"Just give me the tools I need to run a great business." Driving Great Results will help any entrepreneur or manager become more effective at their most important responsibility—running their business. This easy-to-follow handbook provides 19 practical and immediately applicable tools to help you: • Determine what’s most important to you and your business • Prioritize and make better decisions • Identify and drive the projects worth pursuing • Identify the 3 types of communication and how to deliver the right message • Interview, hire, and empower the right people Running a business is tough, but incredibly rewarding. Driving Great Results addresses the frustration around the core elements of running your business. Don’t reinvent the wheel for tools that have already been proven. Spend your time on the things which really matter: your people, customer satisfaction, market and product differentiation, and doing the things you love to do!

Driving Excellence tells the inspiring story of one man who, with no formal business training, turned an entire industry on its head. Mark Aesch proves that we really can run government like a business, and provide value to taxpayers and shareholders alike. When Aesch took over the Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority in 2004, it was operating with a 27.7-million-dollar deficit, and was poised to raise fares, lay off employees, and slash service. Under Aesch's leadership, those deficits have been eradicated and replaced with multimillion-dollar surpluses; reliance on taxpayer subsidies has been reduced; demand for service has increased at rates three times the national average; and in an unprecedented move, the fare at the Authority's two largest subsidiaries were actually reduced. In Driving Excellence, Aesch shows readers how to create a culture built around selflessness rather than ego, and get employees invested in saving the company. In describing the transition from an ailing business to one that enjoys stunning success--lower fares, multi-million surpluses, and the highest ridership and customer satisfaction levels in twenty years--Aesch offers powerful principles that any organization can implement to achieve exceptional results.

Driving Results Through Social Networks shows executives and managers how to obtain substantial performance and innovation impact by better leveraging these traditionally invisible assets. For the past decade, Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas have worked closely with executives from over a hundred top-level companies and government agencies. In this groundbreaking book, they describe in-depth how these leaders are using network thinking to increase revenues, lower costs, and accelerate innovation.

What makes a company great? After all, management trends come and go. Economic conditions fluctuate and market demands shift. Corporations re-structure and new owners take over. The one constant, the one enduring truth, is that people define the character of a company. They always have and always will. Motivated, passionate people make the difference between ho-hum mediocrity and extraordinary performance. That's the message from Peter W. Schutz, former CEO of Porsche AG and author of this new book. Schutz explains that people are the heart and soul of any business. In The Driving Force, he shares a wealth of insights he learned throughout his career that relate to the successful management of people.

Every day, millions of employees watch their leaders sabotage themselves. They watch, they learn, and then they do it, too. Next thing you know, everyone’s lost motivation, and nobody takes ownership. That’s how organizations fail. This book will help you break the vicious cycle of self-handicapping leadership in your organization, stop the excuses, and unleash all the performance your team is capable of delivering. Phil and Jordan reveal how and why people handicap themselves even when they know better. Next, they offer real solutions from their own pioneering research and consulting. You’ll find practical ways to strengthen accountability and self-awareness, recognize the “big picture,” improve decision-making, deepen trust and engagement, develop talent, escape micromanagement, and focus relentlessly on outcomes. Your colleagues can be far more effective, and so can you. In fact, it starts with you–right here, right now, with this book. Many leaders inadvertently create cultures of failure. They model and promote “selfhandicapping” actions, where people withdraw effort or create new problems, in order to maintain their own self-images of competence. Self-Handicapping Leadership shines the spotlight on this widespread and destructive phenomenon and presents real action plans for overcoming it.

"A high-profile business manager describes her development of an optimal management course designed to help business leaders become balanced and effective without resorting to insensitive aggression or overt permissiveness"--

An organizational "North Star," codifying valued behaviors for optimal performance The Culture Engine shows leaders how to create a high performing, values aligned culture through the creation of an organizational constitution. With practical step-by-step guidance, readers learn how to define their organization's culture, delineate the behaviors that contribute to greater performance and greater engagement, and draft a document that codifies those behaviors into a constitution that guides behavior towards an ideal: a safe, inspiring workplace. The discussion focuses on people, including who should be involved at the outset and how to engage employees from start to finish, while examples of effective constitutions provide guidance toward drafting a document that can actualize an organization's potential. Culture drives everything that happens in an organization day to day, including focus, priorities, and the treatment of employees and customers. A great culture drives great performance, and can help attract and retain great talent. But a great culture isn't something that evolves naturally. The Culture Engine is a guide to strategically planning a culture by compiling the company's guiding principles and behaviors into an organizational constitution. Decide which behaviors and attitudes are desired in the organization Secure leader commitment to planning, drafting, and implementing the document Learn the most effective way to socialize the draft statement and get everyone on board Model desired behaviors to boost employee engagement throughout the process Organizational culture is not an amorphous thing – it comes down from the top, inspired and exemplified by the leadership. It can steer a company up or down, keep it on mission or force it off-course. For an organization to fulfill its potential, the culture must be on-point, truly reflecting the heart of the company from leaders to team members across the company. The Culture Engine helps leaders define the playing field, pushing performance to the next level.