What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2009-08-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307373088

From the best-selling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark, a rich and revelatory memoir about writing and running, and the integral impact both have made on his life. In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Haruki Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a slew of critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and—even more important—on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and includes settings ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvellous lens of sport emerges a cornucopia of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs and the experience, after the age of fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running.

Performance-Based Project Management

Performance-Based Project Management
Author: Glen Alleman
Publisher: AMACOM
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2014-02-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0814433316

Even the most experienced project managers aren’t immune to the more common and destructive reasons for project collapses. Poor time and budget performance, failure to deal with complexity, uncontrolled changes in scope . . . they can catch anyone off guard. Performance-Based Project Management can help radically improve your project’s success rate, despite these and other obstacles that will try to take it down. Readers will discover how they can increase the probability of project success, detailing a step-by-step plan for avoiding surprises, forecasting performance, identifying risk, and taking corrective action to keep a project a success. Project leaders wishing to stand out among their peers who are continually hampered by these unexpected failures will learn how to:• Assess the business capabilities needed for a project• Plan and schedule the work• Determine the resources required to complete on time and on budget• Identify and manage risks to success• Measure performance in units meaningful to decision makersBy connecting mission strategy with project execution, this invaluable resource for project managers in every industry will help bring projects to successful, career-enhancing completion.

EMPOWERED

EMPOWERED
Author: Marty Cagan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2020-12-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119691257

"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--

Discover to Deliver

Discover to Deliver
Author: Ellen Gottesdiener
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2012
Genre: Agile software development
ISBN: 9780985787905

Dare to Lead

Dare to Lead
Author: Brené Brown
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0399592520

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.

Aesthetic Value

Aesthetic Value
Author: Alan Goldman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-02-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0429982178

This book focuses on the question of aesthetic value, using many practical examples from painting, music, and literature. Alan Goldman argues for a non-realist view of aesthetic value, showing that the personal element can never be factored out of evaluative aesthetic judgments.

Cultivating Communities of Practice

Cultivating Communities of Practice
Author: Etienne Wenger
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1578513308

Today's marketplace is fueled by knowledge. Yet organizing systematically to leverage knowledge remains a challenge. Leading companies have discovered that technology is not enough, and that cultivating communities of practice is the keystone of an effective knowledge strategy. Communities of practice come together around common interests and expertise- whether they consist of first-line managers or customer service representatives, neurosurgeons or software programmers, city managers or home-improvement amateurs. They create, share, and apply knowledge within and across the boundaries of teams, business units, and even entire companies-providing a concrete path toward creating a true knowledge organization. In Cultivating Communities of Practice, Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder argue that while communities form naturally, organizations need to become more proactive and systematic about developing and integrating them into their strategy. This book provides practical models and methods for stewarding these communities to reach their full potential-without squelching the inner drive that makes them so valuable. Through in-depth cases from firms such as DaimlerChrysler, McKinsey & Company, Shell, and the World Bank, the authors demonstrate how communities of practice can be leveraged to drive overall company strategy, generate new business opportunities, tie personal development to corporate goals, transfer best practices, and recruit and retain top talent. They define the unique features of these communities and outline principles for nurturing their essential elements. They provide guidelines to support communities of practice through their major stages of development, address the potential downsides of communities, and discuss the specific challenges of distributed communities. And they show how to recognize the value created by communities of practice and how to build a corporate knowledge strategy around them. Essential reading for any leader in today's knowledge economy, this is the definitive guide to developing communities of practice for the benefit-and long-term success-of organizations and the individuals who work in them. Etienne Wenger is a renowned expert and consultant on knowledge management and communities of practice in San Juan, California. Richard McDermott is a leading expert of organization and community development in Boulder, Colorado. William M. Snyder is a founding partner of Social Capital Group, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Awakened Company

The Awakened Company
Author: Catherine R. Bell
Publisher: Namaste Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781897238967

There is another way of doing business. The Awakened Company comes at a time of crisis in the business world, as evidenced by current world-wide financial instability, which was a cry for help from a bipolar boom-bust business model that's failing. From a mentality of profits first and growth at all cost, those in the know in the business world are coming to the realization this approach is no longer sustainable. The book's premise is that work isn't separate from life, and the metrics for success in business need to change at a fundamental level if the world is to transcend its present crises, which increasingly threaten us all. There is another way of doing business, and a shift in our behavior could in very short order fuel innovation, open up undreamed of markets, and by so doing bring prosperity to the entire planet. The Awakened Company adopts the premise that the world's greatest challenges will be solved by people working together in new ways. It is different from other business books in the sense that it blends proven business practices with insight from the wisdom traditions and leaders in business thought in a way that hasn't been done before. An awakened approach calls for a fundamental reset to today's economy, a shift to where businesses will be measured by their state of awareness, not profitability alone. "In a world of economic uncertainty, The Awakened Company gives a roadmap to a new way of doing business -- a way that is humane, fosters innovation, and meets the needs of All stakeholders, including Mother Earth." - Tony Robbins, New York Times #1 Best-Selling Author, Entrepreneur, Philanthopist "This is a must-read for those of us in the organization world"-- David Daniels, M.D., Professor Emeritus, Stanford University

Welcome Problems, Find Success

Welcome Problems, Find Success
Author: Kiyoshi "Nate" Furuta
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2021-09-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000449351

In this book, author Nate Furuta, former chair and CEO of Toyota Boshoku America Inc., shares the story of his decades of experience directly leading the establishment of Toyota cultures outside Japan. Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), Toyota’s joint venture in California with General Motors, where he directly led the establishment of the most revolutionary labor-management agreement in the history of the US auto industry. In addition, Furuta was the first Toyota employee on the ground in Georgetown Kentucky at Toyota’s first full-scale, wholly owned manufacturing operation outside Japan, where he led (working directly with President Fujio Cho) the establishment of Toyota’s general management systems and culture there. This book tells the stories of establishing successful operations in those two iconic organizations as well as others. Furuta reveals details, both stories and process descriptions that only he can tell. He takes you along as he and others lead Toyota’s intense globalization from the early 1980s to recent days. He introduces you to the critical leaders in Toyota's history, such as Taiichi Ohno and Fujio Cho as well as Kenzo Tamai, the head of the company’s HRM function in the 1980s. This book is not about human-resource management (HRM) policies and procedures. It provides a deep dive into the way senior leaders embody deep awareness of HRM matters, developing and executing company strategy while at the same time developing organizational capability. The role of senior leaders isn’t just a matter of directing the company to achieve objectives; it is a matter of building the capability to achieve those objectives, consistently, and further developing capability as it executes. Key to this is to develop the awareness, attitude, capability, and practice of identifying problems as progress is made toward achieving objectives, which is, in fact, attained through steadily eliminating each problem as it arises. This becomes a self-reinforcing loop of the organization, tapping in to the essence of solving problems while simultaneously developing ever better problem-solving skills and better problem solvers. This loop propels an organization toward meeting its purpose while developing capability for capability development. Essentially, this book reveals Toyota’s general management systems from the firsthand experience of a Toyota Japanese senior manager and describes, with stories and process examples, the attitude, behaviors, and systems needed to successfully establish and lead in a true Lean business environment.

Getting to Yes

Getting to Yes
Author: Roger Fisher
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 242
Release: 1991
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780395631249

Describes a method of negotiation that isolates problems, focuses on interests, creates new options, and uses objective criteria to help two parties reach an agreement.