Book picks similar to
O Great One!: A Little Story About the Awesome Power of Recognition by David C. Novak
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What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
Ben Horowitz - 2019
Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want?To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions. It is the set of assumptions employees use to resolve everyday problems: should I stay at the Red Roof Inn, or the Four Seasons? Should we discuss the color of this product for five minutes or thirty hours? If culture is not purposeful, it will be an accident or a mistake.What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, a man convicted of murder who ran the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture.Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture.What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted?Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do. This book aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be—and others want to follow.
Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done
David Allen - 2003
Now "the personal productivity guru" (Fast Company) shows readers how to increase their ability to work better, not harder every day. Based on Allen's highly popular e-newsletter, Ready for Anything offers readers 52 ways to immediately clear your head for creativity, focus your attention, create structures that work, and take action to get things moving. With wit, inspiration, and know-how, Allen shows readers how to make things happen with less effort and stress, and lots more energy, creativity, and effectiveness. Ready for Anything is the perfect book for anyone wanting to work and live at his or her very best.
Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization
John Wooden - 2005
. . . Acquire and keep these traits and success should follow."--Coach John WoodenJohn Wooden's goal in 41 years of coaching never changed; namely, to get maximum effort and peak performance from each of his players in the manner that best served the team. Wooden on Leadership explains step-by-step how he pursued and accomplished this goal. Focusing on Wooden's 12 Lessons in Leadership and his acclaimed Pyramid of Success, it outlines the mental, emotional, and physical qualities essential to building a winning organization, and shows you how to develop the skill, confidence, and competitive fire to "be at your best when your best is needed"--and teach your organization to do the same.Praise for Wooden on Leadership"What an all-encompassing Pyramid of Success for leadership! Coach Wooden's moral authority and brilliant definition of success encompass all of life. How I admire his life's work and concept of what it really means to win!"--Stephen R. Covey, author, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness"Wooden On Leadership offers valuable lessons no matter what your endeavor. 'Competitive Greatness' is our goal and that of any successful organization. Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success is where it all starts." --Jim Sinegal, president & CEO, Costco
Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service
Walt Disney Company - 2001
Reprint. 25,000 first printing.
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
Seth Godin - 2003
You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice. What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last? Face it, the checklist of tired 'P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed - Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few - aren't working anymore. There's an exceptionally important 'P' that has to be added to the list. It's Purple Cow. Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows - but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. And it's not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not there. Period. In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for marketers who want to help create products that are worth marketing in the first place. Description from Amazon.com
The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource
Jeffrey Gitomer - 1994
Now completely revised, this book is available for the first time in paperback. The Sales Bible has helped tens of thousands of salespeople all over the world reach their potential and close the big deal. Gitomer gives sales professionals the right answers to the toughest questions:How to make sales in any economic environment Twenty-five ways to get that most-elusive appointment Top-down selling How to fill the sales pipeline with prospects ready to buy How to use the right questions to make more sales in half the time This book is everything its title claims to be
Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose - the Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership (People Skills for Professionals)
John Whitmore - 2002
Coaching has matured into an invaluable profession fit for our times and this fourth edition of the most widely read coaching book takes it to the next frontier.Good coaching is a skill that requires a depth of understanding and plenty of practice if it is to deliver its astonishing potential. This extensively revised and expanded new audio edition of Coaching for Performance clearly explains the principles of coaching and illustrates them with examples of high performance from business and sport. It continues to follow the GROW sequence (Goals, Reality, Options, Will) and clarifies the process and practice of coaching by describing what coaching really is, what it can be used for, when and how much it can be used, and who can use it well.
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Jocko Willink - 2015
you teach guys and gals about leadership and you've helped not only military guys but families." - Megyn Kelly"You show in the book how to motivate... thanks for writing the book Extreme Ownership." Bill O'Reilly"[Jocko] is the co-author of an incredible new book - which I've been loving. Trust me. Buy it." - Tim Ferriss"This is a life-learning lesson for everyone... the book is awesome." - Sean HannitySent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields.Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment.A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.
