Verto Partners is a highly regarded group of corporate performance intellectuals having contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Harvard Business Review and other leading publications; lectured at top universities such as Columbia Business School, UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, London Business School, Wharton Business School; and conducted in-house programs for Fortune 500 clients such as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Fidelity Investments, L’Oreal, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Citibank, Colgate-Palmolive.
The Verto team includes pioneering authors of the following leading books on corporate performance, profitability and turnaround, board communication, private equity, competitive strategy, growth and innovation.
Don Bibeault
“Corporate Turnaround: How Managers Turn Losers Into Winners!”
A comprehensive guide on how to turn a financially distressed company into a strong viable one.
Based on the experience of 97 corporate leaders who successfully managed turnarounds in more than 200 failing corporations, the book analyzes the reasons for corporate decline, expounds on the key factors in turnaround success, and provides management strategies and practices for regaining growth and profits.
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Richard Lindenmuth
“The Outside the Box Executive”
Do you dream of climbing the corporate ladder and being an executive? Are you currently an executive that wants to improve your management and leadership skills? Do you want to work your way to the top and make a difference in the success of your company? If you answered YES, then this book is for you. While this book focuses on how to become and succeed as an Interim Executive, it has vast knowledge for anyone who is interested in becoming a great all-around executive. It is an all in one guide and Richard does a great job of sharing his own experiences and stories, so that it is both educational and entertaining.
John Whitney
“Taking Charge: Management Guide to Troubled Companies and Turnarounds”
A Management Survival Guide From a Turnaround Pro.
Strained financial resources, demoralized executives, fearful employees, unhappy customers, tense bankers, angry investors, and competitors waiting to pounce—these are the classic challenges of turnarounds and troubled companies. Taking Charge is a management survival guide that explores the dynamics of troubled companies from the perspective of a turnaround pro, providing a step-by-step plan for success that is punctuated with real-world examples.
“The Economics of Trust: Liberating Profits and Restoring Corporate Vitality”
What are the root causes of bureaucratic creep? Why do costs grow faster than revenues? Why does it take so long to introduce and lock in even a simple change? Why don’t people in product design, marketing, sales, and manufacturing talk – much less listen – to each other? Why does the budget process exhaust managers, strangle innovation, and sub-optimize productivity and profits? In short, what on earth has gone wrong with the way American companies are being run today? The answer, says famed corporate turnaround specialist John O. Whitney, is institutionalized mistrust – the internal blight that’s strangling virtually every aspect of corporate vitality and profitability. In his words, “Mistrust doubles the cost of doing business. An enterprise that is at war with itself will not have the strength or focus to survive and thrive in today’s competitive environment.” Now, in this groundbreaking book that is nothing less than a wake-up call for senior managers everywhere, Whitney explores how and why corporate mistrust evolves … the large and small ways in which it poisons the corporate culture … how it might be eliminated … and the prognosis for the American economy if it is not!
“Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management”
The issues fueling the intricate plots of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old plays are the same common, yet complex issues that business leaders contend with today. And, as John Whitney and Tina Packer so convincingly demonstrate, no one but the Bard himself can penetrate the secrets of leadership with such piercing brilliance. Let him instruct you on the issues that managers face every day:
- Power: Richard II’s fall from power can enlighten us.
- Trust: Draw on the experiences of King Lear and Othello.
- Decision: Hamlet illustrates the dos and don’ts of decision making.
- Action: See why Henry IV was effective and Henry VI was not.
Whitney and Packer do not simply compare Shakespeare’s plays with management techniques, instead they draw on their own wealth of business experience to show us how these essential Shakespearean lessons can be applied to modern-day challenges. Power Plays infuses the world of business with new life—and plenty of drama.
Kaihan Krippendorff
“Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile: Use the 36 Ancient Chinese Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge”
Today’s global economy is a battleground. To survive and thrive, you’ll need every weapon you can get. Microsoft, Sony, and Starbucks use business practices based on the ancient Chinese military text The Thirty-Six Stratagems—now you can, too. Author Kaihan Krippendorff explains how to apply each stratagem to make your business profits soar, such as:
- Stratagem #1-Kill with a Borrowed Knife:Indirect attacks on your adversaries can catch them off guard.
- Stratagem #19-Watch the Fire on the Other Shore:Companies that temper power with patience will be more competitive in the long run.
- Stratagem #33-Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile:Threatened adversaries resist-trusting ones do not. With Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile, you can take on your competitors and win-one battle at a time.
“The Way of Innovation: Master the Five Elements of Change to Reinvent Your Products, Services, and Organization”
Innovation is not an option. It is a fundamental requisite of survival. Throughout history, innovative societies have dominated their less creative rivals, and innovative companies, their competition. Yet we remain ineffective in this critical skill because we have been our modern understanding of change, rooted in just a few hundred years of study, ignores insights gleaned thousands of year prior. The Way of Innovation shows how we can use ancient Hindu and Chinese frameworks for change to become more effective innovators by navigating five phases of change:
- “Metal”—collapse: how to recognize you are stuck
- “Water”—imagination: how to conceive of new “winning” options
- “Wood”—emergence: how and when to persist when you produce no tangible results
- “Fire”—breakout: how to lead your innovation past the tipping point
- “Earth”—consolidation: how shift into a state of sustainability
“The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge”
Contrary to commonly held beliefs, strength and resources play minor roles in a company s ability to beat the competition. Instead, the ability to conceive of unorthodox strategies that the competition will choose not to copy is the key to gaining a competitive edge. In “The Art of the Advantage,” former McKinsey & Co consultant Kaihan Krippendorff captures a decade of study into corporate conflict. He shows that the fundamental patterns that successful companies have used to outmaneuver their rivals are rooted in a set of ancient Chinese warfare metaphors known as “The 36 Stratagems.” “The Art of the Advantage” marries these ancient principles with modern application through graphical depictions, ancient examples, and modern case studies. More than a traditional business book, “The Art of the Advantage” is a manual for systematically outthinking the competition.
“Outthink the Competition: How a New Generation of Strategists Sees Options Others Ignore”
“Outthinkers” are entrepreneurs and corporate leaders with a new playbook. They see opportunities others ignore, challenge dogma others accept as truth, rally resources others cannot influence, and unleash new strategies that disrupt their markets. Outthink the Competition proves that business competition is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift and that during such revolutions, outthinkers beat traditionalists.
Outthink the Competition presents stories of breakthrough companies like Apple, Google, Vistaprint, and Rosetta Stone whose stunning performances defy traditional explanation and will inspire readers to outthink the competition. Core concepts in the book include:
- Discover the Eight Dimensions of Disruption
- Learn to play by the Outthinker Playbook
- Develop the Five Habits of the Outthinker
- Implement the Outthinker Process
It’s time to buck tradition in order to stay ahead. Outthink the competition and uncover opportunities hiding in plain sight.