Home > Work > HBR's Must Reads Boxed Set (6 Books) (HBR's 10 Must Reads)
1 " There are five degrees of initiative that the manager can exercise in relation to the boss and to the system: wait until told (lowest initiative); ask what to do; recommend, then take resulting action; act, but advise at once; and act on own, then routinely report (highest initiative). "
― Harvard Business School Press , HBR's Must Reads Boxed Set (6 Books) (HBR's 10 Must Reads)
2 " Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities. "
3 " Managers who aspire to be ethical must challenge the assumption that they’re always unbiased and acknowledge that vigilance, even more than good intention, is a defining characteristic of an ethical manager. "
4 " a highly fragmented day is also a very lazy day. "
5 " if management lets itself drift, it invariably drifts in the direction of thinking of itself as producing goods and services, not customer satisfactions. "
6 " Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success. Originally "
7 " Too many people work in ways that are not their ways, and that almost guarantees nonperformance. "
8 " When technical experts mystify their audiences rather than enlighten them, they lose support—and “no” is always an easier answer than “yes. "
9 " the organization must learn to think of itself not as producing goods or services but as buying customers, "
10 " The best way for a firm to be lucky is to make its own luck. "
11 " The seller takes cues from the buyer in such a way that the product becomes a consequence of the marketing effort, not vice versa. "
12 " • Which of our product or service varieties are the most distinctive? • Which of our product or service varieties are the most profitable? • Which of our customers are the most satisfied? • Which customers, channels, or purchase occasions are the most profitable? • Which of the activities in our value chain are the most different and effective? "
13 " Most managers complain about having too little freedom in their jobs, while their bosses complain about managers’ failure to grasp opportunities. "
14 " There is good evidence that when people are put under pressure, they regress to their most habituated ways of responding, "
15 " People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness. "
16 " EVERY MAJOR INDUSTRY WAS once a growth industry. "
17 " the proliferation of user-developed spreadsheets and databases inevitably leads to multiple versions of key indicators within an organization. Furthermore, research has shown that between 20% and 40% of spreadsheets contain errors; the more spreadsheets floating around a company, therefore, the more fecund the breeding ground for mistakes. Analytics competitors, by contrast, field centralized groups to ensure that critical data and other resources are well managed and that different parts of the organization can share data easily, without the impediments of inconsistent formats, definitions, and standards. "
18 " Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success. "
19 " You apply sophisticated information systems and rigorous analysis not only to your core capability but also to a range of functions as varied as marketing and human resources. "
20 " The very technologies that make it hard for us to maintain healthy boundaries among domains also enable us to blend them in ways—unfathomable even a decade ago—that can render us more productive and more fulfilled. "