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Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic reveals for the first time how this complex service organization fosters a culture that exceeds customer expectations and earns deep loyalty from both customers and employees. Service business authority Leonard Berry and Mayo Clinic marketing administrator Kent Seltman explain how the Clinic implements and maintains its strategy, adheres to its management system, executes its care model, and embraces new knowledge - invaluable lessons for managers and service providers of all industries.

Drs. Berry and Seltman had the rare opportunity to study Mayo Clinic's service culture and systems from the inside by conducting personal interviews with leaders, clinicians, staff, and patients, as well as observing hundreds of clinician-patient interactions. The result is a book about how the Clinic's business concept produces stellar clinical results, organizational efficiency, and interpersonal service.

By examining the operating principles that guide every management decision at this legendary healthcare institution, the authors

• Demonstrate how a great service brand evolves from the core values that nourish and protect it
• Extrapolate instructive business lessons that apply outside healthcare
• Illustrate the benefits of pooling talent and encouraging teamwork
• Relate historical events and perspectives to the present-day Mayo Clinic
• Share inspiring stories from staff and patients

An innovative analysis of this exemplary institution, Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic presents a proven prescription for creating sustainable service excellence in any organization.

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Price: $16.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

How Lincoln's Faith Shaped His Leadership

Undoubtedly the most revered leader in American history, Abraham Lincoln has had more books written about him than all ournation's presidents put together. But for all that's been written,little has focused on his faith and how this quality shaped the man who led our country during its most tumultuous years.

Author Joe Wheeler, historian and scholar, brings to the pages of this insightful book the knowledge gleaned from over ten years of study and more than sixty books on the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. Skillfully weaving his own narrative with direct quotes from Lincoln and poignant excerpts from other Lincoln biographers, Wheeler brings a refreshingly friendly rendition of Lincoln's life, faith, and courage.

The stories, historical details, and powerful quotes on the pages of this book will leave a lasting impression on your heart, your mind, and your life..
Price: $12.31 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An exclusive look at one of the world's most successful and controversial companies, and the mysterious family behind it.

BMW is arguably the most admired carmaker in the world. It's financial performance is the envy of its competitors, and BMW products inspire near-fanatical loyalty. While many carmakers struggle with falling sales, profits and market share, demand for BMWs continues to grow, frequently outpacing production. Now, David Kiley-Detroit Bureau Chief at USA Today and author of Getting the Bugs Out, which covered Volkswagen's demise and rebirth, goes inside the fabled German automaker to see how it does what it does so well. With unprecedented access to BMW executives, Kiley goes behind the walls of BMW's famed "Four Cylinders" headquarters in Munich at a time when the company is in its most aggressive, and some say riskiest, expansion in its history and when some of the company's new products, like the 7 Series sedan and Z4 roadster, are for the first time drawing as many barbs from critics as bouquets. Kiley covers intimate details of the boardroom drama surrounding the company's nearly disastrous acquisition and subsequent sale of the British Rover Group and its expansion into selling MINI and Rolls Royce cars. Besides being a world-class carmaker, BMW is also considered one of the smartest consumer marketing companies and Kiley explores the extraordinary value and management of the BMW brand mystique. He also takes a revealing look at the mysterious and ultra-private Quandt family of Bad Homburg Germany, which owns a controlling stake in BMW: Johanna and Susanne Quandt, two of the wealthiest women in Europe and Stefan Quandt, one of the wealthiest bachelors on the continent.

David Kiley (Ann Arbor, MI) is the Detroit Bureau Chief at USA Today who has covered the auto industry for 17 years. He has been featured on Nightline, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and the Today show. He is also the author of Getting the Bugs Out: The Rise, Fall, and Comeback of Volkswagen in America (0-471-26304-4), also available from Wiley..
Price: $22.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"The small individual act is the basic cell of all performance . . . The secret behind outstanding companies, departments, or contributors is simply that they work harder at adding value to their individual acts." -Frederick G. Harmon

In this eye-opening book, Frederick Harmon takes a hard look at the factors that most contribute to a company's profitability, and he comes to some surprising conclusions. With compelling logic, he shows how a company's core values are often the true determinants of its overall success or failure. New strategies, reorganization plans, management techniques, important as they are, depend, in the final analysis, on a foundation of basic values that influence even the most routine acts. "Managers manage neither results nor numbers," he concludes. "They manage the quality of individual acts." In this authoritative book, Harmon explains how to define and implement core values in an organization, and how to measure their effect on the "individual acts" and, therefore, on the bottom line.

