart. The routes connecting customers, companies, products, and services were predictable, reliable, and understood. Today, that landscape has been upended, and in its place a "C-Scape" has emerged a world where consumers, not producers and marketers, make the choices; where content, not distribution, is king; where curation becomes a primary currency of value; and where convergence continues to revolutionize every part of every business. In C-Scape, Larry Kramer leads the reader through this new, evolving world where the challenges are daunting but the opportunities are huge.A seasoned journalist turned superstar digital entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Kramer learned early on to survive and overcome the forces that are remaking the business landscape: the digital media revolution. Why mediaEvery aspect of every business is increasingly carried out through the media. From advertising and marketing to sales and customer service, from product design to manufacturing, everything that happens anywhere in business is ever more likely to happen on a screen or handheld device. That means any business could fall to the same threats facing the newspaper business and the music industry unless that business learns to navigate the four Cs. Kramer's explanation of this new landscape is a revelation; his visionary advice is both crucial and urgent. No leader, whether at the helm of a small business or a conglomerate, will read this book without seeing the business world anew and finding practical ways to put this book's four powerful precepts immediately to work.

A global-innovation expert offers a new perspective on how consumers think and how to develop products and services that affect their everyday lives.Who are your next customers not just the ones you are serving today but the ones you'll need three, five, or ten years from nowHow do you figure out what goods and services will attract them in the future before your competitors do?According to Jan Chipchase whom Fast Company has called the James Bond of design research and Fortune has called the Indiana Jones of technology for the developing world most of the clues are right in front of us. The key is learning to see the ordinary in a revolutionary new way. As the executive creative director of Global Insights at frog, an award-winning global design and innovation company, Chipchase draws on everyday objects and patterns to show us how to see the world differently, from making a phone call to filling up a gas tank to ascertaining whether it's actually half-and-half you're pouring into your coffee. Chipchase is always looking for opportunities gaps, anomalies, and contradictions that will give his clients, some of the world's largest and most successful companies, a distinct competitive advantage, whether they're delivering the most low-tech bar of soap or the most high-tech wireless network.In Hidden in Plain Sight, Chipchase takes readers on his journeys around the globe and shares his methods for identifying the unmet needs of customers. No matter where he stops whether Cleveland or Kabul his goals are the same: to spot and decode the routines of daily life and to help readers use the very same tools that he and his team use to see, and capitalize upon, what is hidden in plain sight today to create businesses tomorrow.

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.

Two experts who have summited the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents and scaled the highest peaks in corporate sales and business examine what it takes to achieve success.In making the grueling journey to the top of Mount Everest, Susan Ershler and John Waechter joined the elite group of climbers who had conquered the Seven Summits the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents. This same determination has made them star performers in corporate sales and established them as business leaders. And both of them cherish the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from attaining a seemingly impossible goal through focus and persistence.In this unique guide, Susan and John draw on concrete experience to inspire sales professionals as well as all team members to overcome limitations and reach new heights of success, illustrating how anyone can achieve peak performance. They will show you how to define your goals clearly, commit to a vision, "choose the right sherpa" (build the right team), "travel light" (manage time), and "measure the mountain" (track progress).Weaving together stories from harrowing climbs and lessons of indomitable perseverance with actual tested methods for high achievement in sales, business, and life, Conquering the Seven Summits of Sales proves that anyone can overcome limitations and accomplish something real and meaningful in business and in life.

