Description
If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind. Though following best practice can help in some ways, it also poses a danger: By emulating what a great leader did in a particular situation, you'll likely be terribly disappointed with your own results. Why? Your situation is different.Instead of focusing on what exceptional leaders do, we need to understand and emulate how they think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking creatively resolving the tension in opposing models by forming entirely new and superior ones. Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers are relentlessly diagnosing and synthesizing by asking probing questions including: What are the causal relationships at work here? and What are the implied trade-offs?Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge including conceptual and experiential knowledge.Integrative thinking can be learned, and The Opposable Mind helps you master this vital skill.
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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.
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