Business Performance

In Better, Simpler Strategy, Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee provides executives with a simple tool to cut through technological complexity and market uncertainties. The Value Stick, based on proven economic mechanics, is an extraordinarily powerful tool that helps executives decide where to focus their attention and how to deepen their firm's competitive advantage.

After extensive original research and a decade as the world's highest-paid performance coach, Brendon Burchard finally reveals the most effective habits for reaching long-term success. Based on one of the largest surveys ever conducted on high performers, it turns out that just six habits move the needle the most in helping you succeed. Adopt these six habits and you win. Neglect them and life is a never-ending struggle. We all want to be high performing in every area of our lives. But how?

Written by Sir John Whitmore, the pioneer of coaching, and Performance Consultants, the global market leaders in performance coaching, this extensively revised and extended edition will revolutionize the traditional approach to organizational culture. Brand-new practical exercises, corporate examples, and coaching dialogues strengthen the learning process, whilst a critical new chapter demonstrates how to measure the benefits of coaching as a return on investment, ensuring this landmark new edition will remain at the forefront of professional coaching and leadership development.

For decades, performance management has been seen as an annual chore by managers and HR alike. But this process is changing, and there are ways to make it more effective for your organization and more useful for employees. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on performance management in your organization, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you assess performance more accurately, have more effective feedback conversations, and encourage the growth of your employees.

If you listen to nothing else on performing at your highest level, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you focus on what matters, manage your energy and attention, and achieve remarkable results. This book will inspire you to improve on your weaknesses, not just your strengths; rise above the pack; take care of your physical health for sustained mental performance; understand what motivates you; use short-term goals to achieve long-term aspirations; and inspire others.

Conducting performance reviews can be stressful. But these conversations are critical to your employees' development, allowing you to formally communicate with them about their accomplishments relative to their goals. Performance Reviews guides you through the basics.

As a professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization, Jim Murphy’s sense of worth revolved around results. He was focused on achievement but also afraid of failure. When he started coaching professional and Olympic athletes, he often encountered the same mindset. He became obsessed with learning how the best in the world performed with poise under pressure. After years of research, Murphy had a revelatory insight: the pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of the best possible life are the same path.

In the early 80s, Mark Fleischman reopened Studio 54, the world's most glamorous and notorious nightclub, after it was closed down by the State of New York. Ten thousand people showed up that night, ready to restart the party that abruptly ended after the raid in 1978 landed its former owners in jail. Inside Studio 54 invites you to revisit the happening scenes of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, the post-Pill, pre-AIDS era of free love, consequence-free sex, and seemingly endless partying. Following Fleischman as he built connections that lead him to Studio 54.

This entertaining and sharply written guide - for both beginners breaking into comedy and professionals seeking to improve their sets and advance their careers - examines the work of great comedians such as Louis C. K., Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Izzard, Moms Mabley, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor, and more as a means of illustrating the most important techniques of performing and writing stand-up.

Streamline KPIs to craft a simpler, more effective system of performance measurement.

Managing the Unexpected, third edition, is a thoroughly revised text that offers an updated look at the groundbreaking ideas explored in the first and second editions. Revised to reflect events emblematic of the unique challenges that organizations have faced in recent years, including bank failures, intelligence failures, quality failures, and other organizational misfortunes, often sparked by organizational actions, this critical book focuses on why some organizations are better able to sustain high performance in the face of unanticipated change.

There are literally thousands of books on selling, coaching, and leadership, but what about the particulars of managing a sales force? Where are the frameworks, metrics, and best practices to help you succeed? Based on extensive research into how world-class companies measure and manage their sales forces, Cracking the Sales Management Code is the first operating manual for sales management.

Striving is in our nature. We all want to perform at our best when it matters most. But in today's world, many of us feel lost, isolated, and overwhelmed. We're paralyzed by fear of failure and crippled by insecurities. We know we’re capable of more, yet no matter how hard we try, we feel stuck. We’ve been sold the wrong path to success and personal fulfillment. Renowned performance scientist and bestselling author Steve Magness reveals a new path to sustainable success.

Performing Under Pressure tackles the greatest obstacle to personal success, whether in a sales presentation, at home, on the golf course, interviewing for a job, or performing onstage at Carnegie Hall. Despite sports mythology, no one rises to the occasion under pressure and does better than they do in practice. The reality is pressure makes us do worse and sometimes leads us to fail utterly. But there are things we can do to diminish its effects on our performance.

The ability to craft an employee review that is meaningful and change-driven is what separates average supervisors from great managers. How often, though, have you struggled to find the most appropriate words for your needs? This completely revised and updated second edition of Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews provides hundreds of ready-made phrases you can use to clearly communicate any employee's performance in 74 different skill areas.

Traveling from New York to Los Angeles, Stockholm to Korea, John Seabrook visits specialized teams composing songs in digital labs with novel techniques, and he traces the growth of these contagious hits from their origins in early '90s Sweden to their ubiquity on today's charts. Featuring the stories of artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Rihanna as well as expert songsmiths like Max Martin, Ester Dean, and Dr. Luke, The Song Machine will change the way you listen to music.

This book is designed to help you rise to the challenge and become the game changer your organization needs. Candid insights from dozens of coaches, managers, CEOs, journalists, entrepreneurs, and other elite performers reveal the qualities that make some people stand out, and the underlying theme is mindset. While talent is a great head start, it is merely potential. Undeveloped and erratically-wielded talent holds little value for an organization.

The Wisdom of Teams is the definitive work on how to create high-performance teams in any organization. Having sold nearly a half million copies and been translated into more than 15 languages, the authors' clarion call that teams should be the basic unit of organization for most businesses has permanently shaped the way companies reach the highest levels of performance. Wisdom lies in recognizing a team's unique potential to deliver results and in understanding its many benefits.

Whether a novice curious about the cartoon production process, a visual arts student who has not yet experienced that big break, or a seasoned professional looking for valuable insight, Animation Development is the go-to guide for creating the perfect pitch.

Are your employees meeting their goals? Is their work improving over time? Understanding where your employees are succeeding—and falling short—is a pivotal part of ensuring you have the right talent to meet organizational objectives. In order to work with your people and effectively monitor their progress, you need a system in place. The HBR Guide to Performance Management provides a multi-step, cyclical process to help you keep track of your employees' work, identify where they need to improve, and ensure they're growing with the organization.