Harnessing Change to Develop Talent and Beat the Competition explores how organizations can formulate effective corporate level and business level strategies to achieve competitive advantage, earn above average profits, build and retain talent, and sustain financial strength.

Harnessing Change to Develop Talent and Beat the Competition explores how organizations can formulate effective corporate level and business level strategies to achieve competitive advantage, earn above average profits, build and retain talent, and sustain financial strength.

Praise for Harnessing America's Wasted Talent "President Obama offered America and the world renewed hope for a better tomorrow. With decades of experience in alternative forms of higher education, Peter Smith grabs that optimistic spirit and seizes the moment to reveal to us the exciting age of Web-based teaching and learning, which is opening access to untold numbers of learners while harnessing the previously wasted talents of millions of people in America and billions around the world. Those seeking insights, a vision of the future, and a chance to join this educational revolution should look forward to Harnessing America's Wasted Talent." Curtis J. Bonk, professor, Indiana University, and author, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education "Anyone who wants to understand where American higher education is headed should read Harnessing America's Wasted Talent. Peter Smith's vision of the future of higher education is based on several decades of experience at the national, state, and international levels. He brings a rare perspective that will interest students, educators, politicians, and those American business leaders who are worried about the future of our workforce and the health of our democracy." Charles Kolb, president, The Committee for Economic Development "Harnessing America's Wasted Talent is a must-read for those of us concerned about the increasing economic and education gaps in our country. Peter Smith takes on an important American disconnect: the need for an educated workforce and the fact that most working Americans lack a college degree. Drawing upon his experience in higher education and politics, Smith dissects the problem and presents a contemporary, practical plan to enhance the learning capacity of our country." Joseph B. Moore, president, Lesley University

Capitalize on the radical new realities of artificial intelligence, changing demographics, and the explosion of the freelance economy In just a few short years, employee mobility will be an imperative for every business, as millions of jobs disappear practically overnight—victims of artificial intelligence and automation – and new jobs are created. The competition for talent will be fierce, and you’re going to have to make major changes in the ways you hire, manage, and retain top performers. Flat, Fluid, and Fast delivers the tactics and strategies you need to create a disruption-proof company during the talent mobility revolution. It walks you through the entire process, providing expert advice on new ways to: • Draw top talent to your company • Implement new training programs • Create employee mobility plans • Design innovative career paths for staff • Operate an adaptable organization for long-term success • Understand policies to support this new world of work across America Flat, Fluid, and Fast takes you beyond merely surviving the coming change. It equips you to seize the opportunities this change affords, to beat out the competition, and to become the dominant player in your industry. And, it equips everyone in America to understand the government policies that are needed to unleash growth, create new jobs and support all workers amid this radical new world of work. The talent mobility revolution is around the corner. Use this peerless resource to plan and build now—so when the workplace of tomorrow becomes the workplace of today, your company and career is already flat, fluid, and fast.

Managing Your Scarcest Resources Business leaders know that the key to competitive success is smart management of scarce resources. That's why companies allocate their financial capital so carefully. But capital today is cheap and abundant, no longer a source of advantage. The truly scarce resources now are the time, the talent, and the energy of the people in your organization--resources that are too often squandered. There's plenty of advice about how to manage them, but most of it focuses on individual actions. What's really needed are organizational solutions that can unleash a company's full productive power and enable it to outpace competitors. Building off of the popular Harvard Business Review article "Your Scarcest Resource," Michael Mankins and Eric Garton, Bain & Company experts in organizational design and effectiveness, present new research into how you can liberate people's time, talent, and energy and unleash your organization's productive power. They identify the specific causes of organizational drag--the collection of institutional factors that slow things down, decrease output, and drain people's energy--and then offer a pragmatic framework for how managers can overcome it. With practical advice for using the framework and in-depth examples of how the best companies manage their people's time, talent, and energy with as much discipline as they do their financial capital, this book shows managers how to create a virtuous circle of high performance.

The economic environment is global, highly sophisticated and in continuous fast flux. The challenge for business leaders, executives and strategists is to read and respond agilely to trends and underlying movements to stay ahead of dynamic market flow and change. Creating Competitive Advantage sets out a compelling case for the business benefits of better market anticipation, and provides tools and approaches to develop a forward-looking strategy that will deliver these. Through theory, case studies and practical insights, the book demonstrates how better analysis of market trends and scanning of the environment combined with business model change and confident leadership can gain and maintain competitive advantage. With the right approach, game-changing strategy can be highly accessible for all business strategists and owners, rather than as today, the almost exclusive reserve of a few brave and instinctive entrepreneurs. With tools, assessments and models to get more value out of the business data you already have and take your strategy to the next level through analytically-supported intuition, Creating Competitive Advantage gives business leaders and strategists the toolkit to move from a responsive mindset to a leading one. Online supporting resources for this book include downloadable figures and tables from the book.

Virtually International introduces readers to basic project management principles that will shorten learning curves and curtail the costs of managing international teams; this book lays out ways that virtual project managers can support productivity and enhance the well-being of geographically distributed team members.