Japan must make bold moves to reverse its economic stagnation, economist Ryoichi Mikitani and Internet entrepreneur Hiroshi Mikitani write in The Power to Compete. They do not believe that Abenomics, the economics program led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, does enough to solve Japan’s problems. Instead, the nation needs to increase its competitiveness, efficiency, and innovation by lessening government regulation, eliminating layers of bureaucracy, moving away from Japan’s lifetime employment tradition, and cutting taxes and the costs of government. The authors also argue that making English the business language of Japan, liberalizing rules governing foreign workers in Japan, and allowing foreign companies to take over failing Japanese businesses would help boost the nation’s economy.
In Looptail, Bruce Poon Tip tells the story of his top adventure travel agency G Adventures and how its innovative management practices and social enterprise mission have engaged employees and customers to generate incredible growth and address pressing social issues. By following what Poon Tip calls the looptail, business leaders can journey in his steps by finding their true passions and paying their success forward to transcend their industries.
Markets are changing at an increasingly rapid pace. While many leaders focus on marketplace disruption, those who shift their focus toward acceleration are finding tremendous, sustainable success. In Accelerating Performance, Colin Price and Sharon Toye provide a comprehensive framework for organizational leaders who want to accelerate their performances at the strategic, organizational, team, and individual levels.
The sales function is changing. Traditional process-laden sales models are becoming obsolete. Increasingly, sales professionals are required to exercise agility, flexibility, and a deeper understanding of the customer to win sales and grow their businesses. In HBR’s 10 Must Reads On Sales, some of the world’s most astute sales experts offer insights into this new sales environment and how sales professionals can adopt new behaviors and business models to succeed in today’s dynamic marketplace.
Companies waste millions of dollars on behavior-based training programs that fail to deliver long-term results. Individuals embark on self-improvement initiatives, then revert to previous self-destructive patterns. Why? Because there is a missing piece in these efforts—an understanding of the relationship between needs, beliefs, behaviors, and results. In You Are What You Believe, behavioral change expert Hyrum W. Smith presents the Reality Model—a method for exploring the interaction between needs, beliefs, behaviors, and results to drive substantive, long-term, self-driven behavioral change for the better.
In Mobilized, SC Moatti outlines the path of mobile products from their inception in the early 2000s to now. Her journey to understand how companies harnessed success in the mobile age began with a desire to determine whether a business plan formula existed. When she discovered that there was no such thing, she set out to create one that would help businesses succeed in the mobile economy. The Mobile Formula applies three rules of personalization that the mobile era demands—the Body Rule, the Spirit Rule, and the Mind Rule. Gone are the days of an industry mindset where mass production and scale were dominant. To succeed on the mobile stage, companies must consider how to amplify their customers’ humanity by making a commitment to personalization. Companies that do not adopt this approach will find that access to customers and their data will become increasingly harder to harness, and they will have to rely on old methods for customer reach and development.
Many organizations today struggle with performance management. Both employees and managers dread the routine of annual reviews. At the same time, accountability is recognized as important and necessary. In How Performance Management Is Killing Performance—and What to Do About It, M. Tamra Chandler discusses why long-used performance management systems do not work well. Based on her experience with numerous organizations, Chandler offers a comprehensive framework that organizations can use to rethink, redesign, and reboot their performance management systems. The goal is to generate better outcomes, as well as more positive experiences for employees at all levels of an organization.
