Management Science

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Once again using an astutely written fictional tale to unambiguously but painlessly deliver some hard truths about critical business procedures, Patrick Lencioni targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. And like those preceding it, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is an entertaining, quick read filled with useful information that will prove easy to digest and implement. This time, Lencioni weaves his lessons around the story of a troubled Silicon Valley firm and its unexpected choice for a new CEO: an old-school manager who had retired from a traditional manufacturing company two years earlier at age 55. Showing exactly how existing personnel failed to function as a unit, and precisely how the new boss worked to reestablish that essential conduct, the book's first part colorfully illustrates the ways that teamwork can elude even the most dedicated individuals--and be restored by an insightful leader. A second part offers details on Lencioni's "five dysfunctions" (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results), along with a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings. Like the author's previous books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, this is highly recommended. --Howard Rothman

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.

Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.

Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.

Data Analysis and Decision Making with Microsoft Excel, (with CD-ROM and Decision Tools and Statistic Tools Suite), Revised

Master data analysis, modeling, and spreadsheet use with DATA ANALYSIS AND DECISION MAKING WITH MICROSOFT EXCEL! With a teach-by-example approach, student-friendly writing style, and complete Excel integration, this quantitative methods text provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Margin notes, boxed-in definitions and formulas in the text, enhanced explanations in the text itself, and stated objectives for the examples found throughout the text make studying easy. Problem sets and cases provide realistic examples that enable you to see the relevance of the material to your future as a business leader. The CD-ROMs packaged with every new book include the following add-ins: the Palisade Decision Tools Suite (@RISK, StatTools, PrecisionTree, TopRank, and RISKOptimizer); and SolverTable, which allows you to do sensitivity analysis. All of these add-ins have been revised for Excel 2007.

Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World

When Margaret J. Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science was initially published in 1992, it outlined an unquestionably unique but extremely challenging view of change, leadership, and the structure of groups. Many readers immediately embraced its cutting-edge perspective, but others just could not understand how the complicated scientific tenets it described could be used to reshape institutions. Now Wheatley, an organizational specialist who has since coauthored A Simpler Way, updates the original by including additional material (such as an epilogue addressing her personal experiences during the past decade) and reconstructing some of her more challenging concepts. The result is a much clearer work that first explores the implications of quantum physics on organizational practice, then investigates ways that biology and chemistry affect living systems, and finally focuses on chaos theory, the creation of a new order, and the manner that scientific principles affect leadership. "Our old ways of relating to each other don't support us any longer," she writes. "It is up to us to journey forth in search of new practices and new ideas that will enable us to create lives and organizations worthy of human habitation." --Howard Rothman

Leadership and the New Science launched a revolution by demonstrating that ideas drawn from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular biology could improve organizational performance. Margaret Wheatley called for free-flowing information, individual empowerment, relationship networks, and organizational change that evolves organically -- ideas that have become commonplace. Now Wheatley's updated classic, based on her experiences with these ideas in a diverse number of organizations on five continents, is available in paperback.

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into nineteen languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Electrifying in its simplicity -- like all great breakthroughs -- Porter's analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies -- lowest cost, differentiation, and focus -- which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. In the almost two decades since publication, Porter's framework for predicting competitor behavior has transformed the way in which companies look at their rivals and has given rise to the new discipline of competitor assessment.

More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalized Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors,, and choose competitive positions. The ideas in the book address the underlying fundamentals of competition in a way that is independent of the specifics of the ways companies go about competing.

Competitive Strategy has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. By bringing a disciplined structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability, Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century.

Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference

A "textbook with passion", Hardwiring Excellence offers a road map and practical how-to guide for creating and sustaining a culture of service and operational excellence. In this book, author Quint Studer, CEO of Studer Group, draws on his personal experience as a former hospital executive who led two organizations to the top 1% in patient satisfaction and his experience coaching hundreds of healthcare organizations since.

