Given that it costs approximately two and a half times his or her annual salary to get a new boss in place, it is essential that organizations hire someone who will give a good return on this investment. The New Boss is a guide for newly appointed senior managers to make a successful leadership transition. With tried and tested models and self-assessment tools, it covers all the dos and don'ts of the new boss' role.

(more…)

Whether you are inheriting a test team or starting one up, Manage Software Testing is a must-have resource that covers all aspects of test management. It guides you through the business and organizational issues that you are confronted with on a daily basis, explaining what you need to focus on strategically, tactically, and operationally. Using a risk-based approach, the author addresses a range of questions about software product development. The book covers unit, system, and non-functional tests and includes examples on how to estimate the number of bugs expected to be found, the time required for testing, and the date when a release is ready. It weighs the cost of finding bugs against the risks of missing release dates or letting bugs appear in the final released product. It is imperative to determine if bugs do exist and then be able to metric how quickly they can be identified, the cost they incur, and how many remain in the product when it is released. With this book, test managers can effectively and accurately establish these parameters.

(more…)

If you are a first time manager or a verteran and you find difficulty in keeping your employees accountable for their results then this book is for you. It draws a plan from the authors vast experience to guide you through an action of providing key deliverables from your direct reports or subordinates and monitor them on an ongoing basis. You do not have to wait till an annual performance review to be in trouble.

All managers want to hold their employees accountable for results, but few know how. Moving beyond the far-from-ideal annual performance review — which only evaluates what has already occurred, and not what the manager wants to achieve — Keeping Employees Accountable for Results contains checklists, how-tos, and other tools to manage performance on an ongoing basis. The book gives busy managers quick, step-by-step advice on: * Setting expectations * Monitoring progress * Giving feedback * Following through Light on theory and heavy on practical application, Keeping Employees Accountable for Results gives time-pressed managers the proven, practical information they need to help their people accomplish more.

(more…)

Integrating key concepts and ideas about public speaking into a clear, step-by-step, transformational method, Power Speaking teaches emerging speakers how to grow the necessary skills and unleash their inner power. Divided into proficiency levels-mastering the basics, making the connection, and polishing the core-this guide allows speakers to conquer public speaking systematically. Readers start with the use of voice and body movements, then move on to learn the use of personal stories, intent listening, and positioning or reframing a topic. (more…)

Traditionally, company leaders develop a business strategy based on bottom lines and profit margins, then hire an ad agency to back up that strategy with creative advertising. But history shows that some of the most effective branding campaigns are born when companies work with ad agencies to develop a business strategy that has a big, creative idea at its heart–what CEO of Euro RSCG Bob Schmetterer calls the Creative Business Idea. In Leap, Bob Schmetterer shows advertisers how to combine advertising creativity and bottom-line realities to develop winning business strategies and winning ad campaigns. He analyzes some of the most creative business ideas in history, showing how successful advertising and marketing strategies do more than simply communicate the brand–they define it. Advertisers know how to create demand for an existing brand, but Schmetterer argues that the next challenge for advertisers is to help their clients apply creative thinking to their core business strategy before they launch a branding blitz. Leap is about connecting the left brain and the right brain to develop solid business strategies that are also creative, fresh, and exciting. Its about mixing businesss cold fixation on numbers with the warm heart of art and creativity to build revolutionary brands. Its about connecting with and listening to the client, understanding the business and the product, tapping into the clients passion for the product, and transmitting that passion to the consumer. Its about what happens when the business makes creativity part of its core strategy–enabling it to move beyond self-imposed boundaries and expand the limits of its reach. With a wealth of examples from Volvo to Purdue, Schmetterer shows ad agencies and managers how to help their clients develop the big, creative idea that will transform their businesses–and perhaps their industries. Its time for companies to make the Leap that synthesizes business and creativity to reap the full rewards of profitable innovation. BOB SCHMETTERER is Chairman and CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide, a one of the worlds top five global advertising and communications agencies with clients such as Intel, Peugeot, Air France, Orange, Abby National, MCI, Danone Group, Reckitt Benckiser, Volvo, and Yahoo!

