The preoccupations of eighteenth-century novelist Samuel Richardson—the inequities of gender and sexuality; race and white femininity; masculinity, sadism, and control; religion and selfhood; authorship and artistic form—continue to resonate with contemporary readers. This fresh collection reconsiders his oeuvre, expanding and significantly updating critical debate on its meaning and importance. In these lively and engaging essays, contributors examine historically overlooked works, provid...

Advantage is what creates value for you, your customers and your organisation.  Focusing on advantage and sources of advantage through the life cycle of a business, whether it be commercial or not for profit, ensures entrepreneurs and leaders minimise risk and maximise value. This book presents a framework called “The Business Advantage Model (BAM™)” that supports leaders in the identification, creation, proving, securing, leveraging and changing of advantage. It is about do...

Effeminate Years: Literature, Politics, and Aesthetics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain investigates the gendered, eroticized, and xenophobic ways in which the controversies in the 1760s surrounding the political figure John Wilkes (1725-97) legitimated some men as political subjects, while forcefully excluding others on the basis of their perceived effeminacy or foreignness. However, this book is not a literary analysis of the Wilkes affair in the 1760s, nor is it a linear account of Wil...

The Balanced Scorecard translates a company's vision and strategy into a coherent set of performance measures. The four perspectives of the scorecard--financial measures, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth--offer a balance between short-term and long-term objectives, between outcomes desired and performance drivers of those outcomes, and between hard objective measures and softer, more subjective measures. In the first part, Kaplan and Norton ...

In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize just a fraction of the financial performance promised in their strategic plans.It doesn't have to be that way, maintain Robert Kaplan and David Norton in The Execution Premium. Building on their breakthrough w...

Set the bar for outstanding performanceA follow-up to the top-selling Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews, this book provides managers with phrases and goals that describe expected future performance from their direct reports. A timesaving job aid for any performance review or plan, the book:Makes it easy for managers to set high performance goals for executives, management, or non-managers employeesIncludes many categories of g...

Technology-as-a-Service Playbook defines the tactical and strategic plays technology companies must run to build a profitable subscription business. Whether you are a pureplay cloud company or a traditional technology provider making the pivot to the cloud, this book will help guide your decision-making and execution around the "as-a-service" model to put your company on a path to profitable growth.This cloud-driven journey will affect every part of the organization. How offers are...

A clear, concise resource for entering this lucrative career fieldConsulting For Dummies, 2nd Edition includes a reorganization and narrower focus of the topic, with new or updated information that delves into the specifics of running your own consulting business. There is greater emphasis on the business of consulting, along with financial and legal issues involved in setting up a consulting business, deepening coverage of consulting proposals, a...

Know if you'll hit your targets before pulling the trigger on any marketing planMore than sixty five percent of new products are commercial failures, and if you compound this with a recession, now more than ever you can't afford to be wrong. In If You Build It Will They Come, business professor and strategy consultant Rob Adams shows you how to make sure you hit your target market before you spend a lot of money. He shows you the fast, systematic and proven approa...

This comprehensive book presents a road map for the achievement of high value enterprise strategies and superior project management results. It provides methods for best project selection, faster completion, optimal project portfolio management, and how to explicitly measure the PMO for rapidly increasing project ROI. The project/program management office (PMO) is the fastest growing concept in project management today and is key to effective implementation of project management across the...

Praise for Selling Real Estate Services"Selling Real Estate Services shows you how to stop being a vendor and start being a partner. Bob Potter's Third-Level concept will help you win more, have more fun, and build greater client loyalty. It's a playbook for success."—Roger T. Staubach, Executive Chairman for the Americas, Jones Lang LaSalle, and founder of The Staubach Company"It's not just about selling; it's about winning. Just i...

Looking for a low-risk, low-capital path to astounding growth?Experienced franchisor Shelly Sun shares practical advice and her own compelling experiences to help you discover the power and avoid the pitfalls of franchising your business.In todays economic environment, access to capital is limited, and that isnt likely to change. Successful business owners have few options for dramatically expanding their brand. Grow Smart, Risk Less describes how you can use other...