Books published by Business Expert Press

This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. Every organization is unique. In order to make yours the best it can be, you need to understand the concepts presented in this book and know what questions to ask as you explore the potential in front of you. There are oceans of information available about how to build a great organization. Trends in how to create culture, attract talent, and boost productivity seem to shift as quickly as seasons of the year. This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. It guides you in questions to ask yourself, your leadership team, and employees of your organization so that you can make wise and informed decisions about how to proceed on the path to a uniquely great organization.

The book defines and helps provide key solutions for some of the greatest leadership challenges facing global managers today.Leadership Through the Screen is a business leadership guidebook that tells a story. Written in an easy-to-read manner, each chapter highlights a single issue through the eyes of a fictional VP of marketing. The authors have done the research and included it in these pages so that business leaders do not have to. This book is meant to serve as a map to help modern managers weave their way through many of the fundamental challenges of leading people in a global and virtual realm. It provides the tools, knowledge, and potential solutions these leaders can use to forge successful and productive virtual teams.

This book offers managers a complete analysis of the various facets of commercial credit and presents an analysis of the various types of markets, instruments, and risks associated with trade credit in supply chains across the globe. Trade credit is extensively used in both domestic and international commercial transactions. Although it clearly supports growth, its significance is even greater for developed countries, where the market has recovered remarkably since the global financial crisis. The number and heterogeneity of motivations to trade credit justify the variability observed in the data on global trading, and the role of trade credit has become crucial in supply chain coordination. A range of diverse trade credit finance solutions are available and include products and services offered by financial intermediaries and market products, highlighting a very interesting set of intermediate solutions that have emerged as a result of new technologies utilized in financial services. For financiers trade credit is an attractive option, but an in-depth evaluation of the possibility of losses forms the basis of a deep understating of numerous sources that can create credit risk (default and dilution risk). This book offers managers a complete analysis of the various facets of commercial credit and presents an analysis of the various types of markets, instruments, and risks associated with trade credit in supply chains across the globe.

The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. This book is made from the connections that the author saw when he compared his experience inside a video game with what he learned through a formal study of economic theory. Set in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) of Eternal Lands, it follows the true story of Mr. Mind, a gamer who builds a business inside the game world that he calls RICH. This business grows from a small start-up to an unregulated natural monopoly that abuses its market power by intentionally losing money to drive competitors out of business.RICH becomes so influential that it breaks the market process with a unique case of regulatory capture. Through this story, the book demonstrates how economic thinking is absorbed by experimenting inside an online video game.The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. Each of these topics begins with the context of a story and continues with an explanation of the economic theory behind it, finishing with a relevant real-world connection. It supports economic theory in an emotional way that cannot be shared through math or charts or graphs.Appendix B provides a comprehensive outline of ideas for teaching and discussion in each chapter.

There have been many books written about negotiation techniques, but all of these have been turned on their head by the ability of Donald Trump to make it to the White House. Ignoring all precedents and defying even his own party, he has opened an era where neither tradition nor precedent remains the order of the day. Fake news has become the entertainment watchword in an era where a president can send out his own daily tweets to millions of followers and the world press, and no one is able to pre-empt his message or know how to respond. In what would be described negotiation madness, Trump incites confrontation into intransient situations: opening an American embassy in Jerusalem and provoking a North Korean leader by a silly name, which nevertheless still initiates first-time discussions between north and south. If he doesn't get his wish through Congress, he pretends to give up, plays the man not the issue, going against what all the negotiation books tell you, then comes in again to get what he wants. At every turn the standards of negotiation need to be rewritten in what has become as much politics as entertainment, ego rather than substance, and this is what is targeted in Peter Nelson's Negotiation Madness.

Board-Seeker: Your Guidebook and Career Map into the Corporate Boardroom is the first practical guide written specifically to help board-ready leaders and executives gain the knowledge, resources, and confidence to shape their personal "e;onboarding"e; program. Assess your experience that makes you valuable to a board-there's more than you think. Shape this into a powerful outreach portfolio, such as board resume, online image, and personal pitch. Gain the targeted network and mentors you'll need, especially your boss! Learn step by step how board searches really happen and how to master each stage. Prepare for the board interview and vetting process, and get ready for your first board meeting. With leads, links, checklists, and first-hand success stories, Board-Seeker spells out each step you'll take into the boardroom-and beyond.

