Winner Business: General The 2020 Best Book Awards
Modern life is complicated, much more so than it used to be. Acclaimed author and social entrepreneur, Julia Hobsbawm, shows you a simpler way.
The Simplicity Principle challenges the assumption that all things that are complex have to stay that way. It helps keep things as lean, simple and focused as possible.
Smartphone users experience concentration interruptions every 12 minutes of the day, there are over 250 billion emails sent every 24 hours and by 2021 the internet will have created more than 3.3 zettabytes of data. Yet complexity doesn't have to dominate, complicate or clutter our lives. Based on a hexagonal model, this book shows you that it's easy to streamline and simplify both your professional and personal lives with lessons based on the natural world.
For anyone who feels that life can be too much, The Simplicity Principle will help you break free of the endless choices and complexities that we face in the world today. It's time to gain control of your focus and productivity, and most importantly, KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Winner Business: Communications/Public Relations The 2020 Best Book Awards
Saying sorry is in crisis. On one hand there are anxious PR aficionados and social media teams dishing out apologies with alarming frequency. On the other there are people and organizations who have done truly terrible things issuing much-delayed statements of mild regret.
We have become addicted to apologies but immune from saying sorry.
In January 2018 there were 35 public apologies from high-profile organizations and individuals. That's more than one per day. Between them, in 2017, the likes of Facebook, Mercedes Benz and United Airlines issued over 2,000 words of apologies for their transgressions. Alarmingly, the word 'sorry' didn't appear once.
This perfectly timed book examines the psychology, motivations and even the economic rationale of giving an apology in the age of outrage culture and on-demand contrition. It reveals the tricks and techniques we all use to evade, reframe and divert from what we did and demonstrates how professionals do it best. Providing lessons for businesses and organizations, you'll find out how to give meaningful apologies and know when to say sorry, or not say it at all.
The Apology Impulse is the perfect playbook for anyone - from social media executive through to online influencers and CEOs - who apologise way too much and say sorry far too infrequently.
Winner Business: Motivational The 2020 Best Book Awards
What if there was a template you could follow to map your own career success in these disruptive times?
The world is filled with smart, talented, and hardworking people whose careers get stuck. Are you feeling like one of them?
Despite what most career self-help books would tell you, getting unstuck is about more than motivation. For the past decade, Silicon Valley executive and leadership coach Abhijeet Khadilkar has been helping some of the most driven, entrepreneurial and creative people in the world to unlock their potential and accelerate their careers. In this book, he reveals what it really takes to find your own North Star for personal growth.
Unlock! is filled with templates, guides and a framework for the seven crucial steps anyone can use to unlock their potential as a leader, even during a recession (or a global pandemic). From a guide to learning how to take advantage of market trends to advice on how to build on your existing strengths, the insights in this book will help you start turning the flywheel of career growth to create value for your organization, community, AND yourself.
Communication should be clear, concise, and should get to the point quickly. The problem is we don’t always know how to do this. What does it mean to be concise? How can a complex topic be summarized in just a few lines?
This award-winning book is a step-by-step guide for clear, concise communication in everyday work conversations. Being concise is not about trying to condense all the information into sixty seconds. It is about having clear intent, talking about one topic at a time, and focusing on solutions instead of dwelling on problems.
Throughout this book you’ll discover how to:
Have shorter, better work conversations and meetings
Get to the point faster without rambling or going off on tangents
Lead your audience toward the solution you need
Apply one technique to almost every discussion, email, presentation and interview with great results
An expert guide for senior executives who want to quickly understand what really matters in digital business and what it takes to win.
Today’s technology demands lightning-fast changes. But speed without purpose is not progress. In Fast Times, McKinsey leaders cut through the hype to provide a readable inside look into what digital winners do best: set direction, learn, and adapt faster than anyone else.
