Who's Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success--And Won't Let You Fail


Keith Ferrazzi - 2009
    The real path to success in your work and in your life is through creating an inner circle of “lifeline relationships” – deep, close relationships with a few key trusted individuals who will offer the encouragement, feedback, and generous mutual support every one of us needs to reach our full potential. Whether your dream is to lead a company, be a top producer in your field, overcome the self-destructive habits that hold you back, lose weight or make a difference in the larger world, Who’s Got Your Back will give you the roadmap you’ve been looking for to achieve the success you deserve.Keith Ferrazzi, the internationally renowned thought leader, consultant, and bestselling author of Never Eat Alone, shows us that becoming a winner in any field of endeavor requires a trusted team of advisors who can offer guidance and help to hold us accountable to achieving our goals. It is the reason PH.D candidates have advisor teams, top executives have boards, world class athletes have fitness coaches, and presidents have cabinets. In this step-by-step guide to the powerful principles behind personal growth and change, you’ll learn how to:· Master the mindsets that will help you to build deeper, more trusting “ lifeline relationships” · Overcome the career-crippling habits that hold you back, once and for all · Get further, faster by setting goals in a dramatically more powerful way· Use “sparring” as a productive tool to make the decisions that will fuel personal success· Replace the yes men in your life with those who get it and care – and will hold you accountable to achieving your goals· Lower your guard and let others help!None of us can do it alone. We need the perspective and advice of a trusted team. And in Who’s Got Your Back, Keith Ferrazzi shows us how to put our own “dream team” together.

Principles of Product Management: How to Land a PM Job and Launch Your Product Career


Peter Yang - 2019
    The book has three parts: Principles: Part one covers the leadership principles that PMs use to lead their team to overcome adversity. When your product fails to gain traction, when your team falls apart, or when your manager gives you tough feedback—these are all opportunities to learn principles that will help you succeed. Product development: Part two covers how PMs at Facebook, Amazon, and other top companies build products. We'll walk through the end-to-end product development process— from understanding the customer problem to identifying the right product to build to executing with your team to bring the product to market. Getting the job: Part three covers how you can land a PM job and reach the interview stage at the right company. We'll prep you for the three most common types of PM interviews— product sense, execution, and behavioral—with detailed frameworks and examples for each. Hear directly from product leaders at Airbnb, Amazon, Google, and more on: How to overcome challenging situations from a VP of Product at Amazon. How to build a great product roadmap from product leaders at LinkedIn and Airbnb. How Google, Airbnb, and other top companies evaluate PM candidates from leaders at those companies. How PMs can grow their career from a Director at Instagram and Twitter. Table of Contents1. PrinciplesTake OwnershipPrioritize and ExecuteStart with WhyFind the TruthBe Radically TransparentBe Honest with Yourself2. Product DevelopmentProduct Development LoopUnderstanding the Customer ProblemSelecting a Goal MetricMission, Vision, and StrategyBuilding a Product RoadmapDefining Product RequirementsGreat Project ManagementEffective CommunicationMaking Good Decisions3. Getting the JobPreparing for the TransitionMaking the TransitionFinding the Right CompanyAcing your PM InterviewsProduct Sense InterviewExecution InterviewBehavioral InterviewYour First 30 Days4. Product Leader Interviews

Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence


Chris Mamula - 2019
    And then, there are three suburban dads just trying to make the world a little bit better. Meet Brad Barrett and Jonathan Mendonsa of the award-winning Choose FI podcast and Chris Mamula of the popular blog “Can I Retire Yet?”. They have walked the talk and now want to share their knowledge with you. Together, these three regular guys will show you how they did something extraordinary. They are all financially independent and doing meaningful work that fulfills them. All three left their corporate 9 to 5 jobs and are reaping the benefits of extra time with their families. Mirroring the format of the popular Choose FI podcast, this book pulls from the collective knowledge of those who have decided to build a lifestyle around their passions instead of allowing their finances to dictate their future. These stories demonstrate universal principles, giving you the opportunity to pick the elements that are the most applicable to your financial situation and “choose your own adventure.”FI or Financial Independence is the new debt-free and getting back to 0 is just the beginning of a wonderful journey. Whether you have mountains of debt now or are recently debt free and wondering what to do next, Choose FI : Your Blueprint to Financial Independence will give you the information to guide your next move.

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco


Bryan Burrough - 1989
    An enduring masterpiece of investigative journalism by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, it includes a new afterword by the authors that brings this remarkable story of greed and double-dealings up to date twenty years after the famed deal. The Los Angeles Times calls Barbarians at the Gate, “Superlative.” The Chicago Tribune raves, “It’s hard to imagine a better story...and it’s hard to imagine a better account.” And in an era of spectacular business crashes and federal bailouts, it still stands as a valuable cautionary tale that must be heeded.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions


Dan Ariely - 2008
    We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same "types" of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable--making us "predictably" irrational.From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. "Predictably Irrational" will change the way we interact with the world--one small decision at a time.

