Classic Strategies for Unapologetic Winners “It” is a strategy so powerful and an execution-driven mind-set so relentless that companies use it to gain more than just competitive advantage ¿ they achieve an industry dominance that is virtually unassailable and that competitors often try to explain away as unfair. In their “hardball manifesto,” authors George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer of the leading strategy consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group show how hardball competitors can build or maintain an enviable competitive edge by pursuing one or more of the classic “hardball strategies”: unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, devastate profit sanctuaries, raise competitors’ costs, and break compromises. Based on twenty-five years of experience advising and observing a range of companies, the authors argue that hardball competitors can gain extreme competitive advantage ¿ neutralizing, marginalizing, or even destroying competitors ¿ without violating their contracts with customers or employees, and without breaking the rules. A clear-eyed paean to the timeless strategies that have driven the world’s winning companies, Hardball Strategy redefines and reinterprets the meaning of competition for a new generation of business players.

The bestselling guide fully updated for the post-Lean In era For nearly two decades, Hardball for Women has shown women how to get ahead in the business world. Whether the arena is a law firm, a medical group, a tech company, or any other work environment, Hardball for Women decodes male business culture and shows women how to break patterns of behavior that put them at a disadvantage. It explains how to get results when you “lean in” without being thrown off balance. Illustrated with real-life examples Hardball for Women teaches women how to: Successfully navigate middle management to become a leader in your field Be assertive without being obnoxious Display confidence Engage in smart self-promotion Lead both men and women—and recognize the differences between them Use “power talk” language to your advantage

Briefly traces the history of professional women's baseball, and offers profiles of seven players

With frankness and poignancy, he tells of the team's joys, losses, and small but essential victories, and of the neophyte coaches whose role moves haltingly from teaching baseball to being big brothers, disciplinarians and ultimately friends.

How politics is played by one who knows the game... Chris Matthews has spent a quarter century on the playing field of American politics—from right-hand man of Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill to host of NBC's highest rated cable talk show Hardball. In this revised and updated edition of his political classic, he offers fascinating new stories of raw ambition, brutal rivalry, and exquisite seduction and reveals the inside rules that govern the game of power.

PLAYING HARD BALL is a unique sports book, a cultural comparison of two national games - cricket, English in origin and American baseball - written from the viewpoint of a top-class practitioner of both codes. Ed Smith - the young Cambridge University and Kent batsman - has spent the winters since 1998 in Spring Training with the New York Mets baseball team. It has enabled Ed to contrast and compare arguably the two most iconic of sports from the inside. In fact, baseball had a thriving following in Britain until the Great War: Derby County's former stadium was called the Baseball Ground; Tottenham Hotspur was at first a baseball club. Apart from learning two very different techniques, Ed learned that the sports' ultimate heroes, the Babe and the Don - Babe Ruth and Don Bradman - might as well have come from different planets, whilst baseball's pristine Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is a far cry from the ramshackle cricket museum at Lord's. Ed Smith's PLAYING HARD BALL draws on these intriguing comparisons to paint a two-sided portrait of sports most illustrous 'hitting games'.