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In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. That's when a green young manager, Jack Stack, took over and turned it around. He didn't know how to'manage'a company, but he did know about the principal, of athletic competition and democracy: keeping score, having fun, playing fair, providing choice, and having a voice. With these principals he created his own style of management -- open-book management. The key is to let everyone in on financial decisions. At SRC, everyone learns how to read a P&L -- even those without a high school education know how much the toilet paper they use cuts into profits. SRC people have a piece of the action and a vote in company matters. Imagine having a vote on your bonus and on what businesses the company should be in. SRC restored the dignity of economic freedom to its people. Stack's'open-book management'is the key -- a system which, as he describes it here, is literally a game, and one so simple anyone can use it. As part of the Currency paperback line, the book includes a'User's Guide'-- an introduction and discussion guide created for the paperback by the author -- to help readers make practical use of the book's ideas. Jack Stack is the president and CEO of the Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation, in Springfield, Missouri. The recipient of the 1993 Business Enterprise Trust Award, Jack speaks throughout the country on The Great Game Of Business and Open Book Management.

We live in a culture—especially at work—that prefers harmony over discord, agreement over dissent, speed over deliberation. We often smile and nod to each other even though deep down we could not disagree more. Whether with colleagues, friends, or family members, the tendency to paper over differences rather than confront them is extremely common. We believe that the best thing to do to preserve our relationships and to ensure that our work gets done as expeditiously as possible is to silence conflict. Let's face it, most bosses don't encourage us to share our differences. Indeed, many people are taught that loyal employees accept corporate values, policies, and decisions—never challenging or questioning them. If we want to hold on to our jobs and move up in our organizations, stifling conflict is the safest way to do it—or so we believe.And it is not just with our bosses that we fear raising a dissenting opinion. We worry about what our peers and even our subordinates may think of us. We don't want to embarrass ourselves or create a bad impression. We don't want to lose others'respect or risk rejection.We often associate conflict with its negative form—petty bickering, heated arguing, a bloody fight. But conflict can also be a source of creative energy; when handled constructively by both parties, differences can lead to a healthy and fruitful collaboration, creation, or construction of new knowledge or solutions. When we silence conflict, we avoid the possibility of negative conflict, but we also miss the potential for constructive conflict.Worse yet, as Leslie Perlow documents, the act of silencing conflict may create the consequences we most dread. Tasks frequently take longer or never get done successfully, and silencing conflict over important issues with people for whom we care deeply can result in disrespect for, and devaluing of, those same people. Each time we silence conflict, we create an environment in which we're all the more likely to be silent next time. We get caught in a vicious “silent spiral,” making the relationship progressively less safe, less satisfying, and less productive. Differences get glossed over, patched over, and suppressed... until disaster happens. “Saying yes when you really mean no” is a problem that haunts organizations from start-ups to multi-nationals. It exists across industries, levels, and functions. And it's exacerbated by a down economy, when the fear of losing one's job is on everybody's mind and the idea of allowing conflict to surface or disagreeing with others seems particularly risky. All too often, the conversation at work bespeaks harmony and togetherness, even though passionate disagreements exist beneath the surface. Leslie A. Perlow is a corporate ethnographer, an anthropologist of corporate culture. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead spend years in the field studying exotic cultures. Perlow does the same, although the field for her is the office and the exotic people are us—those who work in the world of organizations. But the end result is no less surprising or rich in insight. Whether it's a Fortune 500 firm, small business, or government bureaucracy, Perlow provides a keen understanding of the hidden issues behind what people say (and don't say). And more important, she shows how to create relationships where individuals feel empowered to express their genuine thoughts and feelings and to harness the power of positive conflict.

See how thirty-six of China's most successful and innovative entrepreneurs are creating the global economy of tomorrow. In these pages you'll learn valuable lessons from remarkable business leaders, such as:• Zhang Yin, chairwoman of Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings) Limited, who trans- formed wastepaper into a personal fortune estimated at $3.4 billion• Lu Guanqiu, who turned a small farm-machinery workshop into China's largest auto-parts manufacturer, with sales of $7 billion• Yan Zhaoqiang, who saw opportunity in the global energy crisis and positioned his company, TCP, to become one of the world's major manufacturers of energy-efficient lightbulbs, with control of 70 percent of the U.S. market• Song Zhenghuan, a former math teacher who founded a company that is now the largest supplier of baby strollers in China­­Their stories offer inspiration to the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and capture the spirit of innovation and diligence that is the hallmark of the emerging economy of China today.

From the founders of the acclaimed Summit event series and community comes the story of their unconventional journey to business success and the hard lessons they learned along the way.“[Make No Small Plans] neatly crystallizes the teachings and takeaways—basic truths—from the past fifteen years of Summiteering.”—ForbesIn 2008, with no event production experience and two college degrees between the four of them, Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz became business partners and set out to build a global events company. With passion and tenacity, they began cold calling as many inspiring company founders as they could and tried to convince them to attend their first event. In the beginning, only nineteen people said yes.Since then, they have grown Summit into a global community with events all over the world, hosting luminaries including Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Shonda Rhimes, Brené Brown, Kendrick Lamar, and Al Gore. In 2013, the Summit founders—with help from their behind-the-scenes co-founder and partner Ryan Begelman—acquired Powder Mountain, the largest ski resort in the United States, with a dream of building a mountaintop town of the future.In Make No Small Plans, they reveal the triumphs, mistakes, and cornerstone lessons from their journey, which began during the Great Recession and continues today. Alongside teachings from some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs of our time, the authors offer takeaways such as:• No idea should go unspoken.• Reputations are earned by the drop and lost by the bucket.• The road to success is always under construction.• Become a favor economy millionaire.Entertaining and empowering, Make No Small Plans shows that anyone can think big and—with a thirst for knowledge, a talented team, and a little humility—accomplish the impossible.

WALL STREET JOURNAL, LOS ANGELES TIMES, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER • Anyone—even you!—can learn how to harness the power of humor in business (and life), based on the popular class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Don't miss the authors'TED Talk, “Why great leaders take humor seriously,” online now.“The ultimate guide to using the magical power of funny as a tool for leadership and a force for good.”—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When and Drive We are living through a period of unprecedented uncertainty and upheaval in both our personal and professional lives. So it should come as a surprise to exactly no one that trust, human connection, and mental well-being are all on the decline. This may seem like no laughing matter. Yet, the research shows that humor and laughter are among the most valuable tools we have at our disposal for strengthening bonds and relationships, diffusing stress and tension, boosting resilience, and performing when the stakes are high. That's why Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas teach the popular course Humor: Serious Business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where they help some of the world's most hard-driving, blazer-wearing business minds infuse more humor and levity into their work and lives.In Humor, Seriously, they draw on findings by behavioral scientists, world-class comedians, and inspiring business leaders to reveal how humor works and—more important—how you can use more of it, better.Aaker and Bagdonas unpack the theory and application of humor: what makes something funny, how to mine your life for material, and simple ways to identify and leverage your unique humor style. They show how to use humor to rebuild vital connections; appear more confident, competent, and authentic at work; and foster cultures where levity and creativity can thrive.President Dwight David Eisenhower once said, “A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.” If Dwight David Eisenhower, the second least naturally funny president (after Franklin Pierce), thought humor was necessary to win wars, build highways, and warn against the military-industrial complex, then you might consider learning it too.

One of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories of the past twenty yearsWhen a friend told Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank that “you've just been hit in the ass by a golden horseshoe,” they thought he was crazy. After all, both had just been fired. What the friend, Ken Langone, meant was that they now had the opportunity to create the kind of wide-open warehouse store that would help spark a consumer revolution through low prices, excellent customer service, and wide availability of products.Built from Scratch is the story of how two incredibly determined and creative people—and their associates—built a business from nothing to 761 stores and $30 billion in sales in a mere twenty years. Built from Scratch tells many colorful stories associated with The Home Depot's founding and meteoric rise; shows that a company can be a tough, growth-oriented competitor and still maintain a high sense of responsibility to the community; and provides great lessons useful to people in any business, from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

In Mission-Driven Leadership, Mark Bertolini, the long-time chairman and CEO of Aetna, the Fortune 500 health insurance company, reveals that genuine leadership is not about dollars and market share but about improving lives and communities.Mark Bertolini didn't get to the corner office through traditional means. He grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Detroit. Early in his career, he was known for his bare-knuckled leadership and hard driving competitiveness that helped him to turnaround several companies. But his ambition came at a cost as he ran roughshod over his colleagues and employees, and spent time away from his family. Two events served as wakeup calls for the hard-charging Bertolini. First his son Eric was diagnosed with incurable cancer, and Bertolini found himself confronting the healthcare industry firsthand, not as an executive, but as the parent of a deathly ill child, determined to save his son's life. And miraculously, after a year in the hospital, often at death's door--Eric was twice given last rites--his son recovered. The second wakeup call was a skiing accident several years later in which Bertolini broke his neck. As his life unraveled in the face of years of chronic pain, therapy, and medication, he realized he had to reinvent himself, emotionally, spiritually, and as a leader--or go under. Mission-Driven Leadership speaks to the lessons Bertolini learned about empathy, about helping employees and Aetna's customers take better care of themselves and each other, about the need to'find the divine in me,'and the importance of getting out to meet with employees and customers face-to-face in town halls to truly discover their needs and better serve them.