The Second City has launched the careers of celebrated comic performers such as Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert and produced award-winning content. But it's the actual improvisational process developed and honed over the years by The Second City that has become its legacy. Players master an ability to co-create in ensembles, using philosophies that celebrate a "Yes, And" approach. They embrace authenticity and failure, and espouse the idea of "following the follower," which allows any member of the team to assume a leadership role. For more than two decades, The Second City has taken these same principles in thousands of corporate clients, showing leaders how to apply the tools of improv to common business challenges. Here, for the first time, Second City executives Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton describe how you can use the same skills that thrill audiences around the world to improve your emotional intelligence, increase creativity, and learn to pivot out of tight and uncomfortable situations. In this engaging, often humorous, and highly practical book, you will learn how to become a more compelling leader and a more collaborative follower by employing the seven elements of improv: Yes, And, by which you give every idea a chance to be acted on; Ensemble, reconciling the needs of individuals with those of the broader team; Co-creation, which highlights the importance of dialogue in creating new products, processes, and relationships; Authenticity, or being unafraid to speak truth to power, challenge convention, and break the rules; Failure, teaching us that not only is it okay to fail, but we should always include it as part of our process; Follow the Follower, which gives any member of the group the chance to assume a leadership role; Listening, in which you learn to stay in the moment, and know the difference between listening to understand and listening merely to respond. When we are fiercely following the tenets of improvisation, we generate ideas both quickly and efficiently, we weather storms with more aplomb, and we don't work burdened by a fear of failure. Even better, these qualities are fully transferable to our lives outside the office. More people are beginning to recognize what The Second City has known for a long time: In the midst of a revolution in how we learn, communicate, and work, professional success often rests on the same pillars that form the foundation of great comedy: Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration. That's where improvisation comes in.

This special digital edition of Rookie Smarts includes 13 videos of leadership expert Liz Wiseman outlining her ground-breaking principles and guiding viewers through exercises that bring fresh perspective, open minds to innovation, and jumpstart a spirit of naive inquiry and constant learning.Is it possible to be at your best even when you are underqualified or doing something for the first timeIs it still possible, even after decades of experience, to recapture the enthusiasm, curiosity, and fearlessness of youth to take on new challengesWith the right mindset with Rookie Smarts you can.In a rapidly changing world, experience can be a curse. Careers stall, innovation stops, and strategies grow stale. Being new, na?ve, and even clueless can be an asset. For today's knowledge workers, constant learning is more valuable than mastery.In this essential guide, leadership expert Liz Wiseman explains how to reclaim and cultivate the curious, flexible, youthful mindset called Rookie Smarts. Wiseman reveals the different modes of the rookie mindset that lead to success: Backpacker: Unencumbered, rookies are more open to new possibilities, ready to explore new terrain, and don't get stuck in yesterday's best practices. Hunter-Gatherer: Rookies seek out experts and return with ideas and resources to address the challenges they face. Firewalker: Lacking situational confidence, rookies take small, calculated steps, moving fast and seeking feedback to stay on track. Pioneer: Keeping things simple and focusing on meeting core needs, rookies improvise and work tirelessly while pushing boundaries. Rookie Smarts addresses the questions every experienced professional faces: Will my knowledge and skills become obsolete and irrelevantWill a young, inexperienced newcomer upend my company or meHow can I keep upThe answer is to stay fresh, keep learning, and know when to think like a rookie.

Ask a member of the middle class what it takes to become wealthy, and she'll tell you it takes a bold new idea. Tell that to a self-made millionaire, and he'll vehemently disagree. What explains the difference in mind-set between the self-made wealthy and the rest of usIt not what you think, as journalist and entrepreneur Lewis Schiff convincingly illustrates through groundbreaking research and compelling storytelling. For decades, the middle class has believed that the road to success meant working hard and playing by rules passed down from previous generations. But as the 2008 economic crisis has made clear, the old rules no longer apply. While household net worth has declined for most, self-made business leaders entrepreneurially minded individuals born into the middle class who have accumulated significant wealth have prospered. What makes these have-mores financially successful while the rest of us have never felt more uncertain about our professional and financial futuresIn Business Brilliant , Lewis Schiff reveals the eye-opening findings from a national survey of middle-class workers and self-made millionaires, offering practical guidance to show the rest of us what America self-made rich already know. Through his research, he holds a mirror to our most commonly held beliefs about success and then reveals the truth about how wealth is really created by surveying the truly wealthy. In doing so, he explodes the conventional wisdom and identifies the distinct principles practiced by individuals who may or may not be any smarter than the rest of the population but seem to understand instinctively how money is made. They don't employ business-as-usual practices; they adopt a Business Brilliant mind-set. The book illustrates how these self-made millionaires choose their careers, negotiate to win, and leverage social networks to accumulate their wealth. Schiff argues that it is the synergy behind seven uncommon practices, not serendipity or luck, that produces success. He offers a practical four-step program anyone can follow to position themselves to succeed more often and a roadmap to compare your own Business Brilliance to the executives and entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated our rapidly changing economy. While Business Brilliant doesn't promise to make you rich, it can help you achieve better results in your career and accumulate wealth faster.

