Books about Differently from Amazon.com

The greatest managers in the world seem to have little in common. They differ in sex, age, and race. They employ vastly different styles and focus on different goals. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They do not hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They do not believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They do not try to help people overcome their weaknesses. They consistently disregard the golden rule. And, yes, they even play favorites. This amazing book explains why.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive in-depth study of great managers across a wide variety of situations. Some were in leadership positions. Others were front-line supervisors. Some were in Fortune 500 companies; others were key players in small, entrepreneurial companies. Whatever their situations, the managers who ultimately became the focus of Gallup's research were invariably those who excelled at turning each employee's talent into performance.

In today's tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. No matter how generous its pay or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer. Buckingham and Coffman explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations for him or her -- they define the right outcomes rather than the right steps; how they motivate people -- they build on each person's unique strengths rather than trying to fix his weaknesses; and, finally, how great managers develop people -- they find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder. And perhaps most important, this research -- which initially generated thousands of different survey questions on the subject of employee opinion -- finally produced the twelve simple questions that work to distinguish the strongest departments of a company from all the rest. This book is the first to present this essential measuring stick and to prove the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover.

There are vital performance and career lessons here for managers at every level, and, best of all, the book shows you how to apply them to your own situation..
Price: $7.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book describes the beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and interactions that form the fabric of life in our best classrooms and schools It focuses on the specific things that great teachers do ... that others do not.

It answers these essential questions:
- Is it high expectations for students that matter?
- How do great teachers respond when students misbehave?
- Do great teachers filter differently than their peers?
- How do the best teachers approach standardized testing?.
Price: $18.58 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Once upon a time, Martians and Venusians functioned in separate worlds. But in today's hectic and career-oriented environment, relationships have become a lot more complicated, and men and women are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress. To add to the increasing tension, most men and women are also completely unaware that they are actually hardwired to react differently to the stress. It's a common scenario: a husband returns home from work stressed out and eager to kick back on the couch and watch television. A wife returns home from work stressed out and wants to talk about it with her husband. What happens? Neither is on the same page, anger and resentment set in, and Mars and Venus collide.

Using his signature insight that has helped millions of couples transform their relationships, John Gray once again arms the inhabitants of Mars and Venus with information that will help them live harmoniously ever after. In Why Mars and Venus Collide, Gray focuses on the ways that men and women misinterpret and mismanage the stress in their daily lives, and how these reactions ultimately affect their relationships. "It's not that he's just not into you; he needs to fulfill a biological need," Gray explains. "And it's not that she wants to henpeck you; she also has a biological drive." He shows, for instance, how a husband's withdrawal is actually a natural way for him to replenish his depleted testosterone levels and restore his well-being, and how a woman's need for conversation and support helps her build her own stress-reducing hormone, oxytocin.

Backed up by groundbreaking scientific research, Gray offers a clear, easy-to-understand program to bridge the gap between the two planets, providing effective communication strategies that will actually lower stress levels. Whether in a relationship or single, this book will help both men and women understand their new roles in a modern, work-oriented society, and allow them to discover a variety of new and practical ways to create a lifetime of love and harmony.

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Price: $12.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When psychologist Richard E. Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese observers instead commented on the background environment -- and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As

Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought, people think about -- and even see -- the world differently because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China. The Geography of Thought documents Professor Nisbett's groundbreaking research in cultural psychology, addressing questions such as:

• Why did the ancient Chinese excel at algebra and arithmetic, but not geometry, the brilliant achievement of such Greeks as Euclid?

• Why do East Asians find it so difficult to disentangle an object from its surroundings?

• Why do Western infants learn nouns more rapidly than verbs, when it is the other way around in East Asia?

At a moment in history when the need for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration have never been more important, The Geography of Thought offers both a map to that gulf and a blueprint for a bridge that might be able to span it.

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Price: $8.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What are the specific qualities and practices of great principals which elevate them above the rest? This book reveals the 15 things that the most successful principals do and that other principals do not. It shows you why these practices are effective and it also demonstrates how to implement each of them in your school..
Price: $26.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Today's top financial-risk professionals have come to rely on ever-more sophisticated mathematics in their attempts to come to grips with financial risk. But this excessive reliance on quantitative precision is misleading--and it puts us all at risk. This is the case that Riccardo Rebonato makes in Plight of the Fortune Tellers--and coming from someone who is both an experienced market professional and an academic, this heresy is worth listening to.

Rebonato forcefully argues that we must restore genuine decision making to our financial planning, and he shows us how to do it using probability, experimental psychology, and decision theory. This is the only way to effectively manage financial risk in a manner congruent with how human beings actually react to chance. Rebonato challenges us to rethink the standard wisdom about probability in financial-risk management. Risk managers have become obsessed with measuring risk and believe that these quantitative results by themselves can guide sound financial choices--but they can't. In this book, Rebonato offers a radical yet surprisingly commonsense solution, one that seeks to remind us that managing risk comes down to real people making decisions under uncertainty.

Plight of the Fortune Tellers is not only a book for the decision makers of Wall Street, it's a must-read for anyone concerned about how today's financial markets are run. The stakes have never been higher--can you risk it?

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Price: $22.83 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the bestselling author of What the CEO Wants You to Know—how to rethink sales from the outside in

“We have to face the truth: the process of selling is broken. Customers have more choices and are under intense pressure. Yet few companies are facing this reality. When they don’t, a lingering malaise sets in.”

More than ever these days, the sales process tends to be a war about price—a frustrating, unpleasant war that takes all the fun out of selling.

But there’s a better way to think about sales, says bestselling author Ram Charan, who is famous for clarifying and simplifying difficult business problems. What the customer wants you to know is how his or her business works, so you can help make it work better. It sounds simple, but there’s a catch: you won’t be able to do that with your traditional sales approach.

Instead of starting with your product or service, start with your customer’s problems. Focus on becoming your customer’s trusted partner, someone he can turn to for creative, cost-effective solutions that are based on your deep knowledge of his values, goals, problems, and customers.

This book defines a new approach to selling—which Charan calls value creation selling—that while radical is nonetheless practical. VCS has been battle-tested in companies in a variety of industries, such as Unifi, Mead-Westvaco, and Thomson Financial. It will enable you to:
• Gain a deeper knowledge of your customer’s problems
• Understand how your customer’s company really makes decisions
• Help your customer improve margins and drive revenue growth
• Connect sales with other key functions such as finance and manufacturing
• Come up with new customized offerings
• Make price much less of an issue

VCS gets you out of the hell of commoditization and low prices. It differentiates you from the competition, paving the way to better pricing, better margins, and higher revenue growth, built on win-win relationships that deepen over time.

Someday, every company will listen more closely to the customer, and every manager will realize that sales is everyone’s business, not just the sales department’s. In the meantime, this eye-opening book will show you how to get started.
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Price: $10.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]