Showing results by author "Kent Hill" in All Categories

“When are we supposed to do all that?” That’s the question we constantly get from new managers, only weeks or months into their new positions, when we describe the three key activities they should be focusing on to be successful as leaders: building trust, building a team, and building a broader network.

You never dreamed being the boss would be so hard. You're caught in a web of conflicting expectations from subordinates, your supervisor, peers, and customers. You're not alone. Packed with compelling stories and practical guidance, Being the Boss is an indispensable guide for not only first-time managers but all managers seeking to master the most daunting challenges of leadership.

You might think the key to innovation is attracting exceptional creative talent. Or making the right investments. Or breaking down organizational silos. All of these things may help - but there's only one way to ensure sustained innovation: You need to lead it - and with a special kind of leadership. Collective Genius shows you how.

You never dreamed being the boss would be so hard. You're caught in a web of conflicting expectations from your subordinates, from those above you, and from your peers and customers. You're not alone. As Harvard Business School's Linda Hill and manager and executive Kent Lineback reveal in Being the Boss, becoming an effective manager is a painful, difficult journey. It requires trial and error, endless effort, and slowly acquired personal insight. Many managers never complete the journey and instead just learn how to get by. At worst, they become terrible bosses.

The key questions you must be able to answer if you want to keep growing as a leader.

Linda A. Hill, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Greg Brandeau, head of technology at Pixar, Emily Truelove, a researcher and a PhD candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Kent Lineback, a manager and executive with over 25 years of experience, write about how smart leaders of innovation don’t set a vision and motivate others to follow it; they create a community that is both willing and able to innovate.

In search of the ferocious truth, some would call trying to channel the spirit of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson a fool’s errand. But these are desperate times. So settle in for this trilogy of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers from John Bruni (Tales of Questionable Taste), Kent Hill (Hercules with a Shotgun) and Kevin Candela (Weedeaters: The Complete Acropalypse) as they bring you just what the doctor ordered.

YOU'RE THE BOSS.... NOW WHAT! GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR EMPLOYEES WITH THESE 3 INDISPENSIBLE GUIDES. One of the biggest challenges for new managers is how to get the best out of each of their team members so they achieve superior results - and make you, the new manager, look good!

Imagine being liquid enough to fool around with the building blocks of life just to create a park full of zombies to cash in on the general public's infatuation with the undead. Now imagine, as it often does, something going wrong with that concept and zombies ruining the world for everybody. Next, imagine dinosaurs returning to prominence in a Planet of the Apes-type scenario and evolving so they fill all the roles we humans did before the fall of the species. So our story begins. A group of dino-commandos are sent in to uncover the fate of their missing colleagues....

Enter a world that is the ultimate valentine to those cheap and cheesy sci-fi/fantasy flicks from the 80s - a world with hot chicks, blind cyclopean wizards with bad attitudes, swamp zombies, purple cannibalistic aliens, talking gambling mutants that will cook you breakfast, hover-bikes, a gigantic ghost warrior, a ninja, a recently divorced and suicidal sorcerer, dragons, a cyborg demon and borrowed movie dialogue. 

Porn. It’s a part of our society. But in the future, it has all but eclipsed every known form of currency. The creatures that control it are as terrifying in form as they are lustful for sexual gratification. And one of them has just crash-landed in the Wild West. Gold will glisten, blood will flow, many shall be massacred until a few brave souls call down the thunder. A thunder named Badlands Meredith. Part man, part machine, all bad ass. Ready your senses for the most shocking, the most offensive, the most incredible showdown in this alternate universe.

Every cheap little barbarian movie deserves a sequel. But abiding by the laws of straight-to-video sword and sorcery, the sequel doesn’t always continue the story. They’re crazier, funny, and often far removed from the mythology laid down by the film which preceded them. So, in keeping with this formula comes Sword Dude 2. The continuing adventures of the hero also known as the Dude of Swords. He’s back, by popular demand, fighting, killing, playing it cool, and saving the girl in this phantasmagoric romp into realms fantastic. 

Kent Hill presents a double whammy, a double feature, one part heart and one part laughs. Necropolis Tryst begins your listening experience with a tale close to life, full of laughs, love, and tragedy. His over-the-top style comes back to earth in this coming of age that shows Hill is not only a madman, cracking jokes at whirlwind speed, but he is fully human, a romantic and poet. And once you are nice and wet, dip into the genre-splicing parody fest "Zombie Park". A wild and bizarre ride through a kaleidoscope of movies that include Predator, Aliens, and of course, Jurassic Park. Why get one? Rejoice dear listener, in thy double feature. 

Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, Frankenstein. You've lived with the stories your whole life. You've read the tales. You've watched the films. But what if the stories were different? What if the things you read about these monsters were warped and twisted? Here lie stories you may not have heard. Stories both weird and shocking. Bizarre and grotesque. Alternate versions of your favorite classic monsters you've never read and never will again. Featuring 13 stories by Jonathan Moon, The Sisters of Slaughter, Tom Lucas and more! 

When monsters rule the earth...Herein you’ll find a series of sojourns to places where humans are often quite literally overshadowed by the action at hand. This collection of exciting tales from writers who love the giant monster genre runs the gamut from mutation to invasion - from insurrection to vengeance - from the distant past to a far-off future, all with a single common factor: Great big game-changing things.

Forced to return to her ancestral home in Captain’s Point, a small town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Adrianna Montgomery receives a shock and a challenge when the terms of her great-aunt’s will are read. Faced with a haughty attorney, a crumbling old house and a clue, she must draw upon the resources found in those around her, as well as her own inner strengths, in order to solve the riddle and secure her inheritance. Accepting the challenge, she ultimately learns who she is destined to be, discovering her true love along the way.  

When a writer, down on his luck, takes an assignment as a reporter for a small-town newspaper he figures life couldn't get much worse or mundane, being that the town in which he is to reside is on one of those fabled roads that are seldom crossed...even by folks that are lost. But the town of Gabyvale is about to get interesting. Interesting enough to write home about.  

Things that bite are pretty common in the land down under. A predator could be lurking behind every tree, inside every shadow. It is, however, a horrible new menace that threatens the serenity of the vast, sunburnt country: washed inland on a wave of toxic waste, mixed with great white sharks and sleazy topless waitresses. The outback is dry and boring at the best of times...but now, it really bites!  

Here is where the saga ends and the legend begins...You may not remember the glorious age of VHS, but that is not a prerequisite. As has been the custom in compiling these anthologies, the crème de la crème of authors and filmmakers who both lived and thrived during the period in question, like the Avengers assembled to bring you this - the last dance.

The dilapidated shanty stood at the end of a trail birthed from the undergrowth by the feet of travelers numerous. Buck Lightningfast and his girl Sugarplum were two of the many. The lady was draped over Lightningfast's shoulders, screaming and kicking in nothing but his Superman t-shirt and her panties and she was toting a carry bag in which she carried little but her toothbrush and other toiletries.