Long-term value creation—the board's new agenda. A big shift in public ownership has created a new set of challenges for boards. Index funds managed by firms like Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street represent an emerging class of permanent institutional investors who are focused on creating and preserving long-term corporate value. These investors are stating in no uncertain terms that simply managing for short-term shareholder profit is not acceptable. Bill McNabb, Ram Charan, and Dennis Carey have been on the front lines of these changes with the investment community, corporate boards, and top-level management teams. Since TSR (total shareholder return) cannot keep the short and long term in balance, the authors argue, boards should focus on a different kind of TSR—talent, strategy, and risk—because decisions and actions around these factors, more than any others, determine whether or not a company creates long-term value. This book redefines the board's agenda and explains how to: Build and incentivize the right leadership team Help leaders take a longer view and communicate it to investors Refresh board composition and create diversity to meet the new challenges Keep major risks, such as cyberattacks and sexual harassment allegations, front and center Analyze the business through the eyes of a shareholder activist With the new realities of corporate ownership, boards need to lead for the long term. This authoritative book shows them how.

A compelling vision. Bold leadership. Decisive action. Unfortunately, these prerequisites of success are almost always the ingredients of failure, too. In fact, most managers seeking to maximize their chances for glory are often unwittingly setting themselves up for ruin. The sad truth is that most companies have left their futures almost entirely to chance, and don’t even realize it. The reason? Managers feel they must make choices with far-reaching consequences today, but must base those choices on assumptions about a future they cannot predict. It is this collision between commitment and uncertainty that creates THE STRATEGY PARADOX. This paradox sets up a ubiquitous but little-understood tradeoff. Because managers feel they must base their strategies on assumptions about an unknown future, the more ambitious of them hope their guesses will be right – or that they can somehow adapt to the turbulence that will arise. In fact, only a small number of lucky daredevils prosper, while many more unfortunate, but no less capable managers find themselves at the helms of sinking ships. Realizing this, even if only intuitively, most managers shy away from the bold commitments that success seems to demand, choosing instead timid, unremarkable strategies, sacrificing any chance at greatness for a better chance at mere survival. Michael E. Raynor, coauthor of the bestselling The Innovator's Solution, explains how leaders can break this tradeoff and achieve results historically reserved for the fortunate few even as they reduce the risks they must accept in the pursuit of success. In the cutthroat world of competitive strategy, this is as close as you can come to getting something for nothing. Drawing on leading-edge scholarship and extensive original research, Raynor’s revolutionary principle of Requisite Uncertainty yields a clutch of critical, counter-intuitive findings. Among them: -- The Board should not evaluate the CEO based on the company’s performance, but instead on the firm’s strategic risk profile -- The CEO should not drive results, but manage uncertainty -- Business unit leaders should not focus on execution, but on making strategic choices -- Line managers should not worry about strategic risk, but devote themselves to delivering on commitments With detailed case studies of success and failure at Sony, Microsoft, Vivendi Universal, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T and other major companies in industries from financial services to energy, Raynor presents a concrete framework for strategic action that allows companies to seize today’s opportunities while simultaneously preparing for tomorrow’s promise.

Breakthrough Knowledge Transfer Techniques for Every Professional! No matter where you work there are people with experience teaching people who need to learn. Everyone is part of this exchange yet few people know how to do it well. Now, there’s a comprehensive how-to manual for effective knowledge transfer: Teach What You Know. Steve Trautman introduces simple, practical mentoring techniques he created for engineers at Microsoft, and has proven in many diverse organizations ranging from Nike to Boeing. This is real-world, get-it done advice, organized into a framework you can use no matter what you need to teach. Trautman provides common-sense tools to successfully pass along years or even decades of experiences: easy-to- use checklists, sample training plans, lists of questions, step-by-step procedures, and a start-to finish case study. Teach What You Know will help you orient new employees, support transitions to new assignments and promotions, prepare for employee retirements, build teams, roll out new technologies, and even move forward after reorganizations and mergers.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than two million copies in print! The premier resource for how to deliver results in an uncertain world, whether you’re running an entire company or in your first management job. “A must-read for anyone who cares about business.”—The New York Times When Execution was first published, it changed the way we did our jobs by focusing on the critical importance of “the discipline of execution”: the ability to make the final leap to success by actually getting things done. Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan now reframe their empowering message for a world in which the old rules have been shattered, radical change is becoming routine, and the ability to execute is more important than ever. Now and for the foreseeable future: • Growth will be slower. But the company that executes well will have the confidence, speed, and resources to move fast as new opportunities emerge. • Competition will be fiercer, with companies searching for any possible advantage in every area from products and technologies to location and management. • Governments will take on new roles in their national economies, some as partners to business, others imposing constraints. Companies that execute well will be more attractive to government entities as partners and suppliers and better prepared to adapt to a new wave of regulation. • Risk management will become a top priority for every leader. Execution gives you an edge in detecting new internal and external threats and in weathering crises that can never be fully predicted. Execution shows how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a “vision” and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Bossidy and Charan show the importance of being deeply and passionately engaged in an organization and why robust dialogues about people, strategy, and operations result in a business based on intellectual honesty and realism. With paradigmatic case histories from the real world—including examples like the diverging paths taken by Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase and Charles Prince at Citigroup—Execution provides the realistic and hard-nosed approach to business success that could come only from authors as accomplished and insightful as Bossidy and Charan.

