The secret for creating magic in our careers, our organizations, and our lives is simple: outstanding leadership--the kind that inspires employees, delights customers, and achieves extraordinary business results. No one knows more about this kind of leadership than Lee Cockerell, the man who ran Walt Disney World(R) Resort operations for over a decade. And in Creating Magic, he shares the leadership principles that not only guided his own journey from a poor farm boy in Oklahoma to the head of operations for a multibillion dollar enterprise, but that also soon came to form the cultural bedrock of the world's number one vacation destination. But as Lee demonstrates, great leadership isn't about mastering impossibly complex management theories. We can all become outstanding leaders by following the ten practical, common sense strategies outlined in this remarkable book. As straightforward as they are profound, these leadership lessons include: Everyone is important.Make your people your brand. Burn the free fuel: appreciation, recognition, and encouragement. Give people a purpose, not just a job. Combining surprising business wisdom with insightful and entertaining stories from Lee's four decades on the front lines of some of the world's best-run companies, Creating Magic shows all of us - from small business owners to managers at every level - how to become better leaders by infusing quality, character, courage, enthusiasm, and integrity into our workplace and into our lives.

    The One Thing explains the success habit to overcome the six lies that block our success, beat the seven thieves that steal time, and leverage the laws of purpose, priority, and productivity.

    And his advice starts with one simple concept: focus! Instead of trying to master four thousand strategies to improve your business, zero in on the few essential skill areas that make the big difference. Too many managers jump at every new trend, but don’t stick with any of them. Instead, says Holmes, focus on twelve critical areas of improvement—one at a time—and practice them over and over with pigheaded discipline. The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you how to tune up and soup up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve. Like a tennis player who hits nothing but backhands for a few hours a week to perfect his game, you can systematically improve each key area. Holmes offers proven strategies for: • Management: Teach your people how to work smarter, not harder • Marketing: Get more bang from your Web site, advertising, trade shows, and public relations • Sales: Perfect every sales interaction by working on sales, not just in sales The Ultimate Sales Machine will put you and your company on a path to success and help you stay there!

    As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships--so that everyone wins. In "Never Eat Alone," Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps--and inner mindset--he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his Rolodex, people he has helped and who have helped him. The son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, Ferrazzi first used his remarkable ability to connect with others to pave the way to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and several top executive posts. Not yet out of his thirties, he developed a network of relationships that stretched from Washington's corridors of power to Hollywood's A-list, leading to him being named one of Crain's 40 Under 40 and selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the Davos World Economic Forum. Ferrazzi's form of connecting to the world around him is based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends. Ferrazzi distinguishes genuine relationship-building from the crude, desperate glad-handling usually associated with "networking." He then distills his system of reaching out to people into practical, proven principles. Among them: Don't keep score: It's never simply about getting what you want. It's about getting what you want and making sure that the people who are important to you get what they want, too. "Ping" constantly: The Ins and Outs of reaching out to those in your circle of contacts all the time--not just when you need something. Never eat alone: The dynamics of status are the same whether you're working at a corporation or attending a society event-- "invisibility" is a fate worse than failure. In the course of the book, Ferrazzi outlines the timeless strategies shared by the world's most connected individuals, from Katherine Graham to Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan to the Dalai Lama. Chock full of specific advice on handling rejection, getting past gatekeepers, becoming a "conference commando," and more, "Never Eat Alone" is destined to take its place alongside "How to Win Friends and Influence People" as an inspirational classic.

