Business Builders Recommended Reading List

Planning
	The One Page Business Plan Jim Horan The Fastest, Easiest Way To Write A Business Plan It doesn't have to take agonizing meetings, pounds of documents, or endless spreadsheets to produce a meaningful business plan. A single page can contain all of the essential elements you need to successfully present your ideas to management, banks, the SBA, venture capitalists, and Boards of Directors. This new addition includes The One Page Entrepreneur's Toolkit CD-ROM with templates, worksheets, sales calculators, budgets, scorecards, and bonus tools. "In his valuable, The One Page Business Plan, Jim Horan not only removes the mystique from business plans, but also leads you by the hand through crafting the best plan possible: clear, focused, understandable and concise. I consider the book to be a significant contribution to business literature." Jay Conrad Levinson, Author Guerilla Marketing series of books
	Hugh Courtney In the midst of a changing economy, most executives continue to use a strategy toolkit designed for yesterday's more stable marketplace. As a result, strategies emerge that neither manage the risks nor take advantage of the opportunities that arise in highly uncertain times. Now, McKinsey & Company consultant Hugh Courtney argues that managers must move beyond the outdated "all-or-nothing" view of strategy in which future events are either certain or uncertain. Instead, he suggests a simple-yet powerful-alternative: Understand the level of uncertainty you are facing in a given situation, and you will make better, more informed strategic choices. Back to Top
	James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras Groundbreaking research intothe development of America's most enduring and successful corporations thatshatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance forcompanies that would like to follow in their footsteps. Back to Top
	Mark Lipton When it comes to sustained success, vision matters more than strategy. Scores of studies have proven this statement, and millions of business leaders believe it. Yet few executives understand what vision is. They embrace the idea, but ignore the implementation - a disconnect that threatens companies striving for growth in a volatile marketplace. Back to Top
	Rod Napier, Patrick Sanaghan, Clint Sidle, Patrick Saraghan Not just another book on the theory of strategic planning, here are dozens of recipes for creative group activities to facilitate strategic planning in any organization. Designed for use by consultants, facilitators, and management team leaders, step-by-step instructions guide you through exercises for gaining employee and management participation, gathering feedback from management about the current state of the organization, creating an organized mission, vison and values statement, and planning so that the vision becomes reality. Ready-to-use reproducible materials and handouts are also included. Back to Top
	Dan Ciampa, Michael Watkins According to Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins, 64 percent of executives hired form the outside won't make it in their new jobs. While executives from within the ranks know the challenges, culture, and politics of a company, newcomers face a corporate minefield. Right from the Start is Ciampa and Watkins's survival manual for leaders taking starting work at a new company. "Leadership is never easy," they write. "This is never truer than when a new leader enters an organization from the outside and must change its culture in fundamental ways." Through interviews with dozens of corporate leaders who have succeeded or failed in such transitions, the authors provide a strategy for getting it right from the outset. Ciampa, an independent consultant, and Watkins, a Harvard Business School associate professor, advise three key missions for new leaders: Create momentum; master the ability to learn, convey a vision, and build coalitions; and know and manage yourself well. A fast start is especially crucial. In fact, they say, the most important period starts with the recruitment or interview process and runs through the first six months in a new role. Right from the Start provides plenty of real-life examples of successes and failures, in everything from building coalitions to changing corporate culture. The stories tend to suffer sometimes because the executives remain anonymous. Nonetheless, the book is instructive for business people assuming new management roles. Back to Top
	Gerald Nadler, William Chandon Smart Questions offers an entirely new framework for creating solutions. Drawn from the authors' many years of research and field experience, the Smart Questions Approach reveals how the leading creators of solutions in almost every profession and walk of life—including business, government, education, and even in families—think and approach their assignments. The author’s holistic thinking approach shows how to use three “foundation” questions—focusing on uniqueness, purposeful information, and systems—which must be explored for every problem. These three questions, an essential starting point for exploring problems, in turn lead to other key questions that will ultimately create effective solutions. Back to Top
	Roger Kaufman, Hugh Oakley-Brown, Ryan Watkins, Doug Leigh Strategic Planning for Success offers you a pragmatic guide to the design and development of practical and pragmatic strategic thinking and organizational alignment that will yield high-impact results and measurably add value to you, your organization, your clients, and society. Unlike other books on the topic, this volume goes beyond simply detailing the tools and techniques of design and development by clearly showing how to align what you do with what will be most valuable to all stakeholders. Using this unique approach will yield extraordinary results adding measurable value that flows from individual performance accomplishment to organizational and societal contributions. Back to Top
	Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes. More than a decade ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the Balanced Scorecard into action. Back to Top
	Sunil Chopra, Peter Meindl For advanced undergraduate and MBA courses in Supply Chain Management. This book brings together the strategic role of the supply chain, key strategic drivers of supply chain performance, and the tools and techniques for supply chain analysis. Every chapter gives suggestions that managers can use in practice and all methodologies are illustrated with an application in Excel. Fully updated material keeps the book on the forefront of supply chain management. Distribution networks (Chapter 4); Sourcing (Chapter 13), discusses different sourcing activities including supplier assessment, supplier contracts, design collaboration, and procurement; Price and revenue management (Chapter 15); Early coverage of designing the supply chain network—after developing a strategic framework, readers can discuss supply chain network design in Chapters 5 and 6 and then move on to demand, supply, inventory, and transportation planning; Information Technology in the Supply Chain (Chapter 17). For business professionals managing the supply chain. Back to Top
	C. Davis Fogg How to structure, facilitate, and implement the process. Strategic planning is a critical part of running a business, but when you get a team of people together to plan, it can often become a confused exercise in grand visions without a clear process for establishing workable goals. This book is unique in providing both guidance for the actual content of strategic plans and techniques for how to plan in a team context. Readers will discover how to: • structure the process so it custom fits their company needs • effectively facilitate the process (keep meetings on track, train others in planning skills, document decisions made at meetings, present and communicate the plan) • use teams and teamwork smoothly and productively to create a far-reaching plan—and then to implement it Features detailed guidelines for each step, dozens of flowcharts, and three self-contained "facilitator’s guides" to follow.

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