Resources & Books

Adura Strategy resources and books

Prove It!: How to create a High-Performance Culture and Measureable Success

Prove It! is the executive guide to improving organisational performance through the practice of evidence-based leadership. More than ever before, the world is demanding transparency and accountability from organisational leaders, and there is a growing push to hold leaders responsible for the performance of their organisation. Many executives panic at the thought of what transparency might reveal and how they might be held accountable, but others relish the opportunity to showcase their organisation’s performance. The difference is in the leadership methodology. The best leaders already know how their organisation is performing, and that it has improved during their tenure.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. Distilling vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives that take us from the boardrooms of Procter & Gamble to sidelines of the NFL to the front lines of the civil rights movement, Duhigg presents a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. As Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos

We live in the Information Age, and much of that information comes to us in the form of numbers. Before numerical information can be useful, however, it must be analyzed, interpreted, and assimilated. Unfortunately, teaching the techniques for making sense of data has been neglected at all levels of our educational system. As a result, throughout our culture there is little appreciation of how to use effectively the volumes of data generated by business, government, and the media. Thousands of readers have found this book to be the remedy. Readers report that this book has changed both the way they look at data and the very form of their monthly reports. It has turned arguments about the numbers into a common understanding of what needs to be done about them.

Signal: Understanding What Matters in a World of Noise

In this age of so-called Big Data, organizations are scrambling to implement new software and hardware to increase the amount of data they collect and store. However, in doing so they are unwittingly making it harder to find the needles of useful information in the rapidly growing mounds of hay. If you don’t know how to differentiate signals from noise, adding more noise only makes things worse. When we rely on data for making decisions, how do we tell what qualifies as a signal and what is merely noise? In and of itself, data is neither. Assuming that data is accurate, it is merely a collection of facts. When a fact is true and useful, only then is it a signal. When it’s not, it’s noise. It’s that simple.

The Basics of Process Mapping: 2nd Edition

The bestselling first edition of this influential resource has been incorporated into the curriculum at forward thinking colleges and universities, a leading vocational technical institute, many in-house corporate continuous improvement approaches, and the United Nations’ headquarters. Providing a complete and accessible introduction to process maps, The Basics of Process Mapping, Second Edition raises the bar on what constitutes the basics. Thoroughly revised and updated to keep pace with recent developments, it explains how relationship maps, cross-functional process maps (swimlane diagrams), and flowcharts can be used as a set to provide different views of work.