    New York Times BestsellerWhen Captain Abrashoff took over as commander of USS Benfold, it was like a business that had all the latest technology but only some of the productivity. Knowing that responsibility for improving performance rested with him, he realized he had to improve his own leadership skills before he could improve his ship. Within months, he created a crew of confident and inspired problem-solvers eager to take the initiative and responsibility for their actions. The slogan on board became "It's your ship," and Benfold was soon recognized far and wide as a model of naval efficiency. How did Abrashoff do it? Against the backdrop of today's United States Navy, Abrashoff shares his secrets of successful management including: See the ship through the eyes of the crew: By soliciting a sailor's suggestions, Abrashoff drastically reduced tedious chores that provided little additional value.Communicate, communicate, communicate: The more Abrashoff communicated the plan, the better the crew's performance. His crew eventually started calling him "Megaphone Mike," since they heard from him so often.Create discipline by focusing on purpose: Discipline skyrocketed when Abrashoff's crew believed that what they were doing was important.Listen aggressively: After learning that many sailors wanted to use the GI Bill, Abrashoff brought a test official aboard the ship-and held the SATs forty miles off the Iraqi coast. From achieving amazing cost savings to winning the highest gunnery score in the Pacific Fleet, Captain Abrashoff's extraordinary campaign sent shock waves through the U.S. Navy. It can help you change the course of your ship, no matter where your business battles are fought.

    We’re building more products than ever before, but most of them fail—not because we can’t complete what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That’s the promise of Running Lean.In this inspiring book, Ash Maurya takes you through an exacting strategy for achieving a "product/market fit" for your fledgling venture, based on his own experience in building a wide array of products from high-tech to no-tech. Throughout, he builds on the ideas and concepts of several innovative methodologies, including the Lean Startup, Customer Development, and bootstrapping.Running Lean is an ideal tool for business managers, CEOs, small business owners, developers and programmers, and anyone who’s interested in starting a business project.Find a problem worth solving, then define a solutionEngage your customers throughout the development cycleContinually test your product with smaller, faster iterationsBuild a feature, measure customer response, and verify/refute the ideaKnow when to "pivot" by changing your plan’s courseMaximize your efforts for speed, learning, and focusLearn the ideal time to raise your "big round" of fundingGet on track with The Lean Series Presented by Eric Ries—bestselling author of The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses—The Lean Series gives you solid footing in a proven methodology that will help your business succeed.

    Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.

    Desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive.Given that the status quo is so potent, how can we change ourselves and our organizations?In Immunity to Change, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey show how our individual beliefs--along with the collective mind-sets in our organizations--combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. By revealing how this mechanism holds us back, Kegan and Lahey give us the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can bring our organizations forward with us.This persuasive and practical book, filled with hands-on diagnostics and compelling case studies, delivers the tools you need to overcome the forces of inertia and transform your life and your work.

    Covey's eldest son comes a revolutionary new path towards productivity and satisfaction. Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents —is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization. For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time–killing, bureaucratic check–and–balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

    Lean Analytics steers you in the right direction.This book shows you how to validate your initial idea, find the right customers, decide what to build, how to monetize your business, and how to spread the word. Packed with more than thirty case studies and insights from over a hundred business experts, Lean Analytics provides you with hard-won, real-world information no entrepreneur can afford to go without.Understand Lean Startup, analytics fundamentals, and the data-driven mindsetLook at six sample business models and how they map to new ventures of all sizesFind the One Metric That Matters to youLearn how to draw a line in the sand, so you’ll know it’s time to move forwardApply Lean Analytics principles to large enterprises and established products

     Featuring a new foreword by Ariel Emanuel and Patrick WhitesellMark H. McCormack, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in American business, is widely credited as the founder of the modern-day sports marketing industry. On a handshake with Arnold Palmer and less than a thousand dollars, he started International Management Group and, over a four-decade period, built the company into a multimillion-dollar enterprise with offices in more than forty countries.To this day, McCormack's business classic remains a must-read for executives and managers at every level. Relating his proven method of "applied people sense" in key chapters on sales, negotiation, reading others and yourself, and executive time management, McCormack presents powerful real-world guidance on- the secret life of a deal - management philosophies that don't work (and one that does) - the key to running a meeting--and how to attend one - the positive use of negative reinforcement - proven ways to observe aggressively and take the edge - and much more Praise for What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School "Incisive, intelligent, and witty, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School is a sure winner--like the author himself. Reading it has taught me a lot."--Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman, News Corp, chairman and CEO, 21st Century Fox "Clear, concise, and informative . . . Like a good mentor, this book will be a valuable aid throughout your business career."--Herbert J. Siegel, chairman, Chris-Craft Industries, Inc."Mark McCormack describes the approach I have personally seen him adopt, which has not only contributed to the growth of his business, but mine as well."--Arnold Palmer"There have been what we love to call dynasties in every sport. IMG has been different. What this one brilliant man, Mark McCormack, created is the only dynasty ever over all sport."--Frank Deford, senior contributing writer, Sports Illustrated

