Download or read book Companies We Keep written by John Abrams and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2008-11-08 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part memoir and part examination of a new business model, the 2005 release of The Company We Keep marked the debut of an important new voice in the literature of American business. Now, in Companies We Keep, the revised and expanded edition of his 2005 work, John Abrams further develops his idea that companies flourish when they become centers of interdependence, or “communities of enterprise.” Thoroughly revised with an expanded focus on employee ownership and workplace democracy, Companies We Keep celebrates the idea that when employees share in the rewards as well as the responsibility for the decisions they make, better decisions result. This is an especially timely topic. Most of the baby boomer generation—the owners of millions of American businesses— will retire within the next two decades. In 2001, 50,000 businesses changed hands. In 2005, that number rose to 350,000. Projections call for 750,000 ownership transitions in 2009. Employee ownership—in both the philosophical and the practical sense—is gathering steam as businesses change hands, and Abrams examines some of the many ways this is done. Companies We Keep is structured around eight principles—from “Sharing Ownership” and “Cultivating Workplace Democracy” to “Thinking Like Cathedral Builders” and “Committing to the Business of Place”—that Abrams has discovered in the 32 years since he cofounded South Mountain Company on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Together, these principles reveal communities of enterprise as a potent force of change that can—and will— improve the way Americans do business.
Download or read book The Companies We Keep written by Bob Sigall and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book ever to profile and provide interesting stories on over 450 well-known Hawaii companies. It includes a timeline and 20 games and quizzes.
Download or read book The Company We Keep written by John Abrams and published by Chelsea Green Publishing Company. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rejecting the myth that short-term profits are the only indicator of business health and wealth, John Abrams shows how building a company to serve the needs of people (employees and owners), community, and the environment can be a successful business plan as well. Part entrepreneurial business plan, part guide to democratizing the workplace, and part prescription for strong local economies, The Company We Keep marks the debut of an important new voice in the literature of American business."--Publisher's description
Download or read book Why Companies Fail written by Mark Ingebretsen and published by Crown. This book was released on 2003 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the global bull market a few years ago, business giant Kmart stumbled, going from one of the most admired companies to one of the largest bankruptcies in history. The same fate befell several seemingly impenetrable corporation, such as Enron, WorldCom, Polaroid, and others. Were these fantastic failures caused by a fickle stock market and a turbulent economy? Did they fall victim to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s? Not according to business journalist Mark Ingebretsen in Why Companies Fail. As you'll discover in this groundbreaking book, all of these companies exhibited one or more of the ten characteristics of a doomed company--characteristics that have been shared by failed companies for decades. Kmart, Enron, WorldCom, and other corporations might have been saved if their executives had recognized sooner that their companies were exhibiting one or more of these characteristics. Ingebretsen, with the help of some of the world's most noted business management experts from the Turnaround Management Association, describes in startling detail each of the ten big reasons companies fail, including: - Letting stock price dictate strategy - Ignoring customers - Fighting wars of attrition - Innovating too much or too little - And more Inside these pages, you'll discover practical methods for identifying these fatal characteristics in your own organization and preventing them from leading to failure. No matter what the size of your company, the lessons in Why Companies Fail could be the difference between long-lasting success and sudden flameout. And before any company can go from good to great, it's got to be on the right track in the first place.This valuable guide will show you how.
