Books

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Leading Change

In Leading Change, John Kotter examines the efforts of more than 100 companies to remake themselves into better competitors. He identifies the most common mistakes leaders and managers make in attempting to create change and offers an eight-step process to overcome the obstacles and carry out the firm’s agenda: establishing a greater sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering others to act, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the future. This highly personal book reveals what John Kotter has seen, heard, experienced, and concluded in 25 years of working with companies to create lasting transformation.

The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations

John Kotter’s international bestseller Leading Change struck a powerful chord with legions of managers everywhere. It acknowledged the cynicism, pain, and fear they faced in implementing large-scale change-but also armed them with an eight-step plan of action for leaping boldly forward in a turbulent world. Now, Kotter and coauthor Dan S. Cohen delve deeper into the subject of change to get to the heart of how change actually happens. Through compelling, real-life stories from people in the trenches, in all kinds of organizations, the authors attack the fundamental problem that underlies every major transformation: How do you go beyond simply getting your message across to truly changing people’s behavior? Based on interviews within over 100 organizations in the midst of large-scale change, The Heart of Change delivers the simple yet provocative answer to this question, forever altering the way organizations and individuals approach change. While most companies believe change happens by making people think differently, Kotter and Cohen say the key lies in making them feel differently. They introduce a new dynamic-“see-feel-change”-that fuels action by showing people potent reasons for change that spark their emotions. Organized around the revolutionary eight-step change process introduced in Leading Change, this story-driven book shows how the best change leaders use not just reports or analysis, but gloves, video cameras, airplanes, office design, and other concrete elements to impel people toward positive action. The authors reveal how this appeal to the heart-over the mind-motivates people to overcome even daunting obstacles to change and produce breathtaking results. For individuals in every walk of life and companies in every stage of change, this compact, no-nonsense book captures the heart-and the how-of successful change. John P. Kotter, world-renowned expert on leadership at the Harvard Business School, is the author of many books, including the award-winning, best-selling Leading Change. Dan S. Cohen is a Principal with Deloitte Consulting LLC.

Strategic IT Portfolio Management

Strategic IT Portfolio Management delivers a solution to the IT dilemma that has evolved over the past 40 years – namely, how do we get the most value from our IT investment? Author Jeff Kaplan, a lead partner in the Strategic IT Management Practice at consulting firm PRTM, puts nearly two decades of expertise to work exploring and identifying the knowledge, techniques, and strategies needed to maximize technology investments and achieve long-term business transformation for all types of organizations. Written for executives from all disciplines, the book highlights many of the root causes of the IT value dilemma and explains how executives can prevent and counter these issues. Readers will learn the portfolio management methods essential to achieving value. The book provides executives with the tools to: – Illuminate, assess, and improve existing practices – Design a governance structure and allocate appropriate decision rights – Ensure centralized control with decentralized execution – Increase collaboration between business-unit and IT leadership – Instill a culture of continuous improvement and innovation Executives, board members, policymakers, analysts, and the media all want to know: are companies spending too much on information technology (IT)? But the question they should ask is whether organizations are seeing sufficient value from their IT investment – the value that comes from effectively managing technology as part of overall business transformation. Many organizations don’t know how to move from managing technology to managing overall business transformation. Large-scale transformation efforts often go awry because the business leadership team and IT project teams are out of sync. In most of these cases, the organization lacks a governance method that fuses strategic management of the business, the technology, and the projects. Portfolio management is the governance method that’s needed. Strategic IT Portfolio Management describes the portfolio management governance method necessary for transformation success. This book highlights many of the root causes for the IT dilemma and explains how executives can prevent and counter these issues. Readers gain an inside look at how portfolio management can instill a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within the organization.

Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don’t Know

Risk Intelligence gives executives and business managers a simple mental model and simple tools to manage these risks. According to the author’s model, risks fall into two categories: knowable and therefore learnable, and unknowable and therefore difficult to prepare for. The book not only shows readers how to analyse their knowable risks but helps them to appreciate the quality and utility of their own analysis. As it turns out, some people have a higher risk IQ than others and therefore analyse and manage risks more effectively. This book helps people of all risk aptitudes to assess and improve their risk IQs.

Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape

In his landmark book Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough demonstrated that because useful knowledge is no longer concentrated in a few large organizations, business leaders must adopt a new, ‘open’ model of innovation. Using this model, companies look outside their boundaries for ideas and intellectual property (IP) they can bring in, as well as license their unutilized home-grown IP to other organizations. In Open Business Models, Chesbrough takes readers to the next step – explaining how to make money in an open innovation landscape. He provides a diagnostic instrument enabling you to assess your company’s current business model, and explains how to overcome common barriers to creating a more open model. He also offers compelling examples of companies that have developed such models – including Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Air Products. In addition, Chesbrough introduces a new set of players – ‘innovation intermediaries’ – who facilitate companies’ access to external technologies. He explores the impact of stronger IP protection on intermediate markets for innovation, and profiles firms (such as Intellectual Ventures and Qualcomm) that center their business model on innovation and IP. This vital resource provides a much-needed road map to connect innovation with IP management, so companies can create and capture value from ideas and technologies – wherever in the world they are found.

Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris explain how many successful organizations are using data creatively to beat the competition. High-performance businesses are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that are, in turn, generating impressive business results. Their secret weapon? Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling supported by powerful information technology and data-savvy senior leaders. Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples—from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay’s, Capital One, Harrah’s, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia and the Boston Red Sox—illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics.