P3CG Recommendation: This isn’t the first book on change management or buy-in that you will read, but it is a great addition to your repertoire of skills and techniques when it comes to making your ideas public.

Publisher’s Description:

You’ve got a good idea. You know it could make a crucial difference for you, your organization, your community. You present it to the group, but get confounding questions, inane comments, and verbal bullets in return. Before you know what’s happened, your idea is dead, shot down. You’re furious. Everyone has lost: Those who would have benefited from your proposal. You. Your company. Perhaps even the country.

It doesn’t have to be this way, maintain John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead. In Buy-In, they reveal how to win the support your idea needs to deliver valuable results. The key? Understand the generic attack strategies that naysayers and obfuscators deploy time and time again. Then engage these adversaries with tactics tailored to each strategy. By “inviting in the lions” to critique your idea–and being prepared for them–you’ll capture busy people’s attention, help them grasp your proposal’s value, and secure their commitment to implementing the solution.

The book presents a fresh and amusing fictional narrative showing attack strategies in action. It then provides several specific counterstrategies for each basic category the authors have defined–including:

• Death-by-delay: Your enemies push discussion of your idea so far into the future it’s forgotten.
• Confusion: They present so much data that confidence in your proposal dies.
• Fearmongering: Critics catalyze irrational anxieties about your idea.
• Character assassination: They slam your reputation and credibility.

Smart, practical, and filled with useful advice, Buy-In equips you to anticipate and combat attacks–so your good idea makes it through to make a positive change.

P3CG recommendation: This book is an excellent resource for those who have a basic understanding of TOC and are looking to improve on their skills in applying the concepts in a variety of different environments.

Publisher’s description:  An incredible ability awaits managers who practice Theory of Constraints (TOC) techniques: they can take a problem, look beyond the less important details, and directly identify the source of trouble. They’ve been known to promptly resolve perplexing matters – while the uninformed remain stuck.So many more managers could gain the benefit of TOC thinking… if they only took the time. Eli Schragenheim now offers an informative and enjoyable self-learning method, proving how TOC can be invaluable at a wide variety of workplaces. Management Dilemmas: The Theory of Constraints Approach to Problem Identification and Solutions conveys TOC methods through “virtual experience”-stories of managers and the situations they need to resolve. Take note of the dilemmas they’re facing. Think about how you would respond under those circumstances. Then, compare your reactions with Schragenheim’s TOC-influenced analysis.Associated with Dr. Eli Goldratt (the founder of TOC) for seven years, Schragenheim doesn’t tell how the stories end. Instead, he encourages the reader to try out TOC techniques-especially the need to arrive at the most precise answer by raising the right questions. The conclusions you reach today could greatly help your on-the-job thinking tomorrow!

P3CG recommendation: Throughput Accounting is an essential resource for those who wish to better understand how to utilize throughput accounting to make better day to day decisions on truly improving profitability.

Publisher’s description:

Learn How To Apply The Theory Of Constraints To Management Accounting.

The Theory of Constraints, a management philosophy derived from physics, assumes that constraints prevent organizations from achieving better performance. The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is based on a scientific method that has been developed and refined for nearly three decades by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt. As a tool for business management, TOC is now accepted as a mainstream alternative to cost accounting.

Throughput Accounting

• Reveals a new management tool for managerial accounting and shows an alternative path for other management practices.
• Enables managers to quickly see if their decisions increase profitability.
• Demonstrates some of cost accounting’s flaws, and shows how these errors will lead to bad decision making.
• Compares the paradigm of TOC-based throughput accounting with more conventional cost accounting methodologies and in the process, demonstrates a new way to solve the complex problems of modern management.

P3CG recommendation: We recommend the newer book, as it contains updated content and some new concepts on how to use Theory of Constraints in manufacturing and the supply chain.

Publisher’s description: Manufacturing systems don’t exist in a vacuum, isolated from the rest of the company, but they are often managed that way. A truly effective, highly competitive manufacturing company integrates its manufacturing, marketing, sales, purchasing, and financial functions into a well-coordinated whole. Manufacturing at Warp Speed: Optimizing Supply Chain Financial Performance explains in detail how to coordinate all these functions to maximize sales revenue while controlling inventory and overhead costs. Ultimately, the effects of applying the new Simplified-Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR II) introduced by the authors include dramatically faster manufacturing cycle times, shorter order-to-delivery lead times, higher on-time delivery reliability, and better customer satisfaction. The book gives you everything a typical production professional needs to implement this new DBR approach. A supplemental feature – the Management Interactive Case Study Simulator (MICSS) – is included with the book. This CD-ROM sets up a virtual company where you can test and practice the processes you learn in the book before implementing them in your organization. The book and software together constitute the complete package for learning how to streamline manufacturing operations. The first book available on second generation Drum-Buffer-Rope, Manufacturing at Warp Speed: Optimizing Supply Chain Financial Performance describes the simplest, most efficient methods for reducing manufacturing cycle time and increasing the speed of manufacturing yet devised. Fully illustrated, with numerous examples, case studies, and manufacturing scenarios, the book is so easy to read that even the novice can understand it. Correct use of this new method practically assures your company has the competitive advantage.