Download or read book Good to Great written by Jim Collins and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2001-10-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
Download or read book A Stake in the Outcome written by Jack Stack and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2003-09-16 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First Management Classic of the New Millennium! A bold experiment is taking place these days, as leading-edge companies turn upside down the management paradigm that has dominated corporate thinking for more than one hundred years. Southwest Airlines is perhaps the most visible practitioner, soaring through economic downturns while its competitors slash their budgets and order massive layoffs, but you can find other pioneers of the new approach in almost every industry and market niche. Their secret: a culture of ownership that allows them to tap into the most underutilized resource in business today–namely, the enthusiasm, intelligence, and creativity of working people everywhere. No one knows more about building a culture of ownership than CEO Jack Stack, who’s been working on one for the past twenty years with his colleagues at SRC Holdings Corporation (formerly Springfield ReManufacturing Corporation). Along the way, they’ve turned their company into what Business Week has called a “management Mecca,” attracting thousands of people representing hundreds of businesses to SRC’s home in Springfield, Missouri. There the visitors learn how to incorporate the ideals and values of SRC’s remarkable corporate culture into their own organizations–and then they go back and do it. Now, in A Stake in the Outcome, Stack offers a master class on creating a culture of ownership, presenting the hard-won lessons of his own twenty-year journey and explaining what it really takes to build for long-term success. The pioneer of “open-book management” (described in the best-selling classic The Great Game of Business), Stack and twelve other managers began their journey in 1982, when they purchased their factory from its struggling parent company. SRC grew 15 percent a year, while adding almost a thousand new jobs, and the company’s stock price rocketed from 10 cents to $81.60 per share. In the process, Stack discovered that long-term success required constant innovation–and that building a culture of ownership involved much more than paying bonuses, handing out stock options, or setting up an employee stock ownership plan. In a successful ownership culture, every employee had to take the fate of the company as personally as an individual owner would. Achieving that level of commitment was extraordinarily difficult, but Stack realized that the payoff would be enormous: a company that was consistently able to outperform the market. A Stake in the Outcome isn’t about theory–it’s about practice. Stack draws from his own successes and failures at SRC to show how any company can teach its employees to think and act like owners, including how to implement an effective equity-sharing program, how to promote continuous learning at every level of the organization, how to fire up employees’ competitive juices, how to broaden the concept of leadership and delegate responsibility for the business, and how to build a workforce that is fast on its feet and ready to take advantage of every opportunity. You’ll also learn about other companies that have succeeded in building cultures of ownership–and the lessons they can teach the rest of us. Written in Jack Stack’s straightforward, witty, no-beating-around-the-bush style, A Stake in the Outcome is like having a one-on-one session with a master entrepreneur and business innovator. It shows managers and executives of companies both large and small how to build a ferociously motivated workforce that is energized and committed to meeting and overcoming the most daunting challenges a company can face.
Download or read book Start with Why written by Simon Sinek and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-12-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspirational bestseller that ignited a movement and asked us to find our WHY Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time—with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever. START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
Download or read book The Ride of a Lifetime written by Robert Iger and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-09-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A memoir of leadership and success: The executive chairman of Disney, Time’s 2019 businessperson of the year, shares the ideas and values he embraced during his fifteen years as CEO while reinventing one of the world’s most beloved companies and inspiring the people who bring the magic to life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company’s history. His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger—think global—and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets. Today, Disney is the largest, most admired media company in the world, counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Its value is nearly five times what it was when Iger took over, and he is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful CEOs of our era. In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger shares the lessons he learned while running Disney and leading its 220,000-plus employees, and he explores the principles that are necessary for true leadership, including: • Optimism. Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming. • Courage. Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity. • Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale. • Fairness. Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them. This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It’s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology. “The ideas in this book strike me as universal” Iger writes. “Not just to the aspiring CEOs of the world, but to anyone wanting to feel less fearful, more confidently themselves, as they navigate their professional and even personal lives.”
Download or read book The Invincible Company written by Alexander Osterwalder and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited follow-up to the international bestsellers, Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneurs’ Business Model Canvas changed the way the world creates and plans new business models. It has been used by corporations and startups and consultants around the world and is taught in hundreds of universities. After years of researching how the world’s best companies develop, test, and scale new business models, the authors have produced their definitive work. The Invincible Company explains what every organization can learn from the business models of the world’s most exciting companies. The book explains how companies such as Amazon, IKEA, Airbnb, Microsoft, and Logitech, have been able to create immensely successful businesses and disrupt entire industries. At the core of these successes are not just great products and services, but profitable, innovative business models--and the ability to improve existing business models while consistently launching new ones. The Invincible Company presents practical new tools for measuring, managing, and accelerating innovation, and strategies for reducing risk when launching new business models. Serving as a blueprint for your growth strategy, The Invincible Company explains how to constantly stay ahead of your competition. In-depth chapters explain how to create new growth engines, change how products and services are created and delivered, extract maximum profit from each type of business model, and much more. New tools—such as the Business Model Portfolio Map, Innovation Metrics, Innovation Strategy Framework, and the Culture Map—enable readers to understand how to design invincible companies. The Invincible Company: ● Helps large and small companies build their growth strategy and manage their core simultaneously ● Explains the world's best modern and historic business models ● Provides tools to assess your business model, innovation readiness, and all of your innovation projects Presented in striking 4-color, and packed with practical visuals and tools, The Invincible Company is a must-have book for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovation professionals.
