Books about Structural from Amazon.com

Whether challenged with taking on a startup, turning a business around, or inheriting a high-performing unit, a new leader's success or failure is determined within the first 90 days on the job.

In this hands-on guide, Michael Watkins, a noted expert on leadership transitions, offers proven strategies for moving successfully into a new role at any point in one's career. The First 90 Days provides a framework for transition acceleration that will help leaders diagnose their situations, craft winning transition strategies, and take charge quickly.

Practical examples illustrate how to learn about new organizations, build teams, create coalitions, secure early wins, and lay the foundation for longer-term success. In addition, Watkins provides strategies for avoiding the most common pitfalls new leaders encounter, and shows how individuals can protect themselves-emotionally as well as professionally-during what is often an intense and vulnerable period.

Concise and actionable, this is the survival guide no new leader should be without.

"Few companies develop a systematic 'on-boarding' process for their new leaders, even though this is a critical function with major organizational implications. Michael Watkins's The First 90 Days provides a powerful framework and strategies that will enable new leaders to take charge quickly. It is an invaluable tool for that most vulnerable time-the transition."

-Goli Darabi, Senior Vice President, Corporate Leadership & Succession Management, Fidelity Investments

"Every job-private- or public-sector, civilian or military-has its breakeven point, and everyone can accelerate their learning. Read this book at least twice: once before your next transition-before getting caught up in the whirl and blur of new faces, names, acronyms, and issues; then read it again after you've settled in, and consider how to accelerate transitions for your next new boss and for those who come to work for you."

-Colonel Eli Alford, U.S. Army

"Watkins provides an excellent road map, telling us what all new leaders need to know and do to accelerate their learning and success in a new role. The First 90 Days should be incorporated into every company's leadership development strategy, so that anyone making a transition in an organization can get up to speed quicker and smarter."

-Suzanne M. Danielle, Director of Global Leadership Development, Aventis

"Michael Watkins has nailed a huge corporate problem and provided the solution in one fell swoop. The pressure on new leaders to hit the ground running has never been greater, and the likelihood and cost of failure is escalating. Watkins's timing with The First 90 Days is impeccable."

-Gordon Curtis, Principal, Curtis Consulting

"The First 90 Days is a must-read for entrepreneurs. Anyone who's been the CEO of a start-up or early-stage company knows that you go through many 90-day leadership transitions in the course of a company's formative years. In this groundbreaking book, Michael Watkins provides crucial insights, as well as a toolkit of techniques, to enable you to accelerate through these transitions successfully."

-Mike Kinkead, President and CEO, timeBLASTER Corporation, serial entrepreneur, and Cofounder and Trustee, Massachusetts Software Council

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Price: $14.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Over 2 million copies sold! Used by thousands of companies and hundreds of business schools! Required reading for anyone interested in the Theory of Constraints. This book, which introduces the Theory of Constraints, is changing how America does business. The Goal is a gripping, fast-paced business novel about overcoming the barriers to making money. You will learn the fundamentals of identifying and solving the problems created by constraints. From the moment you finish the book you will be able to start successfully addressing chronic productivity and quality problems..
Price: $9.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In Leading Change, John Kotter examines the efforts of more than 100 companies to remake themselves into better competitors He identifies the most common mistakes leaders and managers make in attempting to create change and offers an eight-step process to overcome the obstacles and carry out the firm's agenda: establishing a greater sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering others to act, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the future. This highly personal book reveals what John Kotter has seen, heard, experienced, and concluded in 25 years of working with companies to create lasting transformation..
Price: $9.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At a time when managers everywhere are seeking strong but sensible ways to reorient their companies for the coming millennium, a new edition of Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, reintroduces the bestselling authors' clear and insightful approach to "big picture" management. Updated examples add to those previously drawn from business, education, health care, and the public sector to help today's leaders prepare more creatively for tomorrow's needs..
Price: $29.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Heart of Change is the follow-up to John Kotter's enormously popular book Leading Change, in which he outlines a framework for implementing change that sidesteps many of the pitfalls common to organizations looking to turn themselves around. The essence of Kotter's message is this: the reason so many change initiatives fail is that they rely too much on "data gathering, analysis, report writing, and presentations" instead of a more creative approach aimed at grabbing the "feelings that motivate useful action." In The Heart of Change, Kotter, with the help of Dan Cohen, a partner at Deloitte Consulting, shows how his eight-step approach has worked at over 100 organizations. In just about every case, change happened because the players were led to "see" and "feel" the change. In one example, a sales representative underscores a sense of urgency to change a manufacturing process by showing a videotaped interview with an unhappy customer; in another, a purchasing manager makes his point to senior management about corporate waste by displaying on the company's boardroom table the 424 different kinds of gloves that the company had procured through different vendors at vastly different prices. Well written and loaded with real-life examples and practical advice, The Heart of Change towers over other change-management titles. Managers and employees at organizations both big and small will find much to draw from. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards.
Price: $13.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $6.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Praise for: Beyond Booked Solid

"If you want a four-hour work week, this book is required reading. Michael has automating business down to a science." - TIMOTHY FERRISS, bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek

"If you liked The E-Myth, you'll love Beyond Booked Solid. Port's new book is required reading for all entrepreneurs."
--Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth

"Many business advice books are like certain kinds of Chinese food--you read them and an hour later you're hungry again. By contrast, Beyond Booked Solid is like soul food. You read it, you come back for seconds, and finish it satisfied and happy, looking forward to the day when Michael Port writes his next book."
--Ben Dattner, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Organizational Psychology, New York University

"In Beyond Booked Solid, Port offers you an opportunity to capitalize on one of the most underappreciated assets in business--leverage. And he shows you how to do it with authenticity."
--Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling coauthor of Never Eat Alone

