The narrative explores the ambitious vision and strategic planning of John F. Kennedy, detailing the political and technological challenges faced in the race to land a man on the moon. It highlights key figures, innovative approaches, and the collaborative efforts of scientists and engineers that transformed a bold dream into reality within a decade. The book delves into the historical significance of this achievement and its lasting impact on space exploration and American innovation.
Effective project management is crucial for everyone, regardless of their role. This guide offers practical strategies and insights to enhance your project management skills, helping you navigate challenges and lead initiatives successfully. It emphasizes the importance of organization, communication, and adaptability in achieving project goals. The book aims to empower readers to take charge of their projects with confidence and efficiency.
How did John F. Kennedy put a man on the moon in just under ten years? What can chess teach us about actionable insights? And why should you shake up a business at a time of great success? All of these questions have their answer in strategic thinking. But what is strategic thinking exactly? Are we born with it, or can we nurture it? As a distinct and important capability in leaders, strategic thinking is a remarkably poorly defined, little understood concept, confined to management courses and board meetings. But in The Art of Strategic Thinking, world-renowned expert Michael Watkins shows leaders how they can benefit from it, as long as they have the tools to nurture it. Exploring the six specific mental disciplines that together constitute strategic thinking, each chapter shows how they can create value, and offers prescriptions on how to develop the strategic thinking mindset ourselves. Academically grounded but jargon-free, with real-world examples from all sectors and ages, The Art of Strategic Thinking assesses our innate ability to think strategically, and helps us to cultivate it, leading to better decisions that get proven results.
Your next professional move can make or break your career--are you ready? In business, especially today, you are only as successful as your next career transition. Do well, and you'll be on the fast track to even more challenging roles. Fail, and you could irreparably harm your career--and your organization. In his international bestseller The First 90 Days, transition guru Michael D. Watkins outlined a set of common principles for getting up to speed quickly in new professional roles. Since that book was published, Watkins has worked with thousands of leaders helping them to accelerate their transitions. These leaders posed challenging questions on how to apply the basic principles in real-life situations. The truth that emerged: The First 90 Days framework can be applied in every transition, but the way you apply it is entirely different when you have been promoted to a higher level than it is when you are joining a new organization, or taking a role in a different country. Master Your Next Move answers this distinct need, focusing on the most common types of transitions leaders face and the unique challenges posed by each. Based on years of research, and now with a new introduction, this indispensable book explores eight crucial transitions virtually everyone faces during their career, including promotion, leading former peers, onboarding into a new company, making an international move, and turning around a business in crisis. With real-world examples and lots of practical models and tools, Master Your Next Move is your guide to surviving and thriving as you make your next move ... and every one after that.-- Provided by publisher
"Since its original release, The First 90 Days has become the bestselling globally acknowledged bible of leadership and career transitions. In this updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition, internationally known leadership transition expert Michael D. Watkins gives you the keys to successfully negotiating your next move-whether you're onboarding into a new company, being promoted internally, or embarking on an international assignment. In The First 90 Days, Watkins outlines proven strategies that will dramatically shorten the time it takes to reach what he calls the "breakeven point" - when your organization needs you as much as you need the job. This new edition includes a substantial new preface by the author on the new definition of a career as a series of transitions; and notes the growing need for effective and repeatable skills for moving through these changes. As well, updated statistics and new tools make this book more reader-friendly and useful than ever. As hundreds of thousands of readers already know, The First 90 Days is a road map for taking charge quickly and effectively during critical career transition periods-whether you are a first-time manager, a mid-career professional on your way up, or a newly minted CEO"--
After three months in a new job, are you up to speed? Will you sink … or swim? Transitions into new roles are the crucibles in which leaders get their toughest tests, and they're the defining factor in professional careers today.Yet far too often, leaders fail to move effectively into new roles. The resulting costs are high, for your career and the organization.In Your Next Move, Michael Watkins shows how you can survive and thrive in all the major transitions you will face during your career, including promotion, joining a new organization and making an international move. With real-life examples and case studies, he illustrates the defining hurdles associated with each type of transition. He then provides the insights, strategies, and tools-including relationship reengineering, business systems analysis, and "organizational immunology"-you'll need to accelerate through these crucial turning points and continue moving up in your career.
More than 250,000 public sector managers in the United States take on new positions each year and many more aspire to leadership. Each will confront special challenges--from higher public profiles to a greater number of stakeholders to volatile political environments--that will make their transitions even more challenging than in the business world. Now Michael D. Watkins, author of the best-selling book The First 90 Days, applies his proven leadership transition framework to the public sector. Watkins and co-author Peter H. Daly address the crucial differences between the private and public sectors that go to the heart of how success and failure are defined, measured, and rewarded or penalized. This concise, practical book provides a roadmap to help new government leaders at all levels accelerate their transitions by overcoming nine transition challenges, ranging from clarifying expectations to defining goals to building a team to managing personal stress. The authors also offer detailed strategies for avoiding major "transition traps." Zeroing in on the challenges facing new government leaders, Getting Up to Speed in Government is an indispensable guide for anyone seeking to lead and succeed in the public sector.
Most events that catch us by surprise are both predictable and preventable, but we consistently miss (or ignore) the warning signs This book shows why such “predictable surprises” put us all at risk, and shows how we can understand, anticipate, and prevent them before disaster strikes. There is a universal fear factor surrounding this that society and the workplace are filled with disasters in the making that we could prevent if we only knew what to look for. This book plays on that fear and offers a positive, proactive resolution to it.
Fully a quarter of all managers in major corporations enter new leadership roles each year. Whether their assignments involve leading a work group or taking over a company as CEO, they face very similar challenges--and risks--in those critical first months on the job. How new leaders manage their transitions can make all the difference between success and failure.In this hands-on guide, Michael Watkins, a noted expert on leadership transitions, offers proven strategies for moving successfully into a new role at any point in one's career. Concise and practical, The First 90 Days walks managers through every aspect of the transition, from mental preparation to forging the right alliances to securing critical early wins. Through vivid examples of success and failure at all levels, Watkins identifies the most common pitfalls new leaders encounter and provides tools and strategies for how to avoid them.