Experience is making a comeback. Learn how to repurpose your wisdom.At age 52, after selling the company he founded and ran as CEO for 24 years, rebel boutique hotelier Chip Conley was looking at an open horizon in midlife. Then he received a call from the young founders of Airbnb, asking him to help grow their disruptive start-up into a global hospitality giant. He had the industry experience, but Conley was lacking in the digital fluency of his 20-something colleagues. He didn't write code, or have an Uber or Lyft app on his phone, was twice the age of the average Airbnb employee, and would be reporting to a CEO young enough to be his son. Conley quickly discovered that while he'd been hired as a teacher and mentor, he was also in many ways a student and intern. What emerged is the secret to thriving as a mid-life worker: learning to marry wisdom and experience with curiosity, a beginner's mind, and a willingness to evolve, all hallmarks of the'Modern Elder.'In a world that venerates the new, bright, and shiny, many of us are left feeling invisible, undervalued, and threatened by the'digital natives'nipping at our heels. But Conley argues that experience is on the brink of a comeback. Because at a time when power is shifting younger, companies are finally waking up to the value of the humility, emotional intelligence, and wisdom that come with age. And while digital skills might have only the shelf life of the latest fad or gadget, the human skills that mid-career workers possess--like good judgment, specialized knowledge, and the ability to collaborate and coach - never expire.Part manifesto and part playbook, Wisdom@Work ignites an urgent conversation about ageism in the workplace, calling on us to treat age as we would other type of diversity. In the process, Conley liberates the term'elder'from the stigma of'elderly,'and inspires us to embrace wisdom as a path to growing whole, not old. Whether you've been forced to make a mid-career change, are choosing to work past retirement age, or are struggling to keep up with the millennials rising up the ranks, Wisdom@Work will help you write your next chapter.

The classic on the universal laws of business success, completely revised and updated for today's leadersCompletely rewritten for today's business world, What the CEO Wants You to Know, expanded and updated, written by bestselling author Ram Charan, describes the fundamentals behind every business, from street vendors in Mumbai, to Fortune 500 companies. Drawing on stories from Uber, Amazon, Apple, Toyota, Netflix, Lyft, The Limited, Walmart, GE and Starbucks, Charan, in the most accessible language imaginable, explains the ins and outs of how companies work, from gross revenue and operating costs, to inventory and cash flow, from turnover, profits and margins, to return on capital and accounts payable and receivable, from product quality to sales. A classic in the business literature, with hundreds of thousands of copies in print, this short and engaging book is like a miniature MBA course between covers.For everyone who wants to master and understand the levers that drive a successful business, What the CEO Wants You to Know is the perfect answer.

Today's established companies must find new ways to reignite their entrepreneurial DNA and jumpstart revenues--or risk losing their way. By working with startup companies, Jim Stengel, renowned consultant to Fortune 500 companies and the former global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble, says that legacy companies can renew themselves: by acquiring new technology and creating new business lines; relearning the need for speed; sparking innovation; and learning from failures. At P&G, Stengel saw the importance of establishing partnerships with the startup world in order to learn how to better innovate. Relying on extensive interviews with innovation leaders at enterprise companies and startups, Stengel's Unleashing the Innovators takes readers inside such storied companies as GE and Wells Fargo, IBM and Target, Motorola Solutions and Toyota to see what they are learning from their alliances with entrepreneurs. Stengel also explores how even 20- and 30-year-old'startups'like Amazon, Google, and Facebook can reinvent themselves--and what managers at legacy companies everywhere can learn from them. Drawing on a specially commissioned global study of over 200 established corporations and startups, conducted by research consultancy OgilvyRED, Stengel found that companies with successful startup partnerships are three times more likely to change their culture to be more innovative. Filled with indepth stories from the front lines of today's most forward-looking companies, Unleashing the Innovators shows how companies of all sizes can better navigate today's changing landscape, accelerate innovation, increase revenues, and improve their customer relationships.

Learn how to develop self-awareness and use it to become more fulfilled, confident, and successful.Most people feel like they know themselves pretty well. But what if you could know yourself just a little bit better—and with this small improvement, get a big payoff…not just in your career, but in your life? Research shows that self-awareness—knowing who we are and how others see us—is the foundation for high performance, smart choices, and lasting relationships. There's just one problem: most people don't see themselves quite as clearly as they could. Fortunately, reveals organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, self-awareness is a surprisingly developable skill. Integrating hundreds of studies with her own research and work in the Fortune 500 world, she shows us what it really takes to better understand ourselves on the inside—and how to get others to tell us the honest truth about how we come across. Through stories of people who have made dramatic gains in self-awareness, she offers surprising secrets, techniques and strategies to help you do the same—and how to use this insight to be more fulfilled, confident, and successful in life and in work. In Insight, you'll learn:• The 7 types of self-knowledge that self-aware people possess.• The 2 biggest invisible roadblocks to self-awareness.• Why approaches like therapy and journaling don't always lead to true insight• How to stop your confidence-killing habits and learn to love who you are.• How to benefit from mindfulness without uttering a single mantra.• Why other people don't tell you the truth about yourself—and how to find out what they really think.• How to deepen your insight into your passions, gifts, and the blind spots that could be holding you back.• How to hear critical feedback without losing your mojo.• Why the people with the most power can often be the least-self-aware, and how smart leaders avoid this trap.• The 3 building blocks for self-aware teams.• How to deal with delusional bosses, clients, and coworkers.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, USA TODAY, AND BUSINESSWEEK BESTSELLER—OVER 1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD! David Bach's no-budget, no-discipline, no-nonsense system to help you finish rich automatically, now expanded and updatedDo you want to live rich and retire richer? Rich enough to do what you want when you want to do it? Rich enough to stop worrying about money? Rich enough to make a difference and help others? With The Automatic Millionaire, David Bach presents an easy, realistic system, based on timeless principles, with everything you need to know so you can put the secret to becoming an Automatic Millionaire in place from the comfort of your own home. All you have to do is follow his one-step program to financial security—the rest is automatic! This edition includes updated information on taxes, investments, technologies, and apps to automate your financial life as well as Bach's latest systems for making the entire process even easier.

The revolutionary “Red Book” that helped a generation work smarter, better, and faster—now expanded and updated with new stories, new ideas, and new methods to radically improve the way you and your company deliver resultsIf you've ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, the Scrum framework is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains in workflow of as much as 1,200 percent have been recorded, and there's no more lucid—or compelling—explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland. The thorny problem that Sutherland began tackling back then boils down to this: People are spectacularly bad at doing things with agility and efficiency. Best-laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross-purposes to one another. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars.Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and Sutherland's experience as a West Point–educated fighter pilot, a biometrics expert, a medical researcher, an early innovator of ATM technology, and a C-level executive at eleven different technology companies, this book will take you to Scrum's front lines, where Sutherland's system has brought the FBI into the twenty-first century, helped support John Deere's supply chain amid a global pandemic and supply chain shortage, reduced poverty in the Third World, and even planned weddings and accomplished weekend chores.The way we work has changed dramatically since Sutherland first introduced Scrum a decade ago. This urgent update shares new insights and provides new tools to take advantage of the radical productivity that Scrum delivers. Sutherland will show you how to optimize working with artificial intelligence and share the latest cognitive science research on culture, psychological safety, diversity, and happiness, and how these factors drive performance, innovation, and overall organizational health. This new edition contains a decade of lessons learned. Whether it's ten years ago, now, or ten years into the future, the Scrum framework is guaranteed to help you deliver results. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may just help you achieve what others consider unachievable.

