Book picks similar to
Managing With Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations by Jeffrey Pfeffer
business
management
leadership
non-fiction
How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers
David M. Rubenstein - 2020
Learn the principles and guiding philosophies of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and many others through illuminating conversations about their remarkable lives and careers. For the past five years, David M. Rubenstein—author of The American Story, visionary cofounder of The Carlyle Group, and host of The David Rubenstein Show—has spoken with the world’s highest performing leaders about who they are and how they became successful. How to Lead distills these revealing conversations into an indispensable leadership guidebook. Gain advice and wisdom from CEOs, presidents, founders, and master performers from the worlds of finance (Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, Christine Lagarde, Ken Griffin), tech (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook), entertainment (Oprah Winfrey, Lorne Michaels, Renee Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma), sports (Jack Nicklaus, Adam Silver, Coach K, Phil Knight), government (President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Pelosi), and many others. -Jeff Bezos harnesses the power of wandering, discovering that his best decisions have been made with heart and intuition, rather than analysis. -Richard Branson never goes into a venture looking to make a profit. He aims to make the best in field. -Phil Knight views Nike as a marketing company whose product is its most important marketing tool. -Marillyn Hewson, who grew up in a fatherless home with four siblings in Kansas, quickly learned the importance of self-reliance and the value of a dollar. How to Lead shares the extraordinary stories of these pioneering agents of change. Discover how each luminary got started and how they handle decision making, failure, innovation, change, and crisis. Learn from their decades of experience as pioneers in their field. No two leaders are the same.
21 Dirty Tricks at Work: How to Win at Office Politics
Mike Phipps - 2005
The type of underhand, pernicious and downright Machiavellian scheming that goes on in business every day. An estimated 7.8bn is lost each year in the UK alone though unnecessary and counter-productive office politicking. But 21 Dirty Tricks at Work is also a book of hope. It exposes the classic manoeuvres and gives practical advice on dealing with them to the vast majority who just want to do a good day's work. 21 Dirty Tricks at Work provides you with all the information you need to spot negative tactics and self-interested strategies. It shows you how to spot the games frequently being played and how to come out with your credibility intact and your sanity preserved.So, if you are fed-up of being on the receiving end of constant backbiting and skulduggery from workmates, join hands with the authors and get Machiavelli on the run!
Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior
Nick Kolenda - 2013
Drawing on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience, the entire book culminates a powerful 7-step persuasion process that follows the acronym, METHODS:
Step 1: Mold Their Perception
Step 2: Elicit Congruent Attitudes
Step 3: Trigger Social Pressure
Step 4: Habituate Your Message
Step 5: Optimize Your Message
Step 6: Drive Their Momentum
Step 7: Sustain Their Compliance
This book teaches you the psychology behind each step, and it explains how you can use METHODS to influence people's thoughts, emotions, and behavior in nearly any situation.
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
Daniel J. Levitin - 2014
Levitin shifts his keen insights from your brain on music to your brain in a sea of details.The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we’re expected to make more—and faster—decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing car keys or reading glasses, missing appointments, and feeling worn out by the effort required just to keep up.But somehow some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow. In The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel—and how readers can use their methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces, and time.With lively, entertaining chapters on everything from the kitchen junk drawer to health care to executive office workflow, Levitin reveals how new research into the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory can be applied to the challenges of our daily lives. This Is Your Brain on Music showed how to better play and appreciate music through an understanding of how the brain works. The Organized Mind shows how to navigate the churning flood of information in the twenty-first century with the same neuroscientific perspective.
The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator
Leigh L. Thompson - 1997
It presents an overview of the insights, strategies, and practices inherent in successful negotiations, and addresses the most common myths and pitfalls that plague negotiators.
Pitch Perfect: How to Say It Right the First Time, Every Time
Bill McGowan - 2014
It’s essential to be pitch perfect—to get the right message across to the right person at the right time. In Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan shows you how to craft the right message and deliver it using the right language—both verbal and nonverbal.Pitch Perfect teaches you how to overcome common communication pitfalls using McGowan’s simple Principles of Persuasion, which are highly effective and easy to learn, implement, and master. With Pitch Perfect you can harness the power of persuasion and have people not only listening closely to your every word but also remembering you long after you’ve left the room.
Workplace Poker: Are You Playing the Game, or Just Getting Played?