P3CG recommendation: Selling the Wheel is a very good introduction for salespeople interested in learning how to sell differently to different markets and especially products in different life cycles.

Author’s description: Selling the Wheel is outwardly a book about sales people, but it’s really about adapting to the evolution of the market and creating sales strategies that work with the realities of the market at any given time. As such, it’s a book that every entrepreneur and every executive running a company could stand to read.

P3CG recommendation: SPIN Selling is a must read for anyone looking to improve on closing larger scale sales opportunities.  Perhaps the most highly recommended book on sales we have found to date.

Publisher’s description: How do some sales people consistently outsell their competition? SPIN Selling, the best-selling book that documents Huthwaite’s 12-year, one million dollar research effort has the answers. This book on effective sales performance is the most comprehensive account of sales success ever collected. The unique sales strategy, SPIN^® (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) Selling, is already used by many of the world’s top sales forces, helping them regain the competitive advantage.

Publisher’s description:

Small Changes Can Deliver Big New Product Results. Are new products taking too long and failing to deliver the bottom-line impact you need? Now you can accelerate your growth by identifying your innovation bottleneck, just one of the powerful new product development strategies revealed in Simplifying Innovation.  As the story in this provocative business novel unfolds, you’ll discover the first-ever approach to new product growth based on the Theory of Constraints. Learn how to leverage the power of the 5-Step Guided Innovation System to:

• Fill your pipeline with profitably growing new products
• Finish new product programs on time and on budget
• Select winners so resources aren’t wasted on canceled projects
• Focus on creating value for customers and shareholders
• Hit your new product sales targets more consistently

Inspired by Goldratt’s groundbreaking book, The Goal, Simplifying Innovation takes readers beyond theory and into an experience of the framework. You’re introduced to Barrister Industries and its newest general manager, Maggie Edwards. Struggling to get new product innovation working again, Barrister’s story demonstrates the issues companies like yours face every day and how a systematic framework can address them.

While the underlying problems that Barrister faces may be complex, you’ll learn how TOC can simplify any situation. You’ll also learn a straightforward, five-step approach for identifying the bottleneck in your new product process, uncovering the core issues that constrain it, and engaging your team to drive improvements in new product development speed and impact.

For readers that prefer a more traditional business book, Part V summarizes all of the elements of the story into a concise outline of the entire system and the keys to using it within your organization–a high-leverage, step-by-step process that you can implement immediately to begin getting more profits from your new product investment.

P3CG recommendation: a good book for anyone looking to understand more about how traditional cost accounting can lead managers to make some erroneous day to day decisions and are looking for a better way to make better financial decisions.

Publisher’s description: This book presents support tools for pricing, costing and decision-making in the modern business environment. It presents innovative methodologies, some of which have been developed by the authors and implemented in dozens of organizations, and the theory of constraints (TOC).

P3CG recommendation: We highly recommend this book to people who want to analyze data about their systems.

Publisher’s description: We live in the Information Age, and much of that information comes to us in the form of numbers. But before numerical information can be useful it must be analyzed, interpreted, and assimilated. Unfortunately, teaching the techniques for making sense of data has been neglected at all levels of our educational system. As a result, through our culture there is little appreciation of how to effectively use the volumes of data generated by both business and government. This book can remedy that situation. Readers report that this book as changed both the way they look a data and the very form their monthly reports. It has turned arguments about the numbers into a common understanding of what needs to be done about them. These techniques and benefits have been thoroughly proven in a wide variety of settings. Read this book and use the techniques to gain the benefits for your company.

P3CG recommendation: We recommend for anyone who wants new ways to think about leading organizations.

Publisher’s description:  Motivating entire organizations to embrace large-scale change is the biggest challenge most managers face. Ray Immelman’s insightful book offers a new perspective on why groups resist change and how to leverage the very same trait to get change implemented. Learn how to develop a strategy to gain buy-in and commitment to new behaviors on a large scale.