For those starting out in their careers—and those who wish to advance more quickly—this is a delightfully fussy guide to the hidden rules of the road in the workplace and in life. As bestselling author and social historian Charles Murray explains, at senior levels of an organization there are curmudgeons everywhere, judging your every move. Yet it is their good opinion you need to win if you hope to get ahead. Among the curmudgeon's day-to-day tips for the workplace: • Excise the word “like” from your spoken English • Don't suck up • Stop “reaching out” and “sharing” • Rid yourself of piercings, tattoos, and weird hair colors • Make strong language count His larger career advice includes: • What to do if you have a bad boss • Coming to grips with the difference between being nice and being good • How to write when you don't know what to say • Being judgmental (it's good, and you don't have a choice anyway) And on the great topics of life, the curmudgeon urges us to leave home no matter what, get real jobs (not internships), put ourselves in scary situations, and watch Groundhog Day repeatedly (he'll explain). Witty, wise, and pulling no punches, The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead is an indispensable sourcebook for living an adult life.

Here at last are the hard-to-find answers to the dizzying array of financial questions plaguing those who are age fifty and older.The financial world is more complex than ever, and people are struggling to make sense of it all. If you're like most people moving into the phase of life where protecting—as well as growing-- assets is paramount, you're faced with a number of financial puzzles. Maybe you're struggling to get your kids through college without drawing down your life's savings. Perhaps you sense your nest egg is at risk and want to move into safer investments. Maybe you're contemplating downsizing to a smaller home, but aren't sure of the financial implications. Possibly, medical expenses have become a bigger drain than you expected and you need help assessing options. Perhaps you'll shortly be eligible for social security but want to optimize when and how to take it.Whatever your specific financial issue, one thing is certain—your range of choices is vast. As the financial world becomes increasingly complex, what you need is deeply researched advice from professionals whose credentials are impeccable and who prize clarity and straightforwardness over financial mumbo-jumbo.Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz and the Schwab team have been helping clients tackle their toughest money issues for decades. Through Carrie's popular “Ask Carrie” columns, her leadership of the Charles Schwab Foundation, and her work across party lines through two White House administrations and with the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability, she has become one of America's most trusted sources for financial advice. Here, Carrie will not only answer all the questions that keep you up at night, she'll provide answers to many questions you haven't considered but should.

The authors of the national bestseller The Power of Nice once again tackle conventional wisdom with a provocative and counterintuitive book about the importance of sweating the small stuff in our lives and in our careers. Our smallest actions and gestures often have outsized impact on our biggest goals. Did you double-check that presentation one last time, or hold the elevator for a stranger? Going that extra inch--whether with a client, customer, family member, or friend--speaks volumes to others about our talent, personality, and motivations. After all, if we can't take care of the small details, how can we be counted on to deliver when it really matters? In today's challenging times, bigger isn't always better. In fact, it's often the baby steps that put us on the path to delivering a true competitive advantage. The real secret to getting ahead in life and in our careers is to refocus our attention on the small details that, if disregarded, can sabotage a multimillion-dollar ad campaign or undermine your most important relationships. Kaplan Thaler and Koval show how to get more of what you want with surprisingly less than you'd imagine. Written in the same entertaining, story-driven style that made The Power of Nice the go-to book for finishing first, The Power of Small demonstrates how all of us can harness the power of small to improve and reinvent our lives. It's the ultimate guide to shrinking your outlook to broaden your horizons.

A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making, Sway will change the way you think about the way you think.Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there's danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.Drawing on cutting-edge research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, Sway reveals dynamic forces that influence every aspect of our personal and business lives, including loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived losses), the diagnosis bias (our inability to reevaluate our initial diagnosis of a person or situation), and the “chameleon effect” (our tendency to take on characteristics that have been arbitrarily assigned to us). Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world's most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.Every once in a while, a book comes along that not only challenges our views of the world but changes the way we think. In Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman not only uncover rational explanations for a wide variety of irrational behaviors but also point readers toward ways to avoid succumbing to their pull.

An inspiring parable on the greatest leadership lesson of all—that the best leaders go beyond the tenets of the Golden Rule and help others to be better than they are themselvesToo many people assume that the timeless principles of genuine leadership—of helping others achieve their full potential—don't apply Monday through Friday during work hours or in any circumstance where a paycheck is involved.In Greater Than Yourself, Steve Farber proves them wrong. With this powerful and eye-opening story, Farber shows that the goal of true leadership is to help others—teammates, employees, and colleagues—become more capable, confident, and accomplished than their leaders. Through the actions of a forward-thinking and extraordinarily successful CEO, Farber reveals the three keys to achieving what he calls GTY: Expand Yourself, Give Yourself, and Replicate Yourself.Filled with thought-provoking ideas and actionable principles, Greater Than Yourself offers a powerful message for today's business leaders.

Disregard the myth of the lone professional “superman” and the rest of our culture's go-it alone mentality. The real path to success in your work and in your life is through creating an inner circle of “lifeline relationships” – deep, close relationships with a few key trusted individuals who will offer the encouragement, feedback, and generous mutual support every one of us needs to reach our full potential. Whether your dream is to lead a company, be a top producer in your field, overcome the self-destructive habits that hold you back, lose weight or make a difference in the larger world, Who's Got Your Back will give you the roadmap you've been looking for to achieve the success you deserve.Keith Ferrazzi, the internationally renowned thought leader, consultant, and bestselling author of Never Eat Alone, shows us that becoming a winner in any field of endeavor requires a trusted team of advisors who can offer guidance and help to hold us accountable to achieving our goals. It is the reason PH.D candidates have advisor teams, top executives have boards, world class athletes have fitness coaches, and presidents have cabinets. In this step-by-step guide to the powerful principles behind personal growth and change, you'll learn how to:· Master the mindsets that will help you to build deeper, more trusting “lifeline relationships” · Overcome the career-crippling habits that hold you back, once and for all · Get further, faster by setting goals in a dramatically more powerful way· Use “sparring” as a productive tool to make the decisions that will fuel personal success· Replace the yes men in your life with those who get it and care – and will hold you accountable to achieving your goals· Lower your guard and let others help!None of us can do it alone. We need the perspective and advice of a trusted team. And in Who's Got Your Back, Keith Ferrazzi shows us how to put our own “dream team” together.

This fresh, empowering, and fully comprehensive guide is the must-have handbook for every working mom! Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio have helped readers find their dream jobs, be a boss without being bitchy, and even start companies of their own. But what happens when a career girl becomes a mom and her world turns upside down? Can you maintain your ambition and momentum at work while still being the kind of parent you want to be?Of course you can! In Happy at Work, Happy at Home, Caitlin and Kim guide readers through every step on the road to having it all, offering detailed, practical advice in their trademark style. Working mothers themselves, these authors know what it means to juggle the demands of office and home, and they're here to help the rest of us.From first breaking the news that you're pregnant, to making the most of your maternity leave, to getting the help you need from your partner and childcare professionals, this book is a must-have resource for a whole generation of working women who aspire to keep their careers on track and their home life running smoothly (without losing their minds). As the title suggests, the insightful tips from both the authors and from intimate and eye-opening interviews with other successful moms will help all working mothers on their quest to be satisfied, fulfilled, and happy at work and at home.

Nearly every professional interaction you have during your career will involve a negotiation of some sort. Whether you're closing a million-dollar deal with a client, bargaining over your own terms of employment, or delegating duties among your coworkers, the key to successful negotiation is possessing intelligence. But intelligence doesn't mean just having smarts. It means knowing your opponents inside and out: how they respond under stress, what tricks they try to pull to catch you off guard, and how to negotiate a fair deal that makes both sides happy. It means knowing what they will ask for before they ask, what they are willing to give before they give, and where they will draw the line before they walk away from the table.The Intelligent Negotiator is your complete and practical guide to understanding and mastering effective negotiating skills. Author and negotiation expert Charles Craver goes beyond the basic principles of negotiation and gets down to the nitty-gritty steps of the process, including what kinds of clothes to wear to help you succeed, where to sit in a room during an important negotiation, what questions to ask, how to listen and watch effectively, how to present your offers, and, most importantly, when to give and when to take. Mr. Craver has taught the ins and outs of effective negotiation to more than 60,000 professionals from around the globe over the past 25 years. In this easy-to-use book, he reveals his never-fail techniques that will give you the confidence and persuasiveness of a seasoned pro. You'll discover how to:·Identify the different types of negotiating techniques, when to use each one, and how to counter them ·Close a deal properly to avoid last-minute demands ·Walk away from a deal without losing your cool ·Prepare for the unexpected, master the mental game, and avoid psychological entrapment ·Understand the different stages of the negotiation process and what to do in each ·And much, much morePacked with interactive exercises, insightful anecdotes from the author's own career, and invaluable lessons on building a personal negotiating style, this is your complete guide to bargaining and deal-making the right way—with intelligence.