Dan Rust - 2016
Most assume that they have an advantage that protects them—degrees from the right schools, great mentors, influential friends and family, or just better luck. But these hyper-successful professionals have faced setbacks, too. Instead of allowing challenges to derail their rise, they’ve learned how to manage them better.In Workplace Poker, Dan Rust gives you the strategies you need to accelerate your career, and prevent setbacks from stalling your progress or spiraling it downward. The trick, he reveals, is to “play the game under the game,” to think more deeply and act more strategically. If you are talented, ambitious, and hardworking, but feel your career just isn’t accelerating as rapidly as it should, or as fast as you would like it to, this book is for you. If you have been frustrated to see others (less talented, who don’t work as hard as you do) achieve rapid professional progress while your career stalls out, this book is for you. If you’ve been annoyed by those who are successful primarily because of where they went to school, or family connections, or financial resources, this book is for you.Rust gives you the insight and skills you need to transform yourself and adapt and survive any hurdle—to turn every adversity into advantage, and every struggle into strength, including:• Recognition of your own “blind spots” and what to do about them• Mastering strategic and authentic self-promotion• Enhancing your personal charm and likeability• Achieving the high energy, both mental and physical, necessary to drive an exceptional career trajectory• Developing an interest in “corporate anthropology” and the complex human dimensions of business• Neutralizing the career-stalling impact of difficult or dysfunctional colleagues• Deeply “owning” and learning from career missteps and failuresIn his smart, funny, relatable voice, Rust shares stories of individuals who have applied these capabilities in real world situations, and provides short, focused exercises to help you think about yourself and your own career. With Workplace Poker¸ you’ll learn how to get out of you own way, and find the success you deserve.
How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication
Larry King - 1994
Here is a way to overcome these communication challenges. HOW TO TALK TO ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE is the key to building confidence and improving communication skills. Written by Larry King, this guide provides simple and practical advice to help make communication easier, more successful, and even more enjoyable. Anecdotes from a life spent talking--on television, radio, and in person,--add to the fun and value of the book. Learn what famous talkers say and how the way they say it makes them so successful.Lessons include: How to overcome shyness and put other people at ease How to choose an appropriate conversation topic for any situation How to ace a job interview, run a meeting, and mingle at a cocktail party What the most successful conversationalists have in common The one great question you can ask to enhance your conversation with anyone, anytime, anywhere
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
Geoffrey A. Moore - 2006
Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.
The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life
Robin S. Sharma - 2010
Now, for the first time, Sharma makes his proprietary process available to you, so that you can get to your absolute best while helping your organization break through to a dramatically new level of winning in these wildly uncertain times. In The Leader Who Had No Title, you will learn: • How to work with and influence people like a superstar, regardless of your position• A method to recognize and then seize opportunities in times of deep change• The real secrets of intense innovation• An instant strategy to build a great team and become a "merchant of wow" with your customers• Hard-hitting tactics to become mentally strong and physically tough enough to lead your field• Real-world ways to defeat stress, build an unbeatable mind-set, unleash energy, and balance your personal lifeRegardless of what you do within your organization and the current circumstances of your life, the single most important fact is that you have the power to show leadership. Wherever you are in your career or life, you should always play to your peak abilities. This book shows you how to claim that staggering power, as well as transform your life—and the world around you—in the process.
Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success
Shane Snow - 2014
They employ what psychologists call "lateral thinking: to rethink convention and break "rules" that aren't rules.These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical "smartcuts" that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In Smartcuts, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like "paying dues" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter—and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.
Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World
Donald Sull - 2015
We have too much email, juggle multiple remotes, and hack through thickets of regulations from phone contracts to health plans. But complexity isn’t destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there’s a better way. By developing a few simple yet effective rules, people can best even the most complex problems. In Simple Rules, Sull and Eisenhardt masterfully challenge how we think about complexity and offer a new lens on how to cope. They take us on a surprising tour of what simple rules are, where they come from, and why they work. The authors illustrate the six kinds o f rules that really matter - for helping artists find creativity and the Federal Reserve set interest rates, for keeping birds on track and Zipcar members organized, and for how insomniacs can sleep and mountain climbers stay safe. Drawing on rigorous research and riveting stories, the authors ingeniously find insights in unexpected places, from the way Tina Fey codified her experience at Saturday Night Live into rules for producing 30 Rock (rule five: never tell a crazy person he’s crazy) to burglars’ rules for robbery (“avoid houses with a car parked outside”) to Japanese engineers mimicking the rules of slime molds to optimize Tokyo’s rail system. The authors offer fresh information and practical tips on fixing old rules and learning new ones. Whether you’re struggling with information overload, pursuing opportunities with limited resources, or just trying to change your bad habits, Simple Rules provides powerful insight into how and why simplicity tames complexity.
Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up
Stanley Bing - 2002
Breathe deep. This is the last business book you will ever need. For in these pages, Stanley Bing solves the ultimate problem of your working life: How to manage the boss.The technique is simple . . . as simple as throwing an elephant. All it takes is the proper state of mind, a step-by-step plan, and a great leap of faith. This humble guide provides all these and more. It is Zen that enables one to take an object of enormous weight and size and mold it in one's grasp like a ball of Silly Putty. For senior management, in truth, is the silliest putty of them all.This comprehensive course walks budding business bodhisattvas through basic skills needed to provide the simple elephant handling that makes everyday life possible, including but not limited to the primary task of following along after the elephant with a little broom and dustpan. Serious students will then move to intermediate steps, from Polishing the Elephant's Tusks to Hiding from the Elephant When It Has Been Drinking and Feels Quite Nasty. Beyond this level lies the land of the practiced Zen masters, culminating in the ability to leverage and then throw the now-weightless elephant--and even play catch with it at corporate retreats.If What Would Machiavelli Would Do? was the meanest business book since the Renaissance, Throwing the Elephant provides the yang to that yin. Because sometimes you've got to be selfless, compassionate, and completely empty to get the job done.Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the author of What Would Machiavelli Do? and Lloyd: What Happened, a novel. By day, he works for a gigantic multinational conglomerate whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.
Now, Discover Your Strengths: The revolutionary Gallup program that shows you how to develop your unique talents and strengths
Marcus Buckingham - 2001
This updated assessment includes reports and resources that go far beyond the standardized reports of the older assessment by providing you with personalized insight statements unique to your specific combination of strengths.Many people have little sense of their talents and strengths, much less the ability to build their lives around them. Instead, they are raised and taught to become experts in their weaknesses — and spend their lives trying to fix them — while their strengths lie dormant. Led by Don Clifton, the Father of Strengths-Based Psychology, Gallup created a revolutionary program to help people identify their talents; develop them into strengths; and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance. Twenty years ago, Gallup released Now, Discover Your Strengths to bring this program to the world. At the heart of this book is CliftonStrengths, the assessment that is the product of decades of research and hundreds of thousands of interviews to identify the most prevalent human strengths. CliftonStrengths reveals 34 dominant talent themes that you can translate into personal and career success. To develop this assessment, Gallup conducted psychological profiles with more than 2 million individuals to help people around the world focus and perfect these themes. Since Now, Discover Your Strengths was first released two decades ago, more than 20 million people worldwide have taken the CliftonStrengths assessment. The 20th anniversary edition includes a unique access code to take CliftonStrengths — previously known as StrengthsFinder 2.0 — which is a significantly more robust program than the assessment that appeared in the original edition of the book. This web-based assessment analyzes your instinctive reactions and immediately presents you with your top five themes. Once you know which of the 34 themes you lead with — such as Achiever, Activator, Empathy, Futuristic and Strategic — the book will show you how to use your top themes for your own development, for your success as a manager and for the success of your organization. With accessible and profound insights into how to turn talents into strengths, and with immediate online feedback from the CliftonStrengths assessment at its core, Now, Discover Your Strengths is one of the most groundbreaking and powerful business books ever written.
Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation
Neel Doshi - 2015
While most leaders believe culture is critical to success, few know how to build one, or sustain it over time.What if you knew the science behind the magic—a science so predictive and powerful that you could transform your organization? What if you could use cutting edge psychology to unlock people’s innate desire to innovate, experiment, and adapt? In Primed to Perform, Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor show you how to do just that. The result: higher sales, more loyal customers, and more passionate employees.Primed to Perform explains the counter-intuitive science behind great cultures, building on over a century of academic thinking. It shares the simple, highly predictive new measurement tool—the Total Motivation (ToMo) Factor—that enables you to measure the strength of your culture, and track improvements over time. It explores the authors’ original research into how Total Motivation leads to higher performance in iconic companies, from Apple to Starbucks to Southwest Airlines. Most importantly, it teaches you to build great cultures, using a systematic and sustainable approach.High performing cultures cant be left to chance. Organizations must create systems that shape and maintain them. Whether you’re a five-person team or a startup, a school, a nonprofit or a mega-institution, Primed to Perform shows you how.