This is a work of system-think on why breakthroughs mostly don't sustain. In answer, it recalls mutual learning, by which the exceptional have defied the norms of decline since before humans could write about it. Part 1 shows the mechanics how complex adaptive systems extend order-Hayek's catallaxy. How lean exploits this is unpacked. Part 2 isolates popular fallacies of control that incentivize undoing. Part 3 offers countermeasures-leveled exploration and exploitation in strategy deployment, standard work, and development of employees, products, services, and methods.Lean turns paradigms and routines from holding on, to sustainably moving on. Lean is not just a factory thing. Lessons abound in nature's fractals and adaptations, admin, and history too; from the present back through World War II, the Industrial Revolution, the Reformation, to its roots in the civilizing of Antiquity. Learners mine hard lessons while knowers sadly repeat them. Great sources on catallaxy-Juran, Hayek, Popper, Kuhn, Sproul, Rother, March-have left us rich deposits of distilled experience. Sustain is a trail guide, locating pivotal insights to defy the entropy of abandon-and-revert, in any enterprise that coordinates resources, time, and treasure in the face of varying, alternative uses.

This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations.Now, more than ever before, organizations are encouraging work collaboration both in-person and remotely to increase productivity, enhance innovation, and attain the best results. However, leaders and teams often lack the essential knowledge, tools, and techniques required to avoid failure and achieve optimal outcomes.This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations. It opens with a review of the collaboration decagon of competencies-a self-test to reveal strengths, gaps, and practical tips to apply. Then, collaboration mindfulness is explained and guidelines based on the COIN model explain how to put this crucial mindset into action. Next, practical advice is offered for how to both encourage and manage discussion and disagreement throughout all four phases of the collaboration process.Having a clear focus for the collaboration topic as a problem or an opportunity is reviewed in detail, with tips on how to decide and discuss most efficiently. Guidelines for how to manage conflict and deal with challenging people are offered, based on strategies for each of the four conflict stages. Additionally, whole-brain techniques are explained to help collaboration teams invent the most unique options and solutions for innovation and change. The book concludes with proven strategies for how to overcome eight common obstacles to collaborations with confidence.

Only 39 percent of projects today are successful. Nearly half of the projects that fail, fail because of "e;poor requirements management"e; (PMI 2014). Leveraging Business Analysis for Project Success explores the role of the business analyst in setting a project up for success. It informs and educates project managers, sponsors, and organization leaders on what is necessary for project success. This book goes beyond requirements management in exploring the how the business analyst can contribute to increased proi tability through project selection, scope dei nition, and post-implementation evaluation. The reader will learn about the history of business analysis, professional organizations and resources to support the profession, and what to expect from the business analyst at each phase of the project lifecycle as presented in a case study throughout the text. Project leaders will better be able to support the business analysis needs of the project by understanding the skills, expertise, tasks, resources, and time needed to do business analysis right and maximize the return on investment for each project.

Utilizing a 'coach approach' with oneself and others enables quicker and more effective progress towards goals. This book identifies the crucial coaching qualities and actions to increase motivation, engagement, and performance. Through exercises and examples, the author demonstrates how to ask compelling questions, how to create effective action by constructing SMART goals, and how to hold yourself and others accountable. Additionally, she illustrates how presence and attitude, active listening, compelling questions, setting goals and accountabilities, and encouragement and feedback function in a coaching relationship. Drawing from neuroscience, case studies and personal experience, she shows how to use these specific techniques to create more fulfilling relationships and results. The Concise Coaching Handbook ends with three brief case studies of for-profit and non-profit organizations who have committed to creating a 'coaching culture' and the benefits they've received.

This book deeply explores production-capable social media channels, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. Distributed manufacturing offers the promise of bringing jobs back to local communities, producing goods that are personalized or harmonize with distinctive cultures, and thereby reversing significant aspects of the globalization that has dominated in recent years. Large corporations may still have important roles to play, but in collaboration with local workshops, providing machinery, software, databases of designs, and communication media suitable for a diverse and dynamic workforce. For years, a set of computer simulation laboratories has flourished, in which millions of people have used virtual machines to produce a great variety of products: massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Their systems are highly diverse, complex, and provide information capable of serious social science analysis. This book deeply explores 30 of these production-capable social media, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. This book begins with an overview of this universe of online virtual worlds then demonstrates the principles of virtual manufacturing, modes of work-related communication, socio-economic structures and dynamics, and the function of artificial intelligence in these human-technology systems. It concludes with consideration of the large-scale technical and cultural variation illustrated both by individual examples and by the rather large industry in which they have long been successful.

