Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment - find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company's Chris Zook and James Allen (authors of the best-selling Profit from the Core) researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external.

If you listen to nothing else on becoming a new manager, listen to these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you transition from being an outstanding individual contributor to a great manager of others.

From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of human memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.

From his perspective in Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli's aim in this classic work was to resolve conflict with the ruling prince, Lorenzo de Medici. Machiavelli based his insights on the way people really are rather than an ideal of how they should be. This is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince, a king, or a president.

In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle, New York Times best-selling author of The Talent Code, goes inside some of the most effective organisations in the world and reveals their secrets. He not only explains what makes such groups tick but also identifies the key factors that can generate team cohesion in any walk of life. He examines the verbal and physical cues that bring people together. He determines specific strategies that encourage collaboration and build trust. 

You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is you're busy executing on today's demands. You know you have to carve out time from your day job to build your leadership skills, but it's easy to let immediate problems and old mind-sets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra - an expert on professional leadership and development and a renowned professor at INSEAD, a leading international business school - shows how managers and executives at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves.

One of the secrets to maintaining a thriving business is being able to recognize when it needs a fundamental change.

In The Talent Code, award-winning journalist Daniel Coyle draws on cutting-edge research to reveal that, far from being some abstract mystical power fixed at birth, ability really can be created and nurtured. In the process, he considers talent at work in venues as diverse as a music school in Dallas and a tennis academy near Moscow to demonstrate how the wiring of our brains can be transformed by the way we approach particular tasks.

Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out. In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together.  

Tim Ferriss, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, shares the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book - a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world's top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life's most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life.

In the aftermath of the Enron and WorldCom debacles, corporate boards have been shaken up and made over. Most of the changes are structural and don't go to the heart of a board's work: making the choices that shape a firm's future. Which decisions boards own and how those calls are made are largely hidden from the public. As a result, boards are often unable to learn from their counterparts at other companies. In this article, Michael Useem pulls back the curtain and provides an inside look.

Even for the most gifted individuals, the process of becoming a leader is an arduous, albeit rewarding, journey of continuous learning and self-development. The initial test along the path is so fundamental that we often overlook it: becoming a boss for the first time. That's a shame, because the trials involved in this rite of passage have serious consequences for both the individual and the organization. For a decade and a half, the author has studied people making major career transitions to management.

When some managers take over a new job, they hit the ground running. They learn the ropes, get along with their bosses and subordinates, gain credibility, and ultimately master the situation. Others, however, don't do so well. What accounts for the difference? In this article, first published in 1985, Harvard Business School professor John J. Gabarro relates the findings of two sets of field studies he conducted, covering 14 management successions.

 This Audiobook contains the following works: "The Art of Money Getting: Golden Rules for Making Money" [P.T. Barnum] Starts at Chapter 19, "As a Man Thinketh" [James Allen] Starts at Chapter 40, "The Science of Getting Rich" [Wallace D. Wattles] Starts at Chapter 49, "Morning and Evening Thoughts" [James Allen] Starts at Chapter 67, "The prophet" [Khalil Gibran] Starts at Chapter 131, "Dollars Want Me: The New Road To Opulence" [Henry Harrison Brown] Starts at Chapter 159, "The Art Of War" [Sun Tzu] Starts at Chapter 166. 

Here go a series of strategies that you can use to ensure a less stressful and more rewarding career. Life has so much to offer once you realize that sometimes a single piece of information that you bump into by accident can impact everything around you and those dear to you! The strategies mentioned and explained in detail in this audiobook are not theory, I have lived them almost every day of my working life, and continue living them still.