Strategy: A Business Manifesto
Written by Adam Werbach
Adam Werbach, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, shows how companies like Clorox, Toyota, Procter & Gamble, Nike, and Wal-Mart are viewing sustainability as a true competitive advantage and building it into the core of their business.
Casting off the relentless pursuit of short-term profitability, and embracing long-term sustainability leads to more than just greener credentials. Leading business strategist Werbach pushes sustainability well beyond quaint notions of saving the planet, to address not just environmental and economic trends, but also social and cultural ones.
Werbach underscores that strategy has always been about making profits first, and that can’t change. But what must change is how we go about making those profits. He proposes a new business strategy framework that is keenly attuned to the world around us, flexible enough to respond to rapid change, and focused on the long view.
Through success stories within companies from Xerox to Toyota to Wal-Mart, Werbach shows how some companies are already realising profits by putting sustainability at the core of their business. Not with top-down directives from executives, but from dozens, even hundreds, of small steps taken by people at every level of their companies.
Harvard Business Press
www.strategyforsustainability.com
Management
Managing
Henry Mintzberg
In Managing, Henry Mintzberg captures the essence of management as a practice rather than a profession. This book enables readers to see the job all at once, and thus appreciate its components comprehensively, coherently, and interactively – as effective managers do. Engaging with management as a daily practice, it explains what it is that managers do, why they make a difference, and how they become effective.
“Over the years I have asked many groups of managers what happened the day they became managers,” the author explains. “First I get puzzled looks, and then shrugs. Nothing, they report. You are supposed to figure it out. And from there, while
we can find plenty of effective managers we see a great deal
of dysfunctional and often bizarre managerial behaviour too. The costs are immense.”
Financial Times Series
Technology
Web Analytics 2.0
The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity
Avinash Kaushik
The Web, online marketing, and advertising have been revolutionised in the last few years, yet the approach to using data has remained largely the same as a decade ago. Web analytics thought-leader Avinash Kaushik presents the next-generation framework that will dramatically enhance the ability of an organisation to think smart and move fast.
In this book, Avinash lays out specific strategies and execution models to evolve from simply leveraging clickstream tools to incorporating the insightful elixir of qualitative data, experimentation and testing, and competitive intelligence tools. As he updates traditional approaches, Avinash debunks myths, identifies traps, and reveals specific, simple, and advanced methodologies to transform the readers’ thinking, making this book the ultimate guide for all web professionals.
www.sybex.com
IT Savvy
Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross
Tired of spending money on IT without understanding your investment? Not getting the results you need in the time frame you expected? Then you and your firm are probably not IT savvy.
IT savvy executives think, talk, and act digitally in all their business decisions and activities. They depend upon a reusable digital platform of business processes, data, and systems – and don’t shy away from addressing IT-related business problems. And as a result, their firms enjoy margins up to 20% higher than their competitors.
The authors identify five imperatives that will help you derive value from IT, with detailed explanations on their implementation. You’ll increase your fluency and even learn to leverage IT for profitable growth. For example, you’ll start to build a digital ROI into managers’ job descriptions, then hold them accountable for using your company’s IT activities as assets.
