Book picks similar to
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service Into a World-Class Brand by Al Ries
business
marketing
branding
non-fiction
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
Chris Voss - 2016
Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most – when people’s lives were at stake.Rooted in the real-life experiences of an intelligence professional at the top of his game, Never Split the Difference will give you the competitive edge in any discussion.
Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
Kim Malone Scott - 2017
While this advice may work for everyday life, it is, as Kim Scott has seen, a disaster when adopted by managers.Scott earned her stripes as a highly successful manager at Google and then decamped to Apple, where she developed a class on optimal management. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, the “radical candor” method.Radical candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It’s about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism—delivered to produce better results and help employees achieve.Great bosses have strong relationships with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get (sh)it done, and understand why it matters.Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author’s experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.
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.
Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers
Bernadette Jiwa - 2014
This is her finest work, a book that ought to be read by everyone on your team, and somehow hidden from your competitors."—SETH GODIN One of the biggest challenges we face as entrepreneurs and innovators is understanding how to make our ideas resonate. We tend to have no shortage of ideas, but we struggle to tell the story of how they are going to be useful in the world and why they will matter to people. Marketing is the way we communicate how our ideas translate to value for people in a marketplace.Marketing has become a necessary evil for every business, but what if we adopted a different view of it? What if marketing was less about promotion or coercion and more about reaching out to people and helping them to solve problems? What if marketing was how we found more ways to do better work and to matter to our customers?What if marketing was where we began our journey towards understanding what people need and want?What if it was our vantage point for seeing the world through the eyes of our customers? How different would marketing be then?
Who: The A Method for Hiring
Geoff Smart - 2008
The average hiring mistake costs a company $1.5 million or more a year and countless wasted hours. This statistic becomes even more startling when you consider that the typical hiring success rate of managers is only 50 percent.The silver lining is that "who" problems are easily preventable. Based on more than 1,300 hours of interviews with more than 20 billionaires and 300 CEOs, Who presents Smart and Street's A Method for Hiring. Refined through the largest research study of its kind ever undertaken, the A Method stresses fundamental elements that anyone can implement-and it has a 90 percent success rate.Whether you're a member of a board of directors looking for a new CEO, the owner of a small business searching for the right people to make your company grow, or a parent in need of a new babysitter, it's all about Who. Inside you'll learn how to- avoid common "voodoo hiring" methods- define the outcomes you seek- generate a flow of A Players to your team-by implementing the #1 tactic used by successful businesspeople- ask the right interview questions to dramatically improve your ability to quickly distinguish an A Player from a B or C candidate- attract the person you want to hire, by emphasizing the points the candidate cares about mostIn business, you are who you hire. In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer simple, easy-to-follow steps that will put the right people in place for optimal success.
What Would Google Do?
Jeff Jarvis - 2009
By “reverse engineering the fastest growing company in the history of the world,” author Jeff Jarvis, proprietor of Buzzmachine.com, one of the Web’s most widely respected media blogs, offers indispensible strategies for solving the toughest new problems facing businesses today. With a new afterword from the author, What Would Google Do? is the business book that every leader or potential leader in every industry must read.
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
Michael Bungay Stanier - 2016
Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how--by saying less and asking more--you can develop coaching methods that produce great results. – Get straight to the point in any conversation with The Kickstart Question – Stay on track during any interaction with The Awe Question – Save hours of time for yourself with The Lazy Question – and hours of time for others with The Strategic Question – Get to the heart of any interpersonal or external challenge with The Focus Question – and The Foundation Question – Ensure others find your coaching as beneficial as you do with The Learning Question A fresh innovative take on the traditional how-to manual, the book combines insider information with research based in neuroscience and behavioural economics, together with interactive training tools to turn practical advice into practiced habits. Witty and conversational, The Coaching Habit takes your work--and your workplace--from good to great. "Coaching is an art and it's far easier said than done. It takes courage to ask a question rather than offer up advice, provide and answer, or unleash a solution. giving another person the opportunity to find their own way, make their own mistakes, and create their own wisdom is both brave and vulnerable. In this practical and inspiring book, Michael shares seven transformative questions that can make a difference in how we lead and support. And he guides us through the tricky part - how to take this new information and turn it into habits and a daily practice. --Brené Brown, author of Rising Strong and Daring Greatly
Principle-Centered Leadership
Stephen R. Covey - 1991
Covey has taught to many of the world's top executives and most influential leaders. Align your organization's resources and structures to increase long-term performance and create a high-trust culture - the ultimate competitive advantage.
The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential
John C. Maxwell - 2011
In fact, being chosen for a position is only the first of the five levels every effective leader achieves. To become more than "the boss" people follow only because they are required to, you have to master the ability to invest in people and inspire them. To grow further in your role, you must achieve results and build a team that produces. You need to help people to develop their skills to become leaders in their own right. And if you have the skill and dedication, you can reach the pinnacle of leadership—where experience will allow you to extend your influence beyond your immediate reach and time for the benefit of others.The 5 Levels of Leadership are:1. Position—People follow because they have to.2. Permission—People follow because they want to.3. Production—People follow because of what you have done for the organization.4. People Development—People follow because of what you have done for them personally.5. Pinnacle—People follow because of who you are and what you represent.Through humor, in-depth insight, and examples, internationally recognized leadership expert John C. Maxwell describes each of these stages of leadership. He shows you how to master each level and rise up to the next to become a more influential, respected, and successful leader.
Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
John Warrillow - 2010
Thus, when the time comes to sell, buyers aren't confident that the company-even if it's profitable-can stand on its own. To illustrate this, Warrillow introduces us to a fictional small business owner named Alex who is struggling to sell his advertising agency. Alex turns to Ted, an entrepreneur and old family friend, who encourages Alex to pursue three criteria to make his business sellable: * Teachable: focus on products and services that you can teach employees to deliver. * Valuable: avoid price wars by specialising in doing one thing better than anyone else. * Repeatable: generate recurring revenue by engineering products that customers have to repurchase often.
Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends
Tim Sanders - 2002
By that I mean: Your knowledge: everything that comes from all the books that I’ll encourage you to devour.Your network: the collection of friends and contacts you now have, which I’ll teach you how to grow and nurture.Your compassion: that human warmth you already possess—in these pages I’ll convince you that you can show it freely at the office.What happens when you do all this?* You become a rich source of information to all around you.* You are seen as a person with valuable insight.* You are perceived as generous to a fault, producing surprise and delight.* You double your business intelligence in one year.* You triple your network of personal relationships in two years.* You quadruple the number of colleagues in your life who love you like family.In short, you become one of those amazing, outstanding people to whom everyone turns, who leads rather than follows, who never runs out of ideas, contacts, or friendship.Here’s the real scoop: Nice guys don’t finish last. They rule!From the Hardcover edition.
Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It
April Dunford - 2019
Successfully connecting your product with consumers isn’t a matter of following trends, comparing yourself to the competition or trying to attract the widest customer base.So what is it? April Dunford, positioning guru and tech exec, will enlighten you.Her new book, Obviously Awesome, shows you how to find your product’s “secret sauce”—and then sell that sauce to those who crave it. Having spent years as a startup executive (with 16 product launches under her belt) and a consultant (who’s worked on dozens more), Dunford speaks with authority about breaking through the noise of a crowded market.Punctuated with witty anecdotes and compelling case studies, Dunford’s book is at once entertaining and illuminating. Among the invaluable lessons you’ll learn are:- The Five Components of Effective Positioning- How to instantly connect an audience to your offering’s value- How to choose the best market for your products- How to use three distinct styles of positioning to your advantage- How to leverage market trends to help buyers understand why making a purchase is important right nowWhether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer or salesperson struggling to bring inventive products to market, Dunford’s insights will help you find your awesome, so that your customers can too.
Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire
Paul Smith - 2012
Today, many of the most successful companies use storytelling as a leadership tool. At Nike, all senior executives are designated "corporate storytellers." 3M banned bullet points years ago and replaced them with a process of writing "strategic narratives." Procter & Gamble hired Hollywood directors to teach its executives storytelling techniques. Some forward-thinking business schools have even added storytelling courses to their management curriculum. The reason for this is simple: Stories have the ability to engage an audience the way logic and bullet points alone never could. Whether you are trying to communicate a vision, sell an idea, or inspire commitment, storytelling is a powerful business tool that can mean the difference between mediocre results and phenomenal success. "Lead with a Story" contains both ready-to-use stories and how-to guidance for readers looking to craft their own. Designed for a wide variety of business challenges, the book shows how narrative can help: - Define culture and values - Engender creativity and innovation - Foster collaboration and build relationships - Provide coaching and feedback - Lead change - And more Whether in a speech or a memo, communicated to one person or a thousand, storytelling is an essential skill for success. Complete with examples from companies like Kellogg's, Merrill-Lynch, Procter & Gamble, National Car Rental, Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, and more, this practical resource gives readers the guidance they need to deliver stories to stunning effect.
Business Model You: A One-Page Method for Reinventing Your Career
Tim Clark - 2012
Business Model You uses the same powerful one-page tool to teach readers how to draw "personal business models," which reveal new ways their skills can be adapted to the changing needs of the marketplace to reveal new, more satisfying, career and life possibilities. Produced by the same team that created Business Model Generation, this book is based on the Business Model Canvas methodology, which has quickly emerged as the world's leading business model description and innovation technique.This book shows readers how to:Understand business model thinking and diagram their current personal business model Understand the value of their skills in the marketplace and define their purpose Articulate a vision for change Create a new personal business model harmonized with that vision, and most important, test and implement the new model When you implement the one-page tool from Business Model You, you create a game-changing business model for your life and career.
Measure What Matters
John E. Doerr - 2017
With a foreword by Larry Page, and contributions from Bono and Bill Gates.
Measure What Matters is about using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), a revolutionary approach to goal-setting, to make tough choices in business. In 1999, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr invested nearly $12 million in a startup that had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. Doerr introduced the founders to OKRs and with them at the foundation of their management, the startup grew from forty employees to more than 70,000 with a market cap exceeding $600 billion. The startup was Google. Since then Doerr has introduced OKRs to more than fifty companies, helping tech giants and charities exceed all expectations. In the OKR model objectives define what we seek to achieve and key results are how those top priority goals will be attained. OKRs focus effort, foster coordination and enhance workplace satisfaction. They surface an organization's most important work as everyone's goals from entry-level to CEO are transparent to the entire institution. In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will show you how to collect timely, relevant data to track progress - to measure what matters. It will help any organization or team aim high, move fast, and excel.