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For decades Marks & Spencer was the most successful retailer in the world. Its clothes were a byword for affordable quality and its food halls pioneered ready-prepared meals. Then suddenly they were dowdy, the staff deserted in droves and the shares plummeted - but the annual results in April 2006 show that the company is on the mend. What went wrong and how have things improved? In new chapters covering the Philip Green bid and the Stuart Rose recovery plan, and covering the Christmas 2006 trading figures, Judi Bevan reveals all.
The story of the ferocious battle for supremacy of the four main supermarket chains in Britain - Sainsbury, Tesco, Safeway and Asda. There are dynasties in decline, upstarts coming of age and those who struggle by the wayside. The story of how Tesco came from brash beginnings to challenge and finally overtake the patrician Sainsbury as the market leader in 1995 stunned the retailing world, and raised the curtain on the dramatic rise of supermarket chains in the second half of the 20th century. Behind the bare statistics of roller coaster profits and changing market shares lies a deeper tale of social change, increasing power and clashes with Government and pressure groups. The huge buying po...
The remarkable life story of the founder of Reed Employment.
Alec Reed, founder of the internationally successful Reed Employment and its sister company Reed Executive, is now in his late seventies but still a dynamic and imposing figure, with an engaging personality that conceals his shrewd flair for business. From humble beginnings, he seized every opportunity that offered, clawing his way up from working on a milk round, to drudgery as a City office boy, until he had his first big break when Gillette took him on as a management trainee. This is his remarkable story. Building on his early success with employment and recruitment agencies, he was able to develop his charitable interests - his first such venture was with drug addicts in Covent Garden in the 1960s, leading eventually to the establishment of the Alec Reed Foundation in 1989. Since then it has donated more than £18 million to good causes, and it supports many other charities including the Royal Opera House in London. This eagerly awaited autobiography is both an enjoyable account of a richly varied life and an inspirational insight into an exceptionally successful entrepreneur's imagination.
Product and service designers place increasing emphasis on the colour, form and appearance of what their organization offers and the language with which they describe it. Gloria Moss' erudite, sophisticated and fascinating book, guides the reader to an understanding of the way gender influences our visual perception. In this wide-ranging book the author explores design, visual aesthetics, language and communication, by drawing on an exhaustive range of primary sources of research from psychology, design, branding and communication. The lessons that emerge offer challenges to organizations both in the way in which their design and marketing is perceived by men and women, and how the make-up of their workforce may limit their ability to appreciate and address the diversity of customers' preferences. The challenge for management is to overcome these limitations and ensure that an organization's products and services mirror preferences of customers rather than those of senior managers.
Knowledge is built from personal experience and coloured by our needs and values. It follows that all knowledge is personal and incomplete. We all suffer from ‘blind spots’. But when leaders have them, it matters. To guide people on a journey of continuous learning, understanding and adapting to events as they occur, leaders must overcome their own blind spots and those of their organization. Any leader who implements the practices outlined in this book will immediately improve their ability to perform in today’s competitive global environment. Karen Blakeley provides in-depth analysis of how leaders learn on the job - and what gets in the way. Most importantly she offers a systematic approach for accelerating leaders’ learning capacity - and maximising their performance potential.
Coaching Skills: A handbook, Third edition introduces the reader to the core skills needed to become a great coach.
In this groundbreaking book Bill Bolton and John Thompson present a completely new take on the conventional domains of entrepreneur, leader and manager. They argue that in today’s turbulent and uncertain world, businesses no longer have the time for a business cycle that begins with an entrepreneur, hands over to a manager and finally brings in a strategic leader when things are flagging. ‘The New Normal’ that now prevails requires that these things run together and calls for a new kind of all-rounder. Bolton and Thompson give us a new word to describe such a person: The ENTIREPRENEUR The entirely competent person, able to discern aright and make things happen. Drawing upon the success...
The Premiership of Tony Blair has not only reaffirmed previous trends towards leader-centered parties and governments, it has provided a decisive change in the development of a British presidency. The strategies and techniques designed to secure and expand Blair’s public outreach, together with the priority attached to the prime minister’s personal pledges and individual vision have propelled the office into new dimensions of independence. Michael Foley argues that the ascendancy of Blair is not an aberration, but rather a culmination of trends that have established vigorous leadership as a key criterion of political evaluation and governing competence. This edition is completely up-to-date, including the first convincing analysis of Tony Blair's leadership style.
Why do smart and experienced leaders make flawed, even catastrophic, decisions? Why do people keep believing they have made the right choice, even with the disastrous result staring them in the face? And how can you be sure you're making the right decision--without the benefit of hindsight? Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell show how the usually beneficial processes of the human mind can become traps when we face big decisions. The authors show how the shortcuts our brains have learned to take over millennia of evolution can derail our decision making. Think Again offers a powerful model for making better decisions, describing the key red flags to watch for and detailing the decision-making safeguards we need. Using examples from business, politics, and history, Think Again deconstructs bad decisions, as they unfolded in real time, to show how you can avoid the same fate.