Management Problem Solving

Countless tools and frameworks claim to make decisions objective and bias-free. But in reality, the defining decisions that leaders face are complex ones with subjective information sources and conflicting courses of action. That's why the toughest choices are left to the leaders, and that's why formulas won't answer them. In Difficult Decisions: How Leaders Make the Right Call with Insight, Integrity, and Empathy, leadership expert Eric Pliner delivers a set of practical tools for listeners to make sense of these complex, subjective decisions quickly and with integrity.

Detonate explains how organizations built up bad habits, identifies which ones masquerade as "best practices", and suggests alternatives that can contribute to winning in the marketplace. With a focus on optimism and empowerment, it focuses on an approach and mindset which are critical to successfully compete in an era characterized by profound technological advances and uncertainty.

Every manager makes tough calls - it comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the "gray areas" - situations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, you've done the best analysis you can, and you still don't know what to do. But you have to make a decision. In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems.

In any conflict, the 1st Alternative is my way and the 2nd Alternative is your way. The fight usually boils down to a question of whose way is better. There are many methods of “conflict resolution,” but most involve compromise, a low-level accommodation that stops the fight without breaking through to amazing new results. The 3rd Alternative is about more than just an armistice - it’s about creating a new and improved reality. The 3rd Alternative transcends traditional solutions to conflict by forging a path toward a third option....

Despite the dizzying amount of data at our disposal today - and an increasing reliance on analytics to make the majority of our decisions - many of our most critical choices still come down to human judgment. This fact is fundamental to organizations whose leaders must often make crucial decisions: to do this they need the best available insights. This book introduces a model that taps the collective judgment of an organization so that the right decisions are made, and the entire organization profits.

Go ahead, be skeptical about big data. The author was - at first. When the term "big data" first came on the scene, best-selling author Tom Davenport ( Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work) thought it was just another example of technology hype. But his research in the years that followed changed his mind. Now, in clear, conversational language, Davenport explains what big data means - and why everyone in business needs to know about it.

In leadership, you need to be able to play to your strengths and look toward overcoming your limitations. The first and most important step is identifying and understanding your leadership style. Without this self-analysis, it’s impossible to know what your strengths and limitations are.

It’s not being negative or pessimistic to assume that something will always go wrong in business and in your career. It’s being realistic. What you do when crisis hits is the only thing matters - and this proven guide delivers everything you need to take positive action with confidence, skill, and professionalism. Frank Supovitz, the man who has been behind-the-scenes at major events like the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, and Indy 500 guides you through the process of making sure you handle inevitable problems as if it’s something you do day in and day out.

Leaders today - whether in corporations or associations, nonprofits, or nations - face massive, messy, multidimensional problems. No one person or group can possibly solve them; they require the broadest possible cooperation. But, says Harvard scholar Dean Williams, our leadership models are still essentially tribal: individuals with formal authority leading in the interest of their own group.

Family businesses—from massive corporations like Walmart to the mom-and-pop store on your local street—have always been a vital part of the American life and economy. But as these family-owned companies evolve and grow, so too do their unique difficulties and the need for dynamic leadership. And as more women rise into leadership roles within commonly male-dominated organizations, challenges abound in already tense environments, where family members also happen to be one's coworkers—and superiors.

You might've talked about innovation with your IT department or software development agency lately and the words "design thinking" were surely mentioned. So what is it? Just another piece of business jargon to add to your arsenal or a useful tool? Or maybe even an overestimated hype? Nowadays every organization or business runs into a myriad of problems as business models become increasingly more complex. Globalization and advances in communication and technology, all add up to creating unique opportunities but also new challenges that are not easy to solve applying the old tested methods.

When designer and computer scientist John Maeda was tapped to be president of the celebrated Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, he had to learn how to be a leader quickly. He had to transform himself from a tenured professor - with a love of argument for argument’s sake and the freedom to experiment - into the head of a hierarchical organization. The professor is free to speak his mind against “the man.” The college president is “the man.” Maeda has had to teach himself, through trial and error, about leadership.

For years, I have been doing turnarounds of distressed companies to make the businesses profitable. I believe that the main reason companies are distressed is that the business owners do not know how to hire and manage a strong management team. Many business owners do not realize how important it is to have and maintain a qualified team of managers to oversee their employees. Most entrepreneurs believe they are doing a decent job of building a quality management team to lead their companies.

As organizations strive to do more with less, many are turning to Lean methodology, which is based on the same techniques that propelled the legendary turnaround of Japan's industrial sector after World War II. Few leaders, however, understand that the real secret behind Lean is a comprehensive approach to management that differs significantly from what is taught in business school. The Lean CEO reveals the true power of Lean through in-depth interviews with CEOs who have gone beyond tool adoption and established Lean as a corporate-wide management system.

Technology thought leader and organizational architect Matt K. Parker breaks down the counterintuitive principles and practices that radically collaborative organizations thrive on. By combining the latest insights from organizational science, sociology, and psychology, he illuminates four imperatives that all radically collaborative organizations must embrace in order to succeed: team autonomy, managerial devolution, deficiency gratification, and candid vulnerability.

I have been in hospitality management for over 40 years and have been “mismanaging” my own life for over 60. Management One-Point-Oh is the culmination of what I have learned and what I have not learned. It's about both. I wrote it mostly for fun but also with the aim of saving some folks, particularly young managers, from themselves and to describe, in simple detail, what I think are the primary differences between bad, good, and great managers.

In Ninja Innovation, Gary Shapiro, the head of the Consumer Electronics Association, answers the universal question - What leads to success? - revealing how everyone can use the ninja way to create a killer strategy that will help them achieve their own goals. "Ninja Innovation" is his ultimate how-to for envisioning, executing, and maintaining a successful innovation-based strategy like those utilized in the technology world.

Think of your to-do list at work. Chances are the most important tasks require you to work with others - and the success of those endeavors depends on the effectiveness of your collaboration. According to management expert Leigh Thompson, collaboration that is conscious, planned, and focused on generating new ideas builds excitement and produces what she calls a "creative conspiracy". Teams that conspire to organize themselves, motivate one another, and combine their talents to meet creative challenges are the hallmark of the most successful organizations.

This elegant method prompts listeners to engage with three deceptively simple questions: What? So what? Now what? The first leads to careful observation. The second invites you to thoughtfully consider options and implications. The third ignites effective action. Together, these questions, and the tools that support them, produce a dynamic and creative dance with uncertainty.

Health-care organizations cry out for a tool to decrease untoward events and bridge the communication gap between professional clinician teams and clients. Discover how to guide your team to creatively problem-solve, build emotional and social intelligence, increase workplace safety and employee retention, and guarantee client satisfaction with the results-don’t-lie Improv to Improve Healthcare system.