Most experts on branding emphasize how a brand owner spreads his or her message to consumers, but Winsor believes that genuine success can only come from reversing the line of communication as well. His “bottom-up” approach weds branding to customer research, but the resulting mixture is rather thin, continually circling around a handful of talking points concerning the need for a deeper relationship with customers. Companies are urged repeatedly to “find the key voices” in the market and re-center their brands on those customers in order to break through their “brand immune system,” a disdain for being coerced attributed, with what feels like undue emphasis, to rising antiglobalization sentiment. Yet many of the case studies fail to provide real insight into the process, asserting that certain companies have such relationships without offering enough detail on how they established them. And though he touts the Internet as an effective tool for listening to consumers, Winsor offers examples that feel already dated. A closing chapter full of generalizations about “Millennial” youth reinforces the impression that the book reads like a client prospectus, and the “anthrojournalism” he touts as a key research methodology comes off as cool hunting under a new name, despite all protestations.

Following a series of corporate scandals, legislators have company executives in their sights, and are arming themselves with ever-greater regulatory firepower. All agree that good governance is essential - but must not be allowed to stifle business performance.Beyond Governance develops the concept of Enterprise Governance, an emerging framework which unites Performance, Conformance and Corporate Responsibility and shows how addressing all of these areas in a concerted, coordinated fashion will deliver value to the organisation and its stakeholders. In particular, it focuses on the skills, processes and systems that are required to deliver excellence in each of these areas, giving readers a practical insight into the issues and an understanding of best practice in each area.

Many firms are rethinking their finance activities in the light of e-commerce, shared service centres, business intelligence technology and cost pressures. Beyond Governance explores the challenge of building a modern, flexible finance function, describing the emerging role of the new CFO and how finance professionals should respond to this new business environment.

Today’s organizations face difficult challenges in order to remain competitive—the quickening pace of change, increasing uncertainty, growing ambiguity, and complexity. To meet these challenges, organizations must broaden the scope of leadership responsibility for strategic leadership and engage more people in the process of leadership. In Becoming a Strategic Leader Rich Hughes and Kate Beatty from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) offer executives and managers a handbook for implementing a strategic leadership process that reaches leaders at all levels of organizations. Based on CCL’s  successful Developing the Strategic Leader Program, this book outlines the framework of strategic leadership and contains practical suggestions on how to develop the individual, team, and organizational skills needed for institutions to become more adaptable, flexible, and resilient. The authors also show how individual managers can exercise effective strategic leadership through their distinctive and systemic approach—thinking, acting, and influencing.

Most books on this subject are limited to a specific industry or market segment. This is an in-depth guide for managing a virtual project team in any industry. The book describes how to build high-performance virtual project teams; shows how to reduce the cost of virtual teams to ensure desired results and includes tools and techniques for assessing the maturity of project teams. It illustrates how to decrease time to market for new products, increase corporate profits and much more.

Project Management for Telecommunications Managers is a concise reference work covering important aspects of project management. It explains many key concepts, in layman’s terms, for engineering managers, project managers and other professionals working in the telecommunications environment. This presentation is consistent with many of the processes recommended by the certification body for project managers, the Project Management Institute; however, the material expands on the guide by elaborating on the application of the processes in telecommunications projects. The book covers concepts and applications applicable to all telecommunications related areas. Tools for planning, organizing, tracking and managing projects are provided. The author has also included actual examples of various telecommunications projects from wireline and wireless providers, equipment vendors and component manufacturers to illustrate concepts. Important information for working across departmental and functional units and various organizational structures are also included.

This book is highly recommended for project managers and project team members who work on projects in the telecommunications environment.

Explore this comprehensive survey of the tools, tips, techniques, and tactics that project managers need to successfully complete their projects. Seasoned project management consultant Jay Charvat presents a detailed description of each methodology currently available, weighs the advantages and disadvantages of each, and provides a plan for implementation. He includes expert advice on putting the methodologies to use in both individual projects and across the organization and provides detailed guidance on maintenance and support.

No matter how perfect a project management process may be on paper, it is worthless if it is not being used properly or at all. This practical “how to” guide shows you the way to bring documented process and practiced process into alignment while assuring a certain level of maturity. By using the SEI’s Capability Maturity Model, The Project Management Maturity Model, and PMBOK Knowledge areas, you can baseline your team’s process level to see how it measures up to those required by a project plan. The book shows you how to communicate these baseline capabilities, and the gaps between baseline and target capabilities, to your team and upper management You are provided with a host of metrics that let you target specific areas of improvement needed to raise your project team’s process maturity to the target level. Moreover, this unique resource offers you proven tools and techniques that you can use every day to ensure the success of your project process improvement program. The book concludes with practical methods to take your project team to the next level of process effectiveness.

If you’re a typical project manager, you’re probably aware of the importance of change management but may not have the time or expertise to develop a full-blown plan. Here’s a quick and practical guide to applying the disciplines of proven change management practices without the rigor of complex processes.

Part of the Project Manager’s Spotlight series from Harbor Light Press, this straightforward book offers solutions to real-life project change scenarios. Author Claudia Baca highlights critical components of change control and equips you with tools, techniques, checklists, and templates you can put to use immediately. By following a realistic case study from start to finish, you’ll see how a project manager deals with each concept. Ultimately, this book will help you establish effective guidelines for dealing with change and provide you the flexibility to minimize disruptions and derailments.

We have long been taught that emotions should be felt and expressed in carefully controlled ways, and then only in certain environments and at certain times. This is especially true when at work, particularly when managing others. It is considered terribly unprofessional to express emotion while on the job, and many of us believe that our biggest mistakes and regrets are due to our reactions at those times when our emotions get the better of us. David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey believe that this view of emotion is not correct. The emotion centers of the brain, they argue, are not relegated to a secondary place in our thinking and reasoning, but instead are an integral part of what it means to think, reason, and to be intelligent. In The Emotionally Intelligent Manager, they show that emotion is not just important, but absolutely necessary for us to make good decisions, take action to solve problems, cope with change, and succeed. The authors detail a practical four-part hierarchy of emotional skills: identifying emotions, using emotions to facilitate thinking, understanding emotions, and managing emotions—and show how we can measure, learn, and develop each skill and employ them in an integrated way to solve our most difficult work-related problems.

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.