Alpha Teach Yourself Project Management in 24 Hours

Alpha Books

Every Manager's Desk Reference

Providing self-contained how-to sections, this reference guide includes contributions from leading experts in the fields of managing organizations, marketing, stress and time management, and customer service.

John William Gardner

On Leadership

In this insightful classic, John Gardner unpacks what it means to be a leader, stressing the importance of dispersed leadership and a primary understanding of leadership as applied across all sectors of society. "A masterpiece."--Walter F. Ulmer, Jr., President and CEO, Center for Creative Leadership Leaders today are familiar with the demand that they come forward with a new vision. But it is not a matter of fabricating a new vision out of whole cloth. A vision relevant for us today will build on values deeply embedded in human history and in our own tradition. It is not as though we come to the task unready. Men and women from the beginning of history have groped and struggled for various pieces of the answer. The materials out of which we build the vision will be the moral strivings of the species, today and in the distant past. Most of the ingredients of a vision for this country have been with us for a long time. As the poet wrote, "The light we sought is shining still." That we have failed and fumbled in some of our attempts to achieve our ideals is obvious. But the great ideas still beckon--freedom, equality, justice, the release of human possibilities. The vision is to ...

Margaret A. Neale, Max H. Bazerman

Negotiating Rationally

In Negotiating Rationally , Max Bazerman and Margaret Neale explain how to avoid the pitfalls of irrationality and gain the upper hand in negotiations. For example, managers tend to be overconfident, to recklessly escalate previous commitments, and fail to consider the tactics of the other party. Drawing on their research, the authors show how we are prisoners of our own assumptions. They identify strategies to avoid these pitfalls in negotiating by concentrating on opponents' behavior and developing the ability to recognize individual limitations and biases. They explain how to think rationally about the choice of reaching an agreement versus reaching an impasse. A must read for business professionals.