'The best book on captaincy, written by an expert' - Mike AthertonMike Brearley is one of the most successful cricket captains of all time, and, in 1981, he captained the England team to the momentous Ashes series victory against Australia. In The Art of Captaincy, his study on leadership and motivation, he draws directly on his experience of man-managing a team, which included a pugnacious Ian Botham and Geoffrey Boycott, to explain what it takes to be a leader on and off the field. Giving an insight into both his tactical understanding of the game, as well as how to get a group of individuals playing as a team in order to get the best out of them, The Art of Captaincy is a classic handbook on how to generate, nurture and inspire success. With a foreword by former England player and BBC commentator Ed Smith, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of its first publication, and an afterword by director Sam Mendes, The Art of Captaincy remains urgently relevant for cricket fans and business leaders alike. Covering the ability to use intuition, resourcefulness, clear-headedness and the importance of empathy as a means of achieving shared goals, Brearley's seminal account of captaincy is both the ultimate blueprint for creating a winning mind set, but also shows how the lessons in the sporting arena can be applied to any walk of personal and professional life.

The Art of Captaincy - What Sport Teaches Us About Leadership

Winning takes many forms. For fans of Matthew Syed, this is a great sports book about leadership, judgement and decision-making - rooted in the theory that helped Ed Smith lead England cricket to sustained success. And to help us all win more.

 'An absolutely fascinating book' THE GAME, The Times football pod

 How do you spot the opportunities that others miss?

 How do you turn a team's performance around?

 How do you make good decisions amid a tidal wave of information? And how can you improve?

 As chief selector for the England cricket team, Ed Smith pioneered new methods for building successful teams and watched his decisions tested in real time on the pitch. During his three-year tenure, England averaged 7 wins in every 10 completed matches, better than they have performed before or since.

 Making Decisions reveals Smith's unique approach to finding success in a fast-changing and increasingly data-reliant world. The best decisions, Smith argues, rely on a combination of differing kinds of intelligence: from algorithms to intuition. This is a truth that the most successful people know: data cannot account for everything, it must be harnessed with human insight. Whatever the power of data, humans aren't finished yet.

 Sharing for the first time the tools he introduced as England selector, Smith's book captures the immediacy of life at the sharp end, while also exploring frameworks from the top levels of sports, business and the arts. Decision-making is revealed as a creative enterprise, not a reductive system.

 Making Decisions offers an invaluable guide for those who want a better framework for developing, explaining and implementing new ideas.

Livres