How the Harvard Business School Changed the Way We View Organizations

$28.99

Listen, observe, test—these three words lie at the heart of a powerful method for businesses’ transformation.

Behind this method is a deceptively simple idea: managers and management scholars must first take the pulse of a real business, get its case history, diagnose its problems, and only then solve them. Invented by the scholars who launched Harvard Business School, this medical model will still cure companies today.

Damningly, during the last thirty years business schools embraced the presumptions of economists, game theorists, and other calculators of abstraction. The solving of real-world, real-time problems has atrophied and stagnated. In this book, renowned scholar and emeritus professor Jay W. Lorsch marshals evidence, history, and insights from his more than fifty-year career at Harvard Business School to make the case for a return to the medical model–the practices of listening, observing, and testing in which the fields of human relations and organizational behavior are rooted.

By telling the history of the development of his field, Lorsch demonstrates how the medical model emerged in the years before World War II and for decades helped managers, management scholars, and consultants diagnose and solve the problems besetting companies large and small. Explaining the case studies that define the practice, he discusses how the model has been refined and reapplied by later generations and how it can continue to address issues such as diversity, leadership, competition, and optimal corporate board structures.

Forging Dynasty Businesses: The Competitive Edge of Enduring Teams

$25.99

People are one of the few remaining, reliable sources of sustainable, competitive advantage. Competitors will copy marketing strategies, and technology and process advantages will fade over time, but having the best people for your organization will turn customers into raving fans, allowing you to have a more enjoyable ride as you achieve your goals.

Most business owners give lip service to the mantra that people are our greatest assets, but how many really grasp the deeper implications of this? After all, people are listed on income statements as an expense (payroll) but are nowhere to be found under assets on our balance sheets.

This book provides the keys to unlock the fundamental elements of an organization that serve as the foundation for small businesses to perpetually attract and retain top talent—those who fit with the organization’s culture and core values and who contribute to achieving the organization’s goals.

Download additional resources from this book HERE.

Wealth Management

$34.99

This book empowers individuals with practical knowledge to manage their financial wealth from their first job until retirement and beyond.

The first main theme is investments and covers security types, investment strategies, and asset allocations for individual investors. The foundation for this theme is the magical behavior of investment returns across securities and time, and the concept of market efficiency.

Next, the author details tax minimization, beginning with an understanding of how taxes deplete investment value. He then illuminates various tax loopholes and strategies that individuals can exploit, including:

  • the use of tax-favored investment accounts,
  • opportunistic trading,
  • picking ETFs over mutual funds,
  • gifting to bypass estate taxes.

Lie also covers the many pitfalls in the world of wealth management. Several stem from investors’ ignorance or irrational behavior, while others are concocted by financial institutions to fleece individual investors. Either way, the readers learn to avoid them.

Other topics also discussed include:

  • What types of insurance should individuals purchase?
  • When should a mortgage be refinanced?
  • And how can individuals avoid costly probate court for the estate?

This book is useful for university courses on wealth management and for all individuals who want to secure their financial future. This includes you.

The Start-Up Junkie’s Playbook: A 30-Step Plan to Launch Your Business

$31.99

Starting a Business? What You Need to Think About, Know, and Do

Planning a business needs to start somewhere. This playbook is it.

The objective of this manageable and plainspoken playbook (and workbook) is to sometimes gently, and sometimes less so, prod you toward making an informed decision about your proposed entrepreneurial undertaking or, conversely, help you realize and understand why you need to let go, walk away, and look elsewhere for opportunities.

That’s the “go/no-go” crossroads, likely the most important business decision you will ever have to make.

Think of this as a race to the starting line.

Get ready to walk through 30 consecutive tough and sometimes personal (even mildly cringe-worthy) step-by-step milestones.

The Sales Momentum Mindset: Igniting and Sustaining Sales Force Motivation

$34.99

Unleash your sales potential with The Sales Momentum Mindset. This transformative guide is the key to unlocking sustainable sales force motivation by doing something radical: ignoring motivation. Crafted for sales professionals and managers alike, it offers a fresh perspective on sales performance, designed to ignite production and guide teams towards unprecedented growth.

Discover the power that comes from focusing on momentum instead of motivation, understand its impact on sales culture, and learn how to convert it into significant, lasting results. Gain insights into a new language and framework around momentum, presented in a down-to-earth narrative that will resonate with every level of sales experience.

Authored by a seasoned sales veteran, the book’s authentic stories and enlightening visuals reveal an innovative approach to sales performance management. Find what’s achievable when you step away from obsolete motivational approaches, and instead cultivate a Momentum Mindset.

No matter what you sell or your level of experience, The Sales Momentum Mindset is set to revolutionize your perception of sales and sales force management. Step into a new era of sales success. This is your manual for momentum-based sales transformation.

Regular updates and more opportunities to learn at chamberspivot.com.