Healing the Downsized Organization is for managers and employees who must make sense of dramatically changed workplaces after reengineering, restructuring, or downsizing. Here are'best practices'from those who are successfully reinventing their organizations and re-creating healthy workplaces. Documented examples from executives, managers, and employees who have bounced back from this challenge reveal how they minimized pain during downsizing and discovered promising possibilities for changed employer-employee relationships.Dramatic profiles of four organizations--representing manufacturing, media journalism, education, and health care--provide lessons you can practice today, whether downsizing is unfolding now or whether it looms in the future. From interviews with CEOs, managers, and employees, you will understand how individuals at all levels have handled the tension between personal and organizational goals, managed the human struggles, and achieved victories as they cut costs and redeployed resources to face competition or changing market conditions.You will learn how these companies and individuals coped with downsizing, including: ¸ how'survivors'regained momentum, focus, and job satisfaction after downsizing ¸ what kinds of company-employee interactions allowed trust to be rebuilt ¸ how managers succeeded in balancing the concerns of those who left and those who stayed ¸ ways to be an effective leader in the transitional period ¸ approaches to forge a new employer-employee social contract for the emerging workplaceHealing the Downsized Organization is the recovery book for the downsizing of America.

A practical approach to affording your kids from cradle to college.Bringing home your bouncing baby boy or girl should be an exciting time of celebration–not cause for worry about how you're going to pay for feeding, clothing, and caring for your new bundle of expenses. The average family will spend between $11,000 and $16,000 during a new baby's first year, and more than $200,000 before a kid's eighteenth birthday. Unfortunately, a second child only doubles your costs, with little economy of scale for each additional baby. Before you start using these statistics as birth control, take a deep breath and know that you can have a family and make a comfortable future for your children while saving for your own important goals. The Wall Street Journal Financial Guidebook for New Parents shows you the way, with information on how to: • Safeguard your child's well-being with wills, trusts, and life insurance• Best weigh your child-care options and decide whether to go back to work• Save on taxes with child-friendly tax credits and deductions plus tax-advantaged benefits at work• Manage your family's health-care costs• Save for long-term costs by setting up a college fund• Spend smart and save money at every stage of your child's development• Continue to contribute to your own retirement savingsFrom maternity (and paternity) leave to flexible spending accounts to 529 college plans, The Wall Street Journal Financial Guidebook for New Parents provides all the information you need to meet your child's expenses while also protecting your family's financial security.

When Warren Buffett was asked why the Gillette board of directors chose Jim Kilts to be CEO, he said, “Jim made as much sense in terms of talking about business as anybody I've ever talked to. If you listen to Jim analyze a business situation you get absolutely no baloney. And, frankly, finding someone like that is a rarity.” There is only one CEO in recent times who has faced—and succeeded at—the extraordinary challenges of leading three major companies—Gillette, Nabisco, and Kraft—into prosperous futures by doing what matters on the fundamentals. That CEO is Jim Kilts. In this vivid first-person account he reveals his system for success that is both cutting-edge and back-to-basics. Doing What Matters—the action plan for identifying and tackling what's important and ignoring the rest—is the key to winning in a warp-speed world where the need for revolutionary speed and decisiveness increases by the day. Kilts illustrates his ideas with colorful stories, such as “that little red razor.” A new product idea he proposed early on at Gillette, it was initially shelved because “everyone knew you couldn't sell a red razor,” but went on to become one of Gillette's biggest marketing successes ever. Jim Kilts's focus on both business fundamentals and personal attributes provides the “complete package,” showing how to get results that make a difference through:• Intellectual integrity: The ability to face the unvarnished truth about yourself and your business and using what you see as the basis for action.• Generating emotional engagement and enthusiasm: Using the force of your personality and ideas to infuse people and an entire organization with a sense of purpose and mission. • Action: Gillette, with just five product lines, had over 20,000 SKUs. After studying the issue for over two years, there were still 20,000. How Kilts got Gillette off the dime to pare down the number to 7,000 almost overnight is an astonishing example of getting the rubber to meet the road—with enormous benefits to the business. • Understanding the right things through an overarching concept to frame and filter issues: For Jim Kilts it was Total Brand Value, the framework he used in the consumer products industry for achieving better, faster, and more complete results than the competition.Whether you're CEO of a multibillion-dollar global company, the brand manager for a product, an entrepreneur starting a small business, or just beginning a career, Doing What Matters provides the practical ideas that get results—ranging from a day one action plan for starting a new job to a chorus of cheers and support to a program of total innovation that involves everyone in changes from small to “big bang.”

Learn How to Pick the Right Stock at the Right TimeThe momentum of the bull market spoiled us all—buying stock, any stock, was an almost surefire way to make a mint. Now, in a time of turbulent markets, stock picking has become a mixture of science and high art. With thousands of stocks to choose from, how can investors determine which ones will be future winners?We all know there's a time to buy and a time to sell every stock, but when is the right time? Timing stock buys so that you catch upward momentum is not luck, and Randy Jones shows you how to hone your buying and selling skills by striving to analyze the factors that made winners of the great stocks in the past. Why was AT&T a great stock pick in the 1920s, Polaroid a winner in the'40s, Xerox in the'50s, Teledyne in the'70s, and Intel in the'90s? The potential of these stocks was in plain sight—for those who knew how to read the signs. And perhaps as important is understanding the signs of decline and knowing when to sell.Randy Jones analyzes twenty-five of the greatest stocks of all time, providing a framework for evaluating their strengths that can be used for future selections, including:• Linking great management and bottom-line profits: Who were the faces behind AIG, GE, and IBM that led to profitability, and what was it about these people's management skills that made their companies so great?• Pathbreaking products: Polaroid, Xerox, and Amgen show that products that often seem to be overnight sensations were instead developed over many years, giving investors plenty of lead time to discover their potential as great investments.• The innovative business model: Avon, McDonald's, and Dell reveal that understanding how a company makes money helps you to understand its strengths and vulnerabilities.• Investing during bad times: For some companies, such as Coca-Cola, Schlumberger, and Chrysler, nationwide economic downturns can actually be advantageous.Worth's Greatest Stock Picks of All Time has invaluable lessons for anyone in the market today.

Wouldn't it be great if you could be audaciously ambitious and happy at the same time? You can, and you will. “I'm here to tell you that all of your priorities—personal and ambitious career goals alike—can fit together harmoniously. I'll show you how, like thousands of women I've worked with over the years, you can make more money, earn the credit and recognition you deserve, have more power, and be as ambitious as you want to be. I'll show you how you can be ambitchous without compromising your ethics and integrity. I'll show you that you can feel worthy and entitled to all of this without fear that you risk sacrificing your desire to have a full, happy personal life and without being afraid that you'll be less of a woman. It's worked for me. It's worked for countless ambitchous women I've advised. It will work for you.”—From amBITCHousWe women aren't advancing in our careers the way we should. We're not making the money we deserve or getting the fulfillment we desire. And this time it's not men who are holding us back. This time we're doing it to ourselves, because ambition—for us—is still a dirty word. Debra Condren has coached thousands of women at every level—from those just starting out to the most powerful female executives in the United States—and each one possesses the same fear: if she goes after her dream, she'll be seen as selfish, bitchy, a bad wife, or bad mother. But it's exactly this fear of ambition that has forced women to leave the best part of themselves—their dreams, their great talents—by the roadside, rendering them less able to be the whole people they should be in every area of their lives. Condren has a new message and mission: to remind women that ambition is a virtue, not a vice. Ambition is the best of who we are.The real way to have a great life is to see ambition as a part of your value system to which you must give equal attention, along with the other priorities you hold dear, including your spouse, your children, and your friends. In amBITCHous, Dr. Condren offers fresh, powerful tools for reclaiming your dreams. Her eight amBITCHous Rules provide concrete, innovative solutions to the everyday struggles we as women face, like taking credit, deflecting detractors, and handling confrontation, so that you can become more powerful and fulfilled at work and more satisfied at home. You can redefine your ambition in the face of social sanctions and unapologetically go after your dreams without sacrificing the rest of your life. You owe it to yourself and the world to make the contribution you were born to make. Debra Condren will show you how to do it.

