The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference


Malcolm Gladwell - 2000
    Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail, and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics.

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future


Dorie Clark - 2013
    But to achieve this in today’s competitive job market, it’s almost certain that at some point you’ll need to reinvent yourself professionally. Consider this book your road map for the next phase of your career journey.In Reinventing You, branding expert Dorie Clark provides a step-by-step guide to help you assess your unique strengths, develop a compelling personal brand, and ensure that others recognize the powerful contribution you can make.Mixing personal stories with engaging interviews and examples from well-known personalities—Mark Zuckerberg, Al Gore, Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, and others—Reinventing You shows how to think big about your professional goals, take control of your career, build a reputation that opens doors for you, and finally live the life you want.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization


Peter M. Senge - 1990
    As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices. In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire. The updated and revised Currency edition of this business classic contains over one hundred pages of new material based on interviews with dozens of practitioners at companies like BP, Unilever, Intel, Ford, HP, Saudi Aramco, and organizations like Roca, Oxfam, and The World Bank. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book’s inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus (getting started), Strategies, Leaders’ New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future. Mastering the disciplines Senge outlines in the book will:• Reignite the spark of genuine learning driven by people focused on what truly matters to them• Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity• Free you of confining assumptions and mindsets• Teach you to see the forest and the trees• End the struggle between work and personal time

Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence


Amy Jen Su - 2013
    So how do you become one of them? How can you learn to “own the room”? This book will help you develop your leadership presence. According to Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins, leadership presence is the ability to consistently and clearly articulate your value proposition while influencing and connecting with others. They offer a simple and compelling framework, as well as practical advice about how you can develop your own personal presence.No matter where you sit in an organization, you can “own the room” if you are able to do two things well: first, demonstrate your authentic value and distinction, and second, connect to others in a positive way. Leaders who are able to be authentic while connecting with and impacting others have what the authors call a “signature voice”—a means of self-expression that is uniquely and distinctly their own. Once you discover and express your own signature voice, you’ll be ready to take your leadership presence to the next level.Filled with real-life stories and examples, Own the Room demystifies the concept of presence and gives you the tools you need to identify and embrace your unique leadership voice—and have a greater impact on the world around you.

Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours


Shirzad Chamine - 2012
    His groundbreaking research exposes ten well-disguised mental Saboteurs. Nearly 95 percent of the executives in his Stanford lectures conclude that these Saboteurs cause “significant harm” to achieving their true potential. With Positive Intelligence, you can learn the secret to defeating these internal foes. Positive Intelligence (PQ)SM measures the percentage of time your mind is serving you as opposed to sabotaging you. While your IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence) contribute to your maximum potential, it is your PQ that determines how much of that potential you actually achieve.The great news is that you can improve your PQ significantly in as little as 21 days. With higher PQ, teams and professionals ranging from leaders to salespeople perform 30 to 35 percent better on average. Importantly, they also report being far happier and less stressed. The breakthrough tools and techniques in this book have been refined over years of coaching hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams. Shirzad tells many of their remarkable stories, showing how you too can take concrete steps to unleash the vast, untapped powers of your mind.Discover how to•    Identify and conquer your top Saboteurs. Common Saboteurs include the Judge, Controller, Victim, Avoider, and Pleaser.  •    Measure the Positive Intelligence score (PQ) for yourself or your team—and see how close you come to the critical tipping point required for peak performance.•    Increase PQ dramatically in as little as 21 days.•    Develop new brain “muscles,” and access 5 untapped powers with energizing mental “power games.”•    Apply PQ tools and techniques to increase both performance and fulfillment. Applications include team building, mastering workload, working with “difficult” people, improving work/life balance, reducing stress, and selling and persuading.

Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love


Marty Cagan - 2008
    The goal of the book is to share the techniques of the best companies. This book is aimed primarily at Product Managers working on technology-powered products. That includes the hundreds of "tech companies" like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and the like, as well as the thousands of companies moving to leverage technology (financial companies, media companies, retailers, manufacturers, nearly every industry). Inspired covers companies from early stage start-ups to large, established companies. The products might be consumer products or devices, business services for small businesses to enterprises, internal tools, and developer platforms.Inspired is secondarily aimed at the designers, engineers, user researchers and data scientists that work closely with the product managers on product teams at these same companies.

Six Thinking Hats


Edward de Bono - 1981
    Meetings are a crucial part of all our lives, but too often they go nowhere and waste valuable time. In Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono shows how meetings can be transformed to produce quick, decisive results every time. The Six Hats method is a devastatingly simple technique based on the brain's different modes of thinking. The intelligence, experience and information of everyone is harnessed to reach the right conclusions quickly. These principles fundamentally change the way you work and interact. They have been adopted by businesses and governments around the world to end conflict and confusion in favour of harmony and productivity. 'An inspiring man with brilliant ideas. De Bono never ceases to amaze with his clarity of thought' Richard Branson.Edward de Bono invented the concept of lateral thinking. A world-renowned writer and philosopher, he is the leading authority in the field of creative thinking and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. Dr de Bono has written more than 60 books, in 40 languages, with people now teaching his methods worldwide. He has chaired a special summit of Nobel Prize laureates, and been hailed as one of the 250 people who have contributed most to mankind

Leadership Is an Art


Max DePree - 1987
    First published in 1989, the book has sold more than 800,000 copies in hardcover and paperback. This revised edition brings Max De Pree’s timeless words and practical philosophy to a new generation of readers.De Pree looks at leadership as a kind of stewardship, stressing the importance of building relationships, initiating ideas, and creating a lasting value system within an organization. Rather than focusing on the “hows” of corporate life, he explains the “whys.” He shows that the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality and the last is to say thank you. Along the way, the artful leader must: • Stimulate effectiveness by enabling others to reach both their personal potential and their institutional potential • Take a role in developing, expressing, and defending civility and values• Nurture new leaders and ensure the continuation of the corporate cultureLEADERSHIP IS AN ART offers a proven design for achieving success by developing the generous spirit within all of us. Now more than ever, it provides the insights and guidelines leaders in every field need.

The Three Laws of Performance


Steve Zaffron - 2009
    Do they start with cost reduction? Or should they go for process improvements first? The authors--who have helped hundreds of companies and individuals change and improve--say spend time and money adjusting the systems in which people operate, rather than targeting people and their performance directly. The authors show that it's in fact possible to change everything at once--with a focus on making such transformations permanent and repeatable.Brand-new Introduction written for the paperback edition Filled with illustrative examples from Northrup Grumman, BHP-Billiton, Reebok, Harvard Business School, and many others Two experts in the field show how to make major transformations happen The book outlines a process for engaging all employees to buy-in to an improved vision of an organization's new and improved future.