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Simply effective : how to cut through complexity in your organization and get things done

The level of complexity in most organizations today is staggering-and it's only getting worse. There are so many choices to be made, people to involve, processes to manage, and facts to analyze, it's impossible to get things done. And in today's hypercompetitive world, that can be fatal. Yet complexity doesn't happen on its own. Managers unwittingly create it, often through well-intended decisions. In Simply Effective, Ron Ashkenas provides a playbook for regaining control, focused on the four major causes of complexity: -Constant changes in organizational structures -Proliferation of products and services -Evolution of business processes -Time-wasting managerial behaviors The author provides a diagnostic for identifying how these causes of complexity are affecting your organization-and presents practical tactics for combating each one. Ashkenas also explains how to craft a strategy that will make simplification an ongoing driver of your company's success-no matter where you work in your organization. Abundant examples from companies like ConAgra Foods, GE, Cisco, Zurich Financial Services, and Johnson & Johnson illuminate his points. A crucial resource in today's overly complex age, Simply Effective should be required reading for everyone on your management team.

Simply effective : how to cut through complexity in your organization and get things done

The level of complexity in most organizations today is staggering-and it's only getting worse. There are so many choices to be made, people to involve, processes to manage, and facts to analyze, it's impossible to get things done. And in today's hypercompetitive world, that can be fatal. Yet complexity doesn't happen on its own. Managers unwittingly create it, often through well-intended decisions. In Simply Effective, Ron Ashkenas provides a playbook for regaining control, focused on the four major causes of complexity: constant changes in organizational structures, proliferation of products and services, evolution of business processes, and time-wasting managerial behaviors. The author provides a diagnostic for identifying how these causes of complexity are affecting your organization-and presents practical tactics for combating each one. Ashkenas also explains how to craft a strategy that will make simplification an ongoing driver of your company's success-no matter where you work in your organization. Abundant examples from companies like ConAgra Foods, GE, Cisco, Zurich Financial Services, and Johnson & Johnson illuminate his points.

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Harvard Business Review leader's handbook : make an impact, inspire your organization, and get to the next level

Put aside all the hypey new frameworks, the listicles, the "10 best things you need" to succeed as a leader today. The critical leadership practices--the ones that will allow a leader to make the biggest impact over time--are already well established. They're about how you relate to others. How you make difficult strategic choices. How you get results. How you scan the landscape around you, build a vision for the future, and inspire people to follow you. In fact, these fundamental skills are becoming more important today as organizations and teams become increasingly networked and fragmented and the nature of leadership hierarchies changes. What's hard is actually doing these things--and excelling at them. In this book, strategy and change experts Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville distill the best proven ideas and frameworks about leadership from Harvard Business Review and from their careers in leadership development and transformation into a concise handbook that shows rising leaders how to have the most impact on their organizations. You'll learn how to build a unifying vision, set strategy, manage for results, hire and inspire great leaders and teams, drive innovation, and, finally, lead yourself on your own career journey. Each chapter of the book describes one of these six practices in depth, discussing the pitfalls that real leaders face and how to overcome them, with insights from well-known leaders such as Stanley McChrystal, Dominic Barton, Darren Walker, Jack Welch, and Ann Mulcahy. Each chapter also synthesizes the best Harvard Business Review thinking on the topic. This book gives you the tools you need to have more impact as a leader today, and into the future.--