J.P. Morgan once famously remarked, "Millionaires don't have astrologers. Billionaires do." For modern business professionals, the idea that what's in the stars might have some bearing on the very cut-and-dried, numbers-dominated corporate environment may seem pretty "out there." But time and time again, the science of astrology has been shown to provide uncanny insight into timing and trends. This book examines the accomplishments of hundreds of business greats--from Walt Disney to Oprah Winfrey to Bill Gates--through the remarkable and surprising lens of astrology. Signs of Success gives all readers, be they astrological doubters, dilettantes, or devotees, a practical and entertaining overview of the many applications of astrol­ogy to business endeavors. The book provides an analysis of the 12 zodiacal business personality types, and fascinatingly recounts how an understanding of the stars has affected landmark business events throughout history. Witty, wise, and practical, this delightful book shows readers that when it comes to real-world business and leadership, the sky truly is the limit.

Managing your boss: Isn't that merely manipulation? Corporate cozying up? Not according to John Gabarro and John Kotter. In this handy guidebook, the authors contend that you manage your boss for a very good reason: to do your best on the job--and thereby benefit not only yourself but also your supervisor and your entire company.

Your boss depends on you for cooperation, reliability, and honesty. And you depend on him or her for links to the rest of the organization, for setting priorities, and for obtaining critical resources. By managing your boss--clarifying your own and your supervisor's strengths, weaknesses, goals, work styles, and needs--you cultivate a relationship based on mutual respect and understanding. The result? A healthy, productive bond that enables you both to excel.

Gabarro and Kotter provide valuable guidelines for building this essential relationship--including strategies for determining how your boss prefers to process information and make decisions, tips for communicating mutual expectations, and tactics for negotiating priorities.

Thought provoking and practical, Managing Your Boss enables you to lay the groundwork for one of the most crucial working relationships you'll have in your career.

Experience may be a leader's best teacher--but there's a hitch. Two people can have identical experiences, but one blossoms while the other is depleted. The same can be said for any pair of fired CEOs, unsuccessful political candidates, or rookie supervisors.

In Crucibles of Leadership, Robert J. Thomas concludes that what matters most is what one makes of experience, particularly the traumatic and often unplanned crucible events that challenge one's identity as a leader. What distinguishes leaders who grow through a crucible experience? Their approach to learning. Like accomplished athletes or artists, they practice as strenuously as they perform. And because the line between performance and practice is often hard to discern, they learn how to practice while they perform.

But theirs is no ordinary practice. It's a regimen tailored to individual aspirations, motivations, and learning styles--a Personal Learning Strategy. Building on insightful and moving stories told by accomplished leaders, Thomas offers probing self-assessments and innovative tools designed to help you develop your own Personal Learning Strategy.

Provocative and original, with examples drawn from business and politics as well as from the inner workings of the Mormon Church and the Hell's Angels, Thomas's book will revolutionize the way you think about leadership and learning.

In this illuminating study of corporate America's most critical issue— leadership— world-renowned leadership guru Warren Bennis and his co-author Burt Nanus reveal the four key principles every manager should know: Attention Through Vision, Meaning Through Communication, Trust Through Positioning, and The Deployment of Self. In this age of "process," with downsizing and restructuring affecting many workplaces, companies have fallen trap to lack of communication and distrust, and vision and leadership are needed more than ever before. The wisdom and insight in "Leaders" addresses this need. It is an indispensable source of guidance all readers will appreciate, whether they're running a small department or in charge of an entire corporation.

When the head of Columbia Pictures, David Begelman, got caught forging Cliff Robertson's name on a $10,000 check, it seemed, at first, like a simple case of embezzlement. It wasn't. The incident was the tip of the iceberg, the first hint of a scandal that shook Hollywood and rattled Wall Street. Soon powerful studio executives were engulfed in controversy; careers derailed; reputations died; and a ruthless, take-no-prisoners corporate power struggle for the world-famous Hollywood dream factory began.

First published in 1982, this now classic story of greed and lies in Tinseltown appears here with a stunning final chapter on Begelman's post-Columbia career as he continued to dazzle and defraud . . . until his last hours in a Hollywood hotel room, where his story dramatically and poignantly would end.

There are thousands of books about thinking. But there are very few books that provide clear how-to information that can actually help you think better.

Think Better is about Productive Thinking — why it’s important, how it works, and how to use it at work, at home, and at play. Productive Thinking is a game changer — a practical, easy-to-learn, repeatable process that helps people understand more clearly, think more creatively, and plan more effectively. It's based on the thinking strategies that people we celebrate for their creativity have been using for centuries. Tim Hurson brings Productive Thinking out of the closet and presents it in a way that makes it easy for anyone to grasp and use — so you can think better, work better, and do better in every aspect of your life.

Think Better demonstrates how you can start with an intractable technical problem, an unmet consumer need, or a gaping chasm in your business strategy and, by following a clearly defined, practical thinking process, arrive at a robust, innovative solution. Many companies use the Productive Thinking model to generate fresh solutions for tough business problems, and many individuals rely on it to solve pressing personal problems.

The principles you'll find in Think Better are straight-forward: separate your thinking into creative thinking and critical thinking; stay with the question; strive for the “third third” by generating lots and lots of ideas; and look for unexpected connections.

The model consists of six interlocking steps:

Step 1:What's Going On? Explore and truly understand the challenge.