"Michael Port has bridged the gap between professional and personal success. His book generously shares tips and techniques that will help you manage a successful life, much more difficult than it sounds. This is the perfect complement to Book Yourself Solid. If you wish you had more time and happiness in your business life, this book will make it come true."
--Tim Sanders, author of Love Is the Killer App

"Michael Port doesn't just talk about this stuff. He lives it!"
--Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae

"If you want bigger revenues and profits, then Beyond Booked Solid is the book to read when you're tired of thinking small. It's a masterpiece because you will never think about your business (or your life) in the same way again. I highly recommend it for those who want to understand how to go from doing it all themselves to running a highly successful enterprise with no limit on what is possible."
--Dr. Tony Alessandra, coauthor of The Platinum Rule

"Beyond Booked Solid takes you beyond perspiration to inspiration. It is an innovative guide to the power of leverage; the kind of leverage that will produce amazing results while providing you with more time for your life outside of work. Buy this book if you want to leave a financial and a personal legacy."
--Steve Lundin, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Fish!

"Whether you are just starting out in your business or you're already booked solid, Beyond Booked Solid offers the tools and the inspiration to significantly grow your business and maintain work-life balance. If you want to learn tried-and-true innovations that will catapult your business to the next level, turn the page."
--Brian Scudamore, founder and CEO, 1-800-Got-Junk?

"The ideas in Beyond Booked Solid show you how to create a sustainable, profitable business and live the life you want. Perhaps even more important, you develop a keen sense of mastery and self-actualization--showing yourself that you can continuously grow and innovate, and creating a true sense of personal success."
--Larina Kase, PsyD, MBA, business psychologist and New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Confident Speaker.
Price: $13.05 [Notify me when price goes down.]

IDEO, the world's leading design firm, is the brain trust that's behind some of the more brilliant innovations of the past 20 years--from the Apple mouse, the Polaroid i-Zone instant camera, and the Palm V to the "fat" toothbrush for kids and a self-sealing water bottle for dirt bikers. Not surprisingly, companies all over the world have long wondered what they could learn from IDEO, to come up with better ideas for their own products, services, and operations. In this terrific book from IDEO general manager Tom Kelley (brother of founder David Kelley), IDEO finally delivers--but thankfully not in the step-by-step, flow-chart-filled "process speak" of most how-you-can-do-what-we-do business books. Sure, there are some good bulleted lists to be found here--such as the secrets of successful brainstorming, the qualities of "hot teams," and, toward the end, 10 key ingredients for "How to Create Great Products and Services," including "One Click Is Better Than Two" (the simpler, the better) and "Goof Proof" (no bugs).

But The Art of Innovation really teaches indirectly (not to mention enlightens and entertains) by telling great stories--mainly, of how the best ideas for creating or improving products or processes come not from laboriously organized focus groups, but from keen observations of how regular people work and play on a daily basis. On nearly every page, we learn the backstories of some now-well-established consumer goods, from recent inventions like the Palm Pilot and the in-car beverage holder to things we nearly take for granted--like Ivory soap (created when a P&G worker went to lunch without turning off his soap mixer, and returned to discover his batch overwhipped into 99.44 percent buoyancy) and Kleenex, which transcended its original purpose as a cosmetics remover when people started using the soft paper to wipe and blow their noses. Best of all, Kelley opens wide the doors to IDEO's vibrant, sometimes wacky office environment, and takes us on a vivid tour of how staffers tackle a design challenge: they start not with their ideas of what a new product should offer, but with the existing gaps of need, convenience, and pleasure with which people live on a daily basis, and that IDEO should fill. (Hence, a one-piece children's fishing rod that spares fathers the embarrassment of not knowing how to teach their kids to fish, or Crest toothpaste tubes that don't "gunk up" at the mouth.)

Granted, some of their ideas--like the crucial process of "prototyping," or incorporating dummy drafts of the actual product into the planning, to work out bugs as you go--lend themselves more easily to the making of actual things than to the more common organizational challenge of streamlining services or operations. But, if this big book of bright ideas doesn't get you thinking of how to build a better mousetrap for everything from your whole business process to your personal filing system, you probably deserve to be stuck with the mousetrap you already have. --Timothy Murphy.
Price: $11.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

If you're like most business leaders, innovation now tops your corporate agenda. But despite all the talk and excitement about the importance of innovation, managers have so far found scant help for innovating in a systematic way that fuels consistent growth and sustained success.

In Innovation to the Core, Strategos CEO Peter Skarzynski and business strategist Rowan Gibson change all that. They share the accumulated wisdom from Strategos--the consulting firm Skarzynski co-founded with Gary Hamel that helps clients instill innovation into their very core. Drawing on a wealth of stories and examples, the book shows how companies of every stripe have overcome the barriers to successful, profitable innovation. You'll find parts devoted to crucial topics--such as how to organize the discovery process, generate strategic insights, enlarge your innovation pipeline, and maximize your return on innovation. Frequent hands-on tools--frameworks, checklists, probing questions--help you put the book's ideas into action.

Crafted in close coordination with Gary Hamel--the man who Fortune magazine has called "the world's leading expert on business strategy"--Innovation to the Core is the definitive fieldbook for making innovation a core competence in your organization..
Price: $20.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The practical implementation guide to John Kotter’s revolutionary 8-step change process and the “See-Feel-Change” approach as introduced in Leading Change and The Heart of Change. John Kotter’s change bible Leading Change has sold nearly 490,000 copies since publication in 1996 and The Heart of Change, co-written with Dan Cohen, has sold nearly 125,000 copies. Now, Dan Cohen delivers a highly practical, hands-on complement to both of these books in The Heart of Change Field Guide. Filled with practical tools, checklists and advice, this book will guide leaders and managers step-by-step through real change programs within their organisations..
Price: $2.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]