Book Summaries

Attorney and HR expert Patti Perez reveals the secret to avoiding all forms of drama, legal exposure, and low morale is creating a healthy workplace culture.

New markets have powered the greatest business successes in history, from Standard Oil to Facebook. How can you discover and pursue new markets to make your business thrive? In Capturing New Markets, renowned business strategist Stephen Wunker argues that the first step is to stop applying traditional formulas of success and understand the unique dynamics in fast-changing new markets. He guides you through the process of creating counterintuitive strategies, such as treating...

Geoffrey Moore's now-classic Crossing the Chasm became a must-read book by presenting an innovative framework to address the make-or-break obstacle facing all high-tech companies: how to gain market share from early adopters and from mainstream consumers. Now, Moore's Escape Velocity offers a pragmatic plan to engage the most critical challenge that established enterprises face in the twenty-first-century economy: how to move beyond past success and drive next-generation...

In the long run, the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization's ability to learn faster than the competition. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning "disabilities" that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations — ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually...

Laurie writes that only those companies that include ventures as part of their strategies can achieve exceptional and sustainable growth. These ventures are “new business enterprises that entail a certain amount of risk.” In Venture Catalyst, he helps business leaders identify five key strategies for developing the next great business: invent, invest, venture, partner and integrate.

You have heard of Customer Relationship Management. Now here’s a guidebook that it clearly explains the concept of CRM — and how to put it in place in your company.

Teamwork is increasingly in demand by organizations when doing business and managing customer relationships. Learn about the common pitfalls and roadblocks for teams, such as conflicts between team members and the team leader, poor relationships between corporate teams and customers, and the inability of a team to anticipate problems. Robert Barner offers the symptoms and then provides the treatments to help any team overcome challenges by improving internal relationships, strengthening team foc

Despite careful management of the operational aspects of corporate change, many managers and executives ignore the human element how changing a job description or corporate environment makes people feel. Respected consultant Jeanie Daniel Duck introduces a five-stage framework that helps managers and executives understand how to manage the human element of the change process.

It’s impossible to eliminate crises completely. But crisis management experts Mitroff and Anagnos outline the crisis management tools — and attitudes — needed to either anticipate crises or effectively manage them once they occur.