Why are people around the world so very different? What makes us live, buy, even love as we do? The answers are in the codes.In The Culture Code, internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world. Rapaille's breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of codes as we grow up within our culture. These codes—the Culture Code—are what make us American, or German, or French, and they invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. What's more, we can learn to crack the codes that guide our actions and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do. Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He has used it to help Procter & Gamble design its advertising campaign for Folger's coffee – one of the longest lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising. He has used it to help companies as diverse as GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L'Oréal improve their bottom line at home and overseas. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans, and what makes us different from the world around us. In The Culture Code, Dr. Rapaille decodes two dozen of our most fundamental archetypes—ranging from sex to money to health to America itself—to give us “a new set of glasses” with which to view our actions and motivations. Why are we so often disillusioned by love? Why is fat a solution rather than a problem? Why do we reject the notion of perfection? Why is fast food in our lives to stay? The answers are in the Codes. Understanding the Codes gives us unprecedented freedom over our lives. It lets us do business in dramatically new ways. And it finally explains why people around the world really are different, and reveals the hidden clues to understanding us all.

In the executive offices of the four major networks, sweeping changes are taking place and billions of dollars are at stake. Now Bill Carter, bestselling author of The Late Shift, goes behind the scenes to reveal the inner workings of the television industry, capturing the true portraits of the larger-than-life moguls and stars who make it such a cutthroat business. In a time of sweeping media change, the four major networks struggle for the attention of American viewers increasingly distracted by cable, video games, and the Internet. Behind boardroom doors, tempers flare in the search for hit shows, which often get on the air purely by accident. The fierce competition creates a pressure-cooker environment where anything can happen... NBC's fall from grace—Once the undisputed king of prime time, NBC plunged from first place to last place in the ratings in the course of a single season. What will be the price of that collapse—and who will pay it? CBS's slow and steady race to the top—Unlike NBC, CBS, under the leadership of CEO, Leslie Moonves, engineered one of the most spectacular turnarounds in television history. But in this ruthless world, you're only as good as last week's ratings....ABC's surprising resurrection—Lost and Desperate Housewives—have brought ABC the kind of success it could only dream of in the past. So why don't the executives responsible for those hits work there any more?The End of the News As We Know It—In a stunningly short period of time, all three of the major network news anchors—Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings—signed off, leaving executives scrambling for a way to keep network news relevant in an era of 24/7 information.Crazy Like Fox—They're outrageous, unconventional, and occasionally off-putting, but more and more people are watching Fox shows. Most of all they keep watching American Idol. How did Simon Cowell snooker himself into a huge payday? Stay tuned...

“I have observed several hundred salespeople who were taught to use deceptive practices like ‘bait and switch'and encouraged to play negotiation games with customers... In the same industry, I have observed countless people who had been taught to sell with high integrity. Ironically, their customer satisfaction, profit margins, and salesperson retention were significantly higher.” — Ron Willingham If you've tried manipulative, self-focused selling techniques that demean you and your customer, if you've ever wondered if selling could be more than just talking people into buying, then Integrity Selling for the 21st Century is the book for you. Its concept is simple: Only by getting to know your customers and their needs — and believing that you can meet those needs — will you enjoy relationships with customers built on trust. And only then, when you bring more value to your customers than you receive in payment, will you begin to reap the rewards of high sales. Since the publication of Ron Willingham's enormously successful first book, Integrity Selling, his sales program has been adopted by dozens of Fortune 500 companies, such as Johnson & Johnson and IBM, as well as the American Red Cross and the New York Times. In his new book, Integrity Selling for the 21st Century, Willingham explains how his selling system relates to today's business climate — when the need for integrity is greater than ever before. Integrity Selling for the 21st Century teaches a process of self-evaluation to help you become a stellar salesperson in any business climate. Once you've established your own goals and personality traits, you'll be able to evaluate them in your customers and adapt your styles to create a more trusting, productive relationship. Drawing upon Willingham's years of experience and success stories from sales forces of the more than 2,000 companies that have adopted the Integrity Selling system, Ron Willingham has created a blueprint for achieving success in sales while staying true to your values.

“They're still trying to hide the weenie,” thought Sherron Watkins as she read a newspaper clipping about Enron two weeks before Christmas, 2001... It quoted [CFO] Jeff McMahon addressing the company's creditors and cautioning them against a rash judgment. “Don't assume that there is a smoking gun.”Sherron knew Enron well enough to know that the company was in extreme spin mode…Power Failure is the electrifying behind-the-scenes story of the collapse of Enron, the high-flying gas and energy company touted as the poster child of the New Economy that, in its hubris, had aspired to be “The World's Leading Company,” and had briefly been the seventh largest corporation in America.Written by prizewinning journalist Mimi Swartz, and substantially based on the never-before-published revelations of former Enron vice-president Sherron Watkins, as well as hundreds of other interviews, Power Failure shows the human face beyond the greed, arrogance, and raw ambition that fueled the company's meteoric rise in the late 1990s. At the dawn of the new century, Ken Lay's and Jeff Skilling's faces graced the covers of business magazines, and Enron's money oiled the political machinery behind George W. Bush's election campaign. But as Wall Street analysts sang Enron's praises, and its stock spiraled dizzyingly into the stratosphere, the company's leaders were madly scrambling to manufacture illusory profits, hide its ballooning debt, and bully Wall Street into buying its fictional accounting and off-balance-sheet investment vehicles. The story of Enron's fall is a morality tale writ large, performed on a stage with an unforgettable array of props and side plots, from parking lots overflowing with Boxsters and BMWs to hot-house office affairs and executive tantrums. Among the cast of characters Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins observe with shrewd Texas eyes and an insider's perspective are: CEO Ken Lay, Enron's “outside face,” who was more interested in playing diplomat and paving the road to a political career than in managing Enron's high-testosterone, anything-goes culture; Jeff Skilling, the mastermind behind Enron's mercenary trading culture, who transformed himself from a nerdy executive into the personification of millennial cool; Rebecca Mark, the savvy and seductive head of Enron's international division, who was Skilling's sole rival to take over the company; and Andy Fastow, whose childish pranks early in his career gave way to something far more destructive. Desperate to be a player in Enron's deal-making, trader-oriented culture, Fastow transformed Enron's finance department into a “profit center,” creating a honeycomb of financial entities to bolster Enron's “profits,” while diverting tens of millions of dollars into his own pocketsAn unprecedented chronicle of Enron's shocking collapse, Power Failure should take its place alongside the classics of previous decades – Barbarians at the Gate and Liar's Poker – as one of the cautionary tales of our times.

From America's most authoritative source: the quintessential primer on understanding and managing your moneyMoney courses through just about every corner of our lives and has an impact on the way we live today and how we'll be able to live in the future. Understanding your money, and getting it to work for you, has never been more important than it is today, as more and more of us are called upon to manage every aspect of our financial lives, from managing day-to-day living expenses to planning a college savings fund and, ultimately, retirement. From The Wall Street Journal, the most trusted name in financial and money matters, this indispensable book takes the mystery out of personal finance. Start with the basics, learn how they work, and you'll become a better steward of your own money, today and in the future. Consider The Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook your cheat sheet to the finances of your life. This book will help you:• Understand the nuts and bolts of managing your money: banking, investing, borrowing, insurance, credit cards, taxes, and more• Establish realistic budgets and savings plans• Develop an investment strategy that makes sense for you• Make the right financial decisions about real estate• Plan for retirement intelligentlyAlso available—the companion to this guidebook: The Wall Street Journal Personal Finance Workbook, by Jeff D. OpdykeGet your financial life in order with help from The Wall Street Journal. Look for:• The Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook • The Wall Street Journal Complete Identity Theft Guidebook• The Wall Street Journal Complete Real Estate Investing Guidebook

An invaluable resource for any manager or professional, this book offers a collection of proven, practical methods for simplifying any problem and making faster, better decisions every time.

The Remarkable discoveries about what drives and sustains successful women leaders.Based on five years of proprietary research, How Remarkable Women Lead speaks to you as no other book has, with its hopeful outlook and unique ideas about success. It's the new'right stuff'of leadership, raising provocative issues such as whether feminine leadership traits (for women and men) are better suited for our fast-changing, hyper-competitive, and increasingly complex world. The authors, McKinsey & Company consultants Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston, establish the links between joy, happiness, and distinctive performance with the groundbreaking model of Centered Leadership. The book's personal stories and related insights show you the magic that happens when you put the five elements of Centered Leadership–meaning, framing, connecting, engaging, and energizing–to work. They include:• How Alondra de la Parra built on her strengths and passions to infuse her life with meaning and make her way in the male-dominated world of orchestra conducting• How Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon, avoided a downward spiral when the company turned down by'firing herself'on Friday and re-emerging on Monday as the'new'turnaround CEO• How Ruth Porat's sponsors at Morgan Stanley not only helped her grow but were also her ballast for coping with difficult personal and professional times•How Eileen Naughton recovered after losing her dream job, landing on her feet at Google and open to a new leadership opportunity • How Julie Coates of Woolworth's Australia makes energy key to her professional success, with reserves for her'second shift'as wife and motherHow Remarkable Women Lead is both profoundly moving and actionable. Woman or man, you'll find yourself in its pages and emerge with a practical plan for breaking through at both work and in life.