Drawing on decades of experience as a consultant to major corporations, as a senior executive of the American Management Association, and as a writer for The Wall Street Journal, Harmon focuses first on the dynamic characteristics of values-driven leadership. He analyzes the different styles of leadership, how they culminate in a "new management synthesis," and how managers can use carefully defined values to energize an entire organization.

In the central section of Playing for Keeps, Harmon delineates six specific proactive steps executives can take to build a truly "values-driven" company. Beginning with a firm commitment to new ideals and values, moving through implementation, and concluding with ways of measuring and recognizing success, Harmon shows how to bring about a "commonplace miracle" in any organization, large or small.

The final section, "Values in Action: Applications," enables managers to match specific values to the different phases of a company's growth and development, including entrepreneurial, turnaround, and global values. With actual case studies, Playing for Keeps shows how a broad range of aggressive, successful companies, including GE, Walt Disney, American Express, Levi Strauss, and Intel have implemented values projects to help them maintain a competitive advantage.

For managers, executives, and entrepreneurs, Playing for Keeps is an invaluable guide to unlocking greater profitability through values implementation; it is an invitation to "look behind the numbers, and core values will appear like gold nuggets on the ground."

"Playing for Keeps is for businesspeople who are interested in harnessing the potential of people." -William Pollard, Chairman The ServiceMaster Company

"An insightful look at the way strong corporate values provide a framework for management's actions. The book underscores the important role that values play in the development of a successful company." -Donald J. Schuenke Retired Chairman and CEO The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

"At a time when so much-indeed, too much-has been written at the rarified academic level, Fred Harmon's new book, with its practical, commonsense, 'real world' approach, is like a breath of fresh air." -Domenico Fanelli, President American Management Association International

Better values mean bigger profits

Playing for Keeps shows how company values have an extraordinary but often overlooked impact on the small "individual acts" that add up to success or failure for an entire organization. With compelling logic and numerous real-world examples, this invaluable guide demonstrates how managers, executives, and entrepreneurs can unleash the dormant power of these values within their companies. It offers a complete program for choosing, defining, and implementing sets of values that help advance the goals of any organization, large or small, and shows how to measure the effects of a values implementation program on the bottom line..
Price: $1.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In Search of Excellence co-author, Robert Waterman, says that the U.S. consistently out-produces its European and Asian counterparts The secret is this simple principle: people are our most important asset. In this book, Waterman uses case histories to prove this principle. 40,000..
Price: $0.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic reveals for the first time how this complex service organization fosters a culture that exceeds customer expectations and earns deep loyalty from both customers and employees. Service business authority Leonard Berry and Mayo Clinic marketing administrator Kent Seltman explain how the Clinic implements and maintains its strategy, adheres to its management system, executes its care model, and embraces new knowledge - invaluable lessons for managers and service providers of all industries. Drs. Berry and Seltman had the rare opportunity to study Mayo Clinic's service culture and systems from the inside by conducting personal interviews with leaders, clinicians, staff, and patients, as well as observing hundreds of clinician-patient interactions. The result is a book about how the Clinic's business concept produces stellar clinical results, organizational efficiency, and interpersonal service. By examining the operating principles that guide every management decision at this legendary healthcare institution, the authors. Demonstrate how a great service brand evolves from the core values that nourish and protect it. Extrapolate instructive business lessons that apply outside healthcare. Illustrate the benefits of pooling talent and encouraging teamwork. Relate historical events and perspectives to the present-day Mayo Clinic. Share inspiring stories from staff and patients. An innovative analysis of this exemplary institution, Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic presents a proven prescription for creating sustainable service excellence in any organization..
Price: $22.36 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A compilation of biographies about powerful African American women who made their mark in the publishing industry. Literary Divas share their pain, struggles, desires, and triumphs through their written words as messengers of time and circumstance. Their triumphs and achievements to socio- political cries disguised within novels, poetry, non-fiction reference resources, children’s books, romance novels, mysteries and today’s urban books invite readers to journey through their experiences from bold love and romance to unabashed self-identity crisis and political issues to the plight of today’s Black family and rise in rank all the way to the top. Literary Divas’ stories will amaze as well as make us cry, bring joy and laughter..
Price: $8.59 [Notify me when price goes down.]