If you're like most managers and things keep you up at night, now you can turn to a book that's designed especially for you! But you won't find talking rabbits or princesses here. (There is a cow, but it doesn't jump.) Henry Mintzberg has culled forty-two of the best posts from his widely read blog and turned them into a deceptively light, sneakily serious compendium of sometimes heretical reflections on management.

The moral here is this: managers need to leave their castles and find out what's actually going on in their kingdoms. And like real bedtime stories, these essays have metaphors galore. So prepare to grow strategies like weeds and organize like a cow. Discover the maestro myth of managing, find the soft underbelly of hard data, and learn why downsizing is bloodletting and your board should be a bee. Mintzberg writes, “Just try not to be outraged by anything you read, because some of my most outrageous ideas turn out to be my best. They just take a while to become obvious.”

Offers practical steps for women to bring their passion, brains, and background to the power tables and make life better for themselves, their company or organization and global society. • Combines compelling research, international experience, and fascinating personal stories with solid advice • Tarr-Whelan has extensive background as a business woman, a government official, a non-profit leader, and a nurse A few “first women” are making key decisions in high places but a few is not enough to have a significant impact. Changing what gets decided takes changing who makes the decisions. But with just 17% of Congressional seats and 14% of Fortune 500 board seats held by women, the leaders defining priorities and solutions continue to look and act much the same as generations ago. Linda Tarr-Whelan marshals eye-opening facts and figures to decisively dispel the myths that still hold women back and shows women how to build their confidence and skills to pioneer a distinctive approach to leadership, one that emphasizes collaboration, communication and consensus. The proven tipping point, surprisingly, is just 30%--when women’s representation at the top reaches 30%, real change starts to happen. Drawing on her extraordinarily diverse background as a consultant, organizer, and diplomat, Tarr-Whelan offers a women-led strategy for change and a complete set of practical road-tested tools readers can use to become powerful partners in creating a better future in a rapidly changing world. Closing the leadership gap is a win for everyone—it brings in new ideas, creates a more balanced and productive work environment, a revitalized social compact and demonstrable positive effects on the bottom line in business and government. Women Lead the Way artfully combines advocacy, research, and tactical guidance to help readers wedge the door open and bring more women through and up.

Shows how ripping up the traditional presentation dos and don'ts will make you a better, more relaxed, and more effective presenter.

This enhanced edition of Be the Best Bad Presenter Ever includes 13 exclusive videos that show you how to be a memorable, effective presenter by breaking all the rules. These videos offer a unique learning experience as author Karen Hough walks you through the good, the bad, and the ugly in the world of presentations. Watch as she and her colleagues model how to communicate ideas with care and authenticity, while poking fun at the ridiculous habits that are considered the norm in giving presentations.

* Shows how ripping up the traditional presentation dos and don'ts will make you a better, more relaxed, and more effective presenter

* Takes on over a dozen pieces of "good" presentation advice and reveals why they actually make you worse

* Features stories of people who not only were able to become great presenters by being "bad" but actually came to enjoy it

Gold Honoree, Benjamin Franklin Digital Book Awards

Most of us have received unhelpful advice like this before: cling to the podium, when in doubt use bullet-points, and suppress your nerves before they suppress you. Thankfully, Karen Hough debunks these myths and shows you how to be a presenter who makes a genuine connection with the audience--the type of connection that inspires people to take action

With 25 minutes of lively and engaging video, this enhanced edition copy will change everything you thought you knew about presentations. Join Karen Hough as she teaches you how to be the best bad presenter you can be, so that what you say will actually make a difference.

With 25 minutes of lively and engaging video, this enhanced edition copy will change everything you thought you knew about presentations. Join Karen Hough as she teaches you how to be the best bad presenter you can be, so that what you say will actually make a difference.

If you're like most people, the phrase "You'll be giving a presentation" is on a par with "It looks like that molar will have to come out." Well, let's be honest: you'd prefer the surgery, wouldn't you?

One reason most people regard public speaking as a nightmare is that they have to be "perfect." They drive themselves crazy trying to conform to all sorts of handed-down rules that tie them up in knots and put their audiences to sleep. But Karen Hough knows that by throwing out those rules, relaxing, being yourself, and even making "mistakes," you'll connect with your audience much more effectively than the guy with the impeccable PowerPoint presentation.

Hough has used her unique approach to take the anxiety out of one of the greatest fears in business. It's authenticity and passion that win people over, she says, not polish. It's why people trust vlogs more than commercials and user reviews more than ads. But you can't be authentic if you're following constraining rules that drain the life and personality out of your presentation.

Hough debunks over a dozen myths about presenting to make it more fun and natural for everybody. She explains why mirrors are evil, why you should never end with questions, what the real purpose of any presentation should be, and much more. You'll discover how to embrace and develop your own style and communicate your message in a way that's all "wrong" according to the experts and that your audiences will find compellingly right.

If presentations really didn't matter, we'd all just send memos. There are a million ways to share information out there, but the more we digitize, the more we long for human connection. By following Karen Hough's wise and witty advice, you'll avoid being forced to become one more robot behind a podium and be freed to be a living, breathing, occasionally clumsy real person whose passion is powerful and infectious.

