Today, pursuing quality has changed greatly compared to thirty years ago. It is no longer a question of simply complying with technical specifications, but rather the quest by an organization that leads to meeting and, if possible, exceeding customer expectations with an ever attentive look at cost reduction through optimization, but above all, with a total involvement by people – the true and only wealth of an organization. This is the view that lies at the basis of this book. We speak of...

Written by a manager who has tried and tested the proposed concepts in person, this book illustrates a leadership model centered on personal fulfillment in the workplace. This ethical paradigm produces unexpected results when applied to the work context because it forges environments where people are willing players in a known and shared corporate design. The core focus of this book is: ethical principles applied to corporate organization. The author shows that these principles have always...

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...

Revered management thinker Peter F. Drucker is our trusted guide in this thoughtful, day-by-day companion that offers his penetrating and practical wisdom for executive effectiveness. Amid the multiple pressures of our daily work lives, The Daily Drucker provides the inspiration and advice to meet the many challenges we face. With his trademark clarity, vision, and humanity, Drucker sets out his ideas on a broad swath of key topics, from time management, to innovation, to outsourc...

Most companies today have innovation envy. They yearn to come up with a game—changing innovation like Apple's iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative—they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results.Why? In The Design of Business, Roger Martin offers a compelling and provocative answer: we rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking...

How Successful Career Changers Turn Fantasy into RealityWhether as a daydream or a spoken desire, nearly all of us have entertained the notion of reinventing ourselves. Feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy with what we’re doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown. But we also hold on, white-knuckled, to the years of time and effort we’ve invested in our current profession.In this powerful book, Herminia Ibarra presents a new model ...

A comprehensive playbook for applied design thinking in business and management, complete with concepts and toolkitsAs many companies have lost confidence in the traditional ways of running a business, design thinking has entered the mix. Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation presents a framework for design thinking that is relevant to business management, marketing, and design strategies and also provides a toolkit to apply concepts for immediate use i...

Updated and revised essays that got their writers into Harvard, the #1 business school in the country, as compiled by the editors of the school's newspaper with tips and strategies to help readers do the same there or elsewhereYOUR LIFE . . . IN 300 WORDS OR LESSIt's a daunting task. Even the most seasoned professionals find business school application essays to be among the hardest pieces they ever write. With a diverse pool of talented people applying to ...

Betterness: Economics for Humans is a powerful call to arms for a post-capitalist economy. Umair Haque argues that just as positive psychology revolutionized our understanding of mental health by recasting the field as more than just treating mental illness, we need to rethink our economic paradigm. Why? Because business as we know it has reached a state of diminishing returns-though we work harder and harder, we never seem to get anywhere. This has led to a diminishing of the com...

Modern culture’s worship of “how-to” pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask “how? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters. Instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait for bosses to change, we seek the latest fad, we invest in one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe—instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our...

Studies have shown that coming up with strategies and executing them with success requires specific strategic competencies. It is no longer just about the big idea. Moving beyond a broad, fuzzy picture, however, requires strategic thinking and understanding the management matrix. This guidebook can help you identify critical functions of strategy, such as the alignment of operations, the continual improvement and innovation of systems design, and the allocation of effective recourses; lear...