Intercom on Marketing


Des Traynor - 2018
    But which ones matter to startups? Let us show you how to build your brand and sell more products in a non-spammy way with this marketing book for startups.

Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success


Josh Seiden - 2019
    But in today’s service- and software-driven world, “done” is less obvious. When is Amazon done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, services powered by digital systems are never done. So then how do we give teams a goal that they can work on?Mostly, we simply ask teams to build features—but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that create no value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to achieve. Using outcomes creates focus and alignment. It eliminates needless work. And it puts the customer at the center of everything you do.Setting goals as outcomes sounds simple, but it can be hard to do in practice. This book is a practical guide to using outcomes to guide the work of your team. "Josh’s crisp volume brims with insight about how to fly at just the right level - the level of outcomes. If you’ve ever wondered how M your MVP should be, or how to get more R in your OKRs, this book will help." --Nick Rockwell, CTO, NY Times

How to Lead in Product Management: Practices to Align Stakeholders, Guide Development Teams, and Create Value Together


Roman Pichler - 2020
    Benefitting from Roman Pichler’s extensive experience, you’ll learn how to align stakeholders and guide development teams even in challenging circumstances, avoid common leadership mistakes, and grow as a leader. Written in an engaging and easily accessible style, "How to Lead in Product Management" offers a wealth of practical tips and strategies. Through helpful examples, the book illustrates how you can directly apply the techniques to your work. Coverage includes: • Choosing the right leadership style • Cultivating empathy, building trust, and influencing others • Increasing your authority and empowering others • Directing stakeholders and development teams through common goals • Making decisions that people will support and follow through • Successfully resolving disputes and conflicts even with senior stakeholders • Listening deeply to discover and address hidden needs and interests • Practising mindfulness and embracing a growth mindset to develop as a leader Praise for How to "Lead in Product Management": “Roman has done it again, delivering a practical book for the product management community that appeals to both heart and mind. 'How to Lead in Product Management' is packed with concise, direct, and practical advice that addresses the deeper, personal aspects of the product leadership. Roman’s book shares wisdom on topics including goals, healthy interactions with stakeholders, handling conflict, effective conversations, decision-making, having a growth mindset, and self-care. It is a must read for both new and experienced product people.” Ellen Gottesdiener, Product Coach at EBG Consulting “Being a great product manager is tough. It requires domain knowledge, industry knowledge, technical skills, but also the skills to lead and inspire a team. Roman Pichler’s 'How to Lead in Product Management' is the best book I’ve read for equipping product managers to lead their teams.” Mike Cohn, Author of "Succeeding with Agile", "Agile Estimating and Planning", and "User Stories Applied" “This is the book that has been missing for product people. Roman has created another masterpiece, a fast read with lots of value. It’s a must read for every aspiring product manager.“ Magnus Billgren, CEO of Tolpagorni Product Management “'How Lead in Product Management' is for everyone who manages a product or drives important business decisions. Roman lays out the key challenges of product leadership and shows us ways of thoughtfully working with team members, stakeholders, partners, and the inevitable conflicts.” Rich Mironov, CEO of Mironov Consulting and "Smokejumper" Head of Product

Just F*ing Demo!: Tactics for Leading Kickass Product Demos


Rob Falcone - 2014
    Making matters worse, those leading the demos can rarely afford to spend months at a time figuring out how to improve their success rates. In Just F*Ing Demo!, Rob Falcone outlines the tactics that helped him overcome these challenges, lead clear, relevant demos, and exceed revenue generation goals quarter after quarter. The book will teach readers: - How to structure a demo; - How to ask questions that uncover what your audience truly cares about; - How to translate audience needs into a flow that is extremely easy to follow; - How to use simple but powerful interpersonal tactics within the demo itself. Just F*Ing Demo! distills Falcone’s highly successful training program into an intentionally concise yet impactful read. From the entrepreneur seeking investment to the sales professional chasing a deal, anyone can carve out a few hours, read this book, and immediately make their demos kick ass.

