Pivotal Strategies

Pivotal Strategies examines the rhetorical contexts and motivations that determine how and why people choose writing studies as a discipline, especially as the field begins to take more seriously an antiracist imperative that requires more conscious listening and promotion of work from scholars representing traditionally underrepresented voices. Because undergraduate degrees in writing studies are relatively new, claiming the discipline has required reinvention and revision at personal and professional levels far different than any other discipline. Suspicions about the viability of the discipline linger in many departments and universities, as well as outside the academy, leading writing studies scholars to develop innovative strategies to deal with covertly hostile attitudes. Within the collection, contributors name explicit claiming strategies from the discipline’s beginnings to the contemporary moment, locating opportune spaces, negotiating identities and fostering resilience, and developing allegiances by foregrounding their embodiment as underrepresented members of academia through a commitment to social justice and equity. Responding to current conversations on the worth of education with honest stories about the burdens and joys of becoming and being an academic, Pivotal Strategies features a spectrum of voices across racial, gender, class, and age categories. This collection not only makes the discipline more visible but also helps map the contemporary state of writing studies.

We live in a fundamentally changed world. It’s time for your approach to strategy to change, too. The evidence is all around us. Extreme weather, driven by climate change, is shattering records all over the planet. Our natural resources are in greater demand than ever before as a billion more people enter the global middle class, wanting more of everything. Radical transparency is opening up company operations and supply chains to public scrutiny. This is not some futuristic scenario or model to debate, but today’s reality. We've passed an economic tipping point. A weakening of the foundations of our planetary infrastructure is costing businesses dearly and putting our society at risk. The mega challenges of climate change, scarcity, and radical transparency threaten our ability to run an expanding global economy and are profoundly changing “business as usual.” But they also offer unprecedented opportunities: multi-trillion-dollar markets are in play, and the winners of this new game will profit mightily. According to Andrew Winston, bestselling author (Green to Gold) and globally recognized business strategist, the way companies currently operate will not allow them to keep up with the current—and future—rate of change. They need to make the Big Pivot. In this indispensable new book, Winston provides ten crucial strategies for leaders and companies ready to move boldly forward and win in this new reality. With concrete advice and tactics, and new stories from companies like British Telecom, Diageo, Dow, Ford, Nike, Unilever, Walmart, and many others, The Big Pivot will help you, and all of us, create more resilient businesses and a more prosperous world. This book is the blueprint to get you started.

Public education has been criticized for under-achieving schools and one key phrase for long-term school success is school leadership. Taken comprehensively, leadership emphasizes the importance of where the leader stands at times of decision, challenge, and conflict. The Art of War, written by Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist more than 2500 years ago, represents a very complex work of philosophy and military strategy. A good part of the work describes the pivotal role of a leader and his understanding and application of the winning factors. The Art of War application to education is about solving (i.e. fighting) problems (i.e. the enemy) to improve student and school success. The Art of War describes the significance of a leader and his knowledge and prudent application of the strategies. At the core of theses strategies is the non-negotiable moral purpose of the leader to be reinforced by other fine qualities as wisdom, commitment, discipline, and courage. Readers will be amazed and rewarded by finding the relevance and practicality of this ancient Eastern philosophy.

Advance your career with this insightful playbook for underrepresented women In Prep, Push, Pivot, award-winning career coach and author Octavia Goredema delivers an indispensable career coaching guide for women looking for a new job, dealing with job loss, pivoting to a new career, or returning to the workforce after an extended absence. You'll discover practical strategies you can implement at crucial times during your career, ensuring your considerable talents and skills are used to their full potential. In this important book, you'll: Discover your true worth, cement your career values, and carve out a realistic and aspirational career plan Learn how to position yourself for a promotion, navigate a break in your career, and integrate your role as a mother or caregiver with your professional life Deal with monumental career changes, contribute to the development of the women around you, and benefit from an array of professional resources in your journey forward Perfect for women who are ready to overcome any obstacles that await them, Prep, Push, Pivot is a thoughtful road map to help women chart their professional and personal success.

"Crawford explains the political dynamics of pivotal deterrence and the conditions under which it is likely to succeed, while examining some of its most impressive feats and failures. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's agile approach to the 1870s Eastern Crisis, which prevented war between Russia and Austria-Hungary, is contrasted with Britain's ambiguous and ill-fated maneuvers to deter Germany and France in July 1914. Shifting to the 1960s Cold War, Crawford explores the successes and setbacks in U.S. efforts to prevent NATO allies Greece and Turkey from fighting over Cyprus and to defuse the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan."--BOOK JACKET.

Over the past years, knowledge-intensive industries have gained significant importance as economic factor, giving rise to professional service firms (PSFs) such as law firms, accounting firms, or consultancies. Following this development, the research interest especially in the strategies pursued by PSFs has grown substantially. However, past research focused mainly on strategies of established, mature PSFs, leaving academics as well as potential entrepreneurs without guidance on what newly founded, entrepreneurial PSFs should pay attention to in order to ensure lasting competitive advantages. Based on an explorative grounded theory analysis of two outstanding commercial law firm spin-offs in Germany, this work advances the research in this field. In addition to a detailed case study report, it offers a comprehensive theoretical framework and argues that PSFs have to employ a set of seven specific entrepreneurial strategies – including for example service delivery, people development, and client acquisition strategies – in order to successfully manage the entrepreneurial phase. In providing examples for the growing PSF industry, the findings on commercial law firm spin-offs also inform entrepreneurship research in other professions

Politicians and pundits alike have complained that the divided governments of the last decades have led to legislative gridlock. Not so, argues Keith Krehbiel, who advances the provocative theory that divided government actually has little effect on legislative productivity. Gridlock is in fact the order of the day, occurring even when the same party controls the legislative and executive branches. Meticulously researched and anchored to real politics, Krehbiel argues that the pivotal vote on a piece of legislation is not the one that gives a bill a simple majority, but the vote that allows its supporters to override a possible presidential veto or to put a halt to a filibuster. This theory of pivots also explains why, when bills are passed, winning coalitions usually are bipartisan and supermajority sized. Offering an incisive account of when gridlock is overcome and showing that political parties are less important in legislative-executive politics than previously thought, Pivotal Politics remakes our understanding of American lawmaking.

The proven, effective strategy for reinventing your business in the age of ever-present disruption Disruption by digital technologies? That's not a new story. But what is new is the "wise pivot," a replicable strategy for harnessing disruption to survive, grow, and be relevant to the future. It's a strategy for perpetual reinvention across the old, now, and new elements of any business. Rapid recent advances in technology are forcing leaders in every business to rethink long-held beliefs about how to adapt to emerging technologies and new markets. What has become abundantly clear: in the digital age, conventional wisdom about business transformation no longer works, if it ever did. Based on Accenture's own experience of reinventing itself in the face of disruption, the company's real world client work, and a rigorous two-year study of thousands of businesses across 30 industries, Pivot to the Future reveals methodical and bold moves for finding and releasing new sources of trapped value-unlocked by bridging the gap between what is technologically possible and how technologies are being used. The freed value enables companies to simultaneously reinvent their legacy, and current and new businesses. Pivot to the Future is for leaders who seek to turn the existential threats of today and tomorrow into sustainable growth, with the courage to understand that a wise pivot strategy is not a one-time event, but a commitment to a future of perpetual reinvention, where one pivot is followed by the next and the next.