A Manager's Guide to Building a Successful Business


Book Description

In today’s world, managers need real market examples to demonstrate the effective use of certain management and marketing principles. This book will give you just that as well as an introduction to programs developed over a 40-year career to help manage all aspects of a business and to develop and execute marketing strategies. You and other managers and executives will utilize this book as a guide to grow an established business or start a new one, and a reference book for unique management challenges as well. It differs from other business books in that it introduces certain management techniques and processes and shows how they are critical to executing successful marketing strategies. Each chapter covers a founding principle of management in Part I and a founding principle of marketing in Part II. The examples used in the book are from large and small organizations in which the author was personally involved. The techniques introduced are based on those studied at most universities, and are used in solutions applied to challenges facing these organizations.




Building Trust


Book Description

The concept of trust may, at first glance, seem odd as a component of an effective business strategy. However, trust is at the heart of how we act in many business situations and how we approach trust can be vital to our success. In this book the benefit of trust is explored as is the damage resulting from lack of trust. In addition, you'll examine the three steps that encourage trust: asking for input and using it; doing what you say you'll do; and delegating effectively.




The First-time Manager's Guide to Team Building


Book Description

The First-Time Manager Make the transition from team member to team leader Understand the difference between a team and a work group Hold team members accountable Make their teams more productive Manage challenging situations and resolve conflict within a team. Written in an engaging, conversational style, Topchik explains the five essential qualities of a high-performing team: goals and standards; decision making; honest communication; clear roles and responsibilities; and celebrating success. Packed with activities and assessments for both the manager and team members, this is an essential guide for any manager who strives for team-building success.




The Making of a Manager


Book Description

Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller! Congratulations, you're a manager! After you pop the champagne, accept the shiny new title, and step into this thrilling next chapter of your career, the truth descends like a fog: you don't really know what you're doing. That's exactly how Julie Zhuo felt when she became a rookie manager at the age of 25. She stared at a long list of logistics--from hiring to firing, from meeting to messaging, from planning to pitching--and faced a thousand questions and uncertainties. How was she supposed to spin teamwork into value? How could she be a good steward of her reports' careers? What was the secret to leading with confidence in new and unexpected situations? Now, having managed dozens of teams spanning tens to hundreds of people, Julie knows the most important lesson of all: great managers are made, not born. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager. The Making of a Manager is a modern field guide packed everyday examples and transformative insights, including: * How to tell a great manager from an average manager (illustrations included) * When you should look past an awkward interview and hire someone anyway * How to build trust with your reports through not being a boss * Where to look when you lose faith and lack the answers Whether you're new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you wish you had.




Competing with Information


Book Description

In the e-business economy, managers are faced with too much data and too little meaningful information about markets, customers, products, company operations and finances. Their greatest challenge is to identify, manage and use the right information to compete. Information management is too important to a company's performance and growth to be delegated primarily to IT, information or financial specialists. This book is based on the idea that information management is the responsibility of every manager. Managers may not be IT specialists, but they must create the conditions for effective information use that creates real business value. Donald Marchand and his colleagues at IMD invite you to learn your information responsibilities, so your company can use information faster, better and smarter than the competition. By using the business framework of 'strategic information alignment,' this book shows how information can create business value through delighting customers, being more innovative, managing risks and being the low-cost leader in your markets and industries. Learn the why, what and how of better information use and management in your company. At last, here is a book about managing information written specifically for business managers. Developed from the executive teaching, consulting and real world research of a team of faculty who work with the world's leading global companies every day, this book provides managers with the mindset and guidance to leverage the company's capabilities to use and manage information to create business value.




The Successful Business Plan


Book Description

Forbes calls The Successful Business Plan one of the best books for small businesses. This new edition offers advice on developing business plans that will succeed in today's business climate. Includes up-to-date information on what's being funded now.




HR for Small Business


Book Description

Protect yourself and your small business! The book explains in simple, clear language what business owners and managers need to know about their relationship with their employees in order to comply with the law and protect themselves and their business from being sued. The new edition of this book includes everything from recruiting and hiring to discipline and termination and everything in between. Updated legal information has been added on the new minimum wage law that employers must be aware of, the right to privacy for employees, especially in terms of their email, Internet usage, and phone calls, and what employers need to do to comply with disability laws and FMLA. The appendices in this book include required postings in the workplace, legal holidays, online resources for employers and human resource professionals, a sample employee handbook outline, an employer tax calendar, and a complete glossary of terms.




A Manager's Guide to Coaching


Book Description

To stay on top, companies need to do more than just tread water—they need to grow. And that means that their employees need to develop and improve their skills at the same pace. More than ever, managers are being encouraged to improve employee performance through effective coaching, but so few of them have the time—or the knowledge—it takes to do it successfully. Brian Emerson and Ann Loehr have spent years showing some of the country’s top companies how to develop their most promising employees. Now in this helpful manual they guide managers through every step of the coaching process, from problem solving to developing accountability. Readers will discover:the top 10 tips every manager should know before he starts to coach • how to handle difficult conversations, conflicting priorities, and problem team members • how to hold follow-up meetings after goals and priorities have been set • sample questions they can adapt to various situations • examples of common problems and how they can use coaching to address them.Clear, practical and straightforward, this is an invaluable tool that will help all leaders coach employees, colleagues, and themselves to excellence.




How to Write a Great Business Plan


Book Description

Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop. Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them. In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture: The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond Timely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.




A Manager's Guide to Project Management


Book Description

There are plenty of books about project management, but this is the first one written for the people who have the most at stake: the senior executives who will ultimately be held accountable for the successes of the projects they approve and supervise. Top enterprise project management expert Michael Bender explains project management from the perspective that matters most to executives: adding value. Most books view project management from the inside, focusing primarily on lower-level issues, such as the creation of Work Breakdown Structures. A Manager's Guide to Project Management views it from above, explaining how project managers can best achieve the strategic goals of the business; the executive's role in successful project management; and the tools available to executives who want to gain greater value from project management. Drawing on his extensive experience, Bender shows how to: make sure project and enterprise goals align; structure organizations to support more effective project communication and decision making; integrate project processes with other organizational processes; oversee projects more effectively. This book contains a full section on understanding and managing projects as capital investments, including detailed coverage of building balanced project portfolios. Bender concludes with a sophisticated discussion of managing projects in global environments and optimizing resources where multiple projects must be managed.