For executives frustrated with their pace of change, Fast Times digs into the root questions that shine a light on the issues that keep companies like yours from setting direction, learning, and adapting: Do you really know how your company is performing? How do you make it safe for people to experiment so you can build a proactive culture? How do you balance fast execution with deliberate decision-making? Are your training programs up to the challenge of reskilling the talent you need tomorrow? Do your IT people have the skills needed to build the tech that’s needed and incorporate cybersecurity?
The experts at McKinsey & Company draw from decades of experience and detailed analysis to highlight what matters most in order to become a digital winner. With illuminating sidebars and real-life scenarios, Fast Times is an invaluable shortcut to setting direction, learning, and adapting to win.
The future of work is already here, and what this future looks like must be a pressing concern for the current generation of leaders in both the private and public sectors. In the next ten to fifteen years, rapid change in a post-pandemic world and emerging technology will revolutionize nearly every job, eliminate some, and create new forms of work that we have yet to imagine. How can we survive and thrive in the face of such drastic change?
Deanna Mulligan offers a practical, broad-minded look at the effects of workplace evolution and automation and why the private sector needs to lead the charge in shaping a values-based response. With a focus on the power of education, Mulligan proposes that the solutions to workforce upheaval lie in reskilling and retraining for individuals and companies adapting to rapid change. By creating lifelong learning opportunities that break down boundaries between the classroom and the workplace, businesses can foster personal and career well-being and growth for their employees. Drawing on her own experiences, historical examples, and reports from the frontiers where these issues are unfolding, Mulligan details how business leaders can prepare for and respond to technological disruption. Providing a framework for concrete and meaningful action, Hire Purpose is an essential read about the transformations that will shape the next decade and beyond.
In this new, extensively updated second edition, authors Allyson Stewart-Allen and Lanie Denslow accurately capture the current US business environment and its changes since their best-selling 1st edition published in 2002. You’ll find even more insights into the American business mindset, diversity and regions building on the acclaimed first edition so you can confidently negotiate, communicate and influence in the world’s largest, most profitable and complex marketplace.
Alongside their examination of the impact of 5 generations in today’s US workforce, the authors explore the complex issues faced by American bosses including:
levels of transparency expected of organizations in how they do business, ranging from ethics of their supply chain, to the treatment of employees via social media, equal pay expectations or the personal views of their executives on environmental, social, governance or political events
ever declining workforce loyalty resulting from perceived job insecurity
younger employees’ quest for visibility, interesting projects and rapid promotion
consumer and customer expectations as standard for extensive personalization and customization of products and services
Finalist Business: Communications/Public Relations The 2020 Best Book Awards
Powerful writing changes lives!
You may be the best candidate -- hands down -- but if the competition is better at telling a story, you lose.Powerful writing correlates directly to success, personal and professional.
With this book you will learn to:
Write to win. Make each word count and every second of the reader's time play to your advantage
Know your audience and frame the message. Critical to messaging
Banish bureaucratic blather. Infuse products with clarity, precision, and focus
Generate a resume that stands out ... for the right reasons
Retain and develop talented people. Compose powerful, effective performance appraisals to advance deserving individuals
Finalist Business: General The 2020 Best Book Awards
Productivity Meets Purpose—Discover a Powerful Nine-Step Method to Start Finishing the Work That Matters Most
How much of your time and attention lately has been focused on things that truly matter to you?
Most people's honest answer is: not enough.
Everyone is buried by busywork, responsibility, distraction, and fatigue.
The joy-producing, difference-making ideas are waiting for when the time is right, when the current project is over, when they have a little more money, when the kids are grown, or when they get a more understanding boss. They are waiting for someday.
The trouble is someday never comes on its own.
Start Finishing presents a nine-step method for converting an idea into a project by addressing the challenges you'll face and getting the project on a reality-based schedule.
Finalist Business: General The 2020 Best Book Awards
Laura Huang, a preeminent Harvard Business School professor, shows that success is about gaining an edge: that elusive quality that gives you an upper hand and attracts attention and support. Some people seem to naturally have it. Now, Huang teaches the rest of us how to create our own from the challenges and biases we think hold us back, and turning them to work in our favor.