A practical and irreverent guide to taking the sting out of feedback and reclaiming it as a motivating, empowering experience for everyone involved.

Feedback: the mere mention of the word can make our blood pressure rise and our defenses go up. For many of us, it's a dirty word that we associate with bias, politics, resentment, and self-doubt. However, if we take a step back and think about its true intent, we realize that feedback needn't be a bad thing. After all, understanding how others experience us provides valuable opportunities to learn and grow.

Authors M. Tamra Chandler and Laura Grealish explain how feedback got such a bad rap and how to recognize and minimize the negative physical and emotional responses that can erode trust and shut down communication. They offer a new and more ambitious definition of feedback, explore the roles we each play as Seeker, Extender, and Receiver, and introduce the three Fs of making feedback focused, fair, and frequent. You'll also find valuable exercises and strategies, along with real-world examples that illustrate how you can put these ideas into action and join in the movement to fix feedback, once and for all.

When it's done right, feedback has been proven to be the most effective means of improving communication and performance for you and your organization. It's too important to give up, and with Chandler and Grealish's help, you'll be able to use it deftly, equitably, and effectively.

For more than twenty years, major innovations—the kind that transform industries and even societies—seem to have come almost exclusively from startups. Established companies still dominate most markets, but despite massive efforts and millions of dollars, they can't seem to achieve the same kinds of foundational breakthroughs.

The problem, say Tony Davila and Marc Epstein, is that the very processes and structures responsible for established companies' enduring success prevent them from developing breakthroughs. This is the innovation paradox.

Most established companies succeed through incremental innovation—taking a product they're known for and adding a feature here, cutting a cost there. It's a solid recipe for growth, but major breakthroughs are hard to achieve when everything about the way your organization is built and run is designed to reward making what already works work a little better. But incremental innovation can coexist with breakthrough thinking.

Using examples from both scrappy startups and long-term innovators such as IBM, 3M, Apple, and Google, Davila and Epstein explain how corporate culture, leadership style, strategy, incentives, and management systems can be structured to encourage breakthroughs. Then they bring it all together in a new model called the Startup Corporation, which combines the philosophy of the startup with the experience, resources, and network of an established company. Startup corporations encourage visionary thinking at all levels—instead of depending on a single Steve Jobs, they have dozens, even thousands of them.

Breakthrough innovation no longer has to be the nearly exclusive province of the new kids on the block. With Davila and Epstein's assistance, any company can develop paradigm-shifting products and services and maximize the ROI on its R&D.

In this third edition, bestselling authors Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller answer the question most leaders ask at some point in their career: “What do I need to do to be a great leader?” The secret may surprise you.
 
The authors get at the heart of what makes a leader successful in this classic business fable. Newly promoted but struggling young executive Debbie Brewster asks her mentor, “What is the secret of great leaders?” His reply—“great leaders serve”—flummoxes her, but over time he reveals the five fundamental ways that leaders succeed through service. Along the way, Debbie learns:
 
•       Why great leaders seem preoccupied with the future
•       How people on the team ultimately determine your success or failure
•       What three arenas require continuous improvement
•       Why true success in leadership has two essential components
•       How to knowingly strengthen—or unwittingly destroy—leadership credibility
 
This new edition includes a leadership self-assessment so readers can measure to what extent they lead by serving and where they can improve. The authors have also added answers to the most frequently asked questions about how to apply the SERVE model in the real world. As practical as it is uplifting, The Secret shares Blanchard and Miller's wisdom about leadership in a form that anyone can easily understand and implement.

At one time or another, everyone in a position of authority-whether in a multi-national corporation or a local volunteer group-wonders what the key to great leadership is. And who better to answer that question than the team of Ken Blanchard, whose books on leadership have sold over 20 million copies, and Mark Miller, who worked his way up from line worker to vice president of one of the largest fast-food chains in the country. In The Secret, Blanchard and Miller use the uniquely accessible "business fable" format that Blanchard pioneered to get at the heart of what makes a leader truly able to inspire and motivate people. Debbie Brewster, recently promoted and struggling, finds herself about to lose her job due to poor performance. In an attempt to save her career, she enrolls in a new mentoring program offered by her company. Much to her surprise, Debbie finds her mentor is none other than Jeff Brown, the president of the company. Debbie decides that she is going to ask her new mentor the one question she feels she desperately needs answered: "What is the secret of great leaders?" Jeff's immediate answer-that great leaders serve their followers-completely flummoxes Debbie. Over the next 18 months, Jeff helps Debbie discover and explore five fundamental ways that leaders lead through service.

The Secret puts what Blanchard and Miller have learned about leadership in a form that anyone can easily understand, embrace, and pursue. It is a book that will benefit not only those who read it, but also the organizations they work in and the people who look to them for guidance.

The second edition includes revised and updated content including:

•    A new foreword by John Maxwell
•    A new resource section in the back matter summarizing key learning points
•    A greater focus on the book's primary focus: servant leadership
•    A more humanized protagonist
•    Numerous other minor renovations throughout