Good, Better, Best Buy
Good, Better, Best Buy

Author: New Word City

Publisher: Pearson Education

Published: 2010-03-01

Total Pages: 24

ISBN-13: 0132475316

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For any company contemplating a major course correction, the tale of Best Buy is instructive. It illustrates both the size of the opportunities and the range of difficulties an organization can encounter in accomplishing transformative change. And the story is still being written. In the current economic downturn, with discretionary purchases like electronics plunging, Best Buy’s transformation is being put to the test with encouraging results. Here’s what you can learn. For years, Best Buy thrived as one of America’s leading national electronics retail chains. It had built its reputation and market share over three-and-a-half decades, along the way embracing the big-box superstore and the growing line of electronic products within. Indeed, the company and its employees were focused on the bevy of products Best Buy offered, which was fine with its tech-savvy customers. But, as rapidly evolving technology added more and more sophisticated products to retailers’ shelves, the ranks of the not-so-savvy began to expand. Then came the day in 2002 when Best Buy’s new chief executive realized the need for change—big change. In the years since, the company has remade itself into an organization that concentrates relentlessly on its customers. New Word City, publishers of digital originals, contributes 10 percent of its profits to literacy causes.

Good to Great to Gone
Good to Great to Gone

Author: Alan Wurtzel

Publisher: Diversion Books

Published: 2012-10-23

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 1938120256

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Chronicling his 13 years as CEO of Circuit City during its most successful time and sharing his insightful analysis of its downfall, Alan Wurtzel imparts a wisdom that is a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in business. “Good to Great to Gone illustrates the vital importance of listening to your customers. Without them your company has nothing.” ―Tony Hsieh, New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. How did Circuit City go from a Mom and Pop store with a mere $13,000 investment, to the best performing Fortune 500 Company for any 15-year period between 1965 and 1995, to bankruptcy and liquidation in 2009? What must leaders do not only to take a business from good to great, but to avoid plummeting from great to gone in a constantly evolving marketplace? For almost 50 years, Circuit City was able to successfully navigate the constant changes in the consumer electronics marketplace and meet consumer demand and taste preferences. But with the company’s subsequent decline and ultimate demise in 2009, former CEO Alan Wurtzel has the rare perspective of a company insider in the role of an outsider looking in. Believing that there is no singular formula for strategy, Wurtzel emphasizes the “Habits of Mind” that influence critical management decisions. With key takeaways at the end of each chapter, Wurtzel offers advice and guidance to ensure any business stays on track, even in the wake of disruption, a changing consumer landscape, and new competitors. Part social history, part cautionary tale, and part business strategy guide, Good to Great to Gone: The 60 Year Rise and Fall of Circuit City features a memorable story with critical leadership lessons.

The Physics of Business Growth
The Physics of Business Growth

Author: Edward Hess

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-05-24

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 0804784884

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“Captures the basic laws of growth companies and creates a new formula for success.” —Richard A. D’Aveni, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College Organic business growth is governed by its own natural laws—underlying truths that set the stage for growth and innovation, much in the way that Einstein’s theory of relativity accounts for the movement of objects in the space-time continuum. The most fundamental law is that uncertainty is the only certainty. Dominating forces are ambiguity and change; the processes at work involve exploration, invention, and experimentation. Unfortunately, these truths run counter to the principles of stability, predictability, and linearity that have long informed the design of our firms. The Physics of Business Growth explains how to create growth in today’s business environment, providing a roadmap and a set of practical tools to navigate its challenges. The book lays out a three-step formula that will prove invaluable to professionals who have the opportunity to influence growth now, as well as to tomorrow’s growth leaders, guiding them in (1) creating the right employee and organizational mindsets to enable growth, (2) building an internal corporate growth system, and (3) putting in place processes that result in identifying opportunities, launching growth experiments, and managing a growth portfolio. “Avoids the trap of magical thinking, which glosses over the messiness and complexity involved in growing a business. Rather, they offer a robust toolkit that growth leaders can adapt to their own circumstances.” —J. M. Ryan, Senior Fellow, Wharton Executive Education

Rapid Transformation
Rapid Transformation

Author: Behnam N. Tabrizi

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2007-10-18

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1422163466

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Profound organizational transformation takes years and, in most cases is unsuccessful, right? Not according to change expert Behnam Tabrizi. In Rapid Transformation: A 90-Day Plan for Fast and Effective Change , Tabrizi shows you how to accomplish successful transformational change in your firm in just 90 days. Based on ten years of research into more than 500 leading companies including 3M, IBM, GE, Nissan, Apple, Bay Networks, Verisign, HP and Best Buy--this book demystifies fast, effective change and lays out a clear roadmap for achieving it. Tabrizi's 90-day transformational model comprises three main phases, each lasting 30 days. The model enables you to analyze your company's specific challenge, develop a new course of action, and carry out the plan. Moreover, you apply the model in parallel with the normal workings of your organization--so you don't have to put your company on hold for the sake of the change effort. With its detailed recipe and insightful stories from actual corporate reinventions, this book defies long-held assumptions about change and provides a practical and immediately actionable guide.