The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career
Reid Hoffman - 2012
The career escalator is jammed at every level. Unemployment rates are sky-high. Creative disruption is shaking every industry. Global competition for jobs is fierce. The employer-employee pact is over, and traditional job security is a thing of the past. Here, LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and author Ben Casnocha show how to accelerate your career in today’s competitive world. The key is to manage your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you. Why? Start-ups - and the entrepreneurs who run them - are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage. These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today. This book isn’t about cover letters or resumes. Instead, you will learn the best practices of Silicon Valley start-ups, and how to apply these entrepreneurial strategies to your career. Whether you work for a giant multinational corporation, a small local business, or are launching your own venture, you need to know how to: Adapt your career plans as you change, the people around you change, and industries change Develop a competitive advantage to win the best jobs and opportunities Strengthen your professional network by building powerful alliances and maintaining a diverse mix of relationships Find the unique breakout opportunities that massively accelerate career growth Take proactive risks to become more resilient to industry tsunamis Tap your network for information and intelligence that help you make smarter decisions A revolutionary new guide to thriving in today's fractured world of work, the strategies in this book will help you survive and thrive and achieve your boldest professional ambitions. The Start-Up of You empowers you to become the CEO of your career and take control of your future.©2012 Reid Hoffman (P)2012 Random House
The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness
Linda Kaplan Thaler - 2006
Where so many companies encourage a dog eat dog mentality, the Kaplan Thaler Group has succeeded through chocolate and flowers. In The Power of Nice, through their own experiences and the stories of other people and businesses, they demonstrate why, contrary to conventional wisdom, nice people finish first.Turning the well-known adage of “Nice Guys Finish Last” on its ear, The Power of Nice shows that “nice” companies have lower employee turnover, lower recruitment costs, and higher productivity. Nice people live longer, are healthier, and make more money. In today’s interconnected world, companies and people with a reputation for cooperation and fair play forge the kind of relationships that lead to bigger and better opportunities, both in business and in life. Kaplan Thaler and Koval illustrate the surprising power of nice with an array of real-life examples from the business arena as well as from their personal lives. Most important, they present a plan of action covering everything from creating a positive impression to sweetening the pot to turning enemies into allies. Filled with inspiration and suggestions on how to supercharge your career and expand your reach in the workplace, The Power of Nice will transform how you live and work.
Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen
Dan Heath - 2020
We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems ... [This book] probes the psychological forces that push us downstream--including 'problem blindness,' which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored ... victories by switching to an upstream mindset.
How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs
Guy Raz - 2020
Great ideas often come from a simple spark: A soccer player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn them into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multimillion-dollar business (Stacy’s Pita Chips). Award-winning journalist and NPR host Guy Raz has interviewed more than 200 highly successful entrepreneurs to uncover amazing true stories like these. In How I Built This, he shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trailblazing entrepreneurs made their own dreams a reality.
HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership
Harvard Business Review - 2010
Drucker). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles on leadership and selected the most important ones to help you maximize your own and your organization's performance.HBR's 10 Must Reads On Leadership will inspire you to:- Motivate others to excel- Build your team's self-confidence in others- Provoke positive change- Set direction- Encourage smart risk-taking- Manage with tough empathy- Credit others for your success- Increase self-awareness- Draw strength from adversityThis collection of best-selling articles includes: featured article "What Makes an Effective Executive" by Peter F. Drucker, "What Makes a Leader?" "What Leaders Really Do," "The Work of Leadership," "Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?" "Crucibles of Leadership," "Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve," "Seven Transformations of Leadership," "Discovering Your Authentic Leadership," and "In Praise of the Incomplete Leader."
Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
Brian Tracy - 2001
This new edition is revised and updated throughout, and includes brand new information on how to keep technology from dominating our time.
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
Stanley McChrystal - 2015
But when he took the helm in 2004, America was losing that war badly: despite vastly inferior resources and technology, Al Qaeda was outmaneuvering America’s most elite warriors. McChrystal came to realize that today’s faster, more interdependent world had overwhelmed the conventional, top-down hierarchy of the US military. Al Qaeda had seen the future: a decentralized network that could move quickly and strike ruthlessly. To defeat such an enemy, JSOC would have to discard a century of management wisdom, and pivot from a pursuit of mechanical efficiency to organic adaptability. Under McChrystal’s leadership, JSOC remade itself, in the midst of a grueling war, into something entirely new: a network that combined robust centralized communication with decentralized managerial authority. As a result, they beat back Al Qaeda. In this book, McChrystal shows not only how the military made that transition, but also how similar shifts are possible in all organizations, from large companies to startups to charities to governments. In a turbulent world, the best organizations think and act like a team of teams, embracing small groups that combine the freedom to experiment with a relentless drive to share what they’ve learned. Drawing on a wealth of evidence from his military career, the private sector, and sources as diverse as hospital emergency rooms and NASA’s space program, McChrystal frames the existential challenge facing today’s organizations, and presents a compelling, effective solution.