Are you interested in baking someone into a process at work? Leading a paradigm shift? Or maybe you just feel like drilling down after a nice data dump so you can flesh out a straw dog to help everyone get their ducks in a row and sing from the same song-sheet. Whether you understood any of that or had no idea what you just read, you've probably heard these expressions lobbed around the corporate world with some regularity. What does all of this mean? In meetings on his first job out of college, James Sudakow found himself struggling to pick up a bizarre new language: corporate-speak. He pretended to know what they were saying, but in actuality, he had no idea what expressions like "singing from the same song sheet" or "picking the low hanging fruit" meant or why strange phrases like these were being used to talk about business operations. Had he missed something important in his education that would have prepared him for this? With time, Sudakow adapted to the language; and much to his own embarrassment, he found himself actually using many of these same expressions. For his own sanity, he came up with a plan to combat this corporate-speak language - and it all started with a whiteboard in his office. He listed all of the words and phrases his colleagues, even superiors, were not allowed to use in his office - less they allowed themselves to be subjected to some form of office hazing. "I wondered if we all knew how ridiculous we sounded using these generally weird phrases, instead of just speaking in plain English." Sudakow says."I wanted to call attention to the way we were all communicating and see if we could change it." Ironically, not only did his experiment not deter their use of any of the expressions on his whiteboard, Sudakow found that his colleagues put up with the hazing with seemingly far too much enjoyment and also began to actually, if not enthusiastically, add additional phrases to his whiteboard, taking great pride in their contributions. That whiteboard became the premise for his new book, "Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit... and Other Stupid Stuff We Say in the Corporate World," a humorous corporate glossary that sheds an irreverent light on the weird things we say in the corporate world every day.

A straightforward, valuable guide to reduce effort and raise profits Step inside any organization, even a very successful one, and you’ll probably find a lot of waste if you know where to look. From providing a feature that consumers don’t care about to exhausting efforts on tasks that only require adequate attention, there are countless areas where resources go down the drain. In Low-Hanging Fruit, Jeremy Eden and Terri Long provide seventy-seven of their most effective techniques for improvement, each drawn from their success working with major companies. For more than twenty years, Jeremy Eden and Terri Long have helped companies of all sizes make millions by harvesting their low-hanging fruit. In this practical guide, Eden and Long share valuable, refreshing insights in entertaining chapters that get straight to the point. This book shows you how to smoothly shift your approach, your priorities, and your mindset to reveal the hidden potential in your organization. Whether you are a member of a small team or a global executive, you will learn how to identify and solve hidden problems, improve productivity, and increase profits. Many people don’t realize that there are dozens of quick, easy, and affordable ways to make things better. Don’t buy into the myth that only some people have creative ideas. Typically, the people closest to the work (from the factory floor to the C-Suite) and the people closest to the customer know the best ways to improve business. We can pluck this “low-hanging fruit” every day to save time and money right away. Need to grow your company’s earnings but don’t know where to find the low-hanging fruit? The answer is right in front of you, but harvesting it takes skill. Eden and Long show you seventy-seven clever ways to discover possibilities and make meaningful changes. Low-Hanging Fruit shows you how to easily improve your job satisfaction, your team’s performance, and your company’s earnings.

Low Hanging Fruit-Highly Placed Vegetables describes what's wrong with modern leadership practices and philosophies and what needs to be done to get them right. Written as a critical, edgy but humorous critique and commentary on popular practices, assumptions and programs of modern day management. this book gets existing managers to rethink their approaches, and new managers to know what pitfalls to avoid.

Grabbing the low-hanging fruit is no longer acceptable. ZICO Coconut Water founder Mark Rampolla argues that when you choose to reach higher, you can build an incredible business, be profitable, and maybe even change the world. In 2004, Mark Rampolla was successful by most standards. There was just one problem: He wasn’t inspired in his job and believed he had something more to contribute to the world. When he asked himself, "What do I have to offer that will improve the world?" Rampolla realized that his big idea was hanging right overhead. From his time living in Central America, he and his family came to love drinking coconut water, just like the locals. But no one was really selling coconut water in the United States. So Rampolla chased a very ambitious goal: introducing coconut water to the American beverage market dominated by a few big players. He wasn’t just starting a business; he was creating a whole new industry. ZICO Coconut Water brought a healthy beverage alternative to American consumers while also helping developing-world growers and suppliers profit from this resource. It was a win-win-win—good for Rampolla, his customers, and the world. So good, in fact, that in 2013 the Coca-Cola Company purchased ZICO and is scaling the brand around the globe. Rampolla wrote High-Hanging Fruit for others who want to succeed because of, not in spite of, their values. This book is for people who believe that it’s their duty to reach higher than just the bottom line to build businesses driven by passion, purpose, and integrity. Above all, it’s a call to arms for a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to disrupt the old model and do good by doing business.

