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Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
When Execution was first published in 2002, it changed the way we did our jobs. By analysing the discipline of getting things done, it helped thousands of business people to make the final leap to success. Now, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan reframe their empowering message for a world in which the old rules have been shattered and radical change is becoming routine. 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.
– Governments will take on new roles in their national economies. And companies that execute well will be more attractive as partners and suppliers, and better prepared to adapt to new waves of regulation.
– Risk management will become a top priority for every leader, and every company will be looking for the edge in detecting new internal and external threats.
Forget formulating a ‘vision’, then leaving others to carry it out: Execution shows you how to link together people, strategy and operations – the three core elements of every organisation – and create a business based on dialogue, intellectual honesty and realism. With case histories from the real world – including such recent examples such as 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 only come from authors as accomplished and insightful as Bossidy and Charan.
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Fate of System Thinking: Lessons for Decision Optimisation – Stories from UT Bank, Capital Bank and UniBank
With a history of over a century, the banking industry in Ghana has had periods of financial distress and has had to deal with the persistent problem of lack of financing for indigenous businesses.
UT Bank developed a business model that sought to solve the problem of lack of finance for the informal sector. The UT approach became a model for many other financial institutions. The liquidation of UT Bank and Capital Bank as well as the appointment of an administrator for uniBank signal significant problems worth exploring. Banking serves as the foundational industry for building an economy, thus the banking challenges unearth a far bigger challenge in the dynamics of our economy. Until we have fully understood what the issues are, we are unlikely to identify what the solutions should be.
The author is convinced that the world needs to appreciate the causes of the collapse of these institutions so as to stop fiddling with the symptoms and the demonization without knowledge of cause. This book shares the author’s personal experience and lessons from working with both UT Bank and Capital Bank. He is a financial services educator and has a good understanding of indigenous enterprises. The lessons are intended to revolutionize the way businesses are organized and how individuals approach decision making. The book will help organisations build stronger, sustainable, diverse and more effective systems from the ashes of UT Bank, Capital Bank and uniBank.
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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t
To find the keys to greatness, Collins’s 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.
The Challenge:
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
The Study:
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?The Standards:
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.The Comparisons:
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness — why some companies make the leap and others don’t.
The Findings:
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:- Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
- The Hedgehog Concept: (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
- A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
- The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, “fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”
Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
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How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In – Hardcover
Decline can be avoided.
Decline can be detected.
Decline can be reversed.
Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?
In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins’ research project—more than four years in duration—uncovered five step-wise stages of decline:
Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom.
Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover.
Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins’ research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger—even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4.
Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.
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Interventions: A Life in War and Peace
Over forty years of service to the United Nations – the last ten as Secretary-General – Kofi Annan has been at the centre of the major geopolitical events of our time. As much a memoir as a guide to world order, Interventions provides a unique, behind-the-scenes view of global diplomacy during one of the most tumultuous periods in UN history.
With eloquence and immediacy, Annan writes about the highs and lows of his years at the United Nations: from shuttle-diplomacy during crises such as Kosovo, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine to the wrenching battles over the Iraq War to the creation of the landmark Responsibility to Protect doctrine. He is remarkably candid about the organization’s failed efforts, particularly in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Ultimately, Annan shows readers a world where solutions are available, if we have the will and courage to see them through.
₵75.00Quick View -
Manager’s Handbook: Everything You Need To Know About How Business And Management Work – Hardcover
This management handbook covers the most up-to-date thinking on key business issues, such as the impact of new technology and the Internet, customer focus, e-commerce, the new economy, and the globalization of business. The book includes a business directory of management organizations and institutions.₵60.00Quick ViewManager’s Handbook: Everything You Need To Know About How Business And Management Work – Hardcover
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The Art of War
Considered the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world today.
Conflict is an inevitable part of life, according to this ancient Chinese classic of strategy, but everything necessary to deal with conflict wisely, honorably, victoriously, is already present within us.
Compiled more than two thousand years ago by a mysterious warrior-philosopher, The Art of War is still perhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world, as eagerly studied in Asia by modern politicians and executives as it has been by military leaders since ancient times. As a study of the anatomy of organizations in conflict, The Art of War applies to competition and conflict in general, on every level from the interpersonal to the international. Its aim is invincibility, victory without battle, and unassailable strength through understanding the physics, politics, and psychology of conflict.
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The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators (Hardcover)
A new classic, cited by leaders and media around the globe as a highly recommended read for anyone interested in innovation.
In The Innovator’s DNA, authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and bestselling author Clayton Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, How Will You Measure Your Life?) build on what we know about disruptive innovation to show how individuals can develop the skills necessary to move progressively from idea to impact.
By identifying behaviors of the world’s best innovators—from leaders at Amazon and Apple to those at Google, Skype, and Virgin Group—the authors outline five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting.
Once you master these competencies (the authors provide a self-assessment for rating your own innovator’s DNA), the authors explain how to generate ideas, collaborate to implement them, and build innovation skills throughout the organization to result in a competitive edge. This innovation advantage will translate into a premium in your company’s stock price—an innovation premium—which is possible only by building the code for innovation right into your organization’s people, processes, and guiding philosophies.
Practical and provocative, The Innovator’s DNA is an essential resource for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovative prowess.
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Training on Trial: How Workplace Learning Must Reinvent Itself to Remain Relevant (Hardcover)
While upbeat lingo abounds about complementing strategic objectives and driving productivity, the fact is that most training does not make a significant enough impact on business results, and when it does, training professionals fail to make a convincing case about the value added to the bottom line. The vaunted business partnership model has yet to be realizedand in tough economic times, when the training budget is often the first to be cut, training is on trial for its very existence.
Using a courtroom trial as a metaphor, Training on Trial seeks to get to the truth about why training fails and puts the business partnership model to work for real. Readers on both sides of the courtroom will learn how to stop viewing training as a cost center, and bridge the gulf between what learning functions deliver and what business units need to execute their strategies.
A thought-provoking read for trainers and business unit leaders alike, Training on Trial provides a new application of the Kirkpatrick Four-Level Evaluation Model and a multitude of tips and techniques that allow lessons learned to be put into action now.
₵150.00Quick ViewTraining on Trial: How Workplace Learning Must Reinvent Itself to Remain Relevant (Hardcover)
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Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
The New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Wall Street Journal Bestseller that redefined what it means to be a leader.
Since it was first published almost a decade ago, Seth Godin’s visionary book has helped tens of thousands of leaders turn a scattering of followers into a loyal tribe. If you need to rally fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers around an idea, this book will demystify the process.
It’s human nature to seek out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. Social media gives anyone who wants to make a difference the tools to do so.
With his signature wit and storytelling flair, Godin presents the three steps to building a tribe: the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.
If you think leadership is for other people, think again—leaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma led a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, ran her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle.
Tribes will make you think—really think—about the opportunities to mobilize an audience that are already at your fingertips. It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you think.
₵100.00Quick ViewTribes: We Need You to Lead Us
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