If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind. Though following best practice can help in some ways, it also poses a danger. By emulating what a great leader did in a particular situation, you'll likely be terribly disappointed with your own results. Why? Your situation is different. Instead of focusing on what exceptional leaders do, we need to understand and emulate how they think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking, creatively resolving the tension in opposing models by forming entirely new and superior ones. Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers are relentlessly diagnosing and synthesizing by asking probing questions including: What are the causal relationships at work here? and What are the implied trade-offs? Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge including conceptual and experiential knowledge. Integrative thinking can be learned, and The Opposable Mind helps you master this vital skill.

Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

THESE HABITS WILL MAKE YOU EXTRAORDINARY. Twenty years ago, author Brendon Burchard became obsessed with answering three questions: 1. Why do some individuals and teams succeed more quickly than others and sustain that success over the long term? 2. Of those who pull it off, why are some miserable and others consistently happy on their journey? 3. What motivates people to reach for higher levels of success in the first place, and what practices help them improve the most After extensive original research and a decade as the world’s leading high performance coach, Burchard found the answers. It turns out that just six deliberate habits give you the edge. Anyone can practice these habits and, when they do, extraordinary things happen in their lives, relationships, and careers. Which habits can help you achieve long-term success and vibrant well-being no matter your age, career, strengths, or personality? To become a high performer, you must seek clarity, generate energy, raise necessity, increase productivity, develop influence, and demonstrate courage. The art and science of how to do all this is what this book is about. Whether you want to get more done, lead others better, develop skill faster, or dramatically increase your sense of joy and confidence, the habits in this book will help you achieve it faster. Each of the six habits is illustrated by powerful vignettes, cutting-edge science, thought-provoking exercises, and real-world daily practices you can implement right now. If you’ve ever wanted a science-backed, heart-centered plan to living a better quality of life, it’s in your hands. Best of all, you can measure your progress. A link to a free professional assessment is included in the book.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

For decades, this book has served as a guide to organizations that document their continuous improvement efforts using Baldrige Award-type management systems. Readers will learn what each area of the system means for organizations and how the synergy between process-oriented parts—leadership; strategy; customers; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; workforce; and operations—can lead to excellent performance results. This book provides a valuable, step-by-step approach to help identify and put in place properly focused continuous improvement systems. Seven types of information are provided in this book for each of the Items in Categories 1 through 7 of the 2021–2022 Baldrige Framework and Performance Excellence Criteria: 1. The actual language of each Item, including Notes 2. A plain-English explanation of the requirements and rationale for each Item 3. A table showing the similar requirements of the Criteria 4. A summary of the requirements of each Item in flowchart form 5. The key linkages between each Item and other Items 6. An explanation of some potential adverse consequences 7. Examples of effective practices Features of this edition include: • A stakeholder matrix table of contents that identifies relevant material within the book for key stakeholder groups: senior leaders, examiners, performance excellence initiative leaders, application writers, and program administrators • Tables for each Criteria Item showing the similar expectations of the Criteria award (and award program administrators) presented only once at the scoring level where the expectation first appears to help examiners determine at what level an expectation belongs • Online resources, including scoring calibration guides for education, healthcare, and business/nonprofit/government organizations, a guide to self-assessment of organizations and management systems, and a guide to the alignment of Baldrige, Six Sigma, Lean, and Balanced Scorecard • A new crosswalk between Baldrige and ISO standards and a set of global performance excellence best practices • Information on other award programs throughout the world such as the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), which has undergone significant changes in the 2020 model, and the China Association for Quality Mark L. Blazey has retired from more than 26 years as president of Quantum Performance Group, a management consulting and training firm specializing in organization assessment and high-performance systems development. Paul L. Grizzell is president of Core Values Partners, a perfor mance excellence consulting firm that helps organizations focus, align, and accelerate their improvement efforts through the use of the Baldrige Framework for Performance Excellence, the EFQM Model, the China Quality Award, and other integrated management systems.

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It’s their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives—consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly. As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees’ inner work lives. But it’s forward momentum in meaningful work—progress—that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day. The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts—events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy—and (2) nourishers—interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality. Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people’s performance.

A fresh, holistic approach to strategic management in the modern business environment.