Business Problem Solving

How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies.

This groundbreaking audiobook includes the same material used by leaders and employees of Koch companies to apply Marker-Based Management (MBM) to get results. Koch outlines this unique management methodology, developed and implemented by Koch Industries, which has experienced 2,000-fold growth since 1967. MBM is a scientific approach to management that integrates theory and practice while providing a framework for dealing with the ongoing challenges of growth and change.

In The Upside of Uncertainty, INSEAD professor Nathan Furr and entrepreneur Susannah Harmon Furr provide a sweeping guide to embracing uncertainty and transforming it into a force for good. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, along with pioneering research in psychology, innovation, and behavioral economics, Nathan and Susannah provide dozens of tools—including mental models, techniques, and reflections—for seeing the upside of uncertainty, developing a vision for what to do next, and opening ourselves up to new possibilities.

Rapidly grow your business while staying sane, focused, and fulfilled.

In Critical Thinking: Think Smarter, you’ll discover proven techniques and strategies to sharpen your analytical thinking, strengthen your problem-solving skills, identify logical fallacies, and improve communication.

In Joel's Schwartzberg's 10-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across - one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail - is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.

We are oddly paradoxical creatures who long to be happy while creating our own suffering. We replay past anguish, anticipate future distress, and stew in self-righteous anger. In Hard to Be Human, Ted Cadsby focuses on five cognitive design flaws that foster underthinking and overreacting, and reveals powerful strategies to overcome them.

Here at last is a clear, easy-to-follow interpretation of the classic Chinese text The Art of War by Sun Tzu which incorporates modern business lessons to make this relevant and accessible to today's executive facing strategic and competitive challenges. For years, business schools and professional consultants have turned to Sun Tzu's 2,500-year-old Chinese text for its invaluable commentary on such topics as leadership, strategy, organization, competition and cooperation.

In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help listeners tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide listeners through each step in the process.

Jonathan Smart, business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach, reveals the patterns and antipatterns that will help organizations from every industry deliver better value sooner, safer, and happier through high levels of engagement, inclusion, and empowerment. Through his decades of experience in the technology world, Smart provides business leaders with a blueprint for creating a world-class organization of the future.

Have you or your colleagues ever worked hard on something, only to find out you were focusing on the wrong problem entirely? Most people have. In a survey, 85 percent of companies said they often struggle to solve the right problems. The consequences are severe: Leaders fight the wrong strategic battles. Teams spend their energy on low-impact work. Startups build products that nobody wants. Organizations implement “solutions” that somehow make things worse, not better. Everywhere you look, the waste is staggering.

Move is your guide to mobilizing your whole organization to take your business forward. Whatever your needed transformation may be - a new initiative, a new market, a new product, your fresh strategy is up against a powerful foe - an organization's tendency to stay very busy and completely engaged what it's already doing. Author Patty Azzarello draws on over 25 years of international business management experience to identify the chronic challenges that keep organizations from decisively executing strategy, and to give you a practical game plan for breaking through.

We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are also unpredictable, spending large stretches of time idling or distracting themselves. This is a book about how to optimize these beautiful yet fitful instruments so that they can more regularly and generously produce the sort of insights and ideas we need to fulfill our potential and achieve the contentment we deserve.

This audiobook comes from the dynamic team of award-winning educator Carl Spetzler and his colleagues, Hannah Winter and Jennifer Meyer. This trio has helped shape the decision quality profession over the years - in the field and in the classroom. They've also worked with leaders around the world, across industries, to elevate the quality of their decisions. That same expertise is now available to you.

Slowing down is not a luxury, it is a necessity. A frenetic brain simply doesn't perform at optimal levels. By maintaining a snail's pace, you actually achieve better results - at rocket speed - because you're firing on all cylinders. You'll think of new things, approach old problems from new perspectives, and breathe a breath of fresh air into everything you do. This book shows you how to achieve this state of steady, sustainable fire and how to get further by crawling than you ever did while attempting to fly.

For more than 40 years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside.

Radical uncertainty changes the way we should think about decision-making. For over half a century economics has assumed that people behave rationally by optimizing among well-defined choices. Behavioral economics questioned how far people are rational, pointing to the cognitive biases that seem to describe actual behavior.

Authority can be visually compelling, yet it carries immense responsibility. Gavin Appleby's book, The Manager's Problem Solving Handbook for Almost Every Managerial Work Matter, directs listeners through the complications of leadership. It is an indispensable guide for converting challenges into possibilities for evolution and effective management, whether you're a seasoned executive or new to leadership.

Think differently, be more creative, and catch ideas in the air to solve problems quickly and skyrocket your productivity. People only see what is just visible. Thinking out of the box will empower you see the alternatives that others simply miss out on. Learn how to think out of the box, be known as “idea person”, and solve problems smarter, faster, and better.

In this audiobook, the cloistered world of the boardroom is demystified, brought into the sunlight and explained, with respect and compassion. Read by the author, this audiobook provides information, history, and context essential to anyone seeking to understand how corporations and their stewards - the board of directors - can and should function.