Studer, a nationally acclaimed educator, coach, and thought leader in healthcare today, is a master storyteller, mixing "chicken soup style" stories with personal insight, simple tools, and in-depth recommendations on how good organizations can become great ones.

Based on Studer Group's Nine Principles SM, Quint Studer shows how to retain more employees; ensure better customer service; build strong leadership, align organizational values, goals, and results; increase communication; reward and recognize individual success while also requiring accountability; and move operational performance for better financials, market share, and growth.

At the core of the journey, he says, is a sense of purpose, worthwhile work and making a difference. When organizations learn how to harness this passion in their employees, they create a success spiral with ever increasing momentum.

In fact, Richard L. Clarke, FHFMA, President and CEO of Healthcare Financial Management Association says, "Quint Studer's Nine Principles of service and operational excellence provide the missing link between people power and strong financials. It's about courageous leadership."

The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management (Portable Mba Series)

Until the early '90s, project management was definitely located somewhere near the unsexy end of the business spectrum. But now, with the rise of downsizing and outsourcing, it has become one of the hot disciplines. Professional membership of the U.S.-based Project Management Institute has quadrupled in the last decade, and Microsoft claimed recently to have over 2 million users worldwide of its project-management software. The reasons for this growth are simple. Project management is about managing "projects," that is, unique pieces of work (as opposed to ongoing operations). Downsizing, outsourcing, and the accelerating pace of change have meant that, increasingly, work is carried out on an ad-hoc, one-off project basis. The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management is designed as an advanced textbook for businesspeople with a grasp of the basics and insufficient time (or inclination) to go back to school to learn more. Written by Eric Verzuh, president of the Versatile Company, a leading project-management consultancy, this is not a heavy academic text.

Like the rest of the Fast Forward series, this book is designed to let the reader extract maximum information in minimum time. There is a strong use of graphics with tables, charts cross-heads, and bullet points. Important passages are flagged in bold and/or emblazoned with the words key concept. When you read it, you realize that there is nothing magical about project management, just the application of careful common sense. The book covers all the basic stuff like planning, time-tabling, quantity and price estimation, resource allocation, and scheduling. But it also acknowledges that there is inevitably a political dimension to every project, no matter how small. So it has important sections on how to ensure that all the stakeholders in the project are kept "on board" and the importance of communication.

As Verzuh states in his introduction, "Every project participant from part-time team member to executive sponsor, becomes more effective once he or she understands the basics of project management." Really, this is a book about management that every manager should read, whether he or she has a project or not. --Alex Benady

A timely update of the bestselling guide to effective project management , with free downloadable forms.
The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management is one of the bestselling books ever published on this topic. This revised Third Edition presents managers and team members with proven techniques for managing projects, from establishing project objectives to building realistic schedule and cost projections. While it teaches the basic methods for defining, planning, and tracking a project, it also shows how to use these techniques to build stronger project teams. This third edition includes new chapters on hot topics such as Agile Project Management, PMI exam preparation, best practices for using Microsoft Project, and project selection and portfolio oversight.

An updated and revised edition of a bestselling guide to project management The first edition of The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management sold over 100,000 copies and has been widely adopted in university courses and corporate training programs around the world. The book teaches the basic methods for defining, planning, and tracking a project, as well as techniques for leading and building strong project teams. This new edition includes: - Downloadable, customizable project management forms - Study aids for passing the popular Project Management Professional certification exam - Guidelines for building high-performance project teams - New examples of project management at work in the 21st century Eric Verzuh (Seattle, WA) is certified by the Project Management Institute and is President of The Versatile Company, which delivers project management training and consulting services to such companies as Adobe Systems, Inc., GE, Lockheed Martin, Nordstrom, and the United States Postal Service. He is also the author of The Portable MBA in Project Management (0-471-26899-2), from Wiley.

