Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. In Behind the Cloud, Benioff shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.

    At least four book publishers passed on the first Harry Potter novel rather than pay J. K. Rowling a $5,000 advance. And the same pattern happens in nearly every business. Anyone who recruits talent faces the same basic challenge, whether we work for a big company, a new start-up, a Hollywood studio, a hospital, or the Green Berets. We all wonder how to tell the really outstanding prospects from the ones who look great on paper but then fail on the job. Or, equally important, how to spot the ones who don't look so good on paper but might still deliver extraordinary performance. Over the past few decades, technology has made recruiting in all fields vastly more sophisticated. Gut instincts have yielded to benchmarks. If we want elaborate dossiers on candidates, we can gather facts (and video) by the gigabyte. And yet the results are just as spotty as they were in the age of the rotary phone. George Anders sought out the world's savviest talent judges to see what they do differently from the rest of us. He reveals how the U.S. Army finds soldiers with the character to be in Special Forces without asking them to fire a single bullet. He takes us to an elite basketball tournament in South Carolina, where the best scouts watch the game in a radically different way from the casual fan. He talks to researchers who are reinventing the process of hiring Fortune 500 CEOs. Drawing on the best advice of these and other talent masters, Anders reveals powerful ideas you can apply to your own hiring. For instance: Don't ignore "the jagged resume"-people whose background appears to teeter on the edge between success and failure. Such people can do spectacular work in the right settings, where their strengths dramatically outweigh their flaws. Look extra hard for "talent that whispers"- the obscure, out-of-the- way candidates who most scouting systems overlook. Be careful with "talent that shouts"-the spectacular but brash candidates who might have trouble with loyalty, motivation, and team spirit. Each field that Anders explores has its own lingo, customs, and history. But the specific stories fit together into a bigger mosaic. In any field, there's an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most. It's not necessarily hard, but it requires the courage to take a different approach in pursuit of the rare find.

    And now there’s a sure-fire way to solve their problems and test solutions: the sprint.While working at Google, designer Jake Knapp created a unique problem-solving method that he coined a “design sprint”—a five-day process to help companies answer crucial questions. His ‘sprints’ were used on everything from Google Search to Chrome to Google X. When he moved to Google Ventures, he joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky, both designers and partners there who worked on products like YouTube and Gmail. Together Knapp, Zeratsky, and Kowitz have run over 100 sprints with their portfolio companies. They’ve seen firsthand how sprints can overcome challenges in all kinds of companies: healthcare, fitness, finance, retailers, and more.A practical guide to answering business questions, Sprint is a book for groups of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to non-profits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.

    Without it, we forget what's important to us and lose sight of the steps we might take to reach those goals. Conscious business, explains Fred Kofman, means shining this awareness on every area of your work: in recognizing the needs of others and expressing your own; in seeing the hidden emotional obstacles that may be holding your team back; in making good decisions under pressure; and even in delving into such spiritual questions as "Who am I?" and "What is my real purpose here?" In Conscious Business, this visionary teacher and consultant to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and other leading companies presents the complete training manual in the breakthrough techniques he has shared with over 20,000 executives on four continents.

    When people and organizations rest on prior successes rather than driving purposeful transformation, they discover too late that they have lost their market position altogether to competitors and external forces.The most successful companies, brands, and individuals make reinvention a regular part of their business strategies. Transformation demands an ongoing process of discovery and imagination, and "The Road to Reinvention" lays out a systematic approach for continually challenging and reinventing yourself and your business. Venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Josh Linkner identifies six elements in any business that are ripe for reinvention and shares examples, methods, and step-by-step techniques for creating deliberate, productive disruption.Throughout "The Road to Reinvention," Linkner also explores the history--the great rise, unprecedented fall, and now rebirth--of his beloved hometown, Detroit. First rising to greatness as the result of breathtaking innovation, Detroit had generations of booming growth before succumbing to apathy, atrophy, and finally bankruptcy. Now, the city is rising from the ashes and driving sustainable success through an intense focus on reinvention. Linkner brings an insider's view of this incredible story of grit, determination, and creativity, sharing his perspective on Detroit's successes and setbacks as a profound example of large-scale organizational and personal transformation.Change is inevitable. You need to decide: Will you drive that change, or be driven away by it? Will you disrupt or be disrupted? By choosing to deliberately reimagine your own status quo, you can secure a strong future for both your company and your career.

    As newly appointed captain of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, he was responsible for more than a hundred sailors, deep in the sea. In this high-stress environment, where there is no margin for error, it was crucial his men did their job and did it well.But the ship was dogged by poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention in the fleet. Marquet acted like any other captain until, one day, he unknowingly gave an impossible order, and his crew tried to follow it anyway. When he asked why the order wasn't challenged, the answer was "Because you told me to." Marquet realized he was leading in a culture of followers, and they were all in danger unless they fundamentally changed the way they did things. That's when Marquet took matters into his own hands and pushed for leadership at every level. Turn the Ship Around! is the true story of how the Santa Fe skyrocketed from worst to first in the fleet by challenging the U.S. Navy's traditional leader-follower approach. Struggling against his own instincts to take control, he instead achieved the vastly more powerful model of giving control. Before long, each member of Marquet's crew became a leader and assumed responsibility for everything he did, from clerical tasks to crucial combat decisions. The crew became fully engaged, contributing their full intellectual capacity every day, and the Santa Fe started winning awards and promoting a highly disproportionate number of officers to submarine command.No matter your business or position, you can apply Marquet's radical guidelines to turn your own ship around. The payoff: a workplace where everyone around you is taking responsibility for their actions, where people are healthier and happier, where everyone is a leader.

