New Release Tuesdays is a new weekly feature here at Actionable Books, where you can keep track of the business books being published every week!
You Need a Leade
r–Now What?: How to Choose the Best Person for Your Organization
by James M. Citrin and Julie Daum
How often have you seen someone with great credentials and terrific buzz take an important job, but before long people are wondering “what exactly were we thinking?”
Getting the best person is less about finding an individual superstar and more about deeply understanding what your organization needs, the kind of person who will fit into your culture and bring the right experience and skills to get the job done.
Based on decades of experience at Spencer Stuart, the gold standard in executive search, Jim Citrin and Julie Daum cut through conventional wisdom and “rules of thumb,” whether the job that needs filling is that of CEO or a key leader in marketing, technology, finance, or human resources.
Tough Cookies: Leadership Lessons from 100 Years of the Girl Scouts
by Kathy Cloninger
Millions of American businesswomen, thought leaders, and politicians received their first lessons in salesmanship, money management, marketing, teamwork, and fulfillment in the Girl Scouts. The Girls Scouts has shaped the lives of more than 50 million alumnae alive today. Eighty percent of American female senior business executives and business owners are former Girl Scouts. In March 2012, the Girl Scouts will celebrate their 100th anniversary. Tough Cookies captures the essence of this iconic organization and the principles that have allowed them to build and sustain a 100-year-old organization.
The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees
by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald
As a leader, it’s your job to extract maximum talent, energy, knowledge, and innovation from your customers and employees. But how?
In The Social Organization, two of Gartner’s lead analysts strongly advocate exploiting social technology. The authors share insights from their study of successes and failures at more than four hundred organizations that have used social technologies to foster—and capitalize on—customers’ and employees’ collective efforts.
But the new social technology landscape isn’t about the technology. It’s about building communities, fostering new ways of collaborating, and guiding these efforts to achieve a purpose.
The Rise of Fashion and Lessons Learned at Bergdorf Goodman
by Ira Neimark
From lavish events attended by high-profile personalities such as Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher, Jacqueline Onassis, and Yves Saint Laurent to the latest creative ventures of Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Michael Kors and Donald Trump, Ira Neimark, the legendary leader of fashion luxury retail, recounts how he and his talented fashion and merchandising team brought Bergdorf Goodman to its leadership position an approach, he shows, that continues to inform the most successful designers and business leaders today. While his personal anecdotes focus on how and why Bergdorf helped build the fashion industry during one of the most exciting periods in its history the late sixties through the early nineties the author also shares his views on how contemporary retailers have increased profits by skimping on service, resulting in the loss of customer loyalty. The Rise of Fashion and Lessons Learned at Bergdorf Goodman is a valuable resource for anyone who aspires to succeed in the business of luxury fashion.
Retail Analytics: The Secret Weapon
by Emmett Cox
Retailers collect a huge amount of data, but don’t know what to do with it. Retail Analyticsnot only provides a broad understanding of retail, but also shows how to put accumulated data to optimal use. Each chapter covers a different focus of the retail environment, from retail basics and organization structures to common retail database designs. Packed with case studies and examples, this book insightfully reveals how you can begin using your business data as a strategic advantage.- Helps retailers and analysts to use analytics to sell more merchandise
– Provides fact-based analytic strategies that can be replicated with the same success the author achieved on a global level
– Reveals how retailers can begin using their data as a strategic advantage
– Includes examples from many retail departments illustrating successful use of data and analyticsAnalytics is the wave of the future. Put your data to strategic use with the proven guidance found in Retail Analytics.
RESPECT: Delivering Results by Giving Employees What They Really Want
by Jack Wiley and Brenda Kowske
Is it possible that the way to win in business is to give employees exactly what they want? Yes. As RESPECTreveals, managers and organizations who give their employees what they want outperform those who don’t. This is no hunch – it’s a fact based on more than 25 years of global research. Drs. Jack Wiley and Brenda Kowske have amassed a research database unlike any other, and it all started with this simple question: “What is the most important thing you want from the organization for which you work?”
Organizations that apply this research have more engaged employees, more satisfied customers, and better shareholder returns. It all boils down to seven key elements, summarized by the acronym RESPECT. These are the seven things that employees really want: Recognition, Exciting Work, Security, Pay, Education, Conditions and Truth.