Tax considerations are seldom the determining factor in deciding whether to purchase a business. However, taxes often affect the price and form (e.g., purchase of stock or purchase of assets) the acquisition takes. This is true because the rationally determined price will be based on the expected present value of after-tax future cash flows. The tax component of the equation will depend on the form the acquisition takes. From the seller's perspective, tax considerations are extremely important. The tax implications of the purchase and sale of a business depend largely upon who is the buyer and who is the seller and what is being bought and sold. The business being purchased may be an unincorporated proprietorship, a single owner limited liability company (LLC), a partnership (or an LLC with more than one member), a C corporation, or an S corporation. The form of the sale (asset or stock) affects the character of the seller's gain (ordinary or capital) and the buyer's basis of the assets. Basis becomes the buyer's future tax deductions. Just as the price the buyer is willing to pay is based on projected present value of the after-tax proceeds, the price that is acceptable to the seller will depend upon his or her expected after-tax proceeds. Both parties must be aware of the other party's tax consequences to achieve a rational agreement.

Appropriate planning of a project is the hallmark of a professional project manager. Good planning is what sets apart great projects from accidents. Purposeful planning is what ensures that the executive actions undertaken remain connected to the goals and outcomes expected by the stakeholders. There is no single approach to planning a project, but neither is project planning a free-for-all. This book takes you through many of the common planning situations you will meet, addressing how planning decisions alter depending on the project context. It also discusses how resource-constrained planning differs from end-date schedule planning. The authors look at what is different between cost-constrained plans and time boxing and they discuss why you must plan when using Agile, and how to plan for innovation, as well as planning when managing a project portfolio, and what planning means in a program. To tell this story, we have distilled over seventy years of our combined personal experience of supporting project managers deliver, and thousands of person-years of others' practical knowledge to illustrate tools, models, and approaches that suggest what to do in what circumstances. Also available are supplementary materials and tools, on a website associated with the book, which we hope you find useful when you plan your next project!

Successful Recruitment provides the practical guidance and knowledge needed to recruit the right people, avoiding the many pitfalls that can arise in the recruitment process.It begins by identifying why recruitment is so often unsuccessful, leading to time, money, and energy being wasted in recruiting people who lack the attributes required to succeed in your organization. It then sets out how to put in place an effective recruitment process, by: Planning the process; Laying firm foundations, ensuring that job descriptions, person specifications, and application forms are fit for purpose; Ensuring that advertising is targeted to reach the right applicants; Sifting and shortlisting to ensure that the right candidates are selected for interview; Developing the knowledge, skills and processes to ensure that interviews enable you to accurately assess the candidate's ability to do the job; Effectively utilizing other assessment methods alongside the interview; Concluding the process properly and ensuring that the right candidate is appointed; Effectively inducting the successful candidate into your organization.The author pays particular attention to the recruitment interview, explaining three different approaches to interviewing and the key skills required to conduct an effective interview, as well as considers some of the specific issues involved in recruiting internationally. The book concludes by considering the future trends and innovations which will affect how recruiting is handled over the next decade.

The book intends to provide a high level overview of cryptocurrencies to a new enthusiast by using layman language and limiting many of the technical aspects, providing a very condensed version of this vast development of digital currencies. Blockchain is the new revolution after the Internet that is going to change how we do business today. Cryptocurrencies are the money of the future. These two statements are a positive affirmation from many corners around the world. The author provides a balance of introduction and depth regarding blockchain, hot cryptocurrencies, and their comparisons. Bitcoin, being the pioneer, is discussed in greater detail. The reader will gain the basic idea of bitcoin mining, trading, and investing. With special interest in the various usages of blockchain and interest on traditional banking systems are also discussed.

