A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy and is known as @agatharoza on Wattpad.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children. Angelica is also the author of Hunt A Killer, a PERFECT SCORE novel, under the pen name A.M. Ellis, which she wrote as an IP for Scholastic in the US.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

Aaron Dignan

Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, specialising in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of several books, including Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britain’s Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Aaron Edwards

Aaron Robertson is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Italian literature. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon was short-listed for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and in 2021 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and Literary Hub, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Aaron Robertson

Aaron Shapiro

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Larry Smith

What is stopping you from having a great career? 
 
The answer, quite probably, is you. After all, it is so easy to settle for the dull but safe, or to allow yourself to become trapped in a career you dislike, or to persuade yourself that the job you really want is out of your reach. But it doesn’t have to be that way. 
 
In No Fears, No Excuses, renowned ‘career whisperer’ Professor Larry Smith shows you precisely how to secure a great future. Building on his hugely popular TEDx talk, ‘Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career’, he shows why people so often get stuck on the wrong path. He then takes you step by step from that initial point when you are considering your options to the moment when you pitch for that perfect job – showing you exactly what decisions you need to make, and when. 
 
Whether you are starting out, looking to move up, or hoping to change direction altogether, this book will guide you towards a happier, more fulfilled career – now.

No Fears, No Excuses

Robert Cialdini

When it comes to persuasion, success can begin before you say a word. 
 
‘An instant classic.’ Forbes 
‘Utterly fascinating.’ Adam Grant, author of Originals and Give and Take 
‘Shockingly insightful.’ Chip Heath, co-author of Switch and Made to Stick 
 
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
In his global bestseller Influence, Professor Robert Cialdini transformed the way we think about the craft of persuasion. Now he offers revelatory new insights into the art of winning people over: it isn’t just what we say or how we say it that counts, but also what goes on in the moments before we speak. 
 
This is the world of ‘pre-suasion’, where subtle turns of phrase, seemingly insignificant visual cues, and apparently unimportant details of location can prime people to say ‘yes’ even before they are asked. And as Cialdini reveals, it’s a world you can master. If you understand the tools of pre-suasion, you will better placed to win a debate, get support for an idea or cause, promote a campaign – even persuade yourself to do something you find difficult. 
 
Drawing on the latest research, and packed with fascinating case studies, Pre-Suasion is a masterclass in enhancing your powers of influence. 
 
 
‘Mind-blowing.’ Management Today 
‘Accessible and intellectually rigorous.’ Books of the Year, The Times 
‘Fascinating, fluent and original.’ Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist Strikes Back

Pre-Suasion

A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Robert I. Sutton

Hayagreeva Rao

Scaling up excellence is the key to creating a great organisation. It’s how a small enterprise expands without losing focus. It’s how a brilliant new idea or plan developed by the few goes on to be adopted by the many. And, in hard times and tough situations, it’s how pockets of smart new thinking overcome cultures of indifference or negativity. An organisation that doesn’t know how to scale up what is best within it won’t achieve long-term success. 
 
Bestselling author Robert Sutton and his Stanford colleague Huggy Rao have devoted nearly a decade to uncovering what it takes to create and spread outstanding performance, and in Scaling Up Excellence they share the fruits of their research. Drawing on case studies that range from Silicon Valley enterprises to non-profit organisations, they provide crucial insights into corporate cultures, both good and bad, and offer a road map for establishing and stimulating excellence. In the process, they show how to use ‘premortems’ when making big decisions about change. They reveal why seven is so often the magic number when it comes to team size. They examine successful and unsuccessful quests for improvement – in hospitals, schools and elsewhere. And they discuss when a single corporate mindset is best (‘Catholicism’) and when local variation is preferable (‘Buddhism’). 
 
Scaling Up Excellence is the first management book devoted to what is – or should be – a core priority for every organisation. As such it is destined to become the standard bearer.

Scaling up Excellence

Jia Jiang

Rejection? It's nothing to be afraid of … 
 
Maybe you avoid situations where you might be rejected. You don't apply for that dream job. You don't ask for that pay rise. You don’t ask that person on a date. But it doesn't have to be that way – the only thing standing between you and your goals … is you. 
 
Jia Jiang had allowed his fear of rejection to rule his life. But he decided to take radical action: he quit his job and spent 100 days deliberately seeking out scenarios where he would likely be rejected, from ordering donuts interlinked and iced like the Olympic rings to asking to pilot a light aircraft. And something remarkable happened; Jia not only learned how to cope with rejection but also discovered that even the most outrageous request may be granted – if you ask in the right way. 
 