Markets in Chaos: A History of Market Crises Around the World

$34.99

This book is useful for those seeking to learn about the history of market crises and individuals that want to learn about protection against downside risks for an investment portfolio.

The purpose of this book is not to convince the reader to attempt to anticipate the timing of the next market crash, but rather for the reader to be able to draw parallels (and some contrasts) between the different crises in history. The book reviews case studies related to specific macroeconomic event triggers ranging from COVID-19 to hyperinflation.

Readers will come away with extensive knowledge of different market crisis events spread across countries and timelines. The reader will be well versed on important macroeconomic topics such as the history of currencies. Perhaps most importantly, readers will feel better prepared to handle the next market catastrophe. Audiences such as business school students and those that are a part of organizations such as the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute will find this book of interest.

ANCILLARY MATERIALS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

  • Test Questions: This is a 14 page document that includes straightforward questions along with more open-ended essay questions based on the book.
  • Class Project Recommendations: This is a one page document that provides class project ideas that can be done in reference to the book.

    • Please email [email protected] to request either or both of these.

    How to Think Strategically: Upskilling for Impact and Powerful Strategy

    $34.99

    Competent Strategic Thinking is Rare and Valuable.

    How to Think Strategically is the ideal primer for those who want to develop their business acumen and make strategic impact. This book will help you understand what it means to “be strategic” and how to craft strategy that is effective, clever, and powerful. It provides numerous real-world examples of individual strategic thinkers in action. Through these examples, you’ll gain useful lessons that can be applied in any organization and in your personal life.

    The Most-Important Tool of Strategy Is Found Between Your Ears!

    A competent strategic thinker tolerates ambiguity, notices weak signals, defines the core challenge facing the organization, and designs effective responses with a winning strategic logic.

    How to Think Strategically upskills you to:

    • Internalize the 20 micro skills of strategic thinking.
    • Distinguish strategic thinking from operational thinking and appropriately apply each.
    • Pose high-quality questions that spark strategic insights.
    • Write a concise one-page statement of strategy, with five essential concepts that will help you distinguish effective strategy from a list of goals.
    • Improve conversations with stakeholders.
    • Develop a courageous personal leadership style and a courageous perspective to address the real issues that are obstacles to your organization’s success.
    • Overcome the excuse of “I’m too busy to be strategic”.

    Anyone can improve their strategic thinking if they know where to focus their attention.

    Managing Millennials: Shaping a New Work Paradigm

    $28.99

    Leadership. Engagement. Retention. Recruitment. Diversity. The key challenges facing workplaces today.

    Underpinning these challenges are the millennial workforce.

    • A generation who are experiencing global challenges like the economic crisis, debt, job insecurity and housing unaffordability.
    • A generation who are experiencing personal challenges like social media addictions, pressure, and mental health crisis.
    • A generation who has been put in the “too hard” basket by a lot of workplaces.
    • A generation who are soon to become the dominant global workforce.

    To future proof workplace performance and engagement, workplaces must act.

    Getting the best out of the millennial workforce, means creating an environment where they can thrive. Critical to this, is good management and leadership. Without it, workplaces will not resolve the current challenges.

    This book provides a solution. It’s designed to educate readers on the current and future millennial workforce: who they are, what they want, what they need and how to get the best out of them. It offers clear cut guidance and best practice techniques for both managers and millennials as they continue to navigate the current and future landscape of work.

    Sustainable Investing: An ESG Starter Kit for Everyday Investors

    $28.99

    The Essential Starting Point for Values-Driven Investors

    You are passionate about the important issues facing our world: Climate change. Racial justice. Gender equality. And you do things to reflect those passions – volunteering, donating, voting, recycling. But there’s an even more powerful way to advocate for what matters to you: Changing your investments.

    This book is perfect for individuals looking to make their first investments in “ESG” funds, which consider the Environmental, Social, and Governance aspects of the companies they invest in, as well as their financials. It contains useful and practical guidance on how to understand your choices in the rapidly expanding world of sustainable investing, and it offers concrete steps to invest in funds and companies that reflect your values.

    Catalyzing Transformation: Making System Change Happen

    $34.99

    Here’s how to make purposeful system change happen!

    The world faces a multitude of crises that demand transformative changes in how we live and do business. Yet a core question is…how to make purposeful transformation happen? Catalyzing Transformation shows the way through:

    • Innovative organizing processes that anyone can use to catalyze purposeful whole system transformational change for a better world.
    • How transformation catalysts work to organize purposeful, self-aware transformation systems that can tackle complex systemic challenges.
    • Three processes—connecting (seeing, understanding, and making sense of the system), cohering (co-creatively developing shared goals and action plans), and amplifying (implementing, evaluating, and elaborating effective transformative action).
    • Design guidelines for leaders stewarding change efforts in context-appropriate ways.

    Whether you catalyze social changer, responsible businesses, activists, policymakers, or students of change, Catalyzing Transformation can help!