Leadership Problems

A "brilliant, fun, and wise" (Cass R. Sunstein) tour of nine common business decision-making traps - and practical tools for avoiding them - from a professor of strategic thinking.

Jobs to Be Done gives you a clear-cut framework for thinking about your business, outlines a road map for discovering new markets, new products, and new services, and helps you generate creative opportunities to innovate your way to success.

Bob DeKoch and Phil Clampitt draw on their years of innovative practice and research to describe how leading with care enriches people and transforms organizations in our challenging times.

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.

In The Leader's Checklist, 10th Anniversary Edition: 16 Mission-Critical Principles, world-renowned leadership expert and Wharton professor Michael Useem shows you how to lead through any challenge.

Unleashing your humble alpha is the key factor to unlocking profound leadership, unshakable confidence, clarity of purpose, and the quality of life you dream of. It’s a natural power created by you when in alignment that supercharges your ability to take massive charge in business and life so you can stop grappling for power, failing to motivate staff, or struggling in your relationships. It’s the momentum you’ve been searching for.

In Friend and Foe, researchers Galinsky and Schweitzer explain why this debate misses the mark. Rather than being hardwired to compete or cooperate, humans have evolved to do both. It is only by learning how to strike the right balance between these two forces that we can improve our long-term relationships and get more of what we want.

Not all heroes wear capes. You might not think of yourself as a hero, but every time you create value for others, you're benefiting people and making life easier or better for them in some way. The question is, "Who do you want to be a hero to?" By identifying the key audience you want to create value for, you focus yourself on the most crucial people in your life, helping them to grow their capabilities - and growing your own as well.

This is a book about common sense—what it is, how to make it, and how to put it into practice across all contexts of leadership and life. It's also a book of stories from my leadership journey across continents, cultures, and contexts (e.g., combat, business, and government). In this book, you’ll learn what I learned and what many other common-sense leaders across the ages have learned before us.

Are you new to TRIZ and looking for an easy-to-follow guide on how you can use it to enhance your company's creativity, innovation, and problem-solving abilities? Look no further! Written in plain English and packed with tons of accessible and easy-to-follow instruction, TRIZ for Dummies shows you how to use this powerful toolkit to discover all the ways of solving a problem, uncover new concepts, and identify previously unseen routes for new product development.

If you read (or listen to) nothing else on inspiring and executing innovation, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you innovate effectively.

Much of our business thinking is shaped by delusions that distort our understanding of the real reasons for a company's performance. The most pervasive delusion is the Halo Effect. When a company's sales and profits are up, people often conclude that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary leader, capable employees, and a superb corporate culture. When performance falters, they conclude the opposite. In fact, little may have changed.

With Peter Drucker's five essential questions and the help of five of today's thought leaders, this little book will challenge readers to take a close look at the very heart of their organizations and what drives them. A tool for self-assessment and transformation, answering these five questions will fundamentally change the way you work, helping you lead your organization to an exceptional level of performance.

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 ability to make sound and timely decisions is the mark of a good leader. But when leaders with otherwise strong track records suddenly begin making poor decisions - as seen in the recent corporate scandals that rocked the business world - the impact can be widespread. In The Stress Effect, leadership expert Henry L. Thompson argues that stress is often the real culprit behind this leadership failure.

In today's fast-changing, hyper-competitive market, developing your ability to creatively solve problems is mission critical. Creativity fuels growth, serves clients, and contributes to mission-based pursuits. Across every industry, organizations have an insatiable appetite to find creative problem-solvers, who can crack the code to unlock innovative outcomes and drive measurable results.

Using numerous examples, Robinson and Schroeder argue that the employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services are in the best position to see where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact.

Few businesses can afford to shut down for an extended period of time, regardless of the cause. If the past few years have taught us anything, it's that disaster can strike in any shape, at any time. Be prepared with the time-tested strategies in Business Continuity Management: Building an Effective Incident Management Plan and protect your employees while ensuring your company survives the unimaginable.

Whether you're starting a business from scratch or in an existing company facing new threats, this audiobook offers the direction you need. The HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy provides practical tips and advice that break down the process of crafting strategy so you can identify the areas your company should build on and help it thrive long into the future.

How to Stop Yourself Before You Make Another Costly Decision - No one intentionally makes bad decisions. Yet we make them all the time. In fact, some of the worst disasters in recent history - the collapse of major investment banks, the global financial meltdown - were the result of seemingly reasonable decisions made by a lot of smart people. How does this happen? Michael J. Mauboussin argues that the correct process for deciding well - especially when the stakes are high - conflicts with how our minds naturally work.