In this infectiously positive book Jia shares what he learned in his 100 Days of Rejection, explaining how to turn a 'no' into a 'yes', and revealing how you too can become Rejection Proof and achieve your dreams.

Rejection Proof

How to Beat Fear and Become Invincible

How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible

Charles Handy

Britain's leading guru looks to the future. 
 
Charles Handy is one of the giants of contemporary thought. His books on management – including Understanding Organizations and Gods of Management – have changed the way we view business. His work on broader issues and trends – such as Beyond Certainty – has changed the way we view society. 
 
In The Second Curve, Handy builds on a life's work to glimpse into the future and see what challenges and opportunities lie ahead. He looks at current trends in capitalism and asks whether it is a sustainable system. He explores the dangers of a society built on credit. He challenges the myth that remorseless growth is essential. He even asks whether we should rethink our roles in life – as students, parents, workers and voters – and what the aims of an ideal society of the future should be. 
 
Provocative and thoughtful as ever, he sets out the questions we all need to ask ourselves – and points us in the direction of some of the answers.

The Second Curve

Thoughts on Reinventing Society

Jacquie McNish

Sean Silcoff

Winner of the Canadian National Business Book Award 2016 
Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2015 
 
In 2009, BlackBerry controlled half of the US smartphone market. Today that number is less than one per cent. What went so wrong? 
 
Losing the Signal is the riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed; instead, the rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway. 
 
With unprecedented access to key players, senior executives, directors, and competitors, Losing the Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that started above a bagel store in a small Canadian city and went on to control half of the US smartphone market. However, at the very moment BlackBerry was ranked the world’s fastest-growing company, internal feuds and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: the entry of Apple and Google into the mobile phone market. 
 
Expertly told by acclaimed journalists Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining, whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business stories of the new century.

Losing the Signal

The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry

Carolyn Taylor

A new, fully revised edition. 
 
The culture of an organisation can mean the difference between success and failure. Leaders cast long shadows, and if you want to change the culture you have to walk the talk. This book shows you how. 
 
Walking the Talk covers everything from measuring corporate culture to changing people's behaviour (including your own) and describes in detail six archetypes of company culture: Achievement, Customer-Centric, One-Team, Innovative, People-First and Greater-Good. Packed with fascinating examples and case histories, and drawing extensively on Carolyn Taylor's twenty years' experience of building great cultures, it will give you the confidence to build a culture of success in your own organisation.

Walking the Talk

Building a Culture for Success (Revised Edition)

Gavin Kennedy

The ability to negotiate effectively is a vital skill for business and for everyday life. Whether you want to negotiate a business deal, a pay rise – or the price of a new house or car, Perfect Negotiation shows you how to get a better deal every time – and avoid costly mistakes. Perfect Negotiation tells you everything you need to know about the art of negotiation, from what it is, to how to perfect the technique for yourself. Soon you will be able to bargain yourself to success. 
 
The Perfect series is a range of practical guides that give clear and straightforward advice on everything from getting your first job to choosing your baby's name. Written by experienced authors offering tried-and-tested tips, each book contains all you need to get it right first time.

Perfect Negotiation

Andrew Floyer Acland

Perfect People Skills helps you to deal with other people effectively and how to be aware of your own behaviour too. Differences of direction and motivation, personality, ethnic group, gender, class and ability can all bring problems, as well as those challenges presented by 'difficult types'. The author provides some powerful ideas for preventing people problems, resolving conflict and building harmonious homes and workplaces. The book is comprehensive and yet concise and to-the-point. It is written in simple, clear language and is designed to be of immediate, practical benefit to readers in developing better relationships at work and outside work. Chapters include advice on: Grounding, Listening, Questioning, Empathising, Speaking, Negotiating, Proposing, Counselling, Confronting and Preventing. 
 
The Perfect series is a range of practical guides that give clear and straightforward advice on everything from finding your first job to choosing your baby's name. Written by experienced authors offering tried-and-tested tips, each book contains all you need to get it right first time.

Perfect People Skills

Duncan Bannatyne

Can money buy you happiness? 
 
A few years ago Duncan Bannatyne might have said so. He was happily married and his businesses were thriving. Life was good. He couldn't have known that a storm was brewing on the horizon and that he would soon face immense personal and professional struggles, including the strain of a divorce and the impact of the recession on his business empire. Riding the Storm is the inspirational account of how Duncan overcame these setbacks. It's a survival story, full of insights into how he adapted his businesses and his life to new financial realities. 
 