The bestselling author of The Sellout tells the explosive story of the government’s crackdown on insider-trading networks an investigation that has already racked up more than 60 convictions.In Circle of Friends, award-winning journalist Charles Gasparino one of Wall Street's most knowledgeable observers follows government investigators and prosecutors as they pursue one of the most aggressive and broad-reaching series of insider-trading cases in the nation's history. A richly textured page-turner of investigative journalism based on extensive reporting, Circle of Friends chronicles the massive federal crackdown that has already put some of the biggest names on Wall Street behind bars, including Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, and Rajat Gupta, a former CEO of consulting giant McKinsey & Co. Other similarly sized targets are still waiting nervously, including the biggest one of them all financial impresario Steve Cohen of SAC Capital, the giant hedge fund that has confounded regulators for years by cranking out a steady stream of market-busting returns.Gasparino goes behind the headlines to reveal how the government makes its case, using every tool at its disposal and at great expense to taxpayers to supposedly make the investing world safer for average Americans. Gasparino asks why federal officials are so eager to prosecute these cases: What is the real damage to individualsDo average investors really careHe explores why insider trading is all the rage these days when the U.S. government has failed to bring a single criminal case against the culprits who caused the 2008 financial crisis. Circle of Friends is not a defense of insider trading, but it does offer an account of the politics of Wall Street crime fighting, revealing the behind-the-scenes ambitions that motivate headlines and burnish political careers. A riveting work of narrative nonfiction, as engrossing and explosive as fictional thrillers of the finest magnitude, Circle of Friends is a wakeup call to the investing public.

Work Like an Immigrant: 9 Keys to Unlock Your Potential, Attain True Fulfillment, and Build Your Legacy Today is a memoir-meets-business book that offers you inspiration, hard-won guidance, and soul-searching steps and activities to build a highly fulfilling lifestyle—no matter where you come from, what career path you are on or what adversity you may have encountered in the past. Part 1: The Story traces the author’s journey from selling bread and dodging bullets on the streets of Brazil to earning millions selling cable TV and Internet services door to door, as well as building and managing record-breaking sales teams. It later explores the family crisis that inspired him to become a high-performance consultant, coach, and speaker, leading others to achieve levels of happiness and fulfillment they had never imagined possible. Part 2: Nine Steps to Health, Wealth, Happiness and Fulfillment reveals the nine-step program to dreaming big and living your purpose by taking control of your thoughts and emotions and engaging in continuous joyful execution. Here, you discover how to harness the power of your imagination, unlock hidden resources, and overcome both internal and external limitations. In addition, you gain mastery of a variety of techniques inspired by numerous self-improvement visionaries, from Napoleon Hill and Joseph Murphy to Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins. Part 3: Principles and Practices presents the nine principles for achieving prosperity, along with twenty-eight practical techniques for envisioning success, defining your mission, transforming negative thoughts to positive action, teaming up with a mentor, shifting focus from problems to solutions, and much more.

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.

Meet Emily and Paul, the parents of two young children. Emily is a newly promoted executive in a large corporation, while Paul has his own business as a consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. For them, just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task. In this book, we travel inside the brains of Emily and Paul as they attempt to sort the vast quantities of information they're presented with and figure out how to prioritize, organize, and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul and for readers of Your Brain at Work they're in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works and more specifically, how it works in a work setting. Your Brain at Work explores: Why your brains feels so taxed, and how to take full advantage of your mental resources Why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions How to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems How to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible How to collaborate with others more effectively Why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier How to effectively change other people's behavior Rock shows how it's possible not only to survive in today's overwhelming work environment but to succeed in it and still feel energized at the end of the day, with a sense of accomplishment.

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.

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.