Performance Management Leadership

HBR's 10 Must Reads are definitive collections of classic ideas, practical advice, and essential thinking from the pages of Harvard Business Review. Exploring topics like disruptive innovation, emotional intelligence, and new technology in our ever-evolving world, these books empower any leader to make bold decisions and inspire others.

It's not enough to build a company full of people with leadership skills. The Performance Pipeline digs deep into the real work of executing business results at each leadership layer. It is filled with lessons and examples from the author's 40 years of experience, and explains how to set performance standards, make sure the right work is being done, and remove performance barriers.

It has never been harder to find good employees. Government handouts and programs, publicly traded behemoths with an insatiable appetite for front-line staff, and a burgeoning gig-economy has made hiring extremely hard for small business owners. The golden question is how do we attract good talent and then retain them long-term? How do I determine rates of compensation for my highest performers that are always demanding raises? How do I scale my business without having to constantly micro-manage my Team when they are in the field working? The answer is Pay-For-Performance (P4P).

If you listen to nothing else on performing at your highest level, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you focus on what matters, manage your energy and attention, and achieve remarkable results. This book will inspire you to improve on your weaknesses, not just your strengths; rise above the pack; take care of your physical health for sustained mental performance; understand what motivates you; use short-term goals to achieve long-term aspirations; and inspire others.

How well does your organization respond to changing market conditions, customer needs, and emerging technologies when building software-based products? This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns to help you move fast at scale - and demonstrates why and how to apply these methodologies throughout your organization. Through case studies, you'll learn how successful enterprises have rethought everything from governance and financial management to systems architecture and organizational culture in the pursuit of radically improved performance.

Formerly a successful salesman, Jake McKay is now a failing manager. Join him as he races to learn the fundamentals of team and personal effectiveness from his coach before he loses his job—and the woman he loves.

There's a bewildering array of management tools out there. And they all promise to help you excel at the toughest parts of your job: defining your organization's strategic direction, managing customers and costs, and boosting workforce performance. But just 30 percent of these tools deliver as intended. Why? As Jeremy Hope and Steve Player reveal in Beyond Performance Management, while many tools are sound in theory, they're misused by most organizations. For example, executives buy and implement a tool without first asking, "What problem are we trying to solve?"

Lance Witt, founder of Replenish ministries and a former executive and teaching pastor at Saddleback Church, knows what it takes to keep teams functioning at the highest level of impact. He shows leaders how to build next-level teams that are spiritually, emotionally, and relationally healthy, productive, and high-performing.

Researchers now have a clear understanding of the key drivers that make meetings successful. In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven G. Rogelberg, researcher and consultant to some of the world's most successful companies, draws from extensive research, analytics and data mining, and survey interviews with over 5,000 employees across a range of industries to share the proven practices and techniques that help managers and employees enhance the quality of their meetings.

George Kohlrieser - an international leadership professor, consultant, and veteran hostage negotiator - explains that it is only by openly facing conflict that we can truly progress through the most difficult business challenges. In this provocative book, he reveals how the proven techniques and psychological insights used in hostage negotiation can be applied successfully to any personal or business relationship.

How can your organization increase its agility, alignment, and accountability to improve performance? Developing performance management capabilities means changing the way people are empowered to make better decisions. It requires a transition from a restrictive, command-and-control approach to a management style that includes more participants in the performance-management process.

In 12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence, bestselling author and motivational expert Brian Tracy teams up with global learning expert Dr. Peter Chee to reveal simple, straightforward principles any business leader can use to make lasting positive changes in his or her organization.

The World Health Organization estimates that American businesses lose more than $300 billion a year due to stress experienced by employees, and recent research by Harvard Medical School found that more than 95 percent of leaders felt at least somewhat burnt-out. For individuals and organizations who want to thrive in today's high-pressure, 24-7 business environment, working even longer is not the solution. To maximize your performance and well-being over the long-term, you need to work stronger.

Gapology is the term Mark Thienes and Brian Brockhoff coined to describe what winning leaders do to identify and close performance gaps in their teams. Gapology is their process. For more than a decade, they analyzed the results, leadership behaviors and tactics of winning leaders as compared to those of leaders who were not winning. They wanted to understand how winning leaders win and if winning could be replicated. They were deeply curious about whether winning can be taught to those not winning or if winning leaders are simply born with the skills to win.

This book is designed to help you rise to the challenge and become the game changer your organization needs. Candid insights from dozens of coaches, managers, CEOs, journalists, entrepreneurs, and other elite performers reveal the qualities that make some people stand out, and the underlying theme is mindset. While talent is a great head start, it is merely potential. Undeveloped and erratically-wielded talent holds little value for an organization.

Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with thousands of leaders, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that “tolerance for ambiguity” has become a clichéd job requirement. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Peak Performance Culture: The Five Metrics of Operational Excellence is a step-by-step roadmap to achieving optimal organizational development in your company or association. This practical guide helps you accurately evaluate the current state of your company and create a strategy that maximizes its future success. Author Dave Mitchell, building upon concepts introduced in his books The Power of Understanding People and The Power of Understanding, provides new applications, effective real-world tactics, powerful organizational assessment tools, and much more.

This new edition of this best-selling guide offers an integrated approach to process improvement that delivers quick and substantial results in quality and productivity in diverse settings. The authors explore their Model for Improvement that worked with international improvement efforts at multinational companies as well as in different industries such as healthcare and public agencies. This edition includes new information that shows how to accelerate improvement by spreading changes across multiple sites.

Business owners and managers are under increasing pressure to perform. Never has there been a better time to practice good people motivation and management techniques. Lack of employment security and flexible working contracts have reduced the level of loyalty, so more emphasis needs to be placed on building positive relationships with people. Traditional carrot-and-stick management techniques no longer work.

This authoritative volume on human resource management is highly recommended listening for the small business owners and HR professionals. Written by an acknowledged expert in all areas of business management, Managing Employee Performance is a well-organized guide to understanding this vitally important area of your business.