The Inspirational Leader: Inspire Your Team To Believe In The Impossible


Gifford Thomas - 2019
    Harvard Business School gathered data from assessments of more than 50,000 leaders, and the ability to inspire stood out as one of the most critical competencies. Inspiration creates the highest levels of engagement, it is what separates the best leaders from everyone else, and it is what employees want most in their leaders. The Inspirational Leader, Inspire Your Team To Believe In The Impossible was written to help all leaders successfully navigate all the disruptions in today fiercely competitive world we need a new generation of leaders who care deeply for the well-being of their team and who understand that their people are the heart of their leadership. Whether you are the leader of a large, medium or small organization; a Teacher, a V.P., CEO, Father, Mother, Police Officer, or Hustler; this book was written to help you inspire your team to believe in the impossible. Each chapter in this book will push you to become the leader you were destined to be; a leader of influence, a leader of value, a leader of vision and most importantly, an inspirational leader.

Not Everyone Gets A Trophy: How to Manage the Millennials


Bruce Tulgan - 2015
    

How to Grow Your Church Younger and Stronger: The Story of the Kids who Built a World-Class Church (GenerationS #1)


Tan Seow How - 2021
    Now it has developed into a proof of concept that Youths can build a STRONG CHURCH.GenerationS is a mindset-shifting, heart-changing book that shows you how to raise up generations of young people in your church to build His kingdom.After over 20 years, this youth church, operated by youths, for youths to reach youths, still has an average age of 22.Bonus #1: Contributors and 'Inside Stories'Read 1,000+ word contributions from 13 other contributing writers that provide an 'inside look' and 360º view of HOGC.Director of Global Relations, a Westerner's perspective on an Asian church Board member in his 60s, on what older people do in a youth churchChief of Staff, on what goes on inside the Senior Pastors' OfficeHead of Global Partnerships, on what co-senior pastoring looks likeBonus #2: Comes with Digital CompanionGo beyond the chapters! Access 100+ bonus content and interactive materials when you scan QR codes from within the book.

How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals: Simple, Effective, Done Right


Dick Grote - 2011
    One of a manager's toughest--and most important--responsibilities is to evaluate an employee's performance, providing honest feedback and clarifying what they've done well and where they need to improve. In How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, Dick Grote provides a concise, hands-on guide to succeeding at every step of the performance appraisal process--no matter what performance management system your organization uses. Through step-by-step instructions, examples, do-and-don't bullet lists, sample dialogues, and suggested scripts, he shows you how to handle every appraisal activity from setting goals and defining job responsibilities to evaluating performance quality and discussing the performance evaluation face-to-face. Based on decades of experience guiding managers through their biggest challenges, Grote helps answer the questions he hears most often: -How do I set goals effectively? How many goals should someone set?-How do I evaluate a person's behaviors? Which counts more, behaviors or results? -How do I determine the right performance appraisal rating? How do I explain my rating to a skeptical employee?-How do I tell someone she's not meeting my expectations? How do I deliver bad news? Grote also explains how to tackle other thorny performance management tasks, including determining compensation and terminating poor performers. In accessible and useful language, How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals will help you handle performance appraisals confidently and successfully, no matter the size or culture of your organization. It's the one book you need to excel at this daunting yet critical task.

HYPERGROWTH: How the Customer-Driven Model Is Revolutionizing the Way Businesses Build Products, Teams, & Brands


David Cancel - 2017
    The key to achieving HYPERGROWTH is being customer-driven. So if you’re ready to start putting your customers first, keep reading... What You’ll Learn: A New Approach to Product Management and Developing SaaS Products People Love Today, there’s no excuse for not communicating with customers on a daily basis. Messaging has exploded, new generations are focused on 1:1 communication by default, and artificial intelligence is finally coming so we can deliver 1:1 at scale. So why would you build a product, or a company, without leaning into the advantages of that ecosystem? In his new book, HYPERGROWTH, serial entrepreneur and Drift co-founder/CEO David Cancel shares a modern approach for building products and structuring teams that makes customer communication a central priority. The book tells the story of how Cancel’s customer-driven approach started out as a test with a product team (Performable), transformed an entire organization (HubSpot), and sparked a new movement (Drift). What’s Inside: Practical Advice and Frameworks for Becoming Customer-Driven and Growing Your Business Responsive Development (RD): a new approach to building products that adds the customer back into the equation The Burndown Framework: a framework for implementing Responsive Development that’s faster and more flexible than Agile. The Three-Person Team: the customer-driven way to structure engineering teams. Each team consists of a tech lead who manages two other engineers. Getting Rid of Roadmaps: through building a culture of transparency and accountability and working closely with internal customers, you can release product updates more rapidly and iteratively. The Spotlight Framework: a framework for helping you focus on the right parts of customer feedback so you can take the appropriate next steps. The framework breaks feedback down into three main categories: user experience issues, product marketing issues, and positioning issues. Who This Book Is For: Entrepreneurs, Startup Founders, Product Managers, Product Teams, Marketing Teams … Entire Companies! Every part of your business can benefit from being customer-driven. With the rise of SaaS and the on-demand economy, customer expectations have changed. Customers expect their voices to be heard. They find value in being part of a community, and being part of that journey of creating the product. So stop running your business like we’re still living in the 2000s. It’s time to take a customer-driven approach. Here’s what people are saying about the book: “David Cancel is one of the best when it comes to building products that customers love. And now he’s sharing his wisdom and writing the book explaining how he does it. This is a must read for any entrepreneur or business owner.” -MARK ROBERGE Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School, Former SVP of Sale and Services at HubSpot ”When it comes to building business software, there’s no one better than David Cancel, and I saw fi

