Are you a leader? Do you have what it takes to be successful? How good are you at managing money? Can you supervise? How persuasive are you? Are you considerate? Here's a series of books that are not just another set of test-yourself books. Highly readable, these books are written by professionals and provide expert guidance to help you evaluate yourself, and enrich and fortify your life.

Leaders rely on business people to see the big picture and get things done. They want mindset and mojo, all in one! The problem is that all business people aren't wired that way, and that's where The Business Acumen Handbook comes in. The main idea behind The Business Acumen Handbook is to help managers understand the pillars of their company's business, and to operate more effectively and efficiently. After reading this book, you'll be able to: Understand and apply the dimensions of business acumen that focus on people, processes, projects, and products so that you can see the "big picture of business" Incorporate finance, strategy, and performance management into your professional mindset Develop a model for how to effectively communicate with, and influence others. Understand complex business situations, evaluate facts and data, and make better decisions The book is filled with tools, templates, exercises, and guidelines. It also introduces readers to their own individual business acumen assessment so that they can create a purposeful career and professional development strategy. This book is also the companion text for the Business Acumen Workshop offered by The Business Acumen Institute (visit: www.businessacumeninstitute.com)

Steven Silbiger has distilled the material of the ten most popular business schools in order to teach readers the language of business. At the rate of one easy-to-understand chapter a day, this book will enable readers to absorb the material, speak the language, and, most importantly, acquire the confidence and expertise needed to get ahead in the competitive business world.

Advocates that employees should focus their attention on what the author defines as the key drivers of cash, profit, assets, growth, and people to evaluate the viability of their organization and their prospects for advancement.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

"Now in paperback, this national bestseller proves more than ever, your success as a leader isn't just about being great at business. You must be a great person, performing well in all domains of your life-including work, home, community, and your private self. The good news is that, contrary to conventional wisdom about "balance," you don't have to assume that these domains compete in a zero-sum game. Total Leadership is a game-changing blueprint for how to perform well as a leader not by trading off one domain for another, but by finding mutual value among all four. Stew Friedman shows you how to achieve these "four-way wins" as a leader who can be real, be whole, and be innovative. With engaging examples and clear instruction, Friedman provides more than thirty hands-on tools for using these proven principles to produce stronger business results, find clearer purpose in what you do, feel more connected to the people who matter most, and generate sustainable change. Total Leadership is a unique resource that shows how to win in all domains of life. "--

Fully updated the Good Small Business Guide 2013 is packed with essential advice for small business owners or budding entrepreneurs. Containing 140 easy to read articles, and an extensive information directory, this comprehensive guide offers help on all aspects of starting and growing a small business.

Fully updated for this 7th annual edition, the Good Small Business Guide 2013 is packed with essential advice for small business owners or budding entrepreneurs. Offering help on all aspects of starting, running and growing a small business, including: planning, setting up or acquiring a business, getting to grips with figures, marketing, selling online, and managing yourself and others. Containing over 140 easy-to-read articles and an extensive information directory this fully updated guide offers help on all aspects of starting and growing a small business. Features a foreword from the National Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses.

Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop. Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them. In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture: The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond Timely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.