In it, Duncan explains exactly how a working-class boy from Clydebank built himself a multimillion-pound business empire, and talks with incredible frankness about the current strategies, goals and finances of his companies. He reveals the true nature of his feuds and friendships with the other Dragons and uses his experiences from Dragons' Den to offer advice to start-up entrepreneurs in today's market. He speaks openly about the terrible pain of his divorce and how his children's love gave him the strength to get through it. He discusses the opportunities that success has given him, from learning to dance for Sport Relief to trekking up Kilimanjaro with his daughter. And finally he explains why, in spite of having just gone through the toughest years of his life, he feels positive about the future - and why you should too.

Riding the Storm

Ram Charan

The global economic landscape is 'tilting': countries such as China, India and Brazil are racing forward while established American and European companies struggle to keep up. To survive in this new climate, CEOs need to respond quickly and effectively, and in Global Tilt, best selling coauthor of Execution Ram Charan shows how. 
 
His advice includes: 
- Unlearn Old Lessons 
- Get Ready for Strategic Bets 
- Fight the Short-Term Beast 
- Change Your Psychology 
 
In this age of rapid economic change, we all have to be on our toes. Is your business ready to survive the Global Tilt?

Global Tilt

Leading Your Business Through the Great Economic Power Shift

Alan Siegel

Irene Etzkorn

Leading brand consultants Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn show you how to conquer complexity and bring clarity to business and daily life. Fans for Intuition Pumps or The Art of Thinking Clearly will find this book indispensable to clearing clutter from their minds and their working lives. 
 
For four decades, Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn have been on the frontlines of the battle to make things simple. They have consulted with Xerox, American Express, 3M, the U.S. Air Force, the IRS, and many others to simplify their processes, their offerings, everything they do - with dramatic results for these businesses and the customers they serve. 
 
Siegel and Etzkorn believe in simplicity as a philosophy, a guiding principle, and a way of life, but they have learned firsthand that it's not so simple to make things simple - it demands a commitment to clarity, honesty, discipline, and intelligence. Three things, the authors believe, can be said with certainty: 1) simplicity works; 2) it is accessible to all of us; and 3) we've never needed it more than we do today. 
 
These three principles are at the core of SIMPLE, a book that will expose the overly complex things you do, reveal the reasons why you do them, and make it harder for you to keep on doing them.

Simple

David Robertson

Bill Breen

LEGO is one of the world's best-loved and most familiar brands, adored by generations of children. What is less well known, though, is how close this iconic company came to total collapse in 2003. 
 
Brick by Brick is the compelling story of a Danish family-owned company that enjoyed decades of success before its inability to keep in step with a rapidly changing market brought it crashing to earth. It's also the story of an extraordinary recovery. As disaster stared them in the face, the management of LEGO embarked on an audacious and innovative plan to turn their fortunes around, and then painstakingly implemented it. Today, the company is riding high once again, and enjoying results that are the envy of their competitors. 
 
Granted unprecedented access to every part of the LEGO Group, David Robertson not only charts each twist in the company's story but explains precisely what went wrong and how it was fixed. His clear-sighted analysis will prove invaluable to all those who want to understand how companies can not only ride the storm of change, but benefit from it.

Brick by Brick

How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry

Alex Brummer

‘Buy British!’ we often hear, and many foreign companies have done just that. US food giant Kraft bought Cadbury in 2010, Dutch group AkzoNobel acquired ICI in 2007, Deutsche Bahn now own Arriva, and that’s just the beginning. 
 
The truth is that hundreds of billions of pounds’ worth of British businesses have been sold off abroad in recent years. But what does this takeover bonanza mean for our future economic health? 
 
In Britain for Sale, award-winning financial journalist Alex Brummer investigates this question, explaining why British companies are so irresistible to overseas buyers and weighing up the true cost of these transactions.

Britain for Sale

British Companies in Foreign Hands – The Hidden Threat to Our Economy

Chris Anderson

If a country wants to remain economically vibrant, it needs to manufacture things. In recent years, however, many nations have become obsessed with making money out of selling services, leaving the real business of manufacturing to others. 
 
Makers is about how all that is being reversed. Over the past ten years, the internet has democratised publishing, broadcasting and communications, leading to a massive increase in the range of participation in everything digital - the world of bits. Now the same is happening to manufacturing - the world of things. 
 
