Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how--by saying less and asking more--you can develop coaching methods that produce great results. – Get straight to the point in any conversation with The Kickstart Question – Stay on track during any interaction with The Awe Question – Save hours of time for yourself with The Lazy Question – and hours of time for others with The Strategic Question – Get to the heart of any interpersonal or external challenge with The Focus Question – and The Foundation Question – Ensure others find your coaching as beneficial as you do with The Learning Question A fresh innovative take on the traditional how-to manual, the book combines insider information with research based in neuroscience and behavioural economics, together with interactive training tools to turn practical advice into practiced habits. Witty and conversational, The Coaching Habit takes your work--and your workplace--from good to great. "Coaching is an art and it's far easier said than done. It takes courage to ask a question rather than offer up advice, provide and answer, or unleash a solution. giving another person the opportunity to find their own way, make their own mistakes, and create their own wisdom is both brave and vulnerable. In this practical and inspiring book, Michael shares seven transformative questions that can make a difference in how we lead and support. And he guides us through the tricky part - how to take this new information and turn it into habits and a daily practice. --Brené Brown, author of Rising Strong and Daring Greatly

    With step-by-step guidance, Validating Product Ideas shows you how to tackle the research to build the best possible product.

    Yet, chances are, you aren’t formally trained in managing projects—you’re an unofficial project manager.FranklinCovey experts Kory Kogon, Suzette Blakemore, and James Wood understand the importance of leadership in project completion and explain that people are crucial in the formula for success.Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager offers practical, real-world insights for effective project management and guides you through the essentials of the people and project management process:InitiatePlanExecuteMonitor/ControlCloseUnofficial project managers in any arena will benefit from the accessible, engaging real-life anecdotes, memorable “Project Management Proverbs,” and quick reviews at the end of each chapter.If you’re struggling to keep your projects organized, this book is for you. If you manage projects without the benefit of a team, this book is also for you. Change the way you think about project management—"project manager" may not be your official title or necessarily your dream job, but with the right strategies, you can excel.

    We're expected to be authentic but not too authentic. Professional but not stiff. Friendly but not an oversharer.As organizational consultants and regular people, we know what it's like to experience uncomfortable emotions at work - everything from mild jealousy and insecurity to panic and rage. Ignoring or suppressing what you feel hurts your health and productivity but so does letting your emotions run wild.In this book we'll help you figure out which emotions to toss, which to keep to yourself, and which to express in order to be both happier and more effective. We'll share the latest research and helpful tips, and reveal the surprising reason why you'll actually be more healthier and focused if you're less passionate about your job.Drawing on what we've learned from behavioural economics, psychology and our own experiences at countless organizations, we'll show you how to bring your best self (and your whole self) to work every day.

    This new edition is revised and updated throughout, and includes brand new information on how to keep technology from dominating our time.

    This dynamic and richly illustrated resource gives meeting leaders, presenters, and consultants a slew of exciting tricks and tools, includingGraphic recording, visual planning, story boarding, graphic templates, idea mapping, etc. Creative ways to energize team building, sales presentations, staff meetings, strategy sessions, brainstorming, and more Getting beyond paper and whiteboards to engage new media platforms Understanding emerging visual language for leading groups Unlocking formerly untapped creative resources for business success, Visual Meetings will help you and your team communicate ideas more effectively and engagingly.

    Features chapters on finance, marketing, accounting, strategy, quantitative analysis, operations, economics, organisational behaviour, and ethics, all revised to reflect the contemporary corporate culture and economic climate.

    These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company.Where did they get the ideas that made them rich? How did they convince investors to back them? What went wrong, and how did they recover?Nearly all technical people have thought of one day starting or working for a startup. For them, this book is the closest you can come to being a fly on the wall at a successful startup, to learn how it's done.But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businesses do--create value--more intensively than almost any other part of the economy. How? What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you.

    Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, Bahcall shows how this new kind of science helps us understand the behavior of companies and the fate of empires. Loonshots distills these insights into lessons for creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries everywhere.

    

    However well intentioned they may be, leaders who deceive themselves always end up undermining their own performance.This straightforward book explains how leaders can discover their own self-deceptions and learn how to escape destructive patterns. The authors demonstrate that breaking out of these patterns leads to improved teamwork, commitment, trust, communication, motivation, and leadership.

    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.

    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.

    Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work-but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.After making his case against passion, Newport sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving what they do. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers.Matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter, he reveals. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love.So Good They Can't Ignore You will change the way we think about our careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.

    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.