'A great read and a fascinating insight into performance.' Sir Clive Woodward We all want to discover our hidden talents and make an impact with them. But how? Rasmus Ankersen, an ex-footballer and performance specialist, quit his job and for six intense months lived with the world's best athletes in an attempt to answer this question. Why have the best middle distance runners grown up in the same Ethiopian village? Why are the leading female golfers from South Korea? How did one athletic club in Kingston, Jamaica, succeed in producing so many world-class sprinters? Ankersen presents his surprising conclusions in seven lessons on how anyone - or any business, organisation or team - can defy the many misconceptions of high performance and learn to build their own gold mine of real talent.

Why are 137 of the world’s 500 best female golfers from South Korea? How did one athletic club in Jamaica produce most of the world’s best sprinters? What’s the reason that the world’s best marathon runners grew up in the same village in Ethiopia? What is the secret behind Brazil’s mass production of soccer superstars? How has one tennis club in Moscow managed to develop more top tennis players in 10 years than the whole of the United States? For six months, Rasmus Ankersen travelled around the world visiting these talent gold mines. He talked, trained and lived with the athletes in order to discover what, if anything, they have in common and to attempt to crack the code of developing world-class talent. The result is The Gold Mine Effect, a book that questions all the misconceptions, conventional wisdom and popular theories about talent, hard work, parenting and motivation and looks at how we can apply this knowledge to our own lives.

'High Performance Anthropologist' Rasmus Ankersen brings his first-hand study of success to a mass audience for the first time.

The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.

"The main purpose of this volume is to publish, and thus to publicise, the factual material contained in a series of consultancy reports commissioned by the Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) between 1992 and 1994 (Banks 1993, 1994a, 1994b, 1994c; Bonne1l1994). These reports dealt with the social and economic impact of the Porgera gold mine on the population of the Porgera Valley during the period which had elapsed since the Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) signed a Mining Development Contract with the PJV in April 1989. They were commissioned as part of what became known as the Porgera Social Monitoring Programme, which was itself intended to satisfy some of the conditions which the PNG Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) had attached to its approval of the company's Environmental Plan (NSR 1988) and Environmental Management and Monitoring Programme(PJV 1991). The substance of these reports has been revised and edited to form Chapters 2-7 of the present volume. The last two chapters have been specially commissioned from two other social scientists who have studied the social impact of the mining project, and who were asked to provide their own comments on the design, management and output of the Porgera Social Monitoring Programme."--Introduction.

"Alex Prud'homme's remarkable work of investigative journalism shows how fresh water is the pressing global issue of the twenty-first century"--

This open access book revisits common notions on how to select and recruit the right employees. It reveals that the secret of successful individuals and teams lies in a combination of talent and four important performance indicators, offering an innovative approach that companies can fruitfully adopt. Bas Kodden has studied key performance indicators among over 1,100 executives, senior staff and professionals, including 50 CEOs from leading Dutch companies. His findings put the present recruitment and selection procedures used by many prominent companies in a new light. Moreover, the book not only addresses theory; it also offers a practically applicable model for recruitment, selection and professional development. In closing, the book includes a variety of questionnaires and checklists for HR professionals and executives whose goal is to build sustainable and successful teams and organizations.