Presenting to senior decision makers can be a terrifying "through the looking glass" moment. The stakes are high—one presentation can make or break a career—but the rules are utterly unclear. This book is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to thrive, not just survive, in a top-level meeting.Learn the Rules of the Executive Suite! If you are in middle management, to get anything done you must present your ideas to decision makers, and those presentations can be brutal. The stakes are high—one presentation can make or break a career—but the rules are utterly unclear. Tactics and techniques that work well with peers, subordinates, and immediate supervisors can actually work against you when presenting up the chain. Speaking Up is an indispensable resource for anyone who needs to know how to present to those at the highest levels. Psychologist and coach Frederick Gilbert offers revelatory insights into the minds of the men and women at the top—information that is crucial to understanding what they’re looking for from presenters. Based on ten years of research and hundreds of interviews, Speaking Up features extensive comments from executives explaining exactly what they want and don’t want in a presentation and includes nine chapters containing QR codes for free videos on the chapter topics. This is a must-read book for surviving high-stakes meetings. “I wish I had access to these insights when I was on the other side of the table. Now I will recommend this book to my entire management team.” —John Kispert, CEO, Spansion “Speaking Up is to presentations what the Boy Scout motto is to life: be prepared.” —Todd Lutwak, Partner, Andreessen Horowitz, and former Vice President of Seller Experience, eBay “Impressive in its breadth and yet very much ‘on point.’” —Don Eilers, Managing Director, Vanguard Ventures “Speaking Up has outstanding insights for successful presentations not only in the boardrooms of corporate America but also in the briefing rooms within the Department of Defense.” —Winston Copeland, Jr., President, WWC Consulting, and Rear Admiral, US Navy (Retired)

• The first book to focus on presenting to senior managementpeople with very specific expectations and requirements and the power to make or break careers
• Draws on interviews with more than fifty C-level executives
• Includes nine chapters containing QR codes for free videos on the chapter topics
• Click here for the press release

There are two times when youre alone in life: one is when you die, and the other is when you present to senior management.

Rick Wallace, CEO, KLA-Tencor

If you are in middle management, you live with daily ambiguity, lack of control, and even chaos. To get anything done, you must present your ideas to decision makers, and those presentations can be brutal. Careers and projects can come unwound in a matter of minutes if a presenter at the top level doesnt know the rules.

Fear in the middle creates fog at the top, and bad decisions are made. The stakes are highone presentation can make or break a careerbut the rules are utterly unclear. Or at least they used to be.

Speaking Up is an indispensable resource for anyone who needs to know how to present to those higher up the chain. It offers revelatory insights into the minds of the men and women at the topinformation that is crucial to understanding what theyre looking for from presenters. Tactics and techniques that work well with peers, subordinates, and immediate supervisors may actually work against you when presenting up the chain.

Psychologist and coach Frederick Gilbert shows why these high-level presentations are about one thing: delivering information to help extremely talented, highly stressed people make good decisionsfast.

Gilbert focuses on three simple rules for speaking up: (1) know the people, (2) get to the point, and (3) improvise. Based on ten years of research and hundreds of interviews, Gilberts book is unique in featuring extensive comments from executives explaining exactly what they want and dont want in a presentation, as well as midlevel managers stories of triumphs and tragedies and what they learned as a result. This a must-read book for surviving high-stakes meetings.

The need to beat the many systems that compromise our quality of life goes without saying. When was the last time you dealt with a bureaucracy--a business, a government agency, a school, a hospital--and got a direct answer to a question or received a service you wanted without having to weave through a maze of infuriating hand-offs? Have you found these systems to be utterly indifferent to the inconvenience or hardship they cause? Want to learn how to beat them?

Beating the System shows you how. Coauthors Russell Ackoff and Sheldon Rovin have spent their lives studying how organizational systems work, and here they share both perversely entertaining anecdotes about the abuse of individuals by a variety of bureaucracies, and descriptions of the creative--and deeply satisfying--approaches these people used to get even.

The authors begin by exploring how systems function and malfunction, where their weaknesses are, and what drives them. They then show that much of bureaucratic power is based on unchallenged assumptions--assumptions systems make about themselves and us, and assumptions we make about these systems and ourselves, and that challenging these assumptions is the essence of creativity and the first step in system beating. Ackoff and Rovin use stories to illustrate successful strategies and tactics for defying these assumptions and turning the tables on the many bureaucracies that frustrate us.

