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The corporate landscape is littered with companies whose leaders made the wrong decisions. In CREATE THE FUTURE: Powerful Decision-Making Tools For Your Company And Yourself, corporate leader, board member, and keynote speaker Rick Williams provides a guidebook for leaders who want to turn their leadership team into a powerful creative engine – imagining where an organization can go, defining the best options, and developing a concrete plan for getting there.

The book presents a straightforward, concrete, structured process – from starting with the challenge to ending with a decision. Filled with case studies, critical examples, and drawing on his decades of experience as a company founder and management consultant, Williams offers a strategic methodology complete with planning and decision-making tools – some of which he developed and others he adapted from those used by leading consultants, coaches, and skilled leaders.

Rick Williams is an internationally published author. He is a frequent speaker and writer on best practices for leadership and decision-making.

Williams began his career as a physicist developing space- and defense-related systems. After Harvard Business School, Williams joined the global consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Inc., where he worked on business strategy and acquisitions and the economic and strategic impact of government policy and regulations on a broad spectrum of industries. He then founded and served as CEO of The Equity Company, an award-winning real estate investment and development firm.

Williams’ recent work includes serving on the board of directors of technology companies. He has served as board chairman of a medical device company and a bank/venture capital firm. He has also served on the national board for the Private Directors Association and as president of the Harvard Business School Association of Boston and other non-profit boards. Williams is an honors physics graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, a winning sailboat racer, and an avid photographer.

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WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER 

USA TODAY BESTSELLER

 In a world characterized by constant change, individuals and organizations need to pivot to adapt. In EVERYTHING CONNECTS:  Cultivating Mindfulness, Creativity, And Innovation For Long-term Value. Entrepreneur, thought leader, and innovator Faisal Hoque shows how to thrive in the environment of change in which we live and work.

The book – a revision of the first edition of EVERYTHING CONNECTS – includes new material on changes due to the pandemic, mindfulness and resiliency, all designed to help leverage and thrive in the flickering environment of change. These additional topics add substance to the seminal focus of the original edition, and further the core message that everything has a relationship to everything else, resulting in a powerful synergy.

Part philosophy, part business, and part history, this book is a kaleidoscopic view of the way humans―by being able to think out of the box―have been able to achieve greatness for themselves, their organizations, and the world at large.

Faisal Hoque is an accomplished entrepreneur, senior executive, author, thought leader, public speaker, and advisor to management teams and BODs with more than 25 years of cross-industry success. He is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, and other companies; they focus on enabling sustainable and transformational changes.

In today’s complex, ambiguous world of work, leaders can’t rely on data and models alone. The difference between good and bad decisions often rests on intuition. In INTUITION AT WORK: Using Your Gut Feelings To Get Ahead, executive coach Jessica Pryce-Jones shares how intuition helps senior leaders and their teams arrive at important decisions, explains what intuition is, what forms it takes, and how to be more attentive to its cues.

The benefits of intuitive decision-making, as detailed in the stories and exercises in INTUITION AT WORK, will result in greater responsiveness, flexibility, and improved organizational performance.

Jessica Pryce-Jones started her career in finance where she learned about numbers, strategy and leadership. After ten years in the corporate world, she completed a psychology degree – she wanted to understand why some of her bosses were brilliant and others were dismal. Those insights launched a new career facilitating, coaching, designing interventions and writing.

Clients include multinationals in healthcare, professional services, FMCG, banking, creative, education, manufacturing, publishing and engineering industries as well as the public and not-for-profit sectors.

She has written two previous books, Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success and Running Great Meetings & Workshops for Dummies.

#1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

USA TODAY BESTSELLER

Transformational leaders will leverage positive change

In a world of explosive change and transformation, leaders at all levels―from heads of state and global corporations to entrepreneurs and gig economists―will offer the best opportunity for leveraging change and transforming our lives for the better. This includes how we work, play, govern ourselves, and consider and plan for our collective futures.