HR Transformation: Building Human Resources from the Outside in


Dave Ulrich - 2009
    Businesses of the future need all hands on deck when implementing new ways to stimulate grown and cost efficiency, and this includes human resources. In HR Transformation, the team presents a four-phase model of transformation that shows you step-by-step how to make meaningful progress in contributing to the performance of your company by redesigning HR to work as a strategic partnership.From the "#1 Management Educator & Guru"-BusinessWeek"The authors have presented us with an accessible, readable, and practical illustration of a clear path for successful strategy execution in a complex environment." -Majed Al Romaithi, Executive Director, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority"HR can only transform organizations if it transforms HR. This book shows us how. HR Transformation would have been important in the past-it is critical now! We are entering a new world. HR Transformation can help our organizations thrive in the midst of uncertainty." -Marshall Goldsmith, author of the Wall Street Journal bestsellers What Got You Here Won't Get You There and Succession: Are You Ready? "Ulrich and his colleagues talk tough and provide a detailed blueprint for how those of us in the field can use our own tools to do a "720-degree" evaluation of ourselves. We cannot contribute to the success of our organizations until we upgrade ourselves." -Linda A. Hill, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School"Based on groundbreaking research with hundreds of companies and thousands of executives, HR Transformation provides compelling theory and practical tools to create alignment between strategy, systems, and people. This important book should be read carefully by leadership teams everywhere." -Mark Huselid, Professor of HR Strategy, Rutgers University, Co-author of The HR Scorecard, The Workforce Scorecard, and The Differentiated WorkforceTurn to the front matter for more than thirty rousing endorsements of HR Transformation.INCLUDES CASE STUDIES FROM Intel, Pfizer, Takeda, Flextronics

The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happier


Cy Wakeman - 2013
    In The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, Cy Wakeman shows how to calculate how your true value to your organization by understanding your current and future potential against your emotional expense--the toll your actions and attitudes take on the people around you. With Cy's clear, straight-to-the-point advice, you can confront and reduce your emotional costliness, become an invaluable member of your team, and even learn to love your job again.Reveals a formula for measuring your current performance, future potential, and the biggest detractor, your emotional expense Shares real-world advice for quickly boosting your value and becoming a highly-valued, sought after employee and teammate Builds on the lessons in Reality-Based Leadership, Cy Wakeman's first book for leaders and managers The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace is the essential guide for boosting your value, owning your career, and becoming the kind of employee no organization can afford to lose.

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works


A.G. Lafley - 2013
    But it is hard. It’s hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn’t happen in most companies.Now two of today’s best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy—explaining what it’s for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G’s sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. Now, drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean, this book shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success—where to play and how to win.The result is a playbook for winning. Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are:• What is our winning aspiration?• Where will we play?• How will we win?• What capabilities must we have in place to win?• What management systems are required to support our choices?The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach—and then making the right choices to support it—makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.

Small Data: The Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends


Martin Lindstrom - 2016
    You’ll learn…• How a noise reduction headset at 35,000 feet led to the creation of Pepsi’s new trademarked signature sound.• How a worn down sneaker discovered in the home of an 11-year-old German boy led to LEGO’s incredible turnaround.• How a magnet found on a fridge in Siberia resulted in a U.S. supermarket revolution.• How a toy stuffed bear in a girl’s bedroom helped revolutionize a fashion retailer’s 1,000 stores in 20 different countries.• How an ordinary bracelet helped Jenny Craig increase customer loyalty by 159% in less than a year.• How the ergonomic layout of a car dashboard led to the redesign of the Roomba vacuum.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future


Peter Thiel - 2014
    In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

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.

Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-Of-Fame Career in Advertising


Phil Dusenberry - 2005
    A good idea can inspire one commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials. An insight gives you an entirely new way of thinking about your business. Consider just a few of the breakthrough insights that Dusenberry's agency, BBDO, has offered their clients over the years: That General Electric's unifying tagline should be ?We bring good things to life.? That Pepsi should be targeting the ?Pepsi Generation.? That Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection theme should be ?Morning in America.? That Visa should compare itself with American Express, not MasterCard. Talk about moving the needle!Dusenberry argues that these brainstorms don?t come out of thin air, even at a world class organization like BBDO. They are actually the result of a rigorous and disciplined process of insight generation, one that any manager in any type of business can adopt. Dusenberry explains this process?Research, Analysis, Insight, Strategy, and Execution (RAISE)?in plain English. And he offers examples of some of the greatest business insights of our time, from the birth of Federal Express to the positioning of HBO."Moving the Needle" will help businesspeople get to the heart of their toughest problems.

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World


Tom Wright - 2018
    The dust had yet to settle on the global financial crisis in 2009 when an unlikely Wharton grad was setting in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Billion Dollar Whale will become a classic, harrowing parable about the financial world in the twenty-first century.

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.

The Customer Service Revolution: Overthrow Conventional Business, Inspire Employees, and Change the World


John Dijulius - 2015
    As a result of this Customer service revolution, people are being treated differently, better, and in a way like never before. This is a result of how companies and management are treating their employees and how employees are treating each other and the Customer—which ultimately permeates into people’s personal lives at home and in their communities. Can the way you run your business or treat your Customers have an effect on the world at large? John DiJulius will show you just that! Drawing on years of experience consulting with the top customer service companies around the world and in his role building his first business, John Robert’s Spa, into one of the top 20 salons in the US, DiJulius will show you exactly how to create your very own Customer service revolution and make price irrelevant.