Achieve unprecedented business value by fostering true employee engagementMany organizations fail to realize and harness the power of their most valuable asset—their employees. Though they can be developed into a true competitive advantage, engagement isn't attainable if the employee isn't invested in the company's overall success. Agile Engagement offers business leaders a concrete strategy for building, maintaining, and utilizing employee engagement to a...

Todd Richardson, MD, is a retired Family Medicine physician, havingpracticed for thirty six years in Louisville, Kentucky.He developed a keen interest in oriental rugs and began studying andcollecting them over forty years ago. Dr. Richardson also has had anabiding interest in medical history since obtaining his BA in History atthe University of Louisville. Since that time, he has belonged to textileorganizations, given lectures on oriental r...

In Implied Nowhere: Absence in Folklore Studies, authors Shelley Ingram, Willow G. Mullins, and Todd Richardson talk about things folklorists don’t usually talk about. They ponder the tacit aspects of folklore and folklore studies, looking into the unarticulated expectations placed upon people whenever they talk about folklore and how those expectations necessarily affect the folklore they are talking about.The book’s chapters are wide-ranging in subject and style, yet the...

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common ...

ARE YOUR WORKING RELATIONSHIPS WORKING AGAINST YOU?To achieve your goals and get ahead, you need to rally people behind you and your ideas. But how do you do that when you lack formal authority? Or when you have a boss who gets in your way? Or when you’re juggling others’ needs at the expense of your own?By managing up, down, and across the organization. Your success depends on it, whether you’re a young professional or an experienced leader.

The era of social technologies provides seemingly endless opportunity, both for individuals and organizations. But it’s also the subject of seemingly endless hype. Yes, social tools allow us to do things entirely differently-but how do you really capitalize on that?In 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era, the newest in Harvard Business Review’s line of digital books (HBR Singles), social strategist and insightful blogger Nilofer Merchant argues that soci...

The retail world is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Rapidly evolving technology, globalization, and a saturated marketplace offer consumers instant access to thousands of equally compelling products and services, creating unprecedented levels of expectation. The impact of these changes is so profound that 50 percent of today's retailers and consumer companies will not survive it. Traditional business models will become extinct, and the relationship between vendors and consumers wi...

“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.” — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic BombThe Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history—even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern.The plague that devastated Asia and Europe...

Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses of all kinds, ranging from established companies to early-stage startups, to grow revenues, drive innovation, and transform themselves into truly modern organizations, poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the twenty-first century.In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful ...

Powerful phrases for effective communication in every management situationThe latest addition to the bestselling Perfect Phrases series, Perfect Phrases for Managers and Supervisors is an indispensable tool for novice to mid-level managers and frontline supervisors. Corporate communications guru Meryl Runion coaches readers in the six fundamentals of effective delivery, including "Be Short, Specific, Targeted," and "Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, an...

'A stunning, clear-sighted history of ancient Egypt' Sunday TimesThe extraordinary history of Ancient Egyptian civilization - from its earliest origins to the creation of its greatest monument - from specialist John RomerThis exceptional book draws on a lifetime of research and thought to recreate the previously untold story of how a civilization which began with handfuls of semi-itinerant fishermen settled, spread...

When you can delegate and supervise well, you will not believe how efficient and easy managing your team can be.Managers’ performance reviews, their salary increases, and basically their fate within the company in general are judged by the results they deliver, yet those results are usually produced by a team of employees working under them. Thus, the most important and broad-reaching aspect of a manager’s job is the ability to delegate and supervise extremely well...