The lively, insider story of the rise and rise of New Zealand's most successful logistics company. This is the story of a company built on the belief that with passion anything is possible. As they say at Mainfreight, 'Go anywhere as long as it is forward'. Mainfreight was founded in 1977 by the visionary Bruce Plested, who set out to make the company a family, a team, where everyone has a share in the riches and where the word 'management' is banned. The Mainfreight instruction manual is short: Feel the fear but do it anyway. This is a world where budgets are deemed ‘bullshit’. Why spend time preparing figures that are invariably out of date before the ink is dry? Just make more than last year. It's also a world based on generosity: Mainfreight is the backing force behind Books in Homes, and offers tertiary scholarships to the children of all its employees. Did the rise to NZX sharemarket darling all go smoothly? Not for a minute. Initially there would be catastrophic ventures in Australia and America and finally a jaw-dropping moment in Europe when Don Braid and his team made their biggest purchase ever only to see most of the turnover and half the profit walk out the door. This book takes you on a warts-and-all exploration of Mainfreight's journey from small transport company at the bottom of the world to truly successful global logistics company.

This book is an exploration of Mainfreight's journey from a small transport company at the bottom of the world to a truly successful global logistics company.

Imagine if your best just got better every single day In Your Best Just Got Better, productivity expert Jason Womack teaches readers that working longer hours doesn't make up for a flawed approach to productivity and performance. Workers need to clarify their habits, build mindset-based strategies, and be proactive. Womack's signature "workplace performance" techniques offer specific strategies to consistently and incrementally improve performance. Readers will: Understand the fundamentals of workflow and the principles of human performance Arm themselves with the tools and the processes to get more of their work done, on time, with fewer resources, and with less stress Making your best better won't happen overnight, but learning how to effectively manage just a few critical success factors lead to an effective workday and an overall successful professional career.

In The Currency of Empire, Jonathan Barth explores the intersection of money and power in the early years of North American history, and he shows how the control of money informed English imperial action overseas. The export-oriented mercantile economy promoted by the English Crown, Barth argues, directed the plan for colonization, the regulation of colonial commerce, and the politics of empire. The imperial project required an orderly flow of gold and silver, and thus England's colonial regime required stringent monetary regulation. As Barth shows, money was also a flash point for resistance; many colonists acutely resented their subordinate economic station, desiring for their local economies a robust, secure, and uniform money supply. This placed them immediately at odds with the mercantilist laws of the empire and precipitated an imperial crisis in the 1670s, a full century before the Declaration of Independence. The Currency of Empire examines what were a series of explosive political conflicts in the seventeenth century and demonstrates how the struggle over monetary policy prefigured the patriot reaction to the Stamp Act and so-called Intolerable Acts on the eve of American independence. Thanks to generous funding from the Arizona State University and George Mason University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Dismantle the overwhelming complexity in your IT projects with strategies and real-world examples from a leading expert on enterprise architecture. This guide describes best practices for creating an efficient IT organization that consistently delivers on time, on budget, and in line with business needs. IT systems have become too complex—and too expensive. Complexity can create delays, cost overruns, and outcomes that do not meet business requirements. The resulting losses can impact your entire company. This guide demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, complex problems demand simple solutions. The author believes that 50 percent of the complexity of a typical IT project can and should be eliminated—and he shows you how to do it. You’ll learn a model for understanding complexity, the three tenets of complexity control, and how to apply specific techniques such as checking architectures for validity. Find out how the author’s methodology could have saved a real-world IT project that went off track, and ways to implement his solutions in a variety of situations.