This thought-provoking book invites you to explore the intersection of transformational leadership, systemic thinking, and experiential learning―all required to survive and thrive the tsunami of changes and disruptions caused by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, and misinformation trends.

Faisal Hoque is an accomplished entrepreneur, senior executive, author, thought leader, public speaker, and advisor to management teams and BODs with more than 25 years of cross-industry success. He is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, and other companies; they focus on enabling sustainable and transformational changes.

Trading in financial markets requires a unique set of skills, knowledge, personal mastery, and experience. Traders must hone high-performance abilities to effectively navigate the fast-paced, uncertain, and ever-changing landscape of the markets. In MASTERING THE MENTAL GAME OF TRADING: Harnessing The Power Of The Inner Self To Fuel Trading Outperformance, professional trading coach Steven Goldstein guides readers through the process of integrating both the inner and outer games of trading into a cohesive but evolving process.

Filled with actionable insights based on real-world examples, this book will inspire traders to focus on looking inward so they can meet the external challenges they face in the markets and in their own lives.

Steven Goldstein is one of the leading coaches in the Financial Markets industry. His use of powerful high-level techniques support clients to transition, change, and become more effective as leaders, teams, and risk-takers.

Goldstein’s approach to coaching helps people and teams to see themselves and their place in their worlds from new and different perspectives. His approach empowers people to become more self-aware and helps them build upon their strengths to fully utilize their potential in ways which drive significant performance improvements.

Prior to developing himself as a coach Goldstein worked for over 20 years as an Investment Bank trader at firms including Credit Suisse, Commerzbank, and American Express.

In REINVENT: Navigating Business Transformation In A Hyperdigital Era, entrepreneur, innovator, and advisor with more than twenty-five years of cross-industry success, Faisal Hoque, makes the argument for reinvention – from the changing nature of consumers to shifting workforce priorities to the necessity for greater organizational security. Hoque introduces ideas, concepts, and a comprehensive framework (LIFTS — learn, investigate, formulate, take off, and study) to help position organizations to reap the benefits of business and digital transformation.

The skills and mindset taught in the book will equip transformational leaders to manage ongoing change and adjust to the upheavals that are taking place everywhere.

Faisal Hoque is the founder of SHADOKA, NextChapter, and other companies that focus on enabling sustainable and transformational changes. Throughout his career, he has developed over 20 commercial business and technology platforms and worked with public and private sector giants such as the US Department of Defense, GE, MasterCard, American Express, Northrop Grumman, CACI, PepsiCo, IBM, Home Depot, Gartner, and JPMorgan Chase. He is a 3 time winning Founder and CEO of Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ awards

Teamwork is the lifeblood of a successful organization, and the best mentors are adept at developing team skills. In this book, executive leadership experts Paul Fayad, MSA and Chak Fu Lam, PhD offer innovative strategies and actionable insights to help leaders transform their teams and organizational culture.

Grounded in behavioral science, positive psychology, and evidence-based practices, SHAPING A WINNING TEAM provides reliable and effective leadership strategies designed to meet the needs of contemporary organizations. With decades of experience, the authors, co-founders of Positive Leader, introduce the archetypes within each team – Rower, Sitter, Driller℠.

Combining high-level insights with down-to-earth practical recommendations, this book is the playbook for building a positive, productive, and lasting organizational culture.

Paul Fayad, MSA is cofounder of Positive Leader and ELM Learning. He has focused on organizational behavior through more than four decades of founding and holding executive positions with numerous companies. Fayad has consulted with corporations, school systems, and healthcare facilities to establish programs based on positive leadership skills. He has lectured at universities and college business schools in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong.

Chak Fu Lam, PhD cofounded Positive Leader with Fayad. He is an associate professor of management at City University of Hong Kong and a recipient of the Poets&Quants “40-Under-40 Best MBA Professors.” He studies leadership, communication, self-determination, and well-being at work. Lam publishes his research in premier management journals, serves as an associate editor for the Academy of Management Review, and was voted as one of the best editorial reviewers for the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2021.

