Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World


Stuart Diamond - 2010
     Based on more than 20 years of research and practice among 30,000 people in 45 countries, Getting More concludes that finding and valuing the other party s emotions and perceptions creates far more value than the conventional wisdom of power and logic. It is intended to provide better agreements for everyone no matter what they negotiate from jobs to kids to billion dollar deals to shopping. The book, a "New York Times "bestseller and #1 "Wall Street Journal "business best seller, is based on Professor Stuart Diamond s award-winning course at the Wharton Business School, where the course has been the most popular over 13 years. It challenges the conventional wisdom on every page, from win-win to BATNA to rationality to the use of power. Companies have made billions of dollars so far using his new model and parents have gotten their 4-year-olds to willingly brush their teeth and go to bed. Prof. Diamond draws from his experience as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at The New York Times, Harvard-trained attorney, Wharton MBA, U.N. Consultant in many countries and manager and executive in many sectors, including technology, agriculture, medical services, finance, energy and aviation. The ROI from reading "Getting "More will make it the best investment you make this year, says Rhys Dekle, the business development head of the Microsoft Games division, which produces X-Box. He added that the book was his team s best investment of the year too. The model was also used to quickly solve the 2008 Hollywood Writer s Strike. The advice is addressed through the insightful stories of more than 400 people who have used Prof. Diamond s tools with great success: A 20% savings on an item already on sale. An extra $300 million profit in a business. A woman from India getting out of her own arranged marriage. Better relationships with the family, including teenagers. Raises at work. Better jobs. Dealing with emotional situations. Meeting one s goals. Finding better things to trade. Solving cultural and political problems, sports conflicts, and ordinary arguments. The book is intended to be used in any situation. The most common response is life changing, beginning on page one. The most inspirational book I have read this year said David Simon, an attorney in San Francisco, CA. This book can change the world, says Craig Silverman, Investment Advisor, Long Island, NY"

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow


Matthew Skelton - 2019
    But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity.In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams.Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google


Scott Galloway - 2017
    Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong. For all that's been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway.Instead of buying the myths these compa-nies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions. How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they're almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? And as they race to become the world's first trillion-dollar company, can anyone chal-lenge them?In the same irreverent style that has made him one of the world's most celebrated business professors, Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can't match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.

The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field


Mike Michalowicz - 2012
    Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of “sell it—do it, sell it—do it” that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try.This is the exact situation Mike Michalowicz found himself in when he was trying to grow his first company. Although it was making steady money, there was never very much left over and he was chasing customers left and right, putting in twenty-eight-hour days, eight days a week. The punishing grind never let up. His company was alive but stunted, and he was barely breathing. That’s when he discovered an unlikely source of inspiration—pumpkin farmers.After reading an article about a local farmer who had dedicated his life to growing giant pump­kins, Michalowicz realized the same process could apply to growing a business. He tested the Pumpkin Plan on his own company and transformed it into a remarkable, multimillion-dollar industry leader. First he did it for himself. Then for others. And now you. So what is the Pumpkin Plan?Plant the right seeds: Don’t waste time doing a bunch of different things just to please your customers. Instead, identify the thing you do better than anyone else and focus all of your attention, money, and time on figuring out how to grow your company doing it. Weed out the losers: In a pumpkin patch small, rotten pumpkins stunt the growth of the robust, healthy ones. The same is true of customers. Figure out which customers add the most value and provide the best opportunities for sustained growth. Then ditch the worst of the worst. Nurture the winners: Once you figure out who your best customers are, blow their minds with care. Discover their unfulfilled needs, innovate to make their wishes come true, and overdeliver on every single promise.Full of stories of other successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconven­tional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its field.