This book taps the authors’ “in the trenches” consulting experience and offers real solutions on each element of RESPECT. Written for all types of leaders—from supervisors to the c-suite—readers can pick and choose the proven solutions that are relevant to their own organizations.
By weaving stories and narrative, the authors make complex information easy to understand and fun to read. In addition, RESPECT meets the demands of the global economy, offering an international perspective with corresponding cultural nuances that are critical to helping leaders manage the needs of their workforces.
The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else
by George Anders
Anyone who recruits talent faces the same basic challenge, whether we work for a big company, a new start-up, a Hollywood studio, a hospital, or the Green Berets. We all wonder how to tell the really outstanding prospects from the ones who look great on paper but then fail on the job. Or, equally important, how to spot the ones who don’t look so good on paper but might still deliver extraordinary performance.
Over the past few decades, technology has made recruiting in all fields vastly more sophisticated. Gut instincts have yielded to benchmarks. If we want elaborate dossiers on candidates, we can gather facts (and video) by the gigabyte. And yet the results are just as spotty as they were in the age of the rotary phone.
George Anders sought out the world’s savviest talent judges to see what they do differently from the rest of us. He reveals how the U.S. Army finds soldiers with the character to be in Special Forces without asking them to fire a single bullet. He takes us to an elite basketball tournament in South Carolina, where the best scouts watch the game in a radically different way from the casual fan. He talks to researchers who are reinventing the process of hiring Fortune 500 CEOs.
The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune with Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive
by Terri L. Griffith
Too often discussions of management practice focus exclusively on managing people and organizational issues. Rarely, however, do they incorporate a discussion about technology or address all three dimensions in a balanced way. When they do, the result is game changing. In our hypercompetitive environment, those managers who are outstanding at being plugged into their people, technology, and organizational processes simultaneously excel at coming up with effective business solutions.
The Plugged-In Manager makes the case that being plugged-in—the ability to see choices across each of an organization’s dimensions of people, technology, and organizational processes and then to mix them together into new and powerful organizational strategies, structures, and practices—may be the most important capability a manager can develop to succeed in the 21st century. Step by step Griffith shows you how to acquire this ability.
– Shows what it takes for business managers to succeed as technology and organizations become more and more complex
– Profiles exceptional leaders and organizations who are plugged-in, such as Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com
– Offers a fresh look at management issues
Filled with compelling case studies and drawing on first-hand interviews, The Plugged-In Manager highlights this often neglected managerial capability and the costs of only focusing on one dimension rather than all three.
One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership
by Mike Figliuolo
Based on leadership expert Mike Figliuolo’s popular “Leadership Maxims” training course, One Piece of Paper teaches decisive, effective leadership by taking a holistic approach to defining one’s personal leadership philosophy. Through a series of simple questions, readers will create a living document that communicates their values, passions, goals and standards to others, maximizing their leadership potential.
– Outlines a clear approach for identifying a concise and meaningful set of personal leadership maxims by which leaders can live their lives
– Explains and applies four basic aspects of leadership: leading yourself, leading the thinking, leading your people, and leading a balanced life
– Generates a foundational document that serves as a touchstone for leaders and their teams
Simple, applicable, and without pretense, One Piece of Paper provides a model for real leadership in the real world.
For Immediate Release: Shape Minds, Build Brands, and Deliver Results with Game-Changing Public Relations
by Ronn Torossian
It is essential that businesses know how to communicate quickly, often preemptively, and effectively to survive—and at a cost that is far lower than comparable marketing and ad campaigns. The first book by the owner of a top 50 PR agency, For Immediate Release, Ronn Torossian reveals how public relations can do just that—while also defining brands; helping companies and individuals court the press or avoid it; growing business without alienating loyal customers; resolving crises quickly; and improving first page results on the most powerful search engine in the world (Google).
For Immediate Release will show you how to:
Frame the debate and control the conversation Use new and old media in tandem to find your audiences and create highly personal, relevant impressions tailored for them Promote the interests of your brand or business; deter or potentially stop what is not in your interest Build on great press, and avoid or minimize bad press Ensure the first thing people see about your business or brand during an Internet search is exactly what you want them to see Handle a crisis in the most effective and efficient manner See the positive difference effective PR makes through compelling case studies—Louis Vuitton, Fubu, BP, Toyota, Philip Stein, Zappos, and interviews with experts including Dr. Keith Ablow, political strategists Frank Luntz, Roger Stone and Hank Sheinkopf, and many others—and your own business.
