Companies fail to innovate when they put more energy and resources into generating “big ideas” than they do implementing them. In The Other Side of Innovation, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble demonstrate how the execution of an innovation initiative is just as important to the process as generating the idea itself. Drawn from their ten years of innovation research on the world’s most respected companies, the authors offer innovation leaders the framework to build teams and plans capable of facilitating the successful execution of any innovation initiative.
The HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done brings together more than two dozen articles on personal productivity, including many excerpts from the pages of the Harvard Business Review. The Harvard Business School Publishing collection provides advice on prioritizing work, avoiding distractions and procrastination, managing mental and emotional energy, and developing good work habits. It teaches how to delegate effectively and secure a pay raise by aligning work with corporate objectives. Readers can choose from a number of simple tools, such as to-do lists and e-mail automation, to reduce stress.
The path to success in the corporate world looks very different than in the past. Organizational structures have changed; they have become flatter, resulting in fewer management positions. Employees’ views about work-life balance have also changed, and people need varying degrees of job flexibility at different times of their lives. One potential solution to these challenges is for organizations to shift from a rigid corporate ladder for advancement to a corporate lattice where employees can move laterally and up and down over time. In Mass Career Customization, Cathleen Benko and Anne Weisberg describe why this model is better than traditional approaches, like flexible working arrangements, and discuss what steps companies can take to adopt the Mass Career Customization (MCC) framework.
The main challenge of leadership is that it is poorly understood, and the public associates leadership with scandal and distrust. Also, people in leadership roles often do not understand how to lead. In The Leadership Contract, Vince Molinaro presents a fresh look at leadership, and offers a tangible, concise, and easy-to-understand document that outlines what leadership is: making tough decisions, obligation, hard work, and community. Molinaro explores the risks and rewards of leadership in the context of these concepts. He captures key lessons gleaned from his experiences as a consultant for leaders in a variety of organizations, and reframes leadership as an opportunity to build successful and sustainable organizations.
The Profitable Consultant tells beginning management consultants how and why to get started. Jay Niblick advocates and explains processes called “education-based marketing” and “the diagnostic sales process.” Consultants learn how to generate sales without selling, except for closing. These strategies are unconventional, but becoming widely popular. Consultants can employ many described strategies that will make business come to them. The Profitable Consultant also makes detailed cases against undercharging and accepting undesirable clients and for other practices that increase profitability, how to price consulting, and how to develop materials that provide residual income.
Every day, people face decisions small and large that must be made without a clear picture of the risks involved. In Risk Intelligence, Dylan Evans provides the tools and techniques to make such decisions easier and more fruitful. It turns out that different people have different levels of risk intelligence (RQ), which explains why some people consistently make wise decisions while others always make bad choices. Some aspects of RQ might be innate, but Evans’s research into individuals and groups who are especially good at assessing risks shows that anyone can boost his or her RQ. All it takes is a commitment to assign numbers to possible outcomes and carry out some simple calculations. Evans also explains the road blocks that society and the brain put in the way of making such a commitment and provides ways to overcome them.
Simply Managing is a shortened and updated version of Henry Mintzberg’s 2009 book Managing, and is based on his observations of 29 managers working in different fields. The book explains what management is and is not; what managers do and do not do; and the craft, science, and art of management. Mintzberg suggests that managers are constantly working amid chaos and that many managers are flawed, but that they can often correct their own shortcomings by focusing on what they do best. Moreover, Mintzberg suggests that instead of focusing on the stories of heroic managers who save their companies, managers ought to strive for the more natural goals of leading people, solving problems, and implementing plans for the future.
