Quotes from Harvard Business School Press

ADT isn't an illness or character defect. It's our brains' natural response to exploding demands on our time and attention. As data increasingly floods our brains, we lose our ability to solve problems and handle the unknown. Creativity shrivels; mistakes multiply. Some sufferers eventually melt down.

In negotiations, persuasion is paramount. So the way you package your message is as important as the message itself.

Negative emotions—especially fear—can hamper productive brain functioning. To promote positive feelings, especially during highly stressful times, interact directly with someone you like at least every four to six hours. In environments where people are in physical contact with people they trust, brain functioning hums.

Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points. Everywhere, people rely on their cell phones, e-mail, and digital assistants in the race to gather and transmit data, plans, and ideas faster and faster. One could argue that the chief value of the modern era is speed, which the novelist Milan Kundera described as "the form of ecstasy that technology has bestowed upon modern man.

You get results by exploiting opportunities, not solving problems.

Chevron, for example, has a decision-analysis group whose members facilitate decision-framing workshops; coordinate data gathering for analysis; build and refine economic and analytical models; help project managers and decision makers interpret analyses; point out when additional information and analysis would improve a decision; conduct an assessment of decision quality; and coach decision makers.

There are five degrees of initiative that the manager can exercise in relation to the boss and to the system: wait until told (lowest initiative); ask what to do; recommend, then take resulting action; act, but advise at once; and act on own, then routinely report (highest initiative).

They determine that effective marketing calls for people skilled in segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Once companies hire marketers with those skills, Marketing becomes an independent player. It also starts to compete with Sales for funding.

Deal with the brutal facts of your current reality—while maintaining absolute faith that you'll prevail.

Fostering connections and reducing fear promote brainpower.

The best way for a firm to be lucky is to make its own luck.

The seller takes cues from the buyer in such a way that the product becomes a consequence of the marketing effort, not vice versa.

When you look across the good-to-great transformations, they consistently display three forms of discipline: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. When you have disciplined people, you don't need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don't need excessive controls.

Transformations often begin, and begin well, when an organization has a new head who is a good leader and who sees the need for a major change.

The use of "war games" is a powerful antidote to the lack of thinking about competitors' reactions to proposed moves. 11.

The history of every dead and dying "growth" industry shows a self-deceiving cycle of bountiful expansion and undetected decay.

Directors and management need to spearhead the strategy shift from transactions to relationships and create the culture, structure, and incentives necessary to execute the strategy. What

New ventures are undertaken with a high ratio of assumption to knowledge.

Every week, take a quiet hour to reflect on recent critical events—conflicts, failures, opportunities you exploited, observations of others' behavior, feedback from others. Consider how you responded, what went well, what didn't, and what might be more effective in the future. Never cancel this meeting—it's crucial.

The most valuable form of communication is face-to-face. The next most valuable is by phone or videoconference, but with a caveat: Those technologies become less effective as more people participate in the call or conference. The least valuable forms of communication are e-mail and texting.

The most dramatic change will be the marketing department's reinvention as a "customer department." The first order of business is to replace the traditional CMO with a new type of leader—a chief customer officer. The

If thinking is an intellectual response to a problem, then the absence of a problem leads to the absence of thinking.

Which of our product or service varieties are the most distinctive? • Which of our product or service varieties are the most profitable? • Which of our customers are the most satisfied? • Which customers, channels, or purchase occasions are the most profitable? • Which of the activities in our value chain are the most different and effective?

Ultimately, the CCO is accountable for increasing the profitability of the firm's customers, as measured by metrics such as customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer equity as well as by intermediate indicators, such as word of mouth (or mouse). Customer