Connect


Book Description

The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. Drawing on the experience of John Browne, former CEO of BP, and the insight of two McKinsey experts, Connect articulates and explores the recurring rift between big business and society, offering a practical manifesto for reconciliation. This timely and important book features candid interviews with global leaders at the heart of this debate, from Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein to Tony Blair and Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Connect shows how companies and executives can enhance their performance by engaging radically with the world around them.




Connected Strategy


Book Description

Business Models for Transforming Customer Relationships What if there were a way to turn occasional, sporadic transactions with customers into long-term, continuous relationships--while simultaneously driving dramatic improvements in operational efficiency? What if you could break your existing trade-offs between superior customer experience and low cost? This is the promise of a connected strategy. New forms of connectivity--involving frequent, low-friction, customized interactions--mean that companies can now anticipate customer needs as they arise, or even before. Simultaneously, enabled by these technologies, companies can create new business models that deliver more value to customers. Connected strategies are win-win: Customers get a dramatically improved experience, while companies boost operational efficiency. In this book, strategy and operations experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch reveal the emergence of connected strategies as a new source of competitive advantage. With in-depth examples from companies operating in industries such as healthcare, financial services, mobility, retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education, Connected Strategy identifies the four pathways--respond-to-desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution--for turning episodic interactions into continuous relationships. The authors show how each pathway creates a competitive advantage, then guide you through the critical decisions for creating and implementing your own connected strategies. Whether you're trying to revitalize strategy in an established company or disrupt an industry as a startup, this book will help you: Reshape your connections with your customers Find new ways to connect with existing suppliers while also activating new sources of capacity Create the right revenue model Make the best technology choices to support your strategy Integrating rich examples, how-to advice, and practical tools in the form of "workshop chapters" throughout, this book is the ultimate resource for creating competitive advantage through connected relationships with your customers and redefined connections in your industry.




The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Business Relationships


Book Description

Named a Best Business Book of 2021 by Soundview Magazine Reclaim the power of genuine human connection Networking is often considered a necessary evil for all working professionals. With social media platforms like Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at our disposal, reaching potential investors or employers is much easier. Yet, these connections often feel transactional, agenda-driven, and dehumanizing, leaving professionals feeling burnt out and stressed out. Instead, we should connect on a human level and build authentic relationships beyond securing a new job or a new investor for your next big idea. To build real and meaningful networking contacts, we need to go back to basics, remembering that technology is a tool and more than just a means to an end. We need to tap into our humanity and learn to be more intentional and authentic. As a “serial connector” and communications expert, Susan McPherson has a lifetime of experience building genuine connections in and out of work. Her methodology is broken down into three simple steps: Gather: Instead of waiting for the perfect networking opportunity to come to you, think outside the box and create your own opportunity. Host your own dinner party, join a local meet-up group, or volunteer at your neighborhood food pantry. Ask: Instead of leading with our own rehearsed elevator pitches asking for help, ask to help, opening the door to share resources, experience, contacts, and perspectives that add diversity to your own vision. Do: Turn new connections into meaningful relationships by taking these newly formed relationships deeper. Follow through on the promises you made and keep in touch. Woven together with helpful tips and useful advice on making the most out of every step, this book draws on McPherson’s own experience as a renowned “serial connector,” as well as the real life success stories of friends and clients. Filled with humor, humility, and wisdom, The Lost Art of Connecting is the handbook we all need to foster personal and professional relationships that blur the lines between work and play—and enrich our lives in every way.




Measure What Matters


Book Description

#1 New York Times Bestseller Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive. In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress—to measure what mattered. Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization. The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention. In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.




Fit for Growth


Book Description

A practical approach to business transformation Fit for Growth* is a unique approach to business transformation that explicitly connects growth strategy with cost management and organization restructuring. Drawing on 70-plus years of strategy consulting experience and in-depth research, the experts at PwC’s Strategy& lay out a winning framework that helps CEOs and senior executives transform their organizations for sustainable, profitable growth. This approach gives structure to strategy while promoting lasting change. Examples from Strategy&’s hundreds of clients illustrate successful transformation on the ground, and illuminate how senior and middle managers are able to take ownership and even thrive during difficult periods of transition. Throughout the Fit for Growth process, the focus is on maintaining consistent high-value performance while enabling fundamental change. Strategy& has helped major clients around the globe achieve significant and sustained results with its research-backed approach to restructuring and cost reduction. This book provides practical guidance for leveraging that expertise to make the choices that allow companies to: Achieve growth while reducing costs Manage transformation and transition productively Create lasting competitive advantage Deliver reliable, high-value performance Sustainable success is founded on efficiency and high performance. Companies are always looking to do more with less, but their efforts often work against them in the long run. Total business transformation requires total buy-in, and it entails a series of decisions that must not be made lightly. The Fit for Growth approach provides a clear strategy and practical framework for growth-oriented change, with expert guidance on getting it right. *Fit for Growth is a registered service mark of PwC Strategy& Inc. in the United States




A Great Place to Work For All


Book Description

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Foreword A Better View of Motivation -- Introduction A Great Place to Work For All -- PART ONE Better for Business -- Chapter 1 More Revenue, More Profit -- Chapter 2 A New Business Frontier -- Chapter 3 How to Succeed in the New Business Frontier -- Chapter 4 Maximizing Human Potential Accelerates Performance -- PART TWO Better for People, Better for the World -- Chapter 5 When the Workplace Works For Everyone -- Chapter 6 Better Business for a Better World -- PART THREE The For All Leadership Call -- Chapter 7 Leading to a Great Place to Work For All -- Chapter 8 The For All Rocket Ship -- Notes -- Thanks -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z -- About Us -- Authors