(more…)

Leading the Revolution begins by taking us through what Hamel describes as the End of Progress, whereby the evolution of industrial society is seen to be replaced by the revolution of the new economy. This change is underpinned by the rising expectations of the stakeholder economy: it is not enough to beat your last annual earnings, or be better than your competitor–the revolutionary company will be best of breed by every benchmark, nothing less. Failure to do so will leave you vulnerable to the other revolutionaries.

Hamel then sets about describing the road to becoming a revolutionary in your business and turning your business into a revolution. There are no great surprises here–think illogically, go against the grain, ask the wrong questions, be unreasonable in your expectations, it's a cause not a business, listen to the periphery. But taken together, his account builds into a vivid picture of can-do. The only trouble is that to act on even a fraction of his recommendations would exhaust the mightiest of managers. Perhaps that's why, in a revolution, there is only one leader–the rest of us just follow. –Chris Price (more…)

This earnest guide to career transition periods-when a new job or promotion puts an employee in an unfamiliar role-asserts, reassuringly, that navigating the all-important first 90 days is a "teachable skill." Business professor Watkins, co-author of Right From the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role, lays out a "standard framework" for leadership transitions, based on "five fundamental propositions," "ten key challenges," and a four-fold typology of situations that new managers find themselves in. Fortunately, Watkins balances the theorizing with practical steps managers can take to get on top of things and initiate changes, including elaborate self-assessment checklists, planning exercises and meticulous guidelines on how to have conversations with underlings and bosses. His advice, if not very original, is sound. He warns managers not to assume that their existing skills will suffice for new roles, advises them to pursue small-scale "early wins" to boost credibility, and admonishes workplace Machiavellis to "avoid pressing for closure until you are confident the balance of forces acting on key people is tipping your way." Watkins's penchant for cut-and-dried schematizations sometimes goes overboard, especially in the book's plethora of elementary graphs, tables, diagrams and matrices (novice orators are informed that "classic values invoked to convince others to embrace potentially painful change are summarized in table 8-1," while the oceanic topic of "Intersecting Cultural Dimensions" gets boiled down to a three-ring Venn diagram). But if the content of Watkins's counsel is not always obviously helpful, his systematized approach to thinking will at least help panicky executives keep their wits about them.

(more…)

Remarkable Leadership is a practical handbook written for anyone who wants to hone the skills they need to become an outstanding leader. In this groundbreaking book, Kevin Eikenberry outlines a framework and a mechanism for both learning new things and applying current knowledge in a thoughtful and practical way. Eikenberry provides a guide through the most important leadership competencies, offers a proven method for learning leadership skills, and shows approaches for applying these skills in today's multitasking and overloaded world of work. The book explores real-world concerns such as focus, limited time, incremental improvement, and how we learn.
(more…)

Silicon Valley wunderkind Rayona Sharpnack has been a schoolteacher, tennis champion, manager and player for a women's professional softball team, and a celebrity who coaches some of the most successful leaders in business. Trade Up! draws on Sharpnack's experience, as well as stories of  successful leaders she has worked with, to reveal how leaders limit themselves by holding on to ideas or assumptions about ourselves—what she calls your “context” —that are no longer valid. Trade Up! outlines the 5 steps to help leaders gain awareness of these assumptions and trade up from limiting beliefs and behaviors to those that will help them change the world.  The 5 steps are

•   Reveal your context: what do you believe about yourself? What holds you back? How do you impact others?

•   Own your context: take stock of the upside and downside of your context, and examine the intended and unintended consequences of it!

•   Design a new context that gets you what you want: begin by asking yourself “how good are you willing to have life be?”

•   Sustain your new context: develop new practices to get this new context to stick!

•   Activate your context and engage with the world: move out of your own concerns and into partnership and community with others to help change the world around you!

(more…)

The book introduces the concept of narrative intelligence—an ability to understand and act and react agilely in the quicksilver world of interacting narratives. It shows why this is key to the central task of leadership, what its dimensions are, and how you can measure it. The book's lucid explanations, vivid examples and practical tips are essential reading for CEOs, managers, change agents, marketers, salespersons, brand managers, politicians, teachers, parents—anyone who is setting out to the change the world.
(more…)