Book picks similar to
Going for It!: How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur by Victor Kiam
biography
business
executive-inspiration
inc-inspiring-reads
Design Crazy: Good Looks, Hot Tempers, and True Genius at Apple
Max Chafkin - 2013
is one of the most successful—and influential—companies of our time, the transformational innovator that made computers not just personal but beautiful everyday objects. Technology met design, and our culture was altered forever.And yet very little is known about life inside Apple. The company is pathologically secretive—even with its own designers—about how it comes up with its groundbreaking products: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and the next “insanely great” thing on the horizon. Here, for the first time, the men and women who worked for and alongside Steve Jobs share their remarkable, nearly forty-year-old story. How Apple survived nearly catastrophic failure early on. How Jobs and his team came to understand and execute design like no one else. And how their philosophy ultimately changed the world.This Fast Company/Byliner Original is unlike any other book about Apple. Author Max Chafkin led a team of “Fast Company” reporters that spent months interviewing more than fifty former Apple execs and insiders, many of whom had never spoken publicly about their work. The result is a compelling and deeply revealing oral history of how design evolved at the most creative enterprise of our time, the company that one entrepreneur says “taught the world taste.”In these interviews, former colleagues describe Jobs at his most brilliant and bombastic—hurling unsatisfactory products across the lab and insulting employees, yet also singling out and celebrating craftsmanship and original work. Without a doubt, Jobs is the single most important figure in the company’s history. But overlooked in Apple’s carefully cultivated mythology are the other ingenious men and women who’ve left an indelible mark on Apple, some of whom think they deserve much more of the credit. At Apple, the stakes were big, and so were the egos.“Design Crazy” takes us behind the mystique and reveals Apple to be a deeply misunderstood company. And the greatest business story of the past two decades is far from over. Two years after the death of Steve Jobs, with many of his former colleagues now at startups like Tesla, Evernote, and Nest Labs, some think the end of Apple’s dominance is only a matter of time. The company has risen to the challenge before, but still the question lingers: Can Apple be Apple without Jobs?ABOUT THE AUTHORMax Chafkin is a contributing writer with “Fast Company.” His work has also been published in “Inc.”, “Vanity Fair,” “The New York Times Magazine,” and “The Best Business Writing 2012.” He lives in Brooklyn.
The Case of the Bonsai Manager: Lessons from Nature on Growing
R. Gopalakrishnan - 2009
Will take 25-35 days
FEARVANA: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth and Happiness
Akshay Nanavati - 2017
When harnessed, these forces can be our greatest source of strength.Weaving together inspiring stories, in-depth research in neuroscience, psychology and spirituality, practical insight, and actionable strategies, Fearvana teaches the science of how to transform all your seemingly negative emotions into health, wealth and happiness.Fearvana’s revolutionary approach shatters conventional wisdom, giving you the tools to leverage your fear, stress and anxiety to accomplish anything you set your mind to. By laying out clear, proven and actionable steps to find bliss through suffering, Fearvana will help you develop an unstoppable mind. This is the essential guide for you to overcome any barrier standing between you are now and where you want to be.
Sandler Success Principles: 11 Insights that will change the way you Think and Sell
David H. Mattson - 2012
Now they are revealed for you to learn and use in your own business and career. A remarkable and sometimes painful part of the process is uncovering the truth about yourself, including how your self-image was shaped sometimes carelessly and perhaps even cruelly. As you grasp the influence of these “old tapes,” you see how you have unknowingly sabotaged your potential for being at the top tier of sales professionals. You may be astonished to discover what inner dialogue and even demons you now may choose to control and override. The results? You enjoy a significant advantage over those you seek to impress and persuade, and master a predictable way to reach and exceed your career, business and financial goals. The enormous benefits of self-knowledge and imaginative new tools for self-management are at the heart of the challenging and exhilarating lifelong process of implementing the Sandler Success Principles.
Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want
Linda Babcock - 2008
Now they've developed the action plan that women all over the country requested - a guide to negotiation that starts before you get to the bargaining table.Ask for It explains why it's essential to ask (men do it all the time) and teaches you how to ask effectively, in ways that feel comfortable to you as a woman. Whether you currently avoid negotiating like the plague or consider yourself hard-charging and fearless, Babcock and Laschever's compelling stories of real women will help you recognize how much more you deserve whether it's a raise, that overdue promotion, an exciting new assignment, or even extra help around the house. Their four-phase program, backed by years of research, will show you how to identify what you're really worth, maximize your bargaining power, develop the best strategy for your situation, and manage the reactions and emotions that may arise on both sides. Guided step-by-step, you'll learn how to draw on the special strengths you bring to the negotiating table to reach agreements that benefit everyone involved.This collaborative, problem-solving approach will propel you to new places both professionally and personally and open doors you thought were closed. Because if you never hear no, you're not asking enough.