Successful Organizational Change: The Kotter-Cohen Collection (2 Books)
Successful Organizational Change: The Kotter-Cohen Collection (2 Books)

Author: John P. Kotter

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 1633691934

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Learn how to lead organizational change with this Harvard Business Review digital collection. The Heart of Change is your guide to helping people think and feel differently in order to meet your shared goals. According to bestselling author and renowned leadership expert John Kotter and coauthor Dan Cohen, this focus on connecting with people’s emotions is what will spark the behavior change and actions that lead to success. The Heart of Change Field Guide provides leaders and managers with tools, frameworks, and advice for bringing these breakthrough change methods to life within their own organizations.

The Successful New CEO
The Successful New CEO

Author: Christian Muntean

Publisher: Business Expert Press

Published: 2020-09-10

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1952538092

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This book is for anyone on the pointy part of the organizational pyramid, whatever your title is. The Successful New CEO is organized into four parts: Becoming an Executive: Leaders can only lead out of who they are. How do you become the kind of person who successfully and gracefully inhabits this role? Seven Essential Executive Skills: The skills that earned you the role may not be what you need in that role. What are the critical leadership skills that become even more important as a CEO? Leading Your Leadership Team: CEOs head up leadership teams. How do you lead a confident, capable leader? How do you build a team out of leaders? First Things: Where do you start? How do you quickly build credibility and engagement? What is too fast or too slow? The Successful New CEO will help you quickly gain the confidence of others, successfully address the inevitable issues you will discover, score early wins, and set the course for a fruitful future.

The Future of Management
The Future of Management

Author: Gary Hamel

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2007-10-09

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1422148009

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What fuels long-term business success? Not operational excellence, technology breakthroughs, or new business models, but management innovation—new ways of mobilizing talent, allocating resources, and formulating strategies. Through history, management innovation has enabled companies to cross new performance thresholds and build enduring advantages. In The Future of Management, Gary Hamel argues that organizations need management innovation now more than ever. Why? The management paradigm of the last century—centered on control and efficiency—no longer suffices in a world where adaptability and creativity drive business success. To thrive in the future, companies must reinvent management. Hamel explains how to turn your company into a serial management innovator, revealing: The make-or-break challenges that will determine competitive success in an age of relentless, head-snapping change. The toxic effects of traditional management beliefs. The unconventional management practices generating breakthrough results in “modern management pioneers.” The radical principles that will need to become part of every company’s “management DNA.” The steps your company can take now to build your “management advantage.” Practical and profound, The Future of Management features examples from Google, W.L. Gore, Whole Foods, IBM, Samsung, Best Buy, and other blue-ribbon management innovators.

American Schools
American Schools

Author: Sam Chaltain

Publisher: R&L Education

Published: 2009-11-16

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1607092557

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In American Schools, Sam Chaltain interweaves the leading ideas from the education, business, and scientific communities to outline a framework for leadership that helps educators and organizational leaders create the optimal conditions for transformational change. By pairing a rich theoretical framework with the stories of communities that have, over several years, tried to create more democratic learning communities, Chaltain does what any reader of this book will have to do - provide enough structure to empower people to do their best work, and enough freedom so that each person's inherent creativity can be unleashed.

Encyclopedia of Business in Today′s World
Encyclopedia of Business in Today′s World

Author: Charles Wankel

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2009-06-12

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 1506319521

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2009 RUSA Outstanding Business Reference Business in today′s world is increasingly diverse. Undertaking commerce, even by an individual, can mean working globally through a welter of new media with opportunities of all kinds rapidly appearing. The boundaries, scope, content, structures, and processes of a business activity can morph into completely different ones in the course of a project. Contemporary businesses, and certainly future businesses, find it incumbent upon them to fit within the requirements of environmental and economic sustainability of the others who inhabit our world. With more than 1,000 entries, the Encyclopedia of Business in Today′s World is packed with essential and up-to-date information on the state of business in our world. Not only does it reflect where business is, it also conveys the trajectory of business farther into the 21st century. These four volumes provide clear overviews of the important business topics of our time, ranging from culture shock to currency hedging, political risk, offshoring, and transnational corporations. The wealth of topics represent an integrated vision by the editor of a perplexity of functions, technologies, and environmental factors. Key Features Provides insight into the development and current business situation globally through articles on many individual countries Examines the processes, responsibilities, and ethics of business in the global market Offers entries written by experts from diverse fields Includes an appendix that looks at World Trade Organization statistics Presents a vast range of topics, including key companies, business policies, regions, countries, dimensions of globalization, economic factors, international agreements, financial instruments, accounting regulations and approaches, theories, legislation, management practices and approaches, and much more Key Themes Competitive Forces Countries Corporate Profiles Cultural Environments Economics of International Business Economic Theories of International Business Ethics, Corruption, and Social Responsibility Export/Import Strategies Foreign Direct Investment Globalization and Society Human Resource Management International Accounting International Finance International Monetary System International Trade Legal and Labor Issues Management and Leadership Manufacturing and Operations Marketing Political Environments Regional Economic Integration Supranational and National Organizations The Encyclopedia of Business in Today′s World serves as a general, nontechnical resource for students, professors, and librarians seeking to understand the development of business as practiced in the United States and internationally.