How do you find a competitive edge when the obstacles feel insurmountable? How do you get people to take you seriously when they're predisposed not to, and perhaps have already written you off?
Laura Huang has come up against that problem many times--and so has anyone who's ever felt out of place or underestimated. Many of us sit back quietly, hoping that our hard work and effort will speak for itself. Or we try to force ourselves into the mold of who we think is "successful," stifling the creativity and charm that makes us unique and memorable.
Finalist Business: General The 2020 Best Book Awards
"Complacency is the enemy. Be as vigilant with your customers as you would your dearest friend."
The Journey to WOW delivers deep and unique insights into creating fierce customer loyalty, and transforming an organization's culture into one obsessed with customer experience. It will resonate with anyone looking to improve their company's customer experience, and anyone who deals with customers -- from the newbie part-time employee to the corporate CEO.
The book examines the kinds of experiences we've all had as customers -- things that so many organizations seem blind to. Situations like the inability to actually talk with a human, impenetrable phone systems, frustrating processes and uncaring people. It drives home the reality that these flaws exist in every company, and that they are silent killers of sales and customer loyalty.
Finalist Business: General The 2020 Best Book Awards
"A concise guide to early-stage innovation which will be valuable to everyone making the transition from individual scientist or engineer to a role in achieving innovation by an organization."
This transition is often harder than is recognized. The target audience has typically reached the top of an educational ladder, and moves, with a first job, to an organization with different norms, objectives and understanding of innovation. Relevant organizations are wide-ranging, and include companies, governments (local or national), government agencies and educational institutions. The primary purpose of this book is to provide a useful resource for those making the above transition. It may also be of value to people interacting with innovative scientists and technologists from other perspectives, for example from those in funding, commercial or managerial roles.
The book has three areas of focus. Firstly, on early-stage innovation, covering the journey from idea to proof-of-concept. Here the factors involved are common across many different areas. Secondly, on the needs of scientists and technologists, and thirdly on innovation by organizations.
The contents cover key ideas in innovation, processes for stimulating and managing early-stage innovation, open innovation, and behaviors and communications which support innovation. Conceptual frameworks are described, as well as practical examples. A set of case studies is included, and extensive references are provided. A concluding chapter discusses developments in the management of innovation.
Finalist Business: General The 2020 Best Book Awards
Our system of wealth creation is at a crossroads. It has contributed to economic and social progress. Yet it has also fuelled many problems from climate impacts, and air pollution, to digital manipulation and the invasion of privacy. In many parts of the world, there are demands for government action to restrain greed, irresponsibility and short-termism.
But what about positive solutions? How do we define the contributions that we all want business and investment to make? That is the challenge to which Ong Boon Hwee and Mark Goyder respond. They argue that if our societies are to be set on a forward-looking virtuous cycle and a less damaging course, we will need every ounce of human ingenuity — the inventiveness of entrepreneurs, the dynamism of companies and the adaptability of markets. We need a sense of ownership and purpose, anchored on strong values. We need to be better at valuing the future and rewarding those whose work will benefit future generations. We need a better form of capitalism, one which, while promoting competition, is there to serve and not dominate; to respect human beings and not exploit them; to nurture our surrounding environment, and not destroy it.
Finalist Business: General The 2020 Best Book Awards
In this visual guide to thriving in the midst of chaos, scientist, entrepreneur and “Reinvention Guru” Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva brings together the insights from a community of 3000+ “reinventors” to offer a bold new method for business resilience during disruptive times.
Running a successful business amidst constant change is overwhelming. Just as we handle onedisruption, another crisis looms on the horizon. How do you survive and even thrive?
4-time TEDx speaker Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva and her global Chief Reinvention Officer community understand the struggle and helped countless companies and leaders deal with change by reinventing their products, processes, and leadership practices. Now she brings to you a powerful blend of cross-disciplinary research and battle-tested tools to help you diagnose, design, and implement a reinvention system that allows your company to stop combatting or resisting change – and instead helps you turn every disruption into your greatest opportunity.