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter (HBR Guide Series)


Harvard Business Review - 2011
    Problems often arise with unrealistic or vague agendas, off-track conversations, tuned-out participants who don’t know why they’re there, and follow-up notes that no one reads—or acts on. Meetings can feel like a waste of time. But when you invest a little energy in preparing yourself and your participants, you’ll stay focused, solve problems, gain consensus, and leave each meeting ready to take action.With input from over 20 experts combined with useful checklists, sample agendas, and follow-up memos, the HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter will teach you how to:• Set and communicate your meeting’s purpose• Invite the right people• Prepare an achievable agenda• Moderate a lively conversation• Regain control of a wayward meeting• Ensure follow-through without babysitting or haranguingArm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, from a source you trust. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World


Michael Hyatt - 2012
    In this straightforward how-to, he offers down-to-earth guidance on crafting an effective and meaningful online platform.In Platform, you will learn how to:Extend your influence, monetize it, and build a sustainable career. Get noticed and start earning money in an increasingly noisy world.  Learn to amplify, update, polish, and organize your content for success.Platform goes behind the scenes into the world of social media success. You’ll discover what bestselling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to gain contacts, connections, and followers and win customers in today’s crowded marketplace.With proven strategies, easy-to-replicate formulas, and practical tips, this book makes it easier, less expensive, and more possible than ever to stand out from the crowd and launch a business.

Secrets of Power Negotiating: Inside Secrets from a Master Negotiator


Roger Dawson - 1988
    Covers every aspect of the negotiating process with practical, proven advice: from beginning steps to critical final moves.

Venture Deals


Brad Feld - 2011
    It happens because VCs are experts in financings and most entrepreneurs are not. Brad and Jason are out to fix that problem with Venture Deals. This book is long overdue and badly needed."—Fred Wilson, Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures"Feld and Mendelson pack a graduate-level course into this energetic and accessible book.?The authors' frank style and incisive insight make this a must-read for high-growth company entrepreneurs, early-stage investors, and graduate students.?Start here if you want to understand venture capital deal structure and strategies.?I enthusiastically recommend."—Brad Bernthal, CU Boulder, Associate Clinical Professor ofLaw, Technology Policy, Entrepreneurial Law"A must-read book for entrepreneurs.?Brad and Jason demystify the overly complex world of term sheets and M&A, cutting through the legalese and focusing on what really matters.?That's a good thing not just for entrepreneurs, but also for venture capitalists, angels, and lawyers.?Having an educated entrepreneur on the other side of the table means you spend your time negotiating the important issues and ultimately get to the right deal faster."—Greg Gottesman, Managing Director, Madrona Venture Group"Venture Deals is a must-read for any entrepreneur contemplating or currently leading a venture-backed company. Brad and Jason are highly respected investors who shoot straight from the hip and tell it like it is, bringing a level of transparency to a process that is rarely well understood. It's like having a venture capitalist as a best friend who is looking out for your best interests and happy to answer all of your questions."—Emily Mendell, Vice President of Communications,National Venture Capital Association"The adventure of starting and growing a company can be exhilarating or excruciating—or both. Feld and Mendelson have done a masterful job of shedding light on what can either become one of the most helpful or dreadful experiences for entrepreneurs—accepting venture capital into their firm. This book takes the lid off the black box and helps entrepreneurs understand the economics and control provisions of working with a venture partner."—Lesa Mitchell, Vice President, Advancing Innovation, Kauffman Foundation

Stealing the Corner Office: The Winning Career Strategies They'll Never Teach You in Business School


Brendan Reid - 2014
    It is a unique collection of controversial but highly effective tactics for middle managers and aspiring executives who want to learn the real secrets for moving up the corporate ladder. Unlike virtually all other business books--which are based on the assumption that corporations are logical and fair--Stealing the Corner Office explores the unconventional tactics people less competent than you use to get ahead and stay ahead. It is your proven playbook to thrive and win in an imperfect corporate world.Stealing the Corner Office will teach you:How incompetent people so often get ahead, and what you can learn from them.How to make universally flawed corporate policies work in your favor.Why showing too much passion for your ideas can be career suicide.Why delivering results should never be your highest priority.These and many more controversial tactics will change the way you look at your career and how you manage projects, people, and priorities. Apply the 10 principles in Stealing the Corner Office and watch your career take off!