What if working like crazy to beat the competition did exactly the opposite, making you mediocre and more like the competition?In today's world of overabundant consumer choices and superfluous apps, upgrades, add-ons, and features, brands have become nearly identical, as their efforts to outdo one another have pushed them into a dizzying herd of indistinct options. Youngme Moon identifies the outliers, the mavericks, the iconoclasts—the players who have thoughtfully rejected orthodoxy in favor of an approach that is more adventurous. Some are even “hostile,” almost daring you to buy what they are selling. Using her original research on companies such as IKEA and Google, Moon will inspire you to be counterintuitive and meaningfully different—to rethink your business strategy, to stop conforming and start deviating, to stop emulating and start innovating. Because to stand out you must become the exception, not the rule.

Today's economic climate, dominated by corporate giants and chains, can be a tough place for a new face, but buying a franchise is the best opportunity for a budding entrepreneur. 220 Best Franchises to Buy, revised and updated with all-new franchise ideas, shows you how to get in on the ground floor--and how to reap the benefits of running your own business without running all the risks.Here are all the facts you need to make an informed decision about the franchise operation that best suits your professional goals, financial resources, and personal needs. The book features a step-by-step breakdown of potentially confusing areas such as financial responsibilities and licensing fees. You'll also learn about what kind of training and marketing to expect for your money, and how to negotiate a contract in your favor.This new edition of a business classic has been completely updated and revised to include franchise opportunities for the new millennium--everything from advertising to the fastest-growing chains of health clubs. With over fifty thousand copies in print, 220 Best Franchises to Buy is one of the most trusted sources of franchise information for today's entrepreneurs.

The dollar is in trouble. It has fallen against other currencies for the past three years, and now its orderly retreat could well become a rout. This spells potential disaster for the American economy—and potential riches for a few smart investors. In The Coming Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It, financial gurus James Turk and John Rubino show how the dollar arrived at this precipice, why it will plunge, and how you can profit from the resulting financial crisis.The U.S. today is the world's biggest debtor nation, printing money with abandon to sustain the illusion of prosperity. The federal government owes $7 trillion and its debt is soaring. As a society, we owe more than $37 trillion, or about $500,000 per family of four. Our trade deficit with other countries is staggering, and to finance this mountain of debt we're flooding the world with dollars. The inevitable result: The dollar will decline until it is displaced as the world's dominant currency. Precious metals will soar in value, and gold will reclaim its monetary role at the center of the global financial system. Traditionally a haven during times of uncertainty, gold has risen dramatically since 2001. By the fall of 2004 it was up by nearly 50%, at over $400 an ounce. But this is just the beginning.James Turk, a leading gold authority and the founder of GoldMoney.com, and veteran financial writer John Rubino, show readers how to capitalize on gold's dramatic climb. In The Coming Collapse of the Dollar, Turk and Rubino reveal which stocks and bonds will falter as the dollar declines and why that decline is virtually inevitable. They offer strategies for using gold coins, gold stocks, gold-based digital currencies, and other hard assets to create a profitable portfolio. And they explain how to make the most of your gold and other precious metal holdings, identifying the opportunities and pitfalls of buying gold mining stocks and the mutual funds that invest in them.America's debt binge has put its economy at grave risk. The value of the dollar is falling; many stocks are once again wildly overvalued; and bonds, tied to an ever-diminishing dollar, are a disaster waiting to happen. By investing in gold and other hard assets, Turk and Rubino explain how you can protect yourself from these dangers. The Coming Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It is a must read for every investor, whatever the size of his or her portfolio. For more information, visit www.dollarcollapse.com.

“AOL had found itself at the edge of disaster so frequently that one of its first executives, a brassy Vietnam veteran and restaurateur named Jim Kimsey, had taken the punch line of an old joke popularized by Ronald Reagan and made it into an unlikely mantra for the company. It concerned a very optimistic young boy who happened upon a huge pile of horse manure and began digging excitedly. When someone asked him what he was doing covered in muck, the foolish boy answered brightly, ‘There must be a pony in here somewhere!'” —From the PrologueIf you're wondering what happened after “a company without assets acquired a company without a clue,” as Kara Swisher wryly writes, it's time to crack open this trenchant book about the doomed merger of America Online and Time Warner. On a quest to discover how the deal of the century became the messiest merger in history, Swisher delivers a rollicking narrative and a keen analysis of this debacle that is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what it all means for the digital future. Packed with new revelations and on-the-record interviews with key players, it is the first detailed examination of the merger's aftermath and also looks forward to what is coming next.It certainly has not been a pretty picture so far—with $100 billion in losses, a sinking stock price, employees in revolt, and lawsuits galore. As Swisher writes, “It is hard not to feel a bit queasy about the whole sorry mess.... It felt a bit like I was watching someone fall down a flight of stairs in slow motion, and every bump and thump made me wince. It made me reassess old ideas and wonder what I had gotten wrong. And it left me deeply confused as to what had happened and, more important, what was coming next.”For Swisher, finding the answers to what went awry is important because she remains a staunch believer in the digital future—maybe not in the AOL Time Warner merger, but in the essential idea at the heart of it that someday the distinction of old and new media will no longer exist. Borrowing from Winston Churchill, Swisher calls it “the end of the beginning” of the digital revolution. “By that, I mean that it is from the ashes of this bust that the really important companies of the next era will emerge. And that evolution will, I believe, be shaped by what happened—and what is happening now—at AOL Time Warner.”To figure it all out, Swisher takes her reader on a journey that begins with a portrait of two wildly different corporate cultures and businesses that somehow came to believe, in the crucible of the red-hot Internet era, that they could successfully join forces and achieve unprecedented growth and success. When the merger was announced in early 2000, the irresistible combination was hailed as the new paradigm and its executives—Steve Case, Jerry Levin, Bob Pittman—as popular icons of the future. But after the boom so spectacularly turned to bust and the visions of New Media Supremacy lay in ruins, Swisher searches for clues about where the merger went wrong and who is to blame.More important, she looks to the future of both AOL Time Warner and the Internet as she seeks to answer the key question that the noise of the disaster has all but drowned out. Will the demise of the AOL Time Warner merger be the final and inevitable chapter of the dot-com debacle or will it herald a new paradigm altogether? This book, then, is a primer for the time to come, using the story of the AOL Time Warner merger as the vehicle to show the troubled journey into the future.

'Five little words: BlackBerry, Accenture, Viagra, Cayenne, e-business. Two of the words are appropriated (BlackBerry and Cayenne); two are completely made up (Viagra and Accenture); and one (e-business) is a composite word made of a word and a letter that already exist....These five words are the characters in this book.'Words shape and move the modern marketplace; they are at once ubiquitous and invisible. But where do words such as Saturn, PowerBook, and Tylenol originate? How did we come to'xerox'our paperwork and'have a cup of Starbucks'? Which names work, and why? For journalist Alex Frankel, what began as an exercise in curiosity--tracing the evolution of a handful of the most successful brand names from the marketplace to their places of origin--resulted in a year-long journey in which he gained access to a previously undiscovered world of forward-thinking creatives: professional namers, the unique group of marketers responsible for inventing words that ultimately become a part of our everyday vocabularies.Wordcraft is Frankel's in-depth look at how companies name themselves and their products and, in the process of defining their business through words and language, develop narratives that define the way they present themselves to the outside world. His lively, fly-on-the-wall narrative takes us into the conference rooms of Lexicon, the world's largest professional naming firm, where we see how the highly successful email pager known as the BlackBerry got its name. We travel to Germany to learn how Porsche approached the naming of its controversial SUV, a car that challenged the company's famously sporty image. The creative team behind Viagra explains how they took a completely fabricated word and turned it into a powerful idea. We witness how IBM assumed ownership of the word and story of'e-business'and in so doing turned around its corporate mindset and returned to a dominant industry position.The book is filled with stories about how things get their names, but it's not just tales of business meetings and product launches. We meet the characters who populate the naming world,'information age neologists'like freelance namer Andrea Michaels, who plays professional Scrabble and competes on TV game shows when not brainstorming for corporate clients. And we learn about the civic unrest that erupted in Denver when the naming rights for Mile High Stadium were sold. Frankel laces his narrative with cultural and historical references and quotations from thinkers as diverse as Marianne Moore and Lawrence Lessig, all of which add a layer of richness and depth to this book's multithreaded and engaging stories.For anyone intrigued by the power of words and ideas in today's marketplace, Wordcraft is a captivating tour of a fascinating world.