Step 2: What's Success? Envision the ideal outcome and establish success criteria.

Step 3: What's the Question? Pinpoint the real problem or opportunity.

Step 4: Generate Answers List many possible solutions.

Step 5: Forge the Solution Decide which solution is best. Then make it better.

Step 6: Align Resources Create an action plan.

Tim Hurson starts by explaining how we all build inner barriers to effective thinking. He identifies our habits of thinking that severely limit our behavior, from “monkey mind” to “gator brain.” Then he demonstrates how to overcome these barriers.

More than anything, productive thinking is an attitude that will let you look at problems and convert them into opportunities. At the end of this disciplined brainstorming process, you'll have a concrete action plan, complete with timelines and deadlines.

The book is filled with many of Hurson's original brainstorming tools that will empower you to generate, organize, and process ideas. For example, you can identify your best ideas using the five C's: Cull, Cluster, Combine, Clarify and Choose. And you can transform an embryonic idea into a robust solution with POWER, which stands for Positives, Objections, What else?, Enhancements and Remedies.

To create the future, you first must be able to imagine it. Productive thinking is a way to help you do that.

China has matured as a market and the game has changed. Yesterday, multinationals grappled with fundamental strategic choices: Do we go to China? Whom do we partner with? Where should we invest? Winning in China was all about achieving approval to enter the market, picking the right joint venture partner and selling in the right few cities to the right customers. Execution didn t matter as much as privileged access through government and partner relationships.

Today, China is teeming with MNCs and local competitors. Government is no longer the main driver of deals. Barriers to entry have fallen. Regulations are less of a factor. Partners are no longer required in many industries. Winning now depends on great execution: effectively and efficiently developing, marketing, producing, and channeling goods to customers and growing and retaining a talent base.

In Operation China, Jimmy Hexter and Jonathan Woetzel explain how you can achieve superior execution in China through operations including talent management, product development, information technology, procurement, supply-chain management, manufacturing, and sales, marketing, and distribution.

Based on over two decades of consulting experience for both local and multinational operations in China and extensive research on what drives success in operating in China, this book helps you get your operations right in the new competitive arena defining China today.

"It wasn't long ago when 'good' was good enough to win in China. No longer. Today, it's all about world-class execution. Jimmy Hexter and Jonathan Woetzel draw on their intimate knowledge of China to provide specific, real-world advice for all foreign companies operating in China today."

--Rick Wagoner, Chairman and CEO, General Motors Corporation

"Few Western companies have truly cracked the code on how to successfully turn a China strategy into a winning China business operation. Operation China nails down the key aspects of running businesses in China has no other book has."

--William Amelio, CEO, Lenovo

"If you are a global player, Operation China provides invaluable guidance and insight on translating China opportunities into results. If you're not a global player, but are impacted by companies that are, Operation China is a window into the source of your competitive weakness."

--Robert Holland Jr., Director at YUM! Brands, Inc.

"As trade between China and the United States has exploded, the gap has widened between companies taking full advantage of this opportunity and those left behind. Hexter and Woetzel have put their finger on what every executive must focus on to succeed."

--Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, former US Trade Representative and Senior International Partner, WilmerHale

In this inspiring leadership fable, Stahl-Wert and Jennings draw on their years of experience as consultants and chief executives, as well as on findings from Gallup's ground-breaking Q-12 survey, to lay out an leadership model that will turn employees from dutiful drones to committed contributors. "Ten Thousand Horses" is the story of Matt James, a top-performing sa lesman who is promoted to head his division, an entirely different job than the one he was good at. His workers don't respond to his efforts to lead them, and soon he's on the brink of being fired. In desperation, he reaches out to his old, unorthodox mentor, David Butler , who now works with wiild mustang horses. More than simply a leadership fable, "Ten Thousand Horses" is a story of personal transformation. Beyond specific practices and techniques, Matt must learn a whole new way of relating to his employees, because, as he discovers, leading an engaged workforce is as much about who you are as what you do.

What organization wouldn't want to encourage "places and times where cooperation flourishes, thus creating great energy, innovation, productivity and excitement"? This final volume in a trilogy of books on creating energy at work by London Business School professor Gratton (after Living Strategy and The Democratic Enterprise) attempts to analyze the ingredients of positive workplace energy. Gratton details ways to foster a cooperative mindset, remove boundaries between people, give them a sense of purpose and increase their productive capacity, drawing on examples from organizations like BP and Nokia. But despite her interesting and well-organized findings, some readers may find her intensive focus on scientific research too academic, particularly the complicated diagrams and formulae for workplace qualities that are difficult to quantify.

Addressing American industry's continuing decline in foreign and domestic markets, Peters (In Pursuit of Excellence) here offers a detailed plan for unstructured business activity in which some readers will see not only chaos but anarchy. Nevertheless, the author's perception of high quality as a determining consumer motivation and his radical recipe for achieving it are persuasive. Noting that smaller service-oriented businesses like Federal Express prosper while mammoth GE and GM falter, Peters would largely eliminate top-heavy management superstructures in favor of creative worker involvement and customer participation, with supervisors on hand to encourage. This textbook cites dozens of specific business situations and person-to-person responses in support of its step-by-step instructions for turning a failing enterprise aroundif those involved can act fast. 150,000 first printing; Fortune Book Club main selection.