We Should Get Together


Book Description

We Should Get Together is the handbook for anyone who's ready for better friendships, now. Have you recently moved to a new city and are struggling to make friends? Do you find yourself constantly making plans with friends that fall through? Are you more likely to see your friends' social media posts than their faces? You aren't alone. Millions of adults struggle with an uncomfortable and persistent ache: platonic longing, which is the unfulfilled wish for authentic, resilient, close friendships. But it doesn't have to be this way. Making and maintaining friendships during adulthood can be hard--or, with a bit of intention and creativity, joyful. Author Kat Vellos, experience designer and founder of Better Than Small Talk, tackles the four most common challenges of adult friendship: constant relocation, full schedules, the demands of partnership and family, and our culture's declining capacity for compassion and intimacy in the age of social media. Combining expert research and personal stories pulled from conversations with hundreds of adults, We Should Get Together is the modern handbook for making and maintaining stronger friendships. With this book you will learn to: Make and maintain friendships when you (or your friends) keep moving Have deeper and more meaningful conversations Triumph over awkwardness in social situations Become less dependent on your phone Identify and prioritize quality connections Find time for friendship despite your busy calendar Create closer, more durable friendships Full of relatable stories, practical tips, 60 charming illustrations, 55 suggested activities, a book club discussion guide, and 300+ conversation starters, We Should Get Together is the perfect book for anyone who wants to have dedicated, life-enriching friends, and who wants to be that kind of friend, too.




Brand Admiration


Book Description

Brand Admiration uses deep research on consumer psychology, marketing, consumer engagement and communication to develop a powerful, integrated perspective and innovative approach to brand management. Using numerous real-world examples and backed by research from top notch academics, this book describes how companies can turn a product, service, corporate, person or place brand into one that customers love, trust and respect; in short, how to make a brand admired. The result? Greater brand loyalty, stronger brand advocacy, and higher brand equity. Admired brands grow more revenue in a more efficient way over a longer period of time and with more opportunities for growth. The real power of Brand Admiration is that it provides concrete, actionable guidance on how brand managers can make customers (and employees) admire a brand. Admired brands don't just do the job; they offer exactly what customers need (enabling benefits), in way that's pleasing, fun, interesting, and emotionally involving (enticing benefits), while making people feel good about themselves (enriching benefits). Providing these benefits, called 3 Es, is foundational to building , strengthening and leveraging brand admiration. In addition, the authors articulate a common-sense and action based measure of brand equity, and they develop dashboard metrics to diagnose if there are any 'canaries in the coal mine', and if so, what to do next. In short, Brand Admiration provides a coherent, cohesive approach to helping the brand stand the test of time. A well-designed, well-managed brand becomes a part of the public consciousness, and ultimately, a part of the culture. This trajectory is the fruit of decisions made from an integrated strategic standpoint. This book shows you how to shift the process for your brand, with practical guidance and an analytical approach.




Business Made Simple


Book Description

Is this blue book more valuable than a business degree? Most people enter their professional careers not understanding how to grow a business. At times, this makes them feel lost, or worse, like a fraud pretending to know what they’re doing. It’s hard to be successful without a clear understanding of how business works. These 60 daily readings are crucial for any professional or business owner who wants to take their career to the next level. New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Donald Miller knows that business is more than just a good idea made profitable – it’s a system of unspoken rules, rarely taught by MBA schools. If you are attempting to profitably grow your business or career, you need elite business knowledge—knowledge that creates tangible value. Even if you had the time, access, or money to attend a Top 20 business school, you would still be missing the practical knowledge that propels the best and brightest forward. However, there is another way to achieve this insider skill development, which can both drastically improve your career earnings and the satisfaction of achieving your goals. Donald Miller learned how to rise to the top using the principles he shares in this book. He wrote Business Made Simple to teach others what it takes to grow your career and create a company that is healthy and profitable. These short, daily entries and accompanying videos will add enormous value to your business and the organization you work for. In this sixty-day guide, readers will be introduced to the nine areas where truly successful leaders and their businesses excel: Character: What kind of person succeeds in business? Leadership: How do you unite a team around a mission? Personal Productivity: How can you get more done in less time? Messaging: Why aren’t customers paying more attention? Marketing: How do I build a sales funnel? Business Strategy: How does a business really work? Execution: How can we get things done? Sales: How do I close more sales? Management: What does a good manager do? Business Made Simple is the must-have guide for anyone who feels lost or overwhelmed by the modern business climate, even if they attended business school. Learn what the most successful business leaders have known for years through the simple but effective secrets shared in these pages. Take things further: If you want to be worth more as a business professional, read each daily entry and follow along with the free videos that will be sent to you after you buy the book.




Strategy That Works


Book Description

How to close the gap between strategy and execution Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don’t have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors. Based on new research, the authors reveal five practices for connecting strategy and execution used by highly successful enterprises such as IKEA, Natura, Danaher, Haier, and Lego. These companies: • Commit to what they do best instead of chasing multiple opportunities • Build their own unique winning capabilities instead of copying others • Put their culture to work instead of struggling to change it • Invest where it matters instead of going lean across the board • Shape the future instead of reacting to it Packed with tools you can use for building these five practices into your organization and supported by in-depth profiles of companies that are known for making their strategy work, this is your guide for reconnecting strategy to execution.