Chris Anderson, bestselling author of The Long Tail, explains how this is happening: how such technologies as 3D printing and electronics assembly are becoming available to everybody, and how people are building successful businesses as a result. Whereas once every aspiring entrepreneur needed the support of a major manufacturer, now anybody with a smart idea and a little expertise can make their ideas a reality. Just as Google, Facebook and others have created highly successful companies in the virtual world, so these new inventors and manufacturers are assuming positions of ever greater importance in the real world. 
 
The next industrial revolution is on its way.

Makers

The New Industrial Revolution

Terry Leahy

In his fourteen years as CEO of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy not only turned the company into the largest supermarket chain in the UK but also transformed it into a global enterprise. As a result, Sir Terry is now one of the world's most admired business leaders, widely acclaimed for his drive, flair and no-nonsense approach. 
 
In Management in 10 Words he draws on his experience and expertise to pinpoint the ten vital attributes that make successful managers and underlie great organisations, explaining: 
 
- Why initial failure often leads to ultimate success. 
- Why profits stem from a company's values, not its day-to-day business. 
- Why competition should always be welcomed. 
- Why simplicity leads to innovation. 
- Why trust is the bedrock of effective leadership. 
 
The result is an inspiring, thoughtful and supremely practical guide that will prove invaluable to all managers in all types of organisation.

Management in 10 Words

Roger Fisher

William Ury

__________________________ 
THE WORLD'S BESTSELLING GUIDE TO NEGOTIATION 
 
Getting to Yes has been in print for over thirty years. This timeless classic has helped millions of people secure win-win agreements both at work and in their private lives. Founded on principles such as: 
 
· Don't bargain over positions 
 
· Separate the people from the problem 
 
· Insist on objective criteria 
 
Getting to Yes simplifies the whole negotiation process, offering a highly effective framework that will ensure success.

Getting to Yes

Negotiating an agreement without giving in

Allan Leighton

We all make decisions every day. Most of them are pretty straightforward, but every so often there are some really tough calls. In business the choices that executives are sometimes faced with can make the difference between acclaimed success and ongoing prosperity, and failure and financial disaster. 
 
In Tough Calls, leading businessman Allan Leighton focuses on specific decisions he has made in the course of his career - at ASDA, Royal Mail and elsewhere - and describes the thought processes behind them. He also talks to many others in the know, from Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Terry Leahy to Adam Crozier at ITV and Stephen Hester at RBS. Taking into account facts that were known to them at the time, as well as other interrelated factors and potentially high-risk consequences, this line-up of top executives outline their approaches to breaking down often highly complex problems into achievable solutions. 
 
All Allan Leighton’s royalties from this book will be donated to Breast Cancer Care (Registered charity: England and Wales 1017658, Scotland SC038104)

Tough Calls

Making the right decisions in challenging times

Peter Sims

How did Pixar go from producing CAT scan images to winning Oscars? 
How did Steve Jobs turn Apple into a world-beating company? 
How does Amazon's culture encourage innovation? 
How can you find the creative solutions demanded by our ever-changing world? 
 
The answer, according to renowned business thought-leader Peter Sims, is LITTLE BETS. In these fast-moving times, it's next to impossible to predict what's around the corner, and harder still to formulate a foolproof plan to deal with it. Truly innovative companies, Sims argues, don't get caught up in projections and predictions. Instead, they embrace uncertainty, take a chance, fail quickly and learn fast. 
 
This method has formulated thousands of modern advances, from Google's PageRank to Starbucks coffee shops - if you harness its power, what could you achieve?

Little Bets

How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries

Jim Collins

Morten T. Hansen

THE NEW QUESTION 
Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and his colleague, Morten Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times. 
 
THE NEW STUDY 
Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins's prior work by its focus not just on performance, but also on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today. With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness - beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years - in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control. The research team then contrasted these "10X companies" to a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments. 
 
THE NEW FINDINGS 
The study results were full of provocative surprises. Such as: 
* The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons; they were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. 
* Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card in a chaotic and uncertain world; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline. 
* Following the belief that leading in a "fast world" always requires "fast decisions" and "fast action" is a good way to get killed. 
* The great companies changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies. 
 
