Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership (NelsonFree)


Tim Irwin - 2009
    Derailed chronicles the collapse of six high-profile CEOs, the factors that drove their downfalls, and the lessons that we can learn to stay on track and avoid derailing our own lives and careers.The story of the fallen CEO has become a cultural fixture: veering off course with the force of a train careening off its tracks, leaving fiery wreckage and devastating injury throughout the organization. These executives are often the smartest and most respected individuals in their industries, with glittering resumes and histories of successful leadership. Yet they astonish us by driving the train dramatically off course, blinded by unchecked power and arrogance.Dr. Tim Irwin believes that these leaders suffer from failures of character that are common to each of us--even the most capable individuals. Deficits in authenticity, humility, self-management, and courage become more dangerous as we take on more leadership, and can cause us to ignore glaring signals that might otherwise save us from catastrophic demise. Derailed files the collapse of six high-profile CEOs (Robert Nardelli ? Home Depot, Carly Fiorina - HP, Durk Jager ? Proctor and Gamble, Steven Heyer ? Starwood Hotels, Frank Raines ? Fannie Mae, Dick Fuld ? Lehman Brothers) and the factors that drove their downfalls, finding that derailment actually happens long before the crash and can be avoided. Derailed explains the character qualities that are essential for successful leadership and how to cultivate them so that we can avoid being derailed.

The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work


Teresa Amabile - 2011
    The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly.As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees’ inner work lives. But it’s forward momentum in meaningful work—progress—that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day.The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts—events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy—and (2) nourishers—interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality.Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people’s performance.

Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work


Bill Burnett - 2020
    They have answers" --The NYT)--a job-changing, outlook-changing, life-changing book that shows us how to transform our work lives and create a dream job that is meaningful without necessarily changing the job we have.Dysfunctional Belief: I'm stuck in a lousy situation (and there's nothing I can do about it).Reframe: I'm stuck in a lousy situation (and I'm finding the problems and the solutions).Bill Burnett and Dave Evans successfully taught graduate and undergraduate students at Stanford University and readers of their best-selling book, Designing Your Life ("The prototype for a happy life." --Brian Lehrer, NPR), that designers don't analyze, worry, think, complain their way forward; they build their way forward. In Designing Your Work Life, Burnett and Evans show us how design thinking can transform our present job and our experience of work in general by utilizing the designer mindsets: Curiosity. Reframing. Radical collaboration. Awareness. Bias to action. Storytelling.Dysfunctional Belief: Good enough isn't good enough.Reframe: Good enough is GREAT--for now. Burnett and Evans show us how, with tools, tips, and ideas, to enjoy what we have and to live in a state of "good enough, for now," one of the strongest, most effective reframes there is, and how this idea, once understood and accepted, can make new possibilities available, giving us the energy to enjoy the present moment and allowing us to begin to prototype possible futures. And if we want to quit? Burnett and Evans show us how to use the job we have to get the job we want (in another company), and show us as well, the art and science of quitting (leave the campsite better than we found it), using the power of the quit design to reframe how we finish our current job and get a better one. They write, as well, about how the work world is changing as the automation of work increases (hello Alexa, artificial intelligence, drones, and robots); how thinking like a designer can make us flexible, and ready to adapt to change . . .

How a Foreign Chocolate won Indian Hearts: The Cadbury Story (Rupa Quick Reads)


Anisha Motwani - 2017
    The remarkable story of the brand that was able to pull off the near-impossible challenge of integrating itself into the food habits of a nation strongly habituated to eating indigenous sweets is recounted here. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the Cadbury Dairy Milk journey in India over the last six decades.

The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer


Jeffrey K. Liker - 2003
    Less inventory. The highest quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer. In factories around the globe, Toyota consistently raises the bar for manufacturing, product development, and process excellence. The result is an amazing business success story: steadily taking market share from price-cutting competitors, earning far more profit than any other automaker, and winning the praise of business leaders worldwide.The Toyota Way reveals the management principles behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability. Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a renowned authority on Toyota's Lean methods, explains how you can adopt these principles--known as the "Toyota Production System" or "Lean Production"--to improve the speed of your business processes, improve product and service quality, and cut costs, no matter what your industry.Drawing on his extensive research on Toyota, Dr. Liker shares his insights into the foundational principles at work in the Toyota culture. He explains how the Toyota Production System evolved as a new paradigm of manufacturing excellence, transforming businesses across industries. You'll learn how Toyota fosters employee involvement at all levels, discover the difference between traditional process improvement and Toyota's Lean improvement, and learn why companies often think they are Lean--but aren't.

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."

Art of Leadership


J. Donald Walters - 2001
    Most leaders need reminding everyday that with their privileges comes responsibility and obligation. If any young man or woman seeking to become a leader and not a manager only reads one book on leadership, let it be this one!

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence


Daniel Goleman - 2002
    Looks at the role of emotional intelligence in leadership, discussing the characteristics of a good leader and leadership styles, and outlines the steps to becoming an effective leader.

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.

