Most of August's new titles centre on topics that are each especially contemporary, including: agile, the gig economy, blockchain and innovation. The complete listing of the latest books can be browsed here.
The Harvard Business Review Manager's Handbook: The 17 Skills Leaders Need to Stand Out
Packed with step-by-step advice and wisdom from Harvard Business Review's management archive, the HBR Manager's Handbook provides best practices on topics from understanding key financial statements and the fundamentals of strategy to emotional intelligence and building your employees' trust. The book's brief sections allow you to home in quickly on the solutions you need right away--or take a deeper dive if you need more context [Publisher description].
The Agile Leader: How to Create an Agile Business in the Digital Age by Simon Hayward
With the rise of political unrest, protectionism and economic uncertainties, business leaders have to assess, react and implement strategies rapidly and with enough responsiveness to re-calibrate their efforts should circumstance change. When presented with key moments of choice, agility allows them to move quickly and responsively, and offer coping strategies for this unprecedented rate of change [Publisher description].
The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done by Stephen Denning
The Agile of Agile is filled with examples from every sector, The Age of Agile helps readers master the three laws of Agile Management (team, customer, network); embrace the new mindset; overcome constraints; employ meaningful metrics and make the entire organization agile [Publisher description]. Stephen Denning is the author of The Leader's Guide to Radical Management and The Secret Language of Leadership. You can watch him discuss this book here.
Gigged: The Gig Economy, the End of the Job and the Future of Work by Sarah Kessler
In Gigged, Sarah Kessler meets the people forging the new world of unorthodox employment: from the computer programmer who chooses exactly which hours he works each week, via the driver who is trying to convince his peers to unionise, to the charity worker who thinks freelance gigs might just transform the fortunes of a declining rural town. Their stories raise crucial questions about the future of work. What happens when job security, holidays and benefits become a thing of the past? How can freelancers find meaningful, well-paid employment? And could the gig economy really change the world of work for ever? [Publisher description]
B2B Customer Experience: A Practical Guide to Delivering Exceptional CX by Nick Hague and Paul Hague
Intensely practical in its approach, B2B Customer Experience is divided into five parts to walk readers through the journey of planning, mapping, structuring, implementing and controlling an effective customer experience, all bespoke for the B2B environment [Publisher description].
The Bank that Lived a Little: Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market by Philip Augar
The Bank that Lived a Little describes three decades of boardroom intrigue at one of Britain's biggest financial institutions. In a tale of feuds, grandiose dreams and a struggle for supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents, Philip Augar gives a riveting account of Barclays' journey from an old Quaker bank to a full-throttle capitalist machine. The leveraged society, the winner-takes-all mentality and our present era of austerity can all be traced to the influence of banks such as Barclays. Augar's book tells this rollercoaster story from the perspective of many of its participants [Publisher description].
The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything by Michael J. Casey & Paul Vigna
In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive society’s faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. Casey and Vigna expose the challenge of replacing trusted (and not-so-trusted) institutions on which we’ve relied for centuries with a radical model that bypasses them. The Truth Machine reveals the empowerment possible when self-interested middlemen give way to the transparency of the blockchain, while highlighting the job losses, assertion of special interests, and threat to social cohesion that will accompany this shift [Publisher description].
Becoming the Best: Build a World-Class Organization Through Values-Based Leadership by Harry M. Jansen Kraemer Jr.
In his bestselling book From Values to Action, Harry Kraemer showed how self-reflection, balance, true self-confidence, and genuine humility are the traits of today's most effective leaders. In Becoming the Best, his follow-up, Kraemer reveals how, in practical terms, anyone can apply these principles to become a values-based leader and to help create values-based organizations. [...] Becoming the Best offers a definitive, actionable guide to show anyone how to apply in practice the principles of values-based leadership personally and professionally [Publisher description].
Leap: How Businesses Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied by Howard Yu
Every business faces the existential threat of competitors producing cheaper copies. Even patent filings, market dominance and financial resources can’t shield them from copycats. So what can we do–and, what can we learn from companies that have endured and even prospered for centuries despite copycat competition? [...] Leap is a manifesto for how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats [Publisher description]. Howard Yu is a professor of management and strategy at IMD.
Build an A-team by Whitney Johnson
In this book, Whitney Johnson explains how to build your A-team by identifying what your employees already know and what they need to learn, designing their jobs to maximize engagement and learning, and applying a seven-step process for leading each person up their learning curve [Publisher description].