The authors challenge conventional wisdom with thought-provoking, sticky, and supremely practical concepts. They include 10Xers; the 20 Mile March; Fire Bullets then Cannonballs; Leading above the Death Line; Zoom Out, Then Zoom In; and the SMaC Recipe. Finally, in the last chapter, Collins and Hansen present their most provocative and original analysis: defining, quantifying, and studying the role of luck. The great companies and the leaders who built them were not luckier than the comparisons, but they did get a higher Return on Luck. This book is classic Collins: contrarian, data driven, and uplifting. He and Hansen show convincingly that, even in a chaotic and uncertain world, greatness happens by choice, not by chance.

Great by Choice

Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

Ray Anderson

In 1994, Ray Anderson felt a 'spear in the chest': he realised that his company, billion-dollar carpeting manufacturer Interface, Inc, was plundering the environment with its unsustainable business practices, and that it desperately needed to change direction. 
 
Under his leadership, Interface went on to set unprecedented targets for cutting waste, instigated revolutionary recycling initiatives, and encouraged employees at every level of the company to contribute ideas on how to save resources. As a result, the company's greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 82% and are on target to reach zero level by 2020. Not only that, these changes also brought down costs, improved quality, and increased profits. 
 
In Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, Ray Anderson shares the remarkable story of how Interface turned itself around, and proves that running your company sustainably isn't radical at all - it's just good business.

Confessions of a Radical Industrialist

How Interface proved that you can build a successful business without destroying the planet

Larry Bossidy

Charles Burck

When Execution was first published in 2002, it changed the way we did our jobs. By analysing the discipline of getting things done, it helped thousands of business people to make the final leap to success. Now, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan reframe their empowering message for a world in which the old rules have been shattered and radical change is becoming routine. For the foreseeable future: 
 
- Growth will be slower. But the company that executes well will have the confidence, speed and resources to move fast as new opportunities emerge. 
 
- Competition will be fiercer, with companies searching for any possible advantage in every area. 
 
- Governments will take on new roles in their national economies. And companies that execute well will be more attractive as partners and suppliers, and better prepared to adapt to new waves of regulation. 
 
- Risk management will become a top priority for every leader, and every company will be looking for the edge in detecting new internal and external threats. 
 
Forget formulating a 'vision', then leaving others to carry it out: Execution shows you how to link together people, strategy and operations - the three core elements of every organisation - and create a business based on dialogue, intellectual honesty and realism. With case histories from the real world, Execution provides the realistic and hard-nosed approach to business success that could only come from authors as accomplished and insightful as Bossidy and Charan.

Execution

The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Bill Conaty

The Talent Masters itself stems from a unique marriage of talents. Bill Conaty, in the course of a 40-year career at General Electric, worked closely with CEOs Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt to build the company's internationally renowned talent machine. Ram Charan is the legendary advisor to companies around the world. Here they combine their unparalleled experience and insight to create a blueprint for talent development, and to show how critical it is to the continuing and future success of every business. 
 
The essential skill that lasts. Why talent management guarantees future results in a way that short-term financial success and market share cannot. 
 
Secrets of the masters. How world-class companies achieve their stellar performance decade after decade by finding and nurturing leadership talent. 
 
The importance of knowledge. Why knowing and understanding your talent and reviewing it systematically is the foundation for creating a steady, self-renewing stream of leaders for all levels of your organization - from first-line supervisors to the CEO. 
 
The Talent Masters tool kit. Specific guidelines that will help you assess and improve your company's talent mastery capabilities.

The Talent Masters

Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers

Deborah Meaden

Deborah Meaden is known to millions for her straight-talking, no-nonsense approach on BBC2's Dragons' Den, and in Common Sense Rules she shares insights and observations gleaned from a life lived in business. Some of them come from witnessing the successes - and the failures - of others. Many more, though, are drawn from her own business ventures. She shows, for example, how an early stint in a holiday park gave her a crash course in customer relations. She frankly and honestly analyses why her first enterprise, which started so promisingly, turned sour. And she explains why turning down a multimillion-pound offer for her chain of holiday parks was the best decision she ever made. 
 
As direct and to-the-point on the page as she is in the Den, Deborah Meaden is a superbly clear-sighted and experienced observer of business success, and her book is guaranteed both to inform and inspire.

Common Sense Rules

What you really need to know about business

Steve Johnston

Liam McGee

Google is now a dominant force on the Internet, guiding millions of searches and online purchases every day. Understanding how it works and how to make the most of it is therefore essential to anyone building or running a website, whether for business or as a hobby. This easy-to-follow guide explains not only how Google actually sifts the billions of pages of information its index contains, but shows you how you can improve the performance of your own website in Google's search results, giving specific and detailed instructions about the sort of priority issues you need to address. 
 
