Top Corporate Picks

Most people don't realise they're negotiating until it's too late - until they've already lost ground, damaged relationships, or walked away empty-handed. But what if you could transform every interaction into an opportunity to get what you want while making others feel valued? Fight Less, Win More offers an armoury of negotiation techniques and approaches that are both superbly practical and brilliantly effective. All have been exhaustively tried and tested in situations that range from high-stakes hostage crises to everyday business conversations. All are underpinned by the groundbreaking notion of Tactical Empathy: a means of understanding the motivations and preoccupations of others so that you can engage with them more effectively. Whether you’re negotiating a deal, seeking to defuse tension at work, or even trying to persuade a recalcitrant teenager, Fight Less, Win More will help you resolve conflicts faster, build stronger relationships – and achieve outcomes you never thought possible.

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In the next twenty-five years, Africa’s population is predicted to double in size to 2.5 billion, so that by 2050 one in four people on earth will be African. How can Africa accommodate and benefit from this huge demographic shift? In The Invisible People, former MTN CEO Phuthuma Nhleko calls for a new African renaissance based on three pillars. The first involves building a confident common identity, rooted in Africa’s long and rich history, and celebrating its fundamental contributions to modern civilisation, religion and culture. The second is unleashing the kind of economic development that has so far eluded Africa, by leveraging its significant assets and resources, abandoning outdated and inadequate economic models, and carving a new path grounded in a Pan-African vision and based on technological and economic leapfrogging. The third pillar involves bolstering Africa’s geopolitical influence, by redefining its relationship with the US and China, and embracing a strategic path in its own interests, to take its rightful place in world affairs as home to a quarter of humanity. An insightful and inspiring journey through history, economics and geopolitics, The Invisible People will change the way that people view the future of Africa and the world.

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Leading with Wisdom is a vital guide for leaders, creators and seekers asking the defining question of our time: What does it mean to be human? In an era drowning in information yet starved of wisdom, this book argues that the most powerful technology we possess is not artificial, but human. Leadership coach and entrepreneur Rishad Ahmed exposes the roots of the modern crisis; a ‘meta-crisis’ born from mechanistic thinking, overreliance on left-brain logic, and outdated leadership models built for speed, control and short-term gain. The result is burnout, disconnection and a planet on the brink of collapse. Ahmed presents a different path: not smarter machines, but wiser humans. Leading with Wisdom provides a roadmap to reclaim the intelligence of the body, heart and soul – what he calls the forgotten yet most powerful human technology. This book blends philosophy, business and inner development to offer practical guidance for leaders seeking alignment, clarity and regenerative impact.

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Start with Yourself is a game-changing, no-BS guide for anyone seeking meaningful success on their own terms. It’s an essential framework that will give you the tools and mindset to unlock your full potential in life and business—straight from a woman who defied all the odds to become a serial entrepreneur, cofounder of culture-defining global businesses, a non-profit champion and host of the Aspire with Emma Grede podcast. All while raising a family of four children. Based on the factors of her early life—she’s the child of a working-class single mother who grew up in a rough neighborhood in East London and dropped out of high school—you’d never guess that Emma Grede would go on to become one of America’s richest self-made women. This makes Grede singular and unique, but she’s convinced you can do it too: Start with Yourself is a blueprint to her mindset and how she thinks about business and life, structured in easy takeaways, so you can immediately apply her philosophy to what you’re trying to build and create. Among her most blazing insights, Grede identifies what she calls “Old Thoughts”: stale thinking, outdated ideas; set-in-stone rules ingrained into the culture about work life balance, the crassness of money and the unseemliness of ambition—which aren’t actually rules at all. They’re biases, Grede insists, system errors, and we must strike them from our minds in order to create a greater sense of control, even mastery, over our day-to-day and long-range goals. Ultimately, this is a book for everyone tired of feeling like a bystander or passenger in their own life. Grede offers tangible and applicable-right-now solutions to create a mindset, an overall system of thought to manage emotions, clarify ideas, and illuminate the right next step—while always staying positive. It’s about gathering yourself after failure. It’s about being accountable but also forgiving yourself. It’s about not expecting shortcuts while never being bashful about grabbing them when they appear. It’s about pushing hard for wins and never apologizing for your dreams. Above all, Grede offers a new vision for work and life that encourages readers everywhere to take responsibility for their own thinking to achieve personal and professional success at the highest levels.

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Look around you – is anything real or normal anymore? News, images and videos created by AI are everywhere. The world we live in is changing daily, and it’s no exaggeration to say that everything you thought you knew is undergoing apocalyptic levels of change. Our new normal includes AI CEOs, AI partners, AI versions of our dead relatives to keep us company, and customers deploying their own adversarial agent ‘armies’ to hostile-negotiate on their behalf. Meanwhile, the expensive skills you have accumulated, the jobs you’ve fought for, the relationships you’ve invested in, the organisations you’ve worked for and the economies we depend on for survival are shrinking even as our choices expand. Discernment and understanding of context are now critical to your survival. So, let’s stare the future down and, instead of fearing AI, become solutionists. In order to survive in this hyper-competitive, globalised and automated world, where the strongest and smartest winners are set to take all, we need to change our mindsets and our skill sets to become fit for the ‘post-AI, apocalyptic’ world that is here to stay. This means embracing progress and turning AI and technology into an asset with which we can co-exist, while continuing to create new possibilities far into the future. This book is a call to action to live on the flipside of fear.