If your investing strategy has relied on the facts—financial statements, annual reports, technical charts, and so on—congratulations! You're on the way to becoming a successful, complete investor. But you're only partway there. If the markets are about mood swings, turbulence, and uncertainty, if the herd buys like crazy one day, only to sell off the next, doesn't it make sense for you to have a grip on the way in which your individual psychological makeup and emotional state affect your investing strategy? Doesn't the complete investor need to understand both the facts in his head and the emotions of his heart?Dr. Richard Geist has combined the art and science of the seemingly unrelated fields of psychology and investing. He shows that investing success means both having and using solid information and expertly understanding, monitoring, and managing your emotions. This is the first book directed at professional and individual investors alike, illustrating how they can use emotions to become more effective at meeting the ever-increasing challenges of today's investing environment. Dr. Geist's coverage is stimulating and wide-ranging, including topics such as:•Recognizing emotional reactions such as confidence and anxiety as clues to making investment decisions•Avoiding the most common psychological investment mistakes•Analyzing your psychological risk quotient•Reacting appropriately when you're caught in a stampeding herd•Learning how patience—or the lack of it—influences investing decisions•Responding in psychologically healthy ways to losing money in the market•Gaining the psychological skills you need to sell a stock and learning why these skills differ from those needed when making a buy decision •Understanding the psychological needs of management while obtaining useful, valid information for making informed investing decisionsConventional wisdom says “park your emotions at the door when making investing decisions.” Dr. Geist brings a new, important perspective to show that the conventional wisdom is not only wrong but harmful to your financial well-being. Success lies in understanding your emotional reactions to the market and its participants and integrating an emotional understanding of yourself into your investing strategies. The successful investor is, above all, a human investor, not a “perfect” machine-like investor.

The book that turns our understanding of motivation on its head... and shows why most companies get it wrong.There are few people with more experience and accumulated wisdom about the inner workings of business and how people can work together more effectively than Jon Katzenbach. His groundbreaking research has resulted in several important books, including The Wisdom of Teams and Real Change Leaders. Over the past several years he has turned his attention to one of the perennial questions of leaders everywhere: How do I motivate my employees? Most everyone frets about how to devise schemes that will keep the troops revved up. Conventional wisdom—or at least the practice at most companies—often centers on money as the primary motivating force. Many also rely on intimidation, which like money generally has a short-term impact. But what Katzenbach has found in his research at many organizations is that both of these practices do little to build the long-term sustainability of an organization. For that you need a powerful force that has been—until this point—understood by few managers and implemented by fewer still: pride.From the front lines to the executive suite, most people are motivated by feelings of accomplishment, approval, and camaraderie. It's why the best employees strive well beyond performance levels that will yield them higher pay and why most true professionals relentlessly avoid retirement. Why does Southwest Airlines consistently turn in the highest levels of performance and profitability of any company in the airline business? What can the U.S. Marines teach us about individual commitment that can be used in the for-profit world? How is General Motors overcoming its history of labor-management enmity through the efforts of “pride-builders” from both the union and the management side? By drawing on what he has learned from these and many other organizations, Jon Katzenbach provides a practical program for understanding the role of pride:• Money is not the motivator most people think it is: Katzenbach shows why pay-for-performance programs by themselves result in employees who focus on self-serving behavior and skin-deep organizational commitment. • Money tends to be a short-term motivational device and works best during times of growth, but pride works in bad times as well as good.• Cultivating pride is an investment that yields high returns on workforce performance over time and is not nearly as costly as relying solely on monetary compensation and the turnover risks that accompany a “show me the money” culture. Katzenbach shares unique insights and specifics about how the best mid-level pride-builders take advantage of the world's greatest motivational force even in environments as challenging as General Motors and Aetna. He shows how managers at every level are missing a powerful lever if they are not instilling pride as a primary force for building their organization. Also available as an eBook.

Don't let the rapid evolution of the Internet economy leave your business extinct before its time! Here are the key strategies you need to keep your company alive, growing, and profitable in today's volatile Web climate. The dramatic boom that took place in the Web economy is over. The glory days when companies with strong ideas and weak business plans could easily get millions to launch their businesses are long gone, and in today's tougher, more cutthroat economic arena, natural selection is rampant. Companies need to be smarter, faster, more innovative, and more adaptable than ever before just to survive, let alone succeed. In Digital Darwinism, Evan Schwartz provides seven business strategies that can make or break any Web business. In a new preface and updated case studies, Schwartz discusses the dramatic rise and fall of the Web and analyzes the companies that have made it and those that haven't, from Priceline to Pets.com, and spells out step-by-step techniques such as building your brand, remaining flexible as supply and demand fluctuate, and integrating the Web into every part of your business. The perfect source for everyone from novice entrepreneurs to corporate CEOs, Digital Darwinism provides a comprehensive and unflinching look inside the highly competitive world of e-commerce and distills the critical strategies that Web-based businesses need to follow in order to survive in what has become the world's fastest, and most dangerous, marketplace.

West Point has bred more CEOs than any business school, and the leadership skills taught there are truly matters of life and death. Bolder than Sun Tzu, savvier than Gracian -- THE book on learning to lead.

Worth magazine founder Randy Jones shows how to pick the best stocks of the future by learning the lessons of the greatest stocks of all time.In a turbulent investing environment, luck must be the only way to score in the stock market, right? Not so, says Randy Jones. The people who bought McDonald's in 1965 or Chrysler in 1980 weren't just fortunate. Most of them knew how to read the signs of a good stock and jumped on the opportunity. Such stocks exist in every economic climate, and Jones shows readers exactly how to find them.In The Greatest Stock Picks of All Time, Jones describes twenty-five of the best stock picks ever and explains what made them great. He shows how the smartest investors find companies that are about to zoom, giving readers a framework for analyzing stocks today. For example, Jones explains why AT&T was a great stock pick in the 1920s, Polaroid in the 1940s, Xerox in the 1950s, Teledyne in the 1970s, and Intel in the 1990s. He then guides readers to discover stocks that represent the same kinds of pathbreaking products, innovative business models, great management teams, and other harbingers of success that will certainly be characteristic of the great stock picks of tomorrow. The Greatest Stock Picks of All Time has invaluable lessons for anyone in the market today.“Today a lot of people think they should murder their brokers, but my advice is don't. You can stay out of jail and make a lot of money by learning from the greatest stocks of the last century and by heeding this advice for your future investments.”—Dominick Dunne

“As unique as it is valuable, [8 Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs] achieves where so many business books fail. It provides practical advice for individuals... [I]t delivers what few business books ever aspire to achieve—wisdom regarding business and decision making, within a special context: start-up firms.” —From the Foreword by Carl Schramm, president and CEO, Ewing Marion Kauffman FoundationAt age seven, Cameron Johnson sold tomatoes door-to-door from his family's farm. Pete Amico quit his job on his first day because he didn't feel like taking orders from his boss.Greg Herro built a successful business selling diamonds made from the carbon extracted from ashes. If any of these people remind you of yourself, you just might have the kind of personality to take the small business world by storm. In 8 Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs, Brent Bowers reveals the eight patterns that highly successful entrepreneurs share—and what we can learn from them. In covering small business for decades at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, Bowers has chronicled the rise and fall of hundreds of start-ups. In this book, he draws on extensive interviews and research, as well as on the experiences and expertise of business consultants, venture capitalists, academia, and the entrepreneurs themselves, to describe the key characteristics shared by dozens of successful small-business owners and their companies. Among them: The ability to spot and seize opportunitiesAn overwhelming urge to be in charge coupled with a gift for leadershipThe flexibility to come up with creative, out-of-the-box solutions to problems or obstaclesIncredible energy and tenacity in the pursuit of their goalsUnwavering faith in their businessThe ability to take smart risks The ability to bounce back from setbacks and see failure as just one step on the path to ultimate successThis book offers invaluable lessons and insights for anyone thinking about starting a business or attempting a start-up a second or third time.