    

      Still in his early thirties, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already visited more than 175 nations – and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck.  Rather, he has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he uses what he earns both to support his life of adventure and to give back.    There are many others like Chris – those who’ve found ways to opt out of traditional employment and create the time and income to pursue what they find meaningful.  Sometimes, achieving that perfect blend of passion and income doesn’t depend on shelving what you currently do.  You can start small with your venture, committing little time or money, and wait to take the real plunge when you're sure it's successful.   In preparing to write this book, Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and from that group he’s chosen to focus on the 50 most intriguing case studies.  In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their personal passions that could be monetized, and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom and fulfillment.   Here, finally, distilled into one easy-to-use guide, are the most valuable lessons from those who’ve learned how to turn what they do into a gateway to self-fulfillment.  It’s all about finding the intersection between your “expertise” – even if you don’t consider it such -- and what other people will pay for.  You don’t need an MBA, a business plan or even employees.  All you need is a product or service that springs from what you love to do anyway, people willing to pay, and a way to get paid.   Not content to talk in generalities, Chris tells you exactly how many dollars his group of unexpected entrepreneurs required to get their projects up and running; what these individuals did in the first weeks and months to generate significant cash; some of the key mistakes they made along the way, and the crucial insights that made the business stick.  Among Chris’s key principles: if you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at something else; never teach a man to fish – sell him the fish instead; and in the battle between planning and action, action wins.   In ancient times, people who were dissatisfied with their lives dreamed of finding magic lamps, buried treasure, or streets paved with gold.  Today, we know that it’s up to us to change our lives.  And the best part is, if we change our own life, we can help others change theirs.  This remarkable book will start you on your way.

    It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche web site frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level recruiters, Facebook was MySpace's sorry step-brother, and Uber was a scrappy upstart that didn't stand a chance against the Goliath that was New York City Yellow Cabs.So how did these companies grow from these humble beginnings into the powerhouses they are today? Contrary to popular belief, they didn't explode to massive worldwide popularity simply by building a great product then crossing their fingers and hoping it would catch on. There was a studied, carefully implemented methodology behind these companies' extraordinary rise. That methodology is called Growth Hacking, and it's practitioners include not just today's hottest start-ups, but also companies like IBM, Walmart, and Microsoft as well as the millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, managers and executives who make up the community of GrowthHackers.com.Think of the Growth Hacking methodology as doing for market-share growth what Lean Start-Up did for product development, and Scrum did for productivity. It involves cross-functional teams and rapid-tempo testing and iteration that focuses customers attaining them, retaining them, engaging them, and motivating them to come back and buy more. An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks readers through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must read for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manger looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.

    The problem is you’re busy executing on today’s demands. You know you have to carve out time from your day job to build your leadership skills, but it’s easy to let immediate problems and old mind-sets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra—an expert on professional leadership and development and a renowned professor at INSEAD, a leading international business school—shows how managers and executives at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, she offers advice to help you:• Redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions• Diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a bigger range of stakeholders• Become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar—and possibly outdated—leadership style to evolveIbarra turns the usual “think first and then act” philosophy on its head by arguing that doing these three things will help you learn through action and will increase what she calls your outsight—the valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation. As opposed to insight, outsight will then help change the way you think as a leader: about what kind of work is important; how you should invest your time; why and which relationships matter in informing and supporting your leadership; and, ultimately, who you want to become.Packed with self-assessments and practical advice to help define your most pressing leadership challenges, this book will help you devise a plan of action to become a better leader and move your career to the next level. It’s time to learn by doing.