    The reason is simple: no matter what you think you're saying, your words, gestures, and tone of voice can actually communicate something entirely different.Too often, negative micromessages undermine morale, business opportunities, and ultimately your organization. Micromessaging examines the nuanced behaviors that we all blindly use and react to in our dealings with others. Yet as Young points out, these micromessages can reveal a lot about our own-and our superiors'-biases and preconceived notions. Learning how to constructively address these behaviors can bring about positive change.Young offers a common language for encouraging open discussion in the workplace, along with skills to identify and address familiar micromessages; tools for deploying microadvantages; and real-life workplace scenarios, self-assessments, and solutions that help readers interpret and alter ingrained behaviors and their effects. He delivers valuable information onCruicial leadership skills and how to acquire themUniversal workplace cultural issuesHow expectations affect the performance of othersWays to speak fairly, not falselyTechniques that eliminate group thinkHow to reset the filters you use to screen othersBased on research from MIT, Young's approach has already helped numerous Fortune 500 clients, including Merck, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Starbucks, IBM, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Cisco, and Raytheon to increase leadership effectiveness. With its proven wisdom, you can experience what so many business executives worldwide have discovered and make it a powerful part of your leadership skill set.

    TAKE THE PAIN OUT OF PRESENTATIONS.Terrified of speaking in front of a group? Or simply looking to polish your skills? No matter where you are on the spectrum, this guide will give you the confidence and the tools you need to get results.Written by presentation expert Nancy Duarte, the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations will help you:• Win over tough crowds• Organize a coherent narrative• Create powerful messages and visuals• Connect with and engage your audience• Show people why your ideas matter to them• Strike the right tone, in any situation

    A rich tapestry of anecdotes, object lessons, parodies, insights, and predictions, The Cluetrain Manifesto illustrates how the Internet has radically reframed the seemingly immutable laws of business--and what business needs to know to weather the seismic aftershocks.

    But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products.As legendary Silicon Valley coach--and coach to the founders of several of today's leading tech companies--Bill Campbell said, "Leadership is about recognizing that there's a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge."The goal of EMPOWERED is to provide you, as a leader of product management, product design, or engineering, with everything you'll need to create just such an environment.As partners at The Silicon Valley Product Group, Marty Cagan and Chris Jones have long worked to reveal the best practices of the most consistently innovative companies in the world. A natural companion to the bestseller INSPIRED, EMPOWERED tackles head-on the reason why most companies fail to truly leverage the potential of their people to innovate: product leadership.The book covers:what it means to be an empowered product team, and how this is different from the "feature teams" used by most companies to build technology products recruiting and coaching the members of product teams, first to competence, and then to reach their potential creating an inspiring product vision along with an insights-driven product strategy translating that strategy into action by empowering teams with specific objectives--problems to solve--rather than features to build redefining the relationship of the product teams to the rest of the company detailing the changes necessary to effectively and successfully transform your organization to truly empowered product teams EMPOWERED puts decades of lessons learned from the best leaders of the top technology companies in your hand as a guide. It shows you how to become the leader your team and company needs to not only survive but thrive.

    For decades, understanding management—what works, and what doesn't—has been the pursuit of the world's best and brightest. Globally, there are more than 1,500 credible schools offering master's degrees in business administration, and hundreds of magazines and newspapers and thousands of books devoted to the subject. What's been missing is a simple and convenient way to disseminate the best ideas and practices to managers everywhere, at all levels and in all kinds of industries and organizations. The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management draws the best from the existing body of knowledge and research, and summarizes it in a simple, clear, and useful way. Focusing on classic and contemporary works that have been recommended by members of The Wall Street Journal CEO Council—all chief executives of large and successful global companies—it is an invaluable reference and essential tool for every manager, new and experienced alike.

    Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it's rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don't?This insightful book presents interviews with nearly 100 leading product managers from all over the world. Authors Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, and Nate Walkingshaw draw on decades of experience in product design and development to capture the approaches, styles, insights, and techniques of successful product managers. If you want to understand what drives good product leaders, this book is an irreplaceable resource.In three parts, Product Leadership helps you explore:Themes and patterns of successful teams and their leaders, and ways to attain those characteristicsThe best approaches for guiding your product team through the startup, emerging, and enterprise stages of a company's evolutionStrategies and tactics for working with customers, agencies, partners, and external stakeholders

    Now, as the authors of this lively new book suggest, companies and corporations are moving away from traditional methods of how to lead, manage and compete, towards a more 'maverick' management style that has proved highly successful. Mavericks at Work is the first book to document this change - and to give readers a glimpse into the ideas and techniques behind fast-growing but unconventional companies such as Google, HBO, Lendlease and Southwest Airlines. It profiles some of the most exciting - and often eccentric - CEOs in the US, and details their strategies for success. With its accessible tone, Mavericks at Work is both serious and fun; business 'edutainment' for a smart, ambitious readership.

    today. An essential reference for all teachers, educational leaders, and policymakers at all levels, the book is organized and written in a style that is accessible to all, even those with little or no knowledge of the legal issues in education.

    Renowned scientist David Bohm believed there was a better way for humanity to discover meaning and to achieve harmony. He identified creative dialogue, a sharing of assumptions and understanding, as a means by which the individual, and society as a whole, can learn more about themselves and others, and achieve a renewed sense of purpose.