• Provides practical, easy-to-use tactics and strategies for creatively beating any bureaucratic system that is trying to beat you
• Full of entertaining real-world stories of people who have been frustrated by unresponsive systems and have successfully fought back
• Coauthor Russell L. Ackoff is an internationally renowned pioneer in the world of systems thinking who has spent over 50 years studying how organizations work

As the new century unfolds, we face a host of economic and social challenges--jobs lost to "off shoring," a huge and growing number of Americans without health insurance coverage, an expanding gap between rich and poor, stagnant wages, decaying public schools, and many others. These are difficult and complex problems, but our government's strategy for dealing with them has been essentially not to deal with them at all. Over and over, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, we're told that we're on our own--"Here's a tax cut and a private account; now go fend for yourself." As Jared Bernstein points out, this approach doesn't make any sense as a strategy for solving the enormous systemic problems we face. It's just a way of shifting economic risk from those most able to bear it--the government and the nation's corporations--to those least able: individuals and families. The result has been greater wealth for the top 1% of Americans and stagnant living standards and increasing insecurity for the vast majority. In All Together Now, Bernstein outlines a new strategy, one that applauds individual initiative but recognizes that the problems we face as a nation can be solved only if we take a more collaborative approach. The message is simple: we're all in this together. Bernstein draws on recent and historic events to explore how the proponents of what he dubs the YOYO (you're-on-your-own) approach have sold the idea, exposing the fallacies and ulterior motives in their arguments as well as the disasterous consequences of their policies. More importantly, he details practical WITT (we're-in-this-together) initiatives in specific areas like globalization, health care, and employment that could improve the lives of millions of Americans without increasing overall national spending. And he offers advice on how to overcome objections to the WITT agenda and bring the country together so that both risks and benefits are shared more fairly. While the prevailing philosophy insists that all we can do is cope with massive social forces, each of us on our own, Bernstein argues that we can unite and shape these forces to meet our needs. The optimistic message of All Together Now is that the economic challenges we face are not insoluble; we can wield the tools of government to meet them in such a way as to build a more just and equitable society.

• Exposes the destructive consequences of the 'you're on your own" approach to dealing with pressing societal problems
• Shows how a more collaborative 'we're all in this together" strategy can better resolve these problems and ensure that risks and benefits are shared equitably
• Details specific alternatives to current policies in areas like globalization, health care, and employment

A stellar list of contributors bring a variety of perspectives to establish one central theme: diversity is an advantage to be utilized, not a problem to be solved. Themselves representing a wide range of cultural, national, and vocational perspectives, the contributors examine how diversity creates new possibilities for working together in our projects, our organizations, and our lives. Working Together reveals diversity as a rich resource to meet the challenges of our changing times, an unparalleled opportunity to bring together a multiplicity of gifts for a common purpose.

• A stellar array of contributors includes such well known figures as Mikhail Gorbachev, Riane Eisler, and Norman Lear
• Helps individuals, communities, and organizations to recognize diversity as a rich resource as opposed to an obstacle to growth

Nadine Thompson, president and CEO of Warm Spirit, authors Values Sell, a ready-to-use guide for creative sales and distribution strategies. Her booming network marketing company currently employs 20,000 consultants nationwide and her business model has received national media attention from: The Wall Street Journal, O, Ebony, Essence, and others.Sales and distribution are the lifeblood of any business. But how can a values-driven, socially responsible business compete with those for whom the bottom line is the only measure of success? The answer: get creative! In this practical and inspiring guide, Nadine Thompson and Angela Soper draw on real-world examples--from Tom's of Maine, Seventh Generation, Honest Tea, and many other innovative companies--to detail concrete steps for designing sales and distribution strategies that fit the needs, interests, and habits of your target customers. They show how to turn your stakeholders into enthusiastic partners by ensuring that all of your relationships--with your salespeople as well as other employees, your customers, and your suppliers--are beneficial and fulfilling on more than just an economic level.

• Presents practical, detailed advice for developing innovative sales and distribution strategies
• Features examples from companies such as Tom's of Maine, Seventh Generation, Honest Tea, and many others

This is a book about taking health care the last mile-sometimes literally-to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering.

Every four minutes, over 50 children under the age of five die. In the same four minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills nearly 1.2 million people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for less than $1.50. Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just can’t get it to them. They are dying not because we can’t solve a medical problem but because we can’t solve a logistics problem. In this profoundly important book, Eric G. Bing and Marc J. Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom-up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard-to-reach communities they serve. By building a new model that “scales down” to train and incentivize all kinds of health-care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on-site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top-down bureaucratic programs. Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is a book about taking health care the last mile—sometimes literally—to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first-world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.

• Offers a creative, entrepreneurial approach to bringing lifesaving health care to those who need it most
• Features real-world examples of this approach in action around the world
• Coauthored by a prominent health-care expert and a leading business professor and copublished by the prestigious George W. Bush Institute
• Read the press release here; for media review copies contact [email protected]

Every three minutes, nearly 50 children under the age of five dies. In the same three minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills 655,000 people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for $1.41.

Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just cant get it to them. They are dying not because we can't solve a medical problem but because we cant solve a logistics problem.

In this profoundly important book, Eric Bing and Marc Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom-up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard-to-reach communities they serve. By building a new model that "scales down" to train and incentivize all kinds of health-care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on-site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top-down bureaucratic programs.

Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They describe the principles and practices involved in implementing it and explain how to apply it to overcome specific health challenges.

This is a book about taking health care the last milesometimes literallyto prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first-world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.