Resilience: Navigating Life, Loss and the Road to Success
Lisa Lisson - 2017
One night, after putting their four children to bed, her husband, Patrick, marvelled that their lives seemed perfectly happy.Just a few hours later, everything changed.One moment Lisa was sleeping beside Patrick, and the next, she was kneeling on the floor beside his unconscious body frantically administering CPR. Patrick had had a massive heart attack and was in a coma, and the doctors were blunt: there was no hope. But for the next two years, Lisa stood by his side and awaited a miracle, while continuing to balance life as a high-powered executive and mother of four.Part leadership guide, part memoir of loss, and part personal empowerment primer on how to achieve your goals no matter what the universe throws at you, Resilience is an inspirational story about how to rise to the top in a man’s world, triumph over adversity, lead a fulfilling life, and live each day with purpose and gratitude.
Bill Marriott: Success Is Never Final--His Life and the Decisions That Built a Hotel Empire
Dale Van Atta - 2019
Williard Marriott who opened a root-beer stand that grew into the Hot Shoppes Restaurant chain and evolved into the Marriott hotel company, grew up in the family business. In his more than fifty years at the company’s helm, Bill Marriott was the driving force behind growing Marriott into the world’s largest global hotel chain. His vision and leadership expanded the family business to more than 6,500 properties across 127 countries and territories.Bill Marriott: Success Is Never Final gives readers an intimate portrait of the life of a billionaire and business titan and shares his definition of success. Bill shares details about his very structured childhood including the private struggles with his domineering father’s chronic harsh criticism; his time in the United Sates Navy as an officer aboard the U.S.S. Randolph; how he innovated the hotel industry with resort-like facilities; his dogged courtship with Donna, who would eventually say yes to his marriage proposal over a pay phone; and the boundless passion and energy he demonstrated for his work, family, and faith. Bill also shares spiritual experiences that allowed him to recognize God’s guidance in his personal life, helping him bounce back from a life-threatening explosion in a freak boating accident which caused severe burns over his body. Readers will learn the fascinating details about the successes and failures of Bill’s business ventures and relate to his challenges of balancing roles as a CEO, a husband and father, and a man of faith. From his half-billion-dollar venture and “bet-the-farm” move to build the New York Marriott Marquis hotel, to the heartbreaking loss of an adult son whose body slowly degenerated from Mitochondrial Disease, to the billions of dollars donated to medical research, the biography of Bill Marriott tells the remarkable story of a man who had the vision to create a multi-billion dollar business, who understood the power of giving, and lived the creed that hard work will pay off but success is never final.
Winning
Jack Welch - 2005
Loaded with candid personal anecdotes, hard-hitting advice, and invaluable dos and don’ts, Jack explains his theory of business, by laying out the four most important principles that form the foundation of his success.Chapters include: How to Get Promoted, How to Think about Strategy, How to Write a Budget that Works, How to Work for a Jerk, How Find Work-Life Balance and How Start Something New. Enlivened by quotes from business leaders that Welch interviewed especially for the book, it’s a tour de force that reflects Welch’s mastery of execution, excellence and leadership.
The Game Changers: 20 extraordinary success stories of entrepreneurs from IIT Kharagpur
Rahul Kumar - 2012
The entrepreneur shuns the comfort of a cushy corporate job and a seven-figure salary to set sail on unchartered waters with a single-minded zeal and only an idea as an anchor. But it is this idea and passion that makes all the difference and catapults him into a world of infinite possibilities.The Game Changers brings to you 20 success stories of IITians who went on to live the big dream. These include: Suhas Patil, Vijay Kumar, Vinod Gupta, Sam Dalal, Sridhar Mitta, Arjun Malhotra, Kiran Seth, Prabhakant Sinha, Ranbir Singh Gupta, Bikram Dasgupta, Praful Kulkarni, Sunil Gaitonde, Anand Deshpande, Arvind Kejriwal, Harish Hande, Anuradha Acharya, Venkata Subramanian, Bikash Barai, Vikram Kumar, and Krishna Mehra.With a Foreword by Dr Duvvuri Subbarao, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and an Introduction by Dr Damodar Acharya, Director, IIT Kharagpur, this book marks sixty golden years of India’s finest institute. Come, be a part of their journey, get inspired to dream, and make your own story.
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Herminia Ibarra - 2015
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.
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Yvon Chouinard - 2005
From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.
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.
Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant
Al Kaltman - 1998
Grant never sought fame of glory, nor did he try to tie his performance to personal reward. Instead, he concentrated on contribution and service. He looked upon being given increased responsibility not as increasing his power, but as increasing his ability to get the job done. "The great thing about Grant...is his perfect correctness and persistency of purpose." (Abraham Lincoln)In this masterful retelling of Grant's story, Al Kaltman draws on Grant's writings and life experiences to present a series of practical lessons on how to get superior performance from the troops.Going beyond mere "how-to's", Cigars, Whiskey & Winning deals with character traits, core beliefs, and fundamental values to reveal the secrets to becoming a winning leader that are as much about "who to be" as "what to do". And there isn't a chart, table, or checklist in sight-just a handy index of lessons for ready inspiration on demand.
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