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The third book from the bestselling author of The Psychology of Money and Same as Ever, with lessons on harnessing the power of money to live a happier life. Can money buy happiness? Yes. Can spending it make you happier? Absolutely. Yet, many of us struggle to unlock its full potential – either by spending on things that don't bring as much joy as they should, or by avoiding investments that would truly enhance our mental well-being. In The Art of Spending Money, award-winning and global bestselling author Morgan Housel offers a refreshingly practical approach to managing wealth while finding deeper meaning and contentment. Instead of cookie-cutter financial advice, Housel provides you with psychological tools to navigate your personal relationship with money and optimise for happiness. Discover why people often mistake envy for admiration, how to align your expectations with your income, and ways to invest in future happiness while avoiding regret. Learn about the dangers of social debt and embrace the radical idea that the fastest way to build wealth is by going slow. The Art of Spending Money delves into the complexities that surround money – envy, social aspirations, identity, and insecurity – crucial aspects often missed in traditional financial books. Armed with new insights into money and wealth, you’ll learn to sidestep common spending traps, make smarter investing choices, and wield money to its fullest potential to enhance your enjoyment of life.

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As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker’s fascination is how we think about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or “out there,” is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.   Common knowledge, Pinker shows, can make sense of many of life’s enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretence of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge—to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.   In exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour,  When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows…  invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other’s heads, and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.

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Unlock a new dimension in leadership by asking better questions. Answers are overrated. In an unpredictable world, asking the right questions is significantly more powerful than clinging to stale, dated answers. What you knew yesterday won’t always take you where you need to go. Great leaders stand apart because they know how to ask themselves and their teams questions that spark insight, challenge assumptions, and drive action. 52 Big Questions for Business Leaders isn’t just a collection of prompts and provocations – it’s a guide to sharper, more intentional thinking. Whether you’re leading a start-up or aglobal enterprise, the questions in these pages will help you pause, reflect, and lead with clarity. Drawing on decades of leadership experience, Mike Stopforth infuses wisdom, wit, and practical insight into the art of inquiry – because crafting big, beautiful questions is a skill worth mastering. This isn’t a book to read once and shelve; it’s a tool to return to whenever you need fresh perspective, focus, or inspiration. In the end, great leaders aren’t defined by the answers they give – but by the questions they dare to ask.

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How the three independent asset managers Coronation, Allan Gray and Investec (later Ninety One) , dubbed the CIA, came to dominate and continue to dominate the South African asset management industry, particularly the pension fund market.There are plenty of colourful big ego personalities such as Hendrik du Toit at Ninety-One, Leon Campher at Coronation and the late Allan Gray plus kingmakers reshaping the industry such as Patrice Motsepe.

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Straight from the heart of South Africa’s townships and rural areas, Rising from the Township is an essential read for anyone seeking inspiration and practical strategies to build a thriving business. This first volume in an ongoing series offers a deep dive into the journeys of South Africa’s most inspiring leaders, showing how they turned challenges into opportunities, accessed new markets, secured funding, and built powerful partnerships. Meet 10 trailblazers reshaping their industries, including: Themba Makamo, founder of Vaya Footwear Sheldon Tatchell, founder of Legends Barbershop Ntuthuko Shezi, founder of Livestock Wealth Nozipho Tshabalala, founder of The Conversation Strategists Candice Thurston, founder of Candi & Co. Each story is a powerful testament to resilience, creativity, and the unstoppable spirit that thrives in South Africa’s townships and rural areas. Be part of the movement and get your copy today!

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is upending life, work, and play as we know it … and it’s only just getting started. The rise of AI is a milestone on par with the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, and the creation of the internet. In short, AI is going to change everything. For some, that’s an exciting prospect. For others, it’s terrifying. However you feel about AI, there’s no escaping it, whether you’re in a global metropolis or a farmer in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Dr Mark Nasila has been watching AI’s ascent for over a decade, studying its effects on everything from agriculture and aviation to healthcare, education, entertainment, crime prevention, energy management, policy creation, finance, and anything in between, and applying them to his role at one of South Africa’s most successful financial institutions, First National Bank, a division of FirstRand Group. African Artificial Intelligence is a comprehensive and fascinating journey, tracing the rise of AI and its evolution into the emerging technology underpinning all others – from connected devices and smart chatbots to the metaverse. Mark combines unexpected use cases and tales of cutting-edge innovation with a unique and potent argument: harnessing AI to solve Africa’s problems requires embracing it from an African perspective. African nations can’t afford to simply import AI solutions from afar. Instead, Mark contends, they need to rework, remix, and refine AI so it’s able to meet uniquely African challenges in uniquely African ways, and to take advantage of the once-in-a-generation opportunity AI represents for every industry, sector, and person, everywhere.

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