Agile People: A Radical Approach for HR & Managers (That Leads to Motivated Employees)


Pia-Maria Thoren - 2017
    To ensure teams are well crafted, motivated, and successful, managers and HR professionals must step outside their comfort zone and adapt to younger, newer ways of thinking—they must become Agile. In Agile People, management consultant Pia-Maria Thoren outlines how managers, human resources professionals, company decision-makers, and employees can adopt the flexible, fluid, customer-focused mindset of modern tech companies to inspire their workers and strengthen their organizations. This essential handbook explains both the theories and practical applications behind the Agile framework, showing how companies can do the following: • Create a structure and culture for an organization to meet future challenges 
 • Give management and HR the changed mindset and the tools to facilitate employee drive and performance • Empower employees to become motivated stakeholders 
 • Adopt hiring practices that value attitude, behavior, and competence • Create a passionate, loyal, and accomplished workforce No matter the size of a company, it can benefit from an Agile mindset and launch into a future filled with successful leadership and motivated employees.

Hacking Leadership


Mike Myatt - 2013
    Leadership isn't broken, but how it's currently being practiced certainly is. Everyone has blind spots. The purpose of Hacking Leadership is to equip leaders at every level with an actionable framework to identify blind spots and close leadership gaps. The bulk of the book is based on actionable, topical leadership and management hacks to bridge eleven gaps every business needs to cross in order to create a culture of leadership: leadership, purpose, future, mediocrity, culture, talent, knowledge, innovation, expectation, complexity, and failure. Each chapter:Gives readers specific techniques to identify, understand, and most importantly, implement individual, team and organizational leadership hacks. Addresses blind spots and leverage points most leaders and managers haven't thought about, which left unaddressed, will adversely impact growth, development, and performance. All leaders have blind-spots (gaps), which often go undetected for years or decades, and sadly, even when identified the methods for dealing with them are outdated and ineffective - they need to be hacked. Showcases case studies from the author's consulting practice, serving as a confidant with more than 150 public company CEOs. Some of those corporate clients include: AT&T, Bank of America, Deloitte, EMC, Humana, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, PepsiCo, and other leading global brands. Hacking Leadership offers a fresh perspective that makes it easy for leaders to create a roadmap to identify, refine, develop, and achieve their leadership potential--and to create a more effective business that is financially solvent and professionally desirable.

Building a Better Business Using the Lego Serious Play Method


Per Kristiansen - 2014
    Written by the two original Master Trainers for LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP), the book outlines how LSP can develop teams, people, relationships and business . Based on the merging of play with organizational development, systems thinking and strategy development, LSP can foster improved meetings, faster innovation processes, team growth, and better communication.The belief that everyone intends to do good and has the potential to do it is at the heart of LSP. The method nurtures the idea that everyone in an organization can contribute to discussions and outcomes. Building with LEGO bricks is a type of creative play that triggers a different kind of thought process, unleashing imagination and potential that is frequently untapped by the logical mind. The book explains this hands-on, minds-on approach, and discusses the theory as well as the practical implementation of LSP. Topics include:Observation of internal and external interaction dynamics Fostering a free and honest exchange of opinions Suspending hierarchy for better, more effective communication Facilitating change by encouraging exploration The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method is employed by start-ups and multinational corporations alike to maximize synergy among teams and throughout organizations. For leaders looking to boost effectiveness and see better results, Building a Better Business Using the LEGO(R) SERIOUS PLAY(R) Method is a comprehensive introduction to this creative management technique.