People train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies and still manage to solve the wrong problems. Why? Because they have been taught that when they face problems big or small, their initial impression/definition/hunch of what they think is the problem really is the problem, notes renowned innovation consultant Roger L. Firestien, PhD, in SOLVE THE REAL PROBLEM: Because What You Think Is The Problem Is Usually Not The Problem.

With all the information that they have at their fingertips, people still misdiagnose illnesses, create educational programs that don’t help students, sink millions into business plans that never get off the ground, and overlook simple details that cost time, energy and lives. “We

have been taught to find answers to problems, not to question the problem itself,” says Firestien.

Roger L. Firestien, PhD, has presented programs on innovation to over 600 organizations around the world including Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, universities, associations, and religious institutions.

His expert views on creativity have been covered in Fast Company, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, Inc. and The New York Times.

He is Associate Professor Emeritus at the Center for Applied Imagination at Buffalo State University, President of Innovation Resources, Inc., a founding member of the Buffalo Society for Creativity in Medical Education, and guest lecturer at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, NY.

Leaders of B2C and B2B organizations – irrespective of size, geography and industry sector – need a tried-and-tested approach to improve their customer experience. To stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving demands of empowered, values-driven customers, organizations need to embrace the age of the customer and implement multi-channel strategies. The key lies in values-driven organizational alignment designed for an organization’s unique situation, all underpinned by a customer experience mindset and the ‘human touch’.

In SUPERCHARGING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: How Organizational Alignment Drives Performance, customer experience and business transformation experts Alan Williams and Dave Stubberfield provide a methodology and framework that has successfully been adopted by large and small companies, across sectors.

Alan Williams, Founder & MD, SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL Ltd, coaches progressive leaders of service sector organizations, internationally, to deliver values-driven service for sustained performance.

With more than 20 years’ senior management experience in demanding customer service environments, Williams’ rare mix of extensive operations and coaching experience enables him to create and implement holistic SERVICEBRAND® strategies for sustainable impact. He has applied this approach as a consultant and in senior leadership roles for global blue-chip organizations as well as smaller entrepreneurial companies.

Dave Stubberfield is Director & Principal Consultant, Carter Consultancy. With over a decade’s worth of experience in business transformation, has been involved with and managed complex and comprehensive projects to improve a variety of businesses with a customer-centric focus. By empowering people from the ground up and gaining total sponsorship from senior leaders, Stubberfield ensures complete coverage of the transformation across the organization. He applies his expertise in continuous improvement, customer experience and change management to create bespoke implementation solutions for businesses of all sizes and reach their goals, embedding and sustaining these methodologies.

Climate change, urbanization, new work practices, and aging populations are changing the way people think about their vehicles. Similar to how the electric vehicle revolution became the mobility story of the past decade, the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) revolution will be the story of the next decade and beyond. In THE FLAGSHIP EXPERIENCE: How AI And Software-Defined Vehicles Will Revolutionize The Automotive Customer Experience, recognized thought leader on AI, new mobility, and corporate innovation, Evangelos Simoudis, PhD, describes how SDVs will enable automakers, transportation providers, and transportation planners to reimagine the mobility customer experience, and presents a blueprint for implementation.

Evangelos Simoudis is a recognized expert on AI, new mobility, and corporate innovation. He has been working in Silicon Valley for thirty years as a startup founder and CEO, corporate executive, venture investor, and senior advisor to global corporations and governments. His firm, Synapse Partners, is investing in AI startups and advising senior management teams of large organizations on AI and new business models.

In his new book, THE POWER OF CLOSURE: Why We Want It, How to Get It, and When to Walk Away, psychotherapist Gary McClain fills in the gaps, defines what closure is and is not, the reasons for wanting it – some healthy, some not so healthy – and discusses concrete steps people can take to seek it in productive and meaningful ways.

The basic truth about closure is that sometimes people find the closure they want, and sometimes they have to walk away. “Walking away from the closure they thought they needed and realize they can’t have can be an act of empowerment. That’s the power of closure: It makes an impact on you when you find it and when you don’t,” says McClain.

