"When the going gets tough, they call for the sons of bitches! - Admiral Ernest King (attributed) It's a sad fact that most projects fail - as many as 70% according to one well known study. Those failed projects cost billions of dollars. Perhaps they've even cost you or your company. You've hired certified project managers and implemented project management techniques, and yet you still don't have the success you need. BARE KNUCKLED PROJECT MANAGEMENT has the answer. Of course, there are lots of management philosophies that tell you that if you just follow a few simple rules, you'll have perfect results. But it's never that simple, and we know it. The bare-knuckled approach to project management is all about the people. Anybody can swing a bat, but that doesn't mean anybody can be a major leaguer. It's all about the person. It takes talent, temperament, training, experience, and aptitude to achieve greatness. And make no mistake, for great projects, you need a great project manager - someone who isn't afraid to do what it takes to get the job done. You need a Bare-Knuckled Project Manager, someone not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, make hard decisions, and speak unpleasant truths to people who don't always want to hear bad news. In this insightful and powerful book, you'll learn: *** The key reasons projects fail, and the simple steps needed to avoid the most common mistakes. *** How the "three sided table" approach empowers project managers, customers, and teams to do excellent work. *** How to become a Bare-Knuckled Project Manager, and how to groom others. *** How to handle conflict and communication like a pro. *** How the "Kranz Dictum" that saved NASA's Apollo Program can save your most troubled projects. *** How to transform the organization using the Bare Knuckle approach. For once, you'll experience the "no bullshit" approach to project management: what matters, what doesn't, and how to tell the difference. BARE KNUCKLED PROJECT MANAGEMENT is the one guide you need to achieve real project results!

A new paradigm for shaping and aligning processes, tools, and employees—to tap into the power and potential of your company. Through fifteen years of intense observation and analysis, Tony Gruebl, Jeff Welch, and Bryan Wolbert of advisory services firm Think Systems, Inc. identified a powerful controlling force hiding in plain sight—and now they reveal it in The Red Pill Executive. Tony, Jeff, and Bryan named their approach to harnessing this controlling force the Red Pill model. Every company has an invisible framework called culture. Red Pill Operators sense it where others are oblivious. Culture determines how business happens and what success looks like. Some cultures love growth; others, a perfect record in customer service. For some, it’s sales or P&L—regardless of tanking satisfaction or turnover. With culture as their blueprint, Red Pill Operators shape their processes, tools, language, staff, and every other aspect to align—not just with the strategy and mission, but with the culture as it exists in time. The Red Pill Executive offers operating executives and small business owners fresh insight into the grooming of their frontline managers who carry out critical initiatives. This new paradigm unlocks massive potential for Operations Executives and their team members who have the courage to embrace them. It showcases a new way of thinking that empowers operators to capture value and corrects the one-size-fits-all approach created by the project management industry in reaction to massive project failure. In The Red Pill Executive, Tony, Jeff, and Bryan use a straight-talking style—and some entertaining pop culture metaphors—to deliver their results in an engaging and readable style.

How to make better decisions and achieve your goals What shapes a person's career and life, and defines them as a leader? Their decisions. We all want to be more productive and deliver our best results. But doing this effectively—and consistently over time—is a significant challenge. Managing it all is hard, and leading in today's hyper-paced world is even harder. The good news is that leadership expert Steve McClatchy makes it easier. In Decide, McClatchy—who works with Fortune 1000 people every day to help them achieve outstanding levels of performance—shows you how to cut through the complexities and excuses to start realizing real gains simply by changing one thing: the way you make decisions. With McClatchy's help, you can quickly begin to: Use the time you have each day to move your business and your life forward Make decisions that yield better results Waste less time, reduce stress and regain balance Again and again, McClatchy has helped people learn for themselves how great decision-making habits yield a lifetime of accomplishments. Follow McClatchy's no-nonsense and practical approach, and you'll soon manage—and even lead—at your highest level of personal performance.

2020 Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist in Adventure Travel In Journeys North, legendary trail angel, thru hiker, and former PCTA board member Barney Scout Mann spins a compelling tale of six hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2007 as they walk from Mexico to Canada. This ensemble story unfolds as these half-dozen hikers--including Barney and his wife, Sandy--trod north, slowly forming relationships and revealing their deepest secrets and aspirations. They face a once-in-a-generation drought and early severe winter storms that test their will in this bare-knuckled adventure. In fact, only a third of all the hikers who set out on the trail that year would finish. As the group approaches Canada, a storm rages. How will these very different hikers, ranging in age, gender, and background, respond to the hardship and suffering ahead of them? Can they all make the final 60-mile push through freezing temperatures, sleet, and snow, or will some reach their breaking point? Journeys North is a story of grit, compassion, and the relationships people forge when they strive toward a common goal.

Advances in engineering precision have tracked with technological progress for hundreds of years. Over the last few decades, precision engineering has been the specific focus of research on an international scale. The outcome of this effort has been the establishment of a broad range of engineering principles and techniques that form the foundation of precision design. Today’s precision manufacturing machines and measuring instruments represent highly specialised processes that combine deterministic engineering with metrology. Spanning a broad range of technology applications, precision engineering principles frequently bring together scientific ideas drawn from mechanics, materials, optics, electronics, control, thermo-mechanics, dynamics, and software engineering. This book provides a collection of these principles in a single source. Each topic is presented at a level suitable for both undergraduate students and precision engineers in the field. Also included is a wealth of references and example problems to consolidate ideas, and help guide the interested reader to more advanced literature on specific implementations.

There is a fundamental disconnection between the way business people speak and real people communicate. From advertisers, big business and CEOs - the blather is coming at us in waves. The International Language of Business is no longer English - it's gobbledygook. The authors blindly discovered the enormity of the problem in June 2003 with the launch of Bullfighter, an anti-jargon software tool. But jargon is just one symptom in a larger problem afflicting corporate communications today: the wholesale inability to connect with an audience. In the form of admirably straight-talk, we discover how to avoid the 'obscurity trap', 'the anonymity trap', the 'hard-sell trap' and most importantly, 'the tedium trap'. In this witty and practical new book readers are given all the tools they need to fight the 'spin' and learn to speak like the rest of us.