Scrum is an agile framework for completing complex projects. This book gives examples, tools, and tricks to do Scrum well.For each trick it is explained why it helps. The practices themselves may be worth trying, but by understanding why it works the readers will be able to come up with their own ideas that work better in their organization and situation. All the practical examples in this book have helped someone, somewhere to become a part of a better Scrum team.Scrum's motto is: Inspect and Adapt; change small things one at a time and see what works. Scrum is not done by project leaders or managers, but really by the teams-to succeed in an organization, the teams must do Scrum well. If the teams do Scrum well, the whole organization will benefit from it. Scrum helps a team self-organize, which fits in well with developers, who usually don't like to be micromanaged. At the same time, Scrum can scale: Self-organized teams work together well, and one manager doesn't have to manage all the people. The lessons from this book help Scrum teams develop into autonomous, proud, and independent teams. Often teams fail to become powerful enough to change the organization, so they cannot perform to their full potential. A good team can lead the stakeholders into trusting them. They will then make plans based on the team's release planning instead of making roadmaps out of thin air, and thus make the organization much more predictable.

Exploring and demystifying content marketing and providing proven and practical strategies for promotion and profit, How to Get Inside Someone's Mind and Stay There is for business owners, managers, and anyone with a need to market a product, a service, or even themselves! In this book, you will learn: how to identify your ideal customer; how to identify and create your key marketing messages; the right way to be remembered; and how to write for impact, engagement, and action.

Leading ones first team can be a daunting and sometimes overwhelming experience, requiring self-reflection, self-discipline, communication, and organizational skills as well as no small amount of guts and values. This book provides the guidance needed for how to deal with the challenges of leading teams in modern organizations.

This book is great for anyone in management who has ever experienced the stress, frustration, and costs associated with poor recruitment decisions. Presented in an easy-to-read, engaging, step-by-step format, Rod Matthews has detailed practical ways to reduce the time and money spent on recruitment, while increasing the likelihood of recruiting the right person the first time. Complete with practical exercises, it contains insightful steps for improving skills around recruitment advertising, interview preparation, interviewing candidates, and what happens after the interview. In this humorous and engaging book, the author offers key insights from his extensive experience in dealing with people at all levels of organizations. It is highly recommended as a must-read manual for anyone whose job involves recruitment.

If you think risk management is a bit of meaningless management-speak, this is the book for you. The world is full of risks and they all need managing. In fact, we all manage risks all the time whether well or badly. Every decision we make involves making some assessment of the risks involved. Risk management is simply an attempt at doing it more explicitly, scientifically and, hopefully, effectively. In this book, readers will learn more about the whys and hows of risk management, and examples of how not to do it. I have tried to explain it in everyday language and show how it can be applied in a small business to your advantage.

Anyone who is responsible for the supervision and performance of a team in an organization will appreciate the practical management strategies outlined in this book. In a refreshing, humorous, and engaging approach, it aims to reduce the stress associated with the leadership of a team of people and improve the likelihood that things get done right, the first time. The author provides great insight and practical exercises on how to be an exceptional manager and team leader. In a step-by-step approach, this book will help you be better at coaching and developing team members, setting direction for your team, and enhancing performance and engagement. A must read for all first-time managers/team leaders who want to get the best out of their team.

We are all involved at some time in our lives in projects, if not professionally then in our private and community lives. Some projects fail completely and many more disappoint. We frequently hear reports of IT, construction, engineering, and personal projects failing by going over budget, or running late, or failing to meet the client's expectations; or all three. This book deals with the nine features that almost all failing projects share. In this easy to read book, the author uses his nine laws of project design and control to lead the reader through the traps that that can catch out not only project managers but also the project client and other members of a project community. This book is not a treatise of project management theory but practical guide, based on wide experience and the study of the causes of project failure, aimed at the professional and amateur alike.

Explores a wide range of new approaches to the economic, social, legal, scientific, technological, financial, architectural, environmental, and humanistic challenges that humanity will face due to increased automation. The new methods and approaches outlined will help inform and inspire humanity to create a more balanced world.