Download or read book Rework written by Jason Fried and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2010-03-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office. Those are all just excuses. What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you. With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of "downsizing," and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.
Download or read book Big Business written by Tyler Cowen and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen. We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who, at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough. In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot,” and only 6 percent trust it “a great deal.” Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.
Download or read book The Great Game of Business written by Jack Stack and published by Broadway Business. This book was released on 1994 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Game of Business started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement. The revised and updated edition of The Great Game of Business lays out an entirely different way of running a company. It wasn't dreamed up in an executive think tank or an Ivy League business school or around the conference table by big-time consultants. It was forged on the factory floors of the heartland by ordinary folks hoping to figure out how to save their jobs when their parent company, International Harvester, went down the tubes. What these workers created was a revolutionary approach to management that has proven itself in every industry around the world for the past thirty years--an approach that is perhaps the last, best hope for reviving the American Dream.
Download or read book Winning Enhanced Edition written by Jack Welch and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A champion manager of people, Jack Welch shares the hard-earned wisdom of a storied career in what will become the ultimate business bible With Winning, Jack Welch delivers a wide-ranging, in-depth, no-holds-barred management guidebook about the tough strategic, organizational, and personal challenges that face people at every stage of their careers. Loaded with candid personal anecdotes, hard-hitting advice, and invaluable dos and don’ts, Jack explains his theory of business, by laying out the four most important principles that form the foundation of his success. Chapters include: How to Get Promoted, How to Think about Strategy, How to Write a Budget that Works, How to Work for a Jerk, How Find Work-Life Balance and How Start Something New. Enlivened by quotes from business leaders that Welch interviewed especially for the book, it’s a tour de force that reflects Welch’s mastery of execution, excellence and leadership.
Download or read book Wired to Care How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy written by Patnaik and published by Pearson Education India. This book was released on 2009 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Executives often know little about the people who buy their companies' products and services. This is not surprising. To study people, you must care about them. However, most companies eliminate empathy from their operations. In essence, they proceed as if they have calculating, survival-bent reptile brains. Profits drive everything. This is an odd disconnect because corporate livelihoods depend on people - not lizards - and people's brains are hardwired to be empathetic. Dev Patnaik (writing with Peter Mortensen) shows why firms that connect empathetically with their customers do better financially. He insists today's cold-hearted, bottom-line business world has room for caring companies, and he points to IBM, Nike and Harley-Davidson as examples. The fact that empathy is also a strong business strategy is icing on the cake. getAbstract suggests this fine book to CEOs, marketing officers and other executives who want to build their business by acting on their respect for their customers. As Patnaik explains on his blog, "Empathy isn't about having a visionary leader. It's about making customer information an easy, everyday and experiential part of working at your company."
Download or read book No More Bananas written by Jeroen Kraaijenbrink and published by Effectual Strategy Press. This book was released on 2019-06-21 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Feel better, get done more and become a nicer person” In this age of social media, fake news, individualism and information overload, the certainties we relied on in the past are gone. In our quest for assurance and support, the only seemingly dependable pillar left is other people. So we look to them. But they are unsettled too. And by looking to them, we create and perpetuate our own vicious stress-cycle. As a result, we lose our sensible selves. And we go bananas. But there is good news. If we look around us, there are people who withstand the collective lunacy and stay grounded. They do something that most of us have a hard time doing: they stay themselves. And the best news is that what they can do, you can do too. It doesn’t require any special talents or supernatural powers. It only requires doing. In this amiable, open and accessible book, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink takes you on his personal journey out of Bananaland. Drawing from cognitive psychology, martial arts, Saint Benedict, personal experience, and a wide range of other sources, the book offers a nine-step approach with some remarkably practical advice for keeping a cool head in the collective lunacy. “Free yourself from the collective lunacy and reclaim your calm and sensible self”
Download or read book Business Adventures written by John Brooks and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-05-14 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The best business book I've ever read.' Bill Gates, Wall Street Journal 'The Michael Lewis of his day.' New York Times What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety. These notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened. Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. John Brooks's insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history really does repeat itself. This business classic written by longtime New Yorker contributor John Brooks is an insightful and engaging look into corporate and financial life in America.
Download or read book The Companies We Keep 2 written by Bob Sigall and published by . This book was released on 2007-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