50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website will teach you how to: 
- Use Google to help you understand how people search for the sort of things you are offering 
- Create a website that your customers will quickly find in Google 
- Make your website irresistible to links from other sites 
- Help Google understand what your site is about 
- Think like Google and win more traffic

50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website

What happens when advances in technology allow many things to be produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things are then made available to the consumer for free? 
 
In his groundbreaking new book, The Long Tail author Chris Anderson considers a brave new world where the old economic certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods - newspapers, DVDs, T-shirts, phones, even holiday flights. He explains why this has become possible - why new technologies, particularly the Internet, have caused production and distribution costs in many sectors to plummet to an extent unthinkable even a decade ago. He shows how the flexibility provided by the online world allows producers to trade ever more creatively, offering items for free to make real or perceived gains elsewhere. He pinpoints the winners and the losers in the Free universe. And he demonstrates the ways in which, as an increasing number of things become available for free, our decisions to make use of them will be determined by two resources far more valuable than money: the popular reputation of what is on offer and the time we have available for it. In the future, he argues, when we talk of the 'money economy' we will talk of the 'reputation economy' and the 'time economy' in the same breath, and our world will never be the same again.

Free

How today's smartest businesses profit by giving something for nothing

What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? And when the combined value of the millions of items that only sell in small quantities equals or even exceeds the value of a handful of best-sellers? 
 
In this ground-breaking book, Chris Anderson shows that the future of business does not lie in hits - the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve - but in what used to be regarded as misses - the endlessly long tail of that same curve. As our world is transformed by the Internet and the near infinite choice it offers consumers, so traditional business models are being overturned and new truths revealed about what consumers want and how they want to get it. 
 
Chris Anderson first explored the Long Tail in an article in Wired magazine that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time. Now, in this eagerly anticipated book, he takes a closer look at the new economics of the Internet age, showing where business is going and exploring the huge opportunities that exist: for new producers, new e-tailers, and new tastemakers. He demonstrates how long tail economics apply to industries ranging from the toy business to advertising to kitchen appliances. He sets down the rules for operating in a long tail economy. And he provides a glimpse of a future that's already here.

The Long Tail

How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand

Decline can be avoided. 
Decline can be detected. 
Decline can be reversed. 
 
Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course? 
 
In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins' research project-more than four years in duration-uncovered five step-wise stages of decline: 
 
Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success 
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More 
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril 
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation 
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death 
 
By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom. 
 
Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover. 
 
Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover-in some cases, coming back even stronger-even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4. 
 
Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

How the Mighty Fall

And Why Some Companies Never Give In

Mark Sanborn

Whether you want to impress people at work or inspire your family and friends, bestselling author and acclaimed speaker Mark Sanborn will show you how to make your performance bigger, better, bolder and worthy of an encore. 
 
Every day, at work and at home, we are called on to perform, but is it possible to make the important performances outstanding? Leadership expert Mark Sanborn says 'yes!' and in The Encore Effect he demonstrates how anyone can cultivate the traits shared by remarkable performers. The secret lies in five key concepts: 
 
Passion: invigorates and inspires performer and audience alike. 
Preparation: instils confidence. 
Practice: the best way to find out what works for you. 
Performance: grab your audience's attention and keep it. 
Polish: refine your performance and make it memorable. 
 
Whether your 'stage' is an office, sales floor, boardroom or your own home, Sanborn's inimitable combination of sage advice and rousing encouragement will help you shine when it counts.

The Encore Effect

Martin Lindstrom

Most anti-smoking campaigns inadvertently encourage people to smoke. The scent of melons helps sell electronic products. Subliminal advertising may have been banned, but it's being used all the time. Product placement in films rarely works. Many multi-million pound advertising campaigns are a complete waste of time. 
 
These are just a few of the findings of Martin Lindstrom's groundbreaking study of what really makes consumers tick. Convinced that there is a gulf between what we believe influences us and what actually does, he set up a highly ambitious research project that employed the very latest in brain-scanning technology and called on the services of some 2000 volunteers. Buyology shares the fruits of this research, revealing for the first time what actually goes on inside our heads when we see an advertisement, hear a marketing slogan, taste two rival brands of drink, or watch a programme sponsored by a major company. The conclusions are both startling and groundbreaking, showing the extent to which we deceive ourselves when we think we are making considered decisions, and revealing factors as varied as childhood memories and religious belief that come together to influence our decisions and shape our tastes.

Buyology

How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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