The HOW of Leadership: Inspire People to Achieve Extraordinary Results provides a road map of how great leaders inspire people to achieve extraordinary results. It takes the confusion out of the concept of leadership and introduces quick, easily applicable, and proven leadership concepts that today's leaders can employ. In this extraordinary, easy-to-read, and practical book, you will: Learn the leadership attitude that guarantees greatness; Make better decisions to secure the future of your organization; Improve the engagement levels of your constituents; Inspire and influence people to achieve extraordinary results; Unleash the spirit of performance throughout your organization.

In the venture capital (VC) industry, firms often co-invest with other peers in syndicated deals. The process of syndication is a form of investment alliance that generates networks of VC firms and start-up companies. Despite the prominent role played by syndicates, extant entrepreneurship literature found contradicting evidence on the relationship between the practice of syndication and the performance of both the start-up and the investors. In fact, our understanding of the circumstances under which syndicates have the potential to boost performance, rather than hamper them, is still limited. This book intends to fill this gap and explore the performance dynamics surrounding networks in the venture capital industry. The text also provides introductory knowledge to those interested in network studies and methods.

This book addresses, from a conversational and hands-on perspective, the implications of finance, financial literacy, and the importance of understanding finance for both individuals and entrepreneurs. Finance and understanding financial matters are the ones that drive the decision-making process for businesses, large and small; but it is especially important for small business owners as they attempt to build, expand, and develop their businesses. As a CPA, member of the AICPA Financial Literacy Commission, and a weekly columnist for Inc, personal finance and financial literacy is something that drives decisions and plans for both individuals and organizations. Better informed people make better decisions. This book addresses the multitude of financial issues faced by individuals, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. Incorporating technology trends into this text, resources, links, and additional information is integrated throughout this text.

Customer value is an overused and mis-understood term. Chris Ross said, OThere's a strong argument for changing the term 'marketing' and renaming it 'value creation'.O Companies fail to create value as well as they could because tools of customer value are not known. The author corrects this in simple steps by defining customer value, how it builds loyalty, market share, and profitability; and how customer value can be measured and created. This book also addresses managing steps such as a customer strategy, breaking silos, inter-departmental focus on the customer, measuring customer value added, circle of promises, customer-centric circles, bill of rights, total customer value management. Remember, if you create value for others, they will create value for you!

Delivering Effective Virtual Presentations provides the reader with clear guidelines for creating and delivering webinars, e-meetings, and virtual presentations, including checklists and examples. In an era where technology and the skills required to navigate its use are deemed innate, people can experience some difficulty in transferring face-to-face skills to the virtual environment when they have not received any training or instruction in that regard. In many cases, books designed to assist in the learning process can be lengthy and cumbersome, rather than the clear, concise, complete, and correct format appreciated by readers. Delivering Effective Virtual Presentations provides the reader with clear guidelines for creating and delivering webinars, e-meetings, and virtual presentations, including checklists and examples. The concise content of this book will help fill the gap between existing knowledge, skills, and abilities for delivering effective presentations and those necessary for doing so in the virtual environment. This book is a user-friendly guide to prepare college students, employees, supervisors, managers, and executives, to be highly effective virtual presenters.

This book gives practical tips on how to manage disputes and personality clashes before they create major problems for business and relationships. Written in laymen's terms with examples, acronyms, and illustrations, it helps the reader understand the causes of conflict and how it develops and escalates. The author explains the scientific basis for seemingly illogical behavior under stress and in conflict and also offers tips and tools for managing emotions and behaviors in difficult situations. Guidance is provided on setting and maintaining standards, balancing responsibilities with relationships, and dealing with negative issues before serious damage is done. The book is structured so that it can either be read as a whole or the relevant section accessed in a crisis, with a toolkit of resources at the end. Each chapter ends with questions to check understanding. Full of convenient tools and insights into managing emotions and handling disagreements, it provides a handy resource for managers and employees.

Conflict is one of the greatest sources of tolerated business expenses and loss. This is despite the fact that this expense and loss can, in most cases, be easily turned around to revenue and gain. In the nonprofit world one of the greatest inhibitors of mission success is not that there isn't enough funding, or the challenging nature of the cause. It is the simple fact that teams struggle to work well together. What if conflict was the starting point for developing trust? What if it catalyzed a deeper, more meaningful understanding between team members? What if it was crucial for building stronger and more powerful organizations? Last of all, what if there were simple steps you could take to automatically help your teams communicate and work together more easily? This book shows you how.