Whether dealing with the pain of loss or anger over workplace issues or job loss, THE POWER OF CLOSURE will help readers let go of the past and embrace the future.

Gary McClain, PhD, is an educator, psychotherapist, relationship coach, and author, based in New York City. He also works with employees onsite at local corporations as a mental health professional and is an adjunct faculty member at Montclair State University in the graduate program in mental health and at Excelsior University in health sciences, where he was named the Distinguished Faculty Member in 2013 and received the Faculty Scholarship Award in 2023.

McClain is also a frequent speaker at corporate meetings, delivering various mental health presentations at companies and organizations. Topics include communication for couples, teamwork, burnout, stress management, and managing anxious thoughts.

McClain has written many articles in a series he calls “Chronic Communication Skills.” Articles in this series are published on his website as well as in the publications he contributes to.

The 2020 pandemic was more than a major health event. It was an economic, social, cultural, and geo-political event as well. The result is that existing fractures widened. There was an absence of leadership. In THE SILENT REBELLION: Becoming A Modern Leader, leadership expert Chris Lewis and business coach Inez Robinson-Odom address the most pressing challenges facing leaders today. They reveal that those who choose to quietly rebel can make a difference as a modern leader.

Chris Lewis is founder of TEAM LEWIS, a global marketing consultancy that campaigns for commercial and community causes. He is the author of Too Fast to Think, and co-author of The Leadership Lab and The Infinite Leader. He is based in London.

Inez Robinson-Odom works in media, education, executive coaching and social justice. She is vice president of professional development for TEAM LEWIS, and is based in San Diego, California.

What separates competent leaders from true visionaries? This question is vital for those who wish to leave a positive legacy on their clients, customers, employees, and society. In THE STRATEGY LEGACY: How To Future-Proof A Business And Leave Your Mark, strategy and leadership expert Alex Brueckmann argues that great leaders are distinguished by their ability to combine strategy with organizational identity, focusing not only on what they do, and why, but beyond.

Brueckmann’s goal is to help leaders understand business strategy as the number one driver of both corporate culture and commercial success. “I would like you to approach strategy by decoupling the topic from the metaphorical ivory towers of corporate functions and put strategy at the heart of your organization’s identity,” he says.

Whether a corporate leader, an entrepreneur, or a startup founder, readers of THE STRATEGY LEGACY will be equipped to boost their business and leave a positive impression across the board.

Alex Brueckmann is an executive thought partner, strategy facilitator, speaker, and author of Secrets Of Next Level Entrepreneurs: 11 Powerful Lessons To Thrive In Business And Lead A Balanced Life. He talks about the power of strategy and identity, transformation leadership, purpose, impact, and legacy. Brueckmann has impacted thousands of business leaders across the world, from multinationals to start-ups.

He is an alumnus of EBS European Business School (Germany), and holds certificates in change management, leadership, finance, organizational development, and strategy from INSEAD (France), and Harvard Business School (USA).

Why Didn’t I Think of That?

…we’ve all asked the question one time or another. The answer is almost always the same. When we miss opportunities, it’s because we’re not looking for problems to solve.

Why Didn’t I Think of That? is a short story we can all relate to, shedding an eye-opening light on our classic approaches to work and problem solving.

You’ll discover how to innovate on demand, develop more options, and implement ideas that make a difference.

Creativity is a skill. Just like you learned how to ride a bicycle, you can learn how to be creative. In Why Didn’t I Think of That? you will learn how to turn on your creativity at will instead of waiting for ideas to happen.

Roger L. Firestien, PhD, has presented programs on innovation to over 600 organizations around the world including Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, universities, associations, and religious institutions.

His expert views on creativity have been covered in Fast Company, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, Inc. and The New York Times.

He is Associate Professor Emeritus at the Center for Applied Imagination at Buffalo State University, President of Innovation Resources, Inc., a founding member of the Buffalo Society for Creativity in Medical Education, and guest lecturer at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, NY.