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures


Dan Roam - 2008
    Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers. Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply “get”. In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can’t draw. Drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools – tools that take advantage of everyone’s innate ability to look, see, imagine, and show. THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload


Cal Newport - 2021
    Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations--a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work. There was a time when tools like email felt cutting edge, but a thorough review of current evidence reveals that the hyperactive hive mind workflow they helped create has become a productivity disaster, reducing profitability and perhaps even slowing overall economic growth. Equally worrisome, it makes us miserable. Humans are simply not wired for constant digital communication.We have become so used to an inbox-driven workday that it's hard to imagine alternatives. But they do exist. Drawing on years of investigative reporting, author and computer science professor Cal Newport makes the case that our current approach to work is broken, then lays out a series of principles and concrete instructions for fixing it. In A World without Email, he argues for a workplace in which clear processes--not haphazard messaging--define how tasks are identified, assigned and reviewed. Each person works on fewer things (but does them better), and aggressive investment in support reduces the ever-increasing burden of administrative tasks. Above all else, important communication is streamlined, and inboxes and chat channels are no longer central to how work unfolds.The knowledge sector's evolution beyond the hyperactive hive mind is inevitable. The question is not whether a world without email is coming (it is), but whether you'll be ahead of this trend. If you're a CEO seeking a competitive edge, an entrepreneur convinced your productivity could be higher, or an employee exhausted by your inbox, A World Without Email will convince you that the time has come for bold changes, and will walk you through exactly how to make them happen.

How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age


Dale Carnegie - 2011
    The only diploma that hangs in Warren Buffett’s office is his certificate from Dale Carnegie Training. Lee Iacocca credits Carnegie for giving him the courage to speak in public. Dilbert creator Scott Adams called Carnegie’s teachings “life-changing.” In today’s world, where more and more of our communication takes place across wires and screens, Carnegie’s lessons have not only lasted but become all the more critical. Though he never could have predicted technology’s trajectory, Carnegie proves a wise and helpful teacher in this digital landscape. To demonstrate the many ways his lessons remain relevant, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., has reimagined his prescriptions and his advice for this difficult digital age. We may communicate today with different tools and with greater speed, but Carnegie’s advice on how to communicate, lead, and work efficiently remains priceless across the ages.

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal


Jim Loehr - 2003
    This groundbreaking New York Times bestseller has helped hundreds of thousands of people at work and at home balance stress and recovery and sustain high performance despite crushing workloads and 24/7 demands on their time. We live in digital time. Our pace is rushed, rapid-fire, and relentless. Facing crushing workloads, we try to cram as much as possible into every day. We're wired up, but we're melting down. Time management is no longer a viable solution. As bestselling authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz demonstrate in this groundbreaking book, managing energy, not time, is the key to enduring high performance as well as to health, happiness, and life balance. The Power of Full Engagement is a highly practical, scientifically based approach to managing your energy more skillfully both on and off the job by laying out the key training principles and provides a powerful, step-by-step program that will help you to: * Mobilize four key sources of energy * Balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal * Expand capacity in the same systematic way that elite athletes do * Create highly specific, positive energy management rituals to make lasting changes Above all, this book provides a life-changing road map to becoming more fully engaged on and off the job, meaning physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned.

Leaders Open Doors: A Radically Simple Leadership Approach to Lift People, Profits, and Performance


Bill Treasurer - 2013
    This radically simple concept is the heart of Leaders Open Doors.This book presents a fresh and unique take on leadership that will benefit experienced leaders and those just starting their leadership journeys. With a little courage, anyone at any level can be a leader.Drawing on two decades of experience, author and speaker, Bill Treasurer, in this new second edition, combines personal stories and anecdotes to illustrate how (and how not) to inspire people. He approaches these ideas with the belief that great leadership is not hierarchical--it is the peoples' willingness to take initiative and reach their goals that is crucial to successful leadership.

Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message


Tara Mohr - 2014
    Mohr’s work helping women play bigger has earned acclaim from the likes of Maria Shriver and Jillian Michaels, and has been featured on the Today show, CNN, and a host of other media outlets.   Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In gave many women new awareness about what kinds of changes they need to make to become more successful; yet most women need help implementing them. In the tradition of Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, Playing Big provides real, practical tools to help women quiet self-doubt, identify their callings, “unhook” from praise and criticism, unlearn counterproductive good girl habits, and begin taking bold action.   While not all women aspire to end up in the corner office, every woman aspires to something. Playing Big fills a major gap among women’s career books; it isn’t just for corporate women. The book offers tools to help every woman play bigger—whether she’s an executive, community volunteer, artist, or stay-at-home mom.   Thousands of women across the country have been transformed by Mohr’s program, and now this book makes the ideas and practices available to everyone who is ready to play big.