Whitney Johnson

A fast and practical visual storytelling method that puts a powerful new toolkit into the hands of leaders, innovators, salespeople, teachers and anyone else who needs to quickly make an impact on increasingly distracted audiences. The Pop-Up Pitch is a radical new approach to help you create the perfect presentation, combining three key elements of persuasive storytelling-simple pictures, clear words, and powerful emotions-that together motivate audiences to pay attention, learn something new, and make effective decisions. The Pop-Up Pitch weaves together the latest insights on visual cognition, behavioral economics, and classic story structures in an easy-to-learn and inspiring storytelling algorithm. In this new era of remote, work and online presenting, it delivers powerful and persuasive outcomes for time-limited professionals dealing with complex ideas, attention-deficit audiences, and the evolving challenges of modern meetings.

A groundbreaking book that boldly claims the key to success is not talent, connections, or ideas, but the ability to persuade people to take a chance on your potential. "The most exceptional people aren't just brilliant...they're backable." —Daniel Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive  and To Sell is Human No one makes it alone. But there’s a reason some people can get investors or bosses to believe in them while others cannot. And that reason has little to do with experience, pedigree, or a polished business plan. Backable people seem to have a hidden quality that inspires others to take action. We often chalk this up to natural talent or charisma...either you have “it” or you don’t. After getting rejected by every investor he pitched, Suneel Gupta had a burning question: Could “it” be learned? Drawing lessons from hundreds of the world’s biggest thinkers, Gupta discovered how to pitch new ideas in a way that has raised millions of dollars, influenced large-scale change inside massive corporations, and even convinced his eight-year-old daughter to clean her room. Inside Backable are long-held secrets from producers of Oscar-winning films, members of Congress, military leaders, culinary stars, venture capitalists, founders of unicorn-status startups, and executives at iconic companies like Lego, Method, and Pixar. Backable reveals how the key to success is not charisma, connections, or even your résumé, but rather your ability to persuade others to take a chance on you. This original book will show you how.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

In the spirit of Nickel and Dimed, a necessary and revelatory expose of the invisible human workforce that powers the web—and that foreshadows the true future of work. Hidden beneath the surface of the web, lost in our wrong-headed debates about AI, a new menace is looming. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing "ghost work" make the internet seem smart. They perform high-tech piecework: flagging X-rated content, proofreading, designing engine parts, and much more. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this “ghost economy,” and that number is growing. They usually earn less than legal minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or none. There are no labor laws to govern this kind of work, and these latter-day assembly lines draw in—and all too often overwork and underpay—a surprisingly diverse range of workers: harried young mothers, professionals forced into early retirement, recent grads who can’t get a toehold on the traditional employment ladder, and minorities shut out of the jobs they want. Gray and Suri also show how ghost workers, employers, and society at large can ensure that this new kind of work creates opportunity—rather than misery—for those who do it.

An inspiring yet practical guide for transforming limitations into opportunitiesA Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages And Why It's Everyone's Business Now is a book about everyday, practical inventiveness, designed for the constrained times in which we live. It describes how to take the kinds of issues that all of us face today―lack of time, money, resources, attention, know-how―and see in them the opportunity for transformation of oneself and one's organization's fortunes. The ideas in the book are based on the authors' extensive work as business consultants, and are brought to life in 35 personal interviews from such varied sources as Nike, IKEA, Unilever, the U.S. Navy, Formula One racecar engineers, public school teachers in California, and barley farmers in South Africa. Underpinned by scientific research into the psychology of breakthrough, the book is a practical handbook full of tools and tips for how to make more from less. Beautifully designed and accessible, A Beautiful Constraint will appeal beyond its core business audience to anyone who needs to find the opportunity in constraint. The book takes the reader on a journey through the mindset, method and motivation required to move from the initial "victim" stage into the transformation stage. It challenges us to: Examine how we've become path dependent―stuck with routines that blind us from seeing opportunity along new pathsAsk Propelling Questions to help us break free of those paths and put the most pressing and valuable constraints at the heart of our processAdopt a Can If mentality to answer these questions―focused on "how," not "if"Access the abundance to be found all around us to help transform constraintsActivate the high-octane mix of emotions necessary to fuel the tenacity required for successWe live in a world of seemingly ever-increasing constraints, driven as much by an overabundance of choices and connections as by a scarcity of time and resources. How we respond to these constraints is one of the most important issues of our time and will be a large determinant of our progress as people, businesses and planet, in the future. A Beautiful Constraint calls for a more widespread capability for constraint-driven problem solving and provides the framework to achieve that.

The one primer you need to launch, lead, and sponsor successful projects. We're now living in the project economy. The number of projects initiated in all sectors has skyrocketed, and project management skills have become essential for every leader and manager. Still, project failure rates remain extremely high. Why? Leaders oversee too many projects and have too little visibility into them. Project managers struggle to translate their hands-on, technical knowledge up to senior management. The result? Worthy projects are starved of time and resources and fail to deliver benefits, while too much investment goes into the wrong projects. To compete in the project economy, you need to close this gap. The HBR Project Management Handbook shows you how. In this comprehensive guide, project management expert Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez presents a new and simple framework that will increase any project's likelihood of success. Packed with case studies from many industries worldwide, it will teach you how to manage your organization's projects, strategic programs, and agile initiatives more effectively and push the best ones ahead to completion. Timeless yet forward-looking, this book will help you win in the project-driven world. In the HBR Project Management Handbook you'll find:Everything you need to know about project management in practical, nontechnical languageA definitive taxonomy of project types, from product launches to digital transformations to megaprojectsA road map for becoming an effective project leader and executive sponsorA new, simple, and universal project framework, the Project Canvas, that breaks down any project into essential building blocks that can be easily understood by all project stakeholdersOriginal concepts and exclusive case studies from public- and private-sector organizations worldwideYou'll learn:A common language for project managers and executives to run successful projects across your organizationWhen to use agile, traditional, or hybrid methods in your projectsThe twelve principles of successful projects, including purpose, agility, and a focus on outcomesTechniques for selecting and advancing the best projects and managing a strategic and balanced project portfolioHow today's projects will help address some of the most pressing global trends, including automation, sustainability, diversity, and crisis managementWhy project management needed to be reinvented and what the future holdsHBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, and real-life stories, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack—whatever your role.

Overcome the twelve habits holding you back and take your career to new heights with this wise and approachable guide from two business leadership experts. Ready to take the next step in your career . . . but not sure what's holding you back? Read on. Leadership expert Sally Helgesen and bestselling leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith have trained thousands of high achievers -- men and women -- to reach even greater heights. Again and again, they see that women face specific and different roadblocks from men as they advance in the workplace. In fact, the very habits that helped women early in their careers can hinder them as they move up. Simply put, what got you here won't get you there . . . and you might not even realize your blind spots until it's too late. Are you great with the details? To rise, you need to do less and delegate more. Are you a team player? To advance, you need to take credit as easily as you share it. Are you a star networker? Leaders know a network is no good unless you know how to use it. Sally and Marshall identify the twelve habits that hold women back as they seek to advance, showing them why what worked for them in the past might actually be sabotaging their future success. Building on Marshall's classic bestseller What Got You Here Won't Get You There, How Women Rise is essential reading for any woman who is ready to advance to the next level.