The Diary of a West Point Cadet: A Graduate's Captivating and Hilarious Stories that Teach Vital Leadership Lessons from the US Military Academy


Preston Pysh - 2010
    Many leadership books can be boring. Instead of reading another repetitive book about 100 leadership essentials by a corporate CEO, search no more for the perfect leadership book. In "The Diary of a West Point Cadet," by Captain Preston Pysh, the author teaches essential West Point leadership through the most fun and unique reading of any book in its class. If you are an aspiring cadet, a small-group leader, or even an emerging leader in corporate America, this book is for you. Each intriguing firsthand account of Preston's most memorable stories from attending West Point will capture your interest and imagination. At the conclusion of each gripping story, Preston efficiently summarizes how the experience taught him lessons about leadership, which later prepared him to be a combat commander. If you like twists and turns while reading and learning, you are in for a treat. Prepare to be glued to your seat and the text as you experience unforgettable stories and lessons from "The Point."

A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware


Gary Gruver - 2012
    However, large-scale agile development is difficult, and publicly available case studies have been scarce. Now, three agile pioneers at Hewlett-Packard present a candid, start-to-finish insider's look at how they've succeeded with agile in one of the company's most mission-critical software environments: firmware for HP LaserJet printers.This book tells the story of an extraordinary experiment and journey. Could agile principles be applied to re-architect an enormous legacy code base? Could agile enable both timely delivery and ongoing innovation? Could it really be applied to 400+ developers distributed across four states, three continents, and four business units? Could it go beyond delivering incremental gains, to meet the stretch goal of 10x developer productivity improvements?It could, and it did--but getting there was not easy.Writing for both managers and technologists, the authors candidly discuss both their successes and failures, presenting actionable lessons for other development organizations, as well as approaches that have proven themselves repeatedly in HP's challenging environment. They not only illuminate the potential benefits of agile in large-scale development, they also systematically show how these benefits can actually be achieved.Coverage includes: - Tightly linking agile methods and enterprise architecture with business objectives- Focusing agile practices on your worst development pain points to get the most bang for your buck- Abandoning classic agile methods that don't work at the largest scale- Employing agile methods to establish a new architecture- Using metrics as a "conversation starter" around agile process improvements- Leveraging continuous integration and quality systems to reduce costs, accelerate schedules, and automate the delivery pipeline- Taming the planning beast with "light-touch" agile planning and lightweight long-range forecasting- Implementing effective project management and ensuring accountability in large agile projects- Managing tradeoffs associated with key decisions about organizational structure- Overcoming U.S./India cultural differences that can complicate offshore development- Selecting tools to support quantum leaps in productivity in your organization- Using change management disciplines to support greater enterprise agility

Objectives and Key Results: Driving Focus, Alignment, and Engagement with OKRs (Wiley Corporate F&A)


Paul R. Niven - 2016
    Written by two leading OKRs consultants and researchers, this book provides a one-stop resource for organizations looking to quantify qualitative goals and ensure each team focuses their efforts to make measureable progress on their most important goals. You'll learn how OKRs came to be and how leading companies use them every day to help teams and employees stretch their thinking about what's possible, build their goal-setting muscles and achieve results that reflect their full potential. From the basic framework to a detailed dissection of best practices, this informative guide walks you through real-world implementations to help you get the most out of OKRs.OKRs help employees work together, focus effort, and drive the organization forward. Key results are used to define what it means to achieve broad, qualitative goals, and imperatives like 'do it better' are transformed into clear, measureable markers. From the framework's inception in the 1980s to its popularity in today's hyper-competitive environment, OKRs make work more engaging and feature frequent feedback cycles that enable workers to see the progress they make at work each and every day. This book shows you everything you need to know to implement OKRs effectively. Understand the basics of OKRs and their day-to-day use Learn how to gain the executive support critical to a successful implementation Maintain an effective program with key assessment tips Tailor the OKRs framework to your organization's needs"OKRs Step-by-Step" is your key resource for designing, planning, implementing, and maintaining your OKRs program for sustainable company-wide success.