Radical Advice for Reinventing Talent--and HR Most executives today recognize the competitive advantage of human capital, and yet the talent practices their organizations use are stuck in the twentieth century. Typical talent-planning and HR processes are designed for predictable environments, traditional ways of getting work done, and organizations where "lines and boxes" still define how people are managed. As work and organizations have become more fluid--and business strategy is no longer about planning years ahead but about sensing and seizing new opportunities and adapting to a constantly changing environment--companies must deploy talent in new ways to remain competitive. Turning conventional views on their heads, talent and leadership experts Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey provide leaders with a new and different playbook for acquiring, managing, and deploying talent--for today's agile, digital, analytical, technologically driven strategic environment--and for creating the HR function that business needs. Filled with examples of forward-thinking companies that have adopted radical new approaches to talent (such as ADP, Amgen, BlackRock, Blackstone, Haier, ING, Marsh, Tata Communications, Telenor, and Volvo), as well as the juggernauts and the startups of Silicon Valley, this book shows leaders how to bring the rigor that they apply to financial capital to their human capital--elevating HR to the same level as finance in their organizations. Providing deep, expert insight and advice for what needs to change and how to change it, this is the definitive book for reimagining and creating a talent-driven organization that wins.

Recent studies show that in the next few years many companies could have only about half the leaders and skilled workers they need--and that these talent shortages will be particularly acute in the critical sectors like engineering, health care, energy, government, manufacturing, and aerospace and defense. As a line executive you need to ask yourself one question: Do we havewho it takes to drive business performance inthe future? In The Executive Guide to High-Impact TalentManagement, David DeLong and Steve Trautman combine wide-ranging research and real-world expertise to chart a clear and efficient path for senior leaders. They show how to not only reduce the risks of talent shortages but also maximize the payoff of workforce and leadership developmentinvestments. Sharing their findings based on more than 70 interviews with senior executives and top-rated talent experts and their own experience as leaders and consultants, DeLong and Trautman show you how to: Accurately diagnose talent-related risks that threaten performance Efficiently evaluate and measure workforce and leadership investments Ensure your staff is aligning talent processes to support business strategy Accelerate leadership development and the transfer of critical knowledge Communicate cultural principles that will drive recruiting, development, and retention programs Assess the talent management IQ of your leadership team The Executive Guide to High-Impact Talent Management shows leaders how to translate their belief in the importance of investing in people into concrete actions that will improve business performance. Most important, it shows you how to get started today! Praise for The Executive Guide to High-Impact Talent Management: "Most executives I know are far more comfortable running the financial or operational or product sides of their business. This book does an excellent job clarifying every leader's real role in developing talent to grow their business." -- John Rex, CFO, Microsoft North America "DeLong and Trautman have attacked the issue of managing talent and developing leaders in a manner that is systemic, grounded, insightful, and incredibly helpful for a CEO like me and for our entire senior management team." -- Peter Metca lf, CEO, Black Diamond Equipment "The authors' practical approaches to prioritizing risk and implementing creative talent solutions can help you maximize the payoff of these investments." -- Annmarie Nea l, Vice President, Cisco Center for Collaborative Leadership, Cisco Systems "DeLong and Trautman show leaders how to compete and win at the increasingly high-stakes game of talent management." -- Joseph W. Wilczek, CEO, Franciscan Health System "This book is full of practical insights that will make you a more effective leader today." -- Hy Pomerance, Chief Talent Officer, New York Life Insurance Company

Divulging counterintuitive revelations about what it "really" takes to attract, develop, and retain top performers, this is the definitive guide to today's most urgent business dilemma.