Business Is Business

Balancing the benefits and burdens of a family-owned business Working with family complicates the already daunting task of owning a business, and it’s tough not to take work problems home with you. The best approach is to realize that family is family . . . and business is business. Business is Business: Reality Checks for Family-Owned Companies is a common-sense manual for survival that dispels myths such as the power of teamwork and gender or birth-order differences in ability. Engagingly written, with no-nonsense tips and real-life examples, this defiant treatise will guide you to • Harness your employees’—and your own—inherent strengths • Trust your instincts and the people you work with • Balance lifelong relationships with fair treatment of nonfamily employees Authors Kathy Kolbe and Amy Bruske hone decades of experience helping family businesses thrive—and running their own for more than 30 years—into practical, actionable advice for how to hire family members, how to work with them, and how—when necessary—to fire them. The solutions are not always easy, but understanding the frequent pitfalls of working with family is an investment that could pay back over generations. Business is Business will show you how to find joy while developing a sustainable family-owned company.

Learn about concepts, management, and commerce in The Business Book. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Business in this overview guide to the subject, great for beginners looking to learn and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Business Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Business, with: - Up to 100 quotations from the great business thinkers and gurus - Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts - A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout - Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding The Business Book is the perfect introduction the to key theories that have shaped the world of business, management, and commerce, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you’ll discover every facet of business management, including alternative business models, with real life examples from the marketplace. If you’ve ever wondered about the stages of business strategy, from start-up to delivering the goods, this is the perfect book for you. Your Business Questions, Simply Explained This book introduces the would-be entrepreneur and general reader to the work of great commercial thinkers, leaders, and gurus. Learn about the hurdles facing every new business, such as finding a gap in the market, securing finance, employing people, and creating an eye-catching brand. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the world of commerce, The Business Book presents information in an easy to follow layout. Learn the ideas of seminal business thinkers, such as Malcolm Gladwell's "tipping point", Michael Porter's "five forces", and Meredith Belbin's theories on effective teamwork, with fantastic mind maps and step-by-step summaries. The Big Ideas Series With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Business Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

Do you really understand what business value is? Information technology can and should deliver business value. But the Agile literature has paid scant attention to what business value means—and how to know whether or not you are delivering it. This problem becomes ever more critical as you push value delivery toward autonomous teams and away from requirements “tossed over the wall” by business stakeholders. An empowered team needs to understand its goal! Playful and thought-provoking, The Art of Business Value explores what business value means, why it matters, and how it should affect your software development and delivery practices. More than any other IT delivery approach, DevOps (and Agile thinking in general) makes business value a central concern. This book examines the role of business value in software and makes a compelling case for why a clear understanding of business value will change the way you deliver software. This book will make you think deeply about not only what it means to deliver value but also the relationship of the IT organization to the rest of the enterprise. It will give you the language to discuss value with the business, methods to cut through bureaucracy, and strategies for incorporating Agile teams and culture into the enterprise. Most of all, this book will startle you into new ways of thinking about the cutting-edge of Agile practice and where it may lead.

The Great Game of Business started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement. The revised and updated edition of The Great Game of Business lays out an entirely different way of running a company. It wasn't dreamed up in an executive think tank or an Ivy League business school or around the conference table by big-time consultants. It was forged on the factory floors of the heartland by ordinary folks hoping to figure out how to save their jobs when their parent company, International Harvester, went down the tubes. What these workers created was a revolutionary approach to management that has proven itself in every industry around the world for the past thirty years--an approach that is perhaps the last, best hope for reviving the American Dream.

Tapping into more than 33 years of small business expertise, the staff at Entrepreneur Media takes today’s entrepreneurs beyond opening their doors and through the first three years of ownership. This revised edition features amended chapters on choosing a business, adding partners, getting funded, and managing the business structure and employees, and also includes help understanding the latest tax and healthcare reform information and legalities.

How do university finances really work? From flagship public research universities to small, private liberal arts colleges, there are few aspects of these institutions associated with more confusion, myths or lack of understanding than how they fund themselves and function in the business of higher education. Using simple, approachable explanations supported by clear illustrations, this book takes the reader on an engaging and enlightening tour of how the money flows. How does the university really pay for itself? Why do tuition and fees rise so fast? Why do universities lose money on research? Do most donations go to athletics? Grounded in hard data, original analyses, and the practical experience of a seasoned administrator, this book provides refreshingly clear answers and comprehensive insights for anyone on or off campus who is interested in the business of the university: how it earns its money, how it spends it, and how it all works.

The companion volume to the public television series explains what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.