As you think about retirement, you've got facts to face, planning to do, decisions to make and numbers to crunch. With the experts at The Wall Street Journal to guide you, you'll learn how to tailor a financial plan for the lifestyle you want.• Answers your biggest question—How big does my nest egg need to be?—by linking it to your particular hopes for how you want to spend your days in retirement• Shows how to translate your dreams and interests into daily activities, whether traveling, opening a business, volunteering or going back to school• Provides a timeline for decisions to make and steps to take ten years, five years and one year before you retire• Offers tips on investing wisely and working with the right financial adviser• Tells you how to maximize your benefits from Social Security and Medicare• Guides you through the intricacies of 401(k)s, IRAs, annuities and other financial tools and resourcesToday, the average person can expect to spend two decades in retirement—why leave it to chance? For all of its changes and challenges, a well-planned retirement could very well be the best part of your life.

The agenda: nine powerful and practical business ideas for today's world of fierce competitors and even fiercer customers.These are tough times for business. Pressures from all sides are greater than ever. The old solutions don't work anymore, and the silver bullets of the late 1990s have proven to be hollow. Serious businesspeople know there is no simple solution, no single answer. They need a whole tool kit of new ideas and new techniques. That's what The Agenda delivers.Michael Hammer, author of Reengineering the Corporation, the defining business book of the 1990s, has uncovered the secrets of today's best companies. He has worked long and hard to identify how these companies consistently out-execute their competitors, and he reveals what he has learned in The Agenda. This breakthrough book spells out an action plan for the twenty-first century. Here's a sampling:• Make life easy for your customers. Your customers'biggest gripe is not that your products are bad, but that it is too tough to order, receive, and pay for them. In short, you are a royal pain to do business with. You need to take a hard look at how you operate from your customers'point of view and redesign how you work to save them time, money, and frustration. In other words, run your business for their convenience, not yours.• Become a process fanatic. Process is the Clark Kent of business ideas. Seemingly mild and unassuming, process is a revolutionary way of thinking about work in customer terms. It blows away overhead and cost, confusion and delay. It is the discipline that makes outstanding performance a matter of design rather than luck. Process is the way to make both customers and shareholders happy and to keep them that way on a sustained basis.• Measure like you mean it. Most business measurements are worthless. They tell you what happened in the past (sort of), but offer few if any clues about how to make things better in the future. To come up with useful measurements, you need to create a model of your business that ties overall goals to the things you actually control. You need to measure these (and only these) things carefully and base your actions on what you learn. Measure to improve, not just to measure. • Don't just talk teamwork–live it. You expect teamwork and cooperation from the front lines, and you need to demand the same from yourself and your colleagues. The days of the proudly independent business manager running a sharply defined unit are over. • Link companies together through the Internet. Break down the walls that separate you from other companies, walls that create huge amounts of inefficiency and overhead. Change your distribution channel from a series of resellers into a community that works together to serve the final customer. Redesign your operations in tandem with those of your suppliers and customers. Stop seeing yourself as a self-contained unit that creates a product on its own, and get used to the idea of virtually integrating with others.The Agenda will forever change the way you think about business.

Life is more like a marathon than a sprint. Here's how to stay well conditioned.Bill Butterworth will make you laugh–and learn while you're doing it! In the opening chapter of this powerful little book, Bill shares with you how, while running his rotund body in a nightmarish 440-yard dash, he learned a great lesson:Life is much more like a marathon than a sprint.The attitudes and actions that result in steady success over the long haul are what make for long-term satisfaction and achievement. To experience this for yourself, you need to understand how to deal with life's inevitable challenges:·The “Hazies”–losing sight of long-term goals·The “Lazies”–lacking the self-discipline to bring life back into focus·The “Crazies”–allowing life to run out of controlEach of these can be conquered by three “clarifying triangles:” setting clear priorities, learning the discipline of endurance, and reaching the finish line through skillful pacing. It all adds up to a succinct and inspiring guide to balancing excellence at work with fulfillment in all of life.Also look for the On-the-Fly-Guide to Building Successful Teams!

This little book could make a big change in the way you view your team.There's little more energizing and fulfilling in life than the satisfaction of working well with others to accomplish a common goal. And this powerful little book can help you experience more team satisfaction than ever before Making use of his exceptional, humor-laced storytelling style, Bill Butterworth makes the basics of teamwork easy to grasp and easy to put to work. He sketches a memorable overview of teamwork that includes:·the three great needs of team members·the four great barriers to teamwork, and·the five great traits of effective teams.It all adds up to a succinct understanding of how to work well as a team that will satisfy leaders, managers, coaches–anyone who wants to know how to make a group perform at high levels while enjoying the camaraderie and satisfaction of being “us.” Also look for the On-the-Fly-Guide to Balancing Work and Life!

'Impressive... This is an evidence-based bottom-up account of the realities of globalisation. It is more varied, more subtle, and more substantial than many of the popular works available on the subject.'-- Financial Times Based on a five-year study by the MIT Industrial Performance Center, How We Compete goes into the trenches of over 500 international companies to discover which practices are succeeding in today's global economy, which are failing –and why.There is a rising fear in America that no job is safe. In industry after industry, jobs seem to be moving to low-wage countries in Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe. Production once handled entirely in U.S. factories is now broken into pieces and farmed out to locations around the world. To discover whether our current fears about globalization are justified, Suzanne Berger and a group of MIT researchers went to the front lines, visiting workplaces and factories around the world. They conducted interviews with managers at more than 500 companies, asking questions about which parts of the manufacturing process are carried out in their own plants and which are outsourced, who their biggest competitors are, and how they plan to grow their businesses. How We Compete presents their fascinating, and often surprising, conclusions. Berger and her team examined businesses where technology changes rapidly–such as electronics and software–as well as more traditional sectors, like the automobile industry, clothing, and textile industries. They compared the strategies and success of high-tech companies like Intel and Sony, who manufacture their products in their own plants, and Cisco and Dell, who rely primarily on outsourcing. They looked closely at textile and clothing to uncover why some companies, including the Gap and Liz Claiborne, choose to outsource production to foreign countries, while others, such as Zara and Benetton, base most operations at home. What emerged was far more complicated than the black-and-white picture presented by promoters and opponents of globalization. Contrary to popular belief, cheap labor is not the answer, and the world is not flat, as Thomas Friedman would have it. How We Compete shows that there are many different ways to win in the global economy, and that the avenues open to American companies are much wider than we ever imagined. SUZANNE BERGER is the Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science at MIT and director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative. She was a member of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, whose report Made in America analyzed weaknesses and strengths in U.S. industry in the 1980s. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

At Berkshire Hathaway, we like companies that are easy to understand. Doris Christopher's “keep it simple” approach has a lot to teach anyone who is reaching for the American Dream. Frankly, if I can't understand a company's business, I figure their customers must have a pretty hard time figuring it out, too.I would challenge anyone on Wall Street to take $3,000 and do what Doris Christopher has done: build a business from scratch into a world-class organization. But follow the simple steps in this book, and it just might happen. Come see me in Omaha when you've put together your own recipe for success; we pay cash and Bershire's check will clear. In the meantime, read this book. Then, read it again.-- Warren Buffet from the foreword to The Pampered ChefThe Pampered Chef is Doris Christopher's extraordinary account of how she turned an innovative concept and $3,000 investment into a business with annual sales approaching the billion-dollar mark. It is packed with real-life lessons and inspiring insights for small-business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.In 1980 Doris Christopher, a former home economist and teacher, was itching to get back into the workforce after an eight-year hiatus as a stay-at-home mom. Drawing on her personal and professional expertise, and determined to make cooking easier and more convenient for families, she started selling high-quality kitchen tools through cooking demonstrations to groups of women in their homes. Today, the company she started in her basement, The Pampered Chef, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and has grown into a corporation with tens of thousands of independent kitchen consultants. Now owned by Berkshire Hathaway, The Pampered Chef's Kitchen Consultants present more than a million Kitchen Shows a year, attended by more than 12 million people.THE PAMPERED CHEF is the story of the vision, energy, hard work, and chutzpah that drove Christopher and her company to the height of success. She describes her early days as a “one-woman show,” chronicles the company's gradual expansion, its challenges and growing popularity, and the process, offers invaluable advice and sound strategies on how to found and grow a business, including:Hard learned lessons for start-up entrepreneursHow to create a business concept and set your prioritiesKnowing when to expand and when to slow growth so that demand doesn't overwhelm your operations or suppliesHow to counter the naysayers and deal with adversityToday, as at the company's founding, achieving a better balance between work and family remains central to The Pampered Chef's mission. THE PAMPERED CHEF brings Christopher's recipe for success to women, and men, everywhere.