Who Moved My Pulpit? may not be the exact question you’re asking. But you’re certainly asking questions about change in the church—where it’s coming from, why it’s happening, and how you’re supposed to hang on and follow God through it—even get out ahead of it so your church is faithfully meeting its timeless calling and serving the new opportunities of this age. Based on conversations with thousands of pastors, combined with on-the-ground research from more than 50,000 churches, best-selling author Thom S. Rainer shares an eight-stage roadmap to leading change in your church. Not by changing doctrine. Not by changing biblical foundations. But by changing methodologies and approaches for reaching a rapidly changing culture. You are the pastor. You are the church staff person. You are an elder. You are a deacon. You are a key lay leader in the church. This is the book that will equip you to celebrate and lead change no matter the cost. The time is now.

A comprehensive, year-round guide to jellies, jams, conserves, preserves, and marmalades, featuring over 100 recipes. If you love to cook, are crazy for fruit, or have even a passing interest in jam or marmalade, Rachel Saunders’s James Beard Award–nominated Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is the book for you. Rachel’s legendary Bay Area jam company, Blue Chair Fruit, earned instant fame for its intensely flavored preserves when it launched in 2008. Rachel’s passion for fruit shines through every part of this lavishly illustrated book, which is the culmination of nearly ten years of research. The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is the essential jam and marmalade book of the twenty-first century, one in which Rachel’s modern yet nostalgic vision of cooking takes center stage. Rachel offers an in-depth exploration of individual fruits, a comprehensive technical section, and nearly 120 original recipes organized around the seasons. In offerings ranging from Plum Jam to Strawberry–Blood Orange Marmalade with Rosemary and Black Fig and Candied Citrus Jam, she vividly captures the joyful essence of fruit and of the preserving process. The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is not only an exciting and vibrant exploration of fruit and of the seasons, but also one of the few books that clearly explains and illustrates preserving techniques. Each recipes includes clear and detailed directions to help ensure success, and Rachel explores a wide range of technical questions as they relate to individual fruits and types of preserves. Whether you make jam or marmalade once a year or every week, and whether you are a home or professional cook, The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is sure to claim a special place in your cookbook library. Praise for The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook “A complete and exquisite guide to making jam and marmalade at home. In addition to sharing 100+ recipes, Saunders walks you step-by-step through the process with in-depth explanations as well as photos of the various steps so you see exactly what each phase looks like.” —Epicurious “Blue Chair could well become the jam maker’s quintessential reference book.” —SFGate.com “Rachel Saunders . . . is quite possibly the high priestess of jam making. [The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook] . . . belongs in the kitchen of anyone interested in keeping their pantry stocked with delicious and unique fruit preserves. And Rachel’s instructions are so thorough and clear, even beginners are assured success.” —The Splendid Table’s “Weeknight Kitchen” newsletter

Are you attracted by the promises of agile methods but put off by the fanaticism of many agile texts? Would you like to know which agile techniques work, which ones do not matter much, and which ones will harm your projects? Then you need Agile!: the first exhaustive, objective review of agile principles, techniques and tools. Agile methods are one of the most important developments in software over the past decades, but also a surprising mix of the best and the worst. Until now every project and developer had to sort out the good ideas from the bad by themselves. This book spares you the pain. It offers both a thorough descriptive presentation of agile techniques and a perceptive analysis of their benefits and limitations. Agile! serves first as a primer on agile development: one chapter each introduces agile principles, roles, managerial practices, technical practices and artifacts. A separate chapter analyzes the four major agile methods: Extreme Programming, Lean Software, Scrum and Crystal. The accompanying critical analysis explains what you should retain and discard from agile ideas. It is based on Meyer’s thorough understanding of software engineering, and his extensive personal experience of programming and project management. He highlights the limitations of agile methods as well as their truly brilliant contributions — even those to which their own authors do not do full justice. Three important chapters precede the core discussion of agile ideas: an overview, serving as a concentrate of the entire book; a dissection of the intellectual devices used by agile authors; and a review of classical software engineering techniques, such as requirements analysis and lifecycle models, which agile methods criticize. The final chapters describe the precautions that a company should take during a transition to agile development and present an overall assessment of agile ideas. This is the first book to discuss agile methods, beyond the brouhaha, in the general context of modern software engineering. It is a key resource for projects that want to combine the best of established results and agile innovations.