Now, Discover Your Strengths: The revolutionary Gallup program that shows you how to develop your unique talents and strengths


Marcus Buckingham - 2001
    This updated assessment includes reports and resources that go far beyond the standardized reports of the older assessment by providing you with personalized insight statements unique to your specific combination of strengths.Many people have little sense of their talents and strengths, much less the ability to build their lives around them. Instead, they are raised and taught to become experts in their weaknesses — and spend their lives trying to fix them — while their strengths lie dormant. Led by Don Clifton, the Father of Strengths-Based Psychology, Gallup created a revolutionary program to help people identify their talents; develop them into strengths; and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance. Twenty years ago, Gallup released Now, Discover Your Strengths to bring this program to the world. At the heart of this book is CliftonStrengths, the assessment that is the product of decades of research and hundreds of thousands of interviews to identify the most prevalent human strengths. CliftonStrengths reveals 34 dominant talent themes that you can translate into personal and career success. To develop this assessment, Gallup conducted psychological profiles with more than 2 million individuals to help people around the world focus and perfect these themes. Since Now, Discover Your Strengths was first released two decades ago, more than 20 million people worldwide have taken the CliftonStrengths assessment. The 20th anniversary edition includes a unique access code to take CliftonStrengths — previously known as StrengthsFinder 2.0 — which is a significantly more robust program than the assessment that appeared in the original edition of the book. This web-based assessment analyzes your instinctive reactions and immediately presents you with your top five themes. Once you know which of the 34 themes you lead with — such as Achiever, Activator, Empathy, Futuristic and Strategic — the book will show you how to use your top themes for your own development, for your success as a manager and for the success of your organization. With accessible and profound insights into how to turn talents into strengths, and with immediate online feedback from the CliftonStrengths assessment at its core, Now, Discover Your Strengths is one of the most groundbreaking and powerful business books ever written.

How to Make Meetings Work!: The New Interaction Method


David Straus - 1976
    Demonstrating how time and people can be better used in meetings, this thorough manual is indispensable for any organization--from large corporations to the PTA.

Love Works: Seven Timeless Principles for Effective Leaders


Joel Manby - 2012
    After the show aired, many of the 18 million viewers wrote to him about the profound impact of his servant leadership. How does a person achieve that level of success without arrogance or pride? In Love Works, Joel Manby introduces us to the power of Christlike love in the workplace. After years of leading thousands of men and women, Manby has proven that leading with love is effective, even in a business environment. Manby challenges leaders to allow integrity and faith to guide leadership decisions, outlining seven time-proven principles that break down the natural walls within corporate cultures, empowering managers and employees, disarming difficulties, and cultivating an atmosphere that builds long-term success. Manby also leverages the undeniable truth that love builds healthy relationships at home---why not use the same behavior to build healthy relationships at work?

The Cycle: A Practical Approach to Managing Arts Organizations


Michael M. Kaiser - 2013
    According to Kaiser, successful arts organizations pursue strong programmatic marketing campaigns that compel people to buy tickets, enroll in classes, and so on—in short, to participate in the organization’s programs. Additionally, they create exciting activities that draw people to the organization as a whole. This institutional marketing creates a sense of enthusiasm that attracts donors, board members, and volunteers. Kaiser calls this group of external supporters the family. When this hidden engine is humming, staff, board, and audience members, artists, and donors feel confidence in the future. Resources are reinvested in more and better art, which is marketed aggressively; as a result, the “family” continues to grow, providing even more resources. This self-reinforcing cycle underlies the activities of all healthy arts organizations, and the theory behind it can be used as a diagnostic tool to reveal—and remedy—the problems of troubled ones. This book addresses each element of the cycle in the hope that more arts organizations around the globe—from orchestras, theaters, museums, opera companies, and classical and modern dance organizations to service organizations and other not-for-profit cultural institutions—will be able to sustain remarkable creativity, pay the bills, and have fun doing so!

Essentials of Contemporary Management


Gareth R. Jones - 2003
    Jones and George are dedicated to the challenge of "Making It Real" for students. The authors present management in a way that makes its relevance obvious even to students who might lack exposure to a "real-life" management context. This is accomplished thru a diverse set of examples, and the unique, and most popular feature of the text, the "Manager as a Person" Chapter 2. This chapter discusses managers as real people with their own personalities, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and problems and this theme is carried thru the remaining chapters. This text also discusses the importance of management competencies--the specific set of skills, abilities, and experiences that gives one manager the ability to perform at a higher level than another in a specific context. The themes of diversity, ethics, globalization, and information technology are integrated throughout.

Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success


Rory Vaden - 2012
    But as popular speaker and strategist Rory Vaden explains, we live in an "escalator world"-one that's filled with shortcuts, quick fixes, and distractions that make it all too easy to slide into procrastination, compromise, and mediocrity. What seems like an easier path is really much harder in the end-and, most important, it won't take you where you want to go.How do successful people stay focused and achieve results? This lively and insightful guide presents a simple program for taking the stairs-that is, for overcoming the temptations of quick fixes and procrastination, conquering creative avoidance, and transcending personal setbacks in order to tackle the work that leads to real success.Whatever your goals are, Rory Vaden's proven approach will get you there-one stair at a time.