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable

Allegories and parables have long been effective ways to impart serious bits of knowledge and wisdom without getting too pedantic, and business readers seem increasingly receptive to sensible management theory that employs this lively age-old literary technique. Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, a "leadership fable" by Patrick Lencioni, continues the trend with a solid prescription for organizational health--aiming for less politics, lower turnover, more productivity, and higher morale. Presented as a fictional tale of two technical consultants and their competing companies, the story is structured in a fashion that recalls his previous book (The Five Temptations of a CEO, whose main character and firm are even slipped into this narrative). Lencioni uses this hypothetical setting to show how his concepts might look and work in the real world. In this case, his "four disciplines at the heart of making any organization world class" are revealed and explained through the philosophy and behavior of Rich O'Connor of Telegraph Partners. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team, create organizational clarity, communicate organizational clarity, and reinforce organizational clarity through human systems. Through his tale of Telegraph and its rival Greenwich Consulting, Lencioni illustrates how these principles can be beneficially employed--and how an organization can be stymied when they're missing. The story moves quickly and is followed by a comprehensive analytical summary, which includes self-assessment tools and suggestions for putting the ideas into practice. --Howard Rothman

In this stunning follow-up to his best-selling book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, Patrick Lencioni offers up another leadership fable that's every bit as compelling and illuminating as its predecessor. This time, Lencioni's focus is on a leader's crucial role in building a healthy organization--an often overlooked but essential element of business life that is the linchpin of sustained success. Readers are treated to a story of corporate intrigue as the frustrated head of one consulting firm faces a leadership challenge so great that it threatens to topple his company, his career, and everything he holds true about leadership itself. In the story's telling, Lencioni helps his readers understand the disarming simplicity and power of creating organizational health, and reveals four key disciplines that they can follow to achieve it.

Project Management with MS Project CD + Student CD (McGraw-Hill/Irwin Series Operations and Decision Sciences)

As the market-leading textbook on the subject, Project Management: The Managerial Process, 4e is distinguished by its balanced treatment of both the technical and behavioral issues in project management as well as by its coverage of a broad range of industries to which project management principles can be applied. It focuses on how project management is integral to the organization as a whole. The 4th edition reflects the latest changes found in the practice. Other texts discuss the topics covered in this text but they do not view oversight as the project manager’s operating environment, as does Gray/Larson.

The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey

Get that monkey off your back!

Start with a monkey. It comes from your subordinates shifting their responsibility to you -- until you're working for them! How does the successful manager keep monkeys off his back? In this lively, provocative seminar, two of today's foremost consultants show you:

* How to recognize monkeys before they land on your back
* How to stop your subordinates from imposing unnecessary time demands on you
* Why "an honest day's work for a fair day's pay" does not apply to managers
* The real answer to the Manager's Lament: "where does all the time go?"
* Why you should be on the golf course on Saturday instead of at the office

Be a smarter, tougher and better manager!

Together and separately Kenneth Blanchard and William Oncken have trained and consulted with America's largest corporations. Now they bring their unique style and hard-hitting program to audio -- to help you take charge of your job and your life.

An Introduction to Management Science: Quantitative Approaches to Decision Making (with CD-ROM and Crystal Ball Pro Printed Access Card) (Introduction to Management Science)

Learn today's management science concepts and techniques--and how they will benefit you in the classroom and business world beyond--with the definitive leader in management science, INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT SCIENCE: A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH TO DECISION MAKING, 12E. The latest edition of this leading text blends a readable style with a wealth of examples that demonstrate how businesses throughout the world use management science techniques to further their success. Proven, realistic problems help strengthen critical problem-solving skills, while numerous self-test exercises with complete solutions allow you to immediately check your personal understanding of the material. Every new edition now includes the highly respected LINGO 10 software that is integrated with text problems to help you develop the skills to use this, Excel, and many other valuable software packages to resolve management science problems. This edition now places greater emphasis on the applications of management science and use of computer software with less focus on algorithms. Much of the algorithm coverage as well as Excel templates and add-in software, and the user-friendly Management Scientist software are available on the text's accompanying Student CD. Trust INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, 12E to introduce the management science skills you need now and into the future with clarity you can understand and practicality you can immediately apply.