Business Problem Solving

He knows how to win. More, he knows the many ways - subtle, brutal, often self-inflicted - we lose. As the most trusted mental coach in the world of sports, Trevor Moawad has worked with many of the most dominant athletes and the savviest coaches. From Nick Saban and Kirby Smart to Russell Wilson, they all look to Moawad for help finding or keeping or regaining their competitive edge. (As do countless business leaders and members of special forces.) Now, at last, Moawad shares his unique philosophy with the general public.

Customers can be a mystery. Despite the availability of more data than ever before, everyone, from the CEO to salespeople in the field, struggles to understand who their customers really are, what they want, why they lose them, and how to regain them. To crack the case, start thinking like a market detective. David Scott Duncan shows how in his entertaining story of Tazza, a fictional chain of cafes with declining sales and leaders urgently seeking to understand why.

The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to "think outside the box": to brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but it’s a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), a method that systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. SIT requires thinking "inside the box", working in one’s familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems.

The strength of any organization is determined by the quality of its managers. Want to be invaluable to your company? Just boost your management skills. When you discover what the most successful managers know, you'll unlock the secrets to turning even ordinary employees into extraordinary performers. Filled with proven techniques, this guide tells you how to bring out the best in your people - and hit new heights in your own career.

Difficult people are the worst part of a manager's job. Whether it comes from direct reports or people above, outbursts, irrational demands, griping, and other disruptions need to be dealt with - and it's your responsibility to do it. Leading the Unleadable turns this dreaded chore into a straight forward process that gently, yet effectively, improves behaviors.

In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem, and in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what Taleb calls the "antifragile" is actually beyond the robust, because it benefits from shocks, uncertainty, and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. The antifragile needs disorder in order to survive and flourish. Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner.

Design-oriented firms such as Apple and IDEO have demonstrated how design thinking can directly affect business results. Yet most managers lack a real sense of how to put this new approach to use for issues other than product development and sales growth. Solving Problems with Design Thinking details 10 real-world examples of managers who successfully applied design methods at 3M, Toyota, IBM, Intuit, and SAP; entrepreneurial start-ups such as MeYou Health; and government and social sector organizations.

In The Book of Beautiful Questions, Berger shares illuminating stories and compelling research on the power of inquiry. Drawn from the insights and expertise of psychologists, innovators, effective leaders and some of the world's foremost creative thinkers, he presents the essential questions readers need to make the best choices when it truly counts, with a particular focus in four key areas: decision-making, creativity, leadership and relationships.

Each year about 28 million Americans begin a search for a new job. Millions more live in the age of the permanent job search, their online profiles eternally awaiting a better offer. Job seekers are more mobile and better informed than ever, aspiring to work for employers offering an appealing culture, a robust menu of perks, and opportunities for personal fulfillment and advancement. The result is that millions of applications stream to the handful of companies that regularly top listings of the best companies to work for.

Do you want to avoid being a target of social influence and manipulation? Do you feel guilty for wanting to say no although you have not done anything wrong? Do you often find your decisions are based on assumptions rather than knowing the facts? Are you tired of repeatedly making the same mistakes? The solution is Critical Thinking and Dark Psychology Secrets 101, a valuable skill that you can use at work and in your personal life so you can regain control of your own thoughts, opinions, and behaviors.

The Great Game of Business started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement. The revised and updated edition of The Great Game of Business lays out an entirely different way of running a company.

Hiring and firing are hard to get right - and potentially costly to get wrong. Two of the most crucial tasks you face as a manager, they are vital to both the success of the enterprise...and your own career. No need to worry. This handy guide breaks down the simple but powerful strategies you can use to bring better employees onboard - and weed out the weaker ones.

Do you ever feel like you're too busy, too stressed, or just too distracted to concentrate and get work done? In Unlimited Memory you'll learn how the world's best memory masters get themselves to concentrate at will, anytime they want. When you can easily focus and concentrate on the task at hand and store and recall useful information, you can easily double your productivity and eliminate wasted time, stress, and mistakes at work. In this book you'll find all the tools, strategies, and techniques you need to improve your memory.

A popular process improvement strategy used in many corporations, Lean Six Sigma exemplifies eliminating waste and optimizing flow at an operational level. With the strategies outlined in this book, you'll have your projects, team, and maybe even your organization running at peak efficiency.

Klein proposes a naturalistic approach to decision making, which views people as gaining experience that enables them to use a combination of intuition and analysis to make decisions. To illustrate this approach, Klein tells stories of people - from pilots to chess masters - acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions.

Ben Horowitz offers essential advice on building and running a startup - practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

Overthinking isn't a personality trait. It's the sneakiest form of fear. It steals time, creativity, and goals. It's the most expensive, least productive thing companies invest in without even knowing it. And it's an epidemic. When New York Times best-selling author Jon Acuff changed his life by transforming his overthinking, he wondered if other people might benefit from what he discovered. He commissioned a research study to ask 10,000 people if they struggle with overthinking too, and 99.5 percent said, "Yes!"

How can you come up with great ideas by yourself, or in the context of your team, and quickly determine which are worthy of investment? The simple metric of ideaflow determines success like no other. Ideaflow is a mindset, a way of approaching all your business problems, that multiplies your efforts and unleashes your full potential. Nurture ideaflow and watch your results transform.

The training to become a fighter pilot is among the most competitive and difficult in the world with less than one-in-a-thousand succeeding. Pushing a cutting-edge jet to its limits at over 1,000 mph means that every split-second decision can have catastrophic consequences. This extreme environment has forged a group of warriors who for the last 50 years have been considered at the apex of decision-making theory and practice. In The Art of Clear Thinking Hasard Lee distills what he’s learned during his career flying some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft.

Renowned statistician David Spiegelhalter shows how we can become better at dealing with what we don't know to make smarter choices in a world so full of puzzling variables. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts.