Great companies don’t just depend on strategies—they depend on people. The more great people on your team, the more successful your organization will be. But that’s easier said than done. Statistically, half of all employment decisions result in a mishire: The wrong person winds up in the wrong job. But companies that have followed Bradford Smart’s advice in Topgrading have boosted their successful hiring rate to 90 percent or better, giving them an unbeatable competitive advantage. Now Smart has fully revised his 1999 management classic to reintroduce the topgrading concept, which works for companies large and small in any industry. The author spells out his practical approach to finding and managing A-level talent—as well as coaching B players to turn them into A players. He provides intriguing case studies drawn from more than four thousand in-depth interviews. As Smart writes in his introduction, “All organizations, all businesses live or die mostly on their talent, and any manager who fails to topgrade is nuts, or a C player. . . . Those who, way deep down, would sooner see an organization die than nudge an incompetent person out of a job should not read this book... Topgrading is for A players and all those aspiring to be A players.” On the web: http://www.topgrading.com/

In the spirit of The One Thing and Start with Why, this guide provides the "missing link" for entrepreneurs to generate fast, sustainable growth, get out of the weeds, and build their A-teams from the inside out. “The People Part . . . starts with the first principles that most every other leadership book glosses over. This is a nutrient-dense book that will show you how to build a responsive and productive team.” — Jeff Walker, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Launch Success in business today means responding to change at an ever-increasing pace—due to factors such as competition, evolving technology, and increasing client expectations. Delivering more value with fewer resources is the name of the game. But even when a business is winning, the leaders and teams playing the game often feel like they are losing—plagued by overwhelm and burnout. Most business books try to address this problem with systems, structures, and values. What’s missing? The “People Part”—the often-misunderstood area of a business where leaders and team members do the actual thinking, interacting, and performing together. Drawing on Annie’s 30 years of working with humans in business, this dynamic and engaging book—available in paperback for the first time—outlines seven easy-to-implement agreements to build a high-performance team. You’ll learn how to: Lead in a way that supports others to perform at their best, by strengthening your own Self-Leadership Generate a leadership reputation where the best A Players seek to work with you, and stay for the long term Create psychological safety—the environment that empowers team members to collaborate at the highest levels Develop leaders and team members to take on responsibilities with the same commitment level as the owners Supercharge your team productivity If you’re an entrepreneur just starting out . . . a CEO trying to get out of the weeds to work “on” rather than “in” your business . . .a leader needing a breakthrough for yourself and your team . . . or a team member wanting to make your best contribution yet . . . then The People Part is for you.

Making the Hardest Decisions As a young aid worker, Sasha Chanoff was sent to evacuate a group of refugees from the violence-torn Congo. But when he arrived he discovered a second group. Evacuating them too could endanger the entire mission. But leaving them behind would mean their certain death. All leaders face defining moments, when values are in conflict and decisions impact lives. Why is moral courage the essential factor at such times? How do we access our own rock-bottom values, and how can we take advantage of them to make the best decisions? Through Sasha's own extraordinary story and those of eight other brave leaders from business, government, nongovernment organizations, and the military, this book reveals five principles for confronting crucial decisions and inspires all of us to use our moral core as a lodestar for leadership.

NOW AN OWL (Outstanding Work of Literature) Leadership Award Winner! Every great leader is a great storyteller. As a manager, CEO, or team leader, how can you innovatively engage your employees so that they understand where your organization came from, where it's going, and how you're going to get there? How can you connect with your customers in a way that makes them believe in your company as passionately as you do? Paul Smith is one of the world's leading experts in business storytelling. He teaches people how to be more effective leaders by communicating their company's important mission, inspiring creativity, and earning the trust of valued stakeholders. The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell explores the journey behind success, and breaks down not just the importance of your company's story but how to craft compelling ones of your own.

Former Procter & Gamble Vice President for IT and Shared Services, Tony Saldanha gives you the keys to a successful digital transformation: a proven five-stage model and a disciplined process for executing it. Digital transformation is more important than ever now that we're in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds are becoming ever more blurred. But fully 70 percent of digital transformations fail. Why? Tony Saldanha, a globally awarded industry thought-leader who led operations around the world and major digital changes at Procter & Gamble, discovered it's not due to innovation or technological problems. Rather, the devil is in the details: a lack of clear goals and a disciplined process for achieving them. In this book, Saldanha lays out a five-stage process for moving from digitally automating processes here and there to making digital technology the very backbone of your company. For each of these five stages, Saldanha describes two associated disciplines vital to the success of that stage and a checklist of questions to keep you on track. You want to disrupt before you are disrupted--be the next Netflix, not the next Blockbuster. Using dozens of case studies and his own considerable experience, Saldanha shows how digital transformation can be made routinely successful, and instead of representing an existential threat, it will become the opportunity of a lifetime.

Smart, the author of the bestselling "Topgrading," has teamed up with Alexander to teach sales managers how to conduct interviews in order to gain the best talent for their sales force.

Publisher Fact Sheet Two of the employee retention industry's leading experts join forces to demonstrate how an effective corporate culture is critical to retaining top talent & therefore essential to an organization's success.