Books:
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It's Your Ship
Captain D. Michael Abrashoff
Even though this audio book is of military origin, the lessons learned are applicable to all organizations. Learn about leading and motivating your employees, and doing the "little things" that make such a big difference in your organization's effectiveness, morale, and turnover.
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Good To Great
Jim Collins
Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner.
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7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Stephen R. Covey
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges.
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The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
John Maxwell
What would happen if a top expert with more than 30 years of leadership experience were willing to distill everything he had learned about leadership into a handful of life-changing principles just for you? It would change your life.
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The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work
Michael Gerber
In this first new and totally revised edition of the 150,000-copy underground bestseller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. Next, he walks you through the steps in the life of a business?from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed?and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Finally, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in. your business. After you have read The E-Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.
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The On-Time, On-Target Manager: How a Last-Minute Manager Conquered Procrastination
Ken Blanchard
The On-Time, On-Target Manager tells the highly recognizable story of Bob, a middle manager who tends to put things off to the last minute. He misses deadlines, rationalizes, justifies, and tries to explain. Luckily, Bob is sent to his company's CEO ? a new kind of CEO ? the "Chief Effectiveness Officer" ? who helps him deal with the three negative side effects of procrastination: lateness, poor work quality, and stress to himself and others. Bob learns how to overcome procrastination, and transforms himself into a productive On-Time, On-Target Manager through the Three P strategy.
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The World is Flat
Thomas Friedman
For Thomas Friedman, cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have finally obliterated all impediments to international competition, and the dawning "flat world" is a jungle pitting "lions" and "gazelles," where "economic stability is not going to be a feature" and "the weak will fall farther behind." Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs, by contrast, will be empowered. The service sector (telemarketing, accounting, computer programming, engineering and scientific research, etc.), will be further outsourced to the English-spoken abroad; manufacturing, meanwhile, will continue to be off-shored to China. Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives who are his main sources that these developments are desirable and unstoppable, and that American workers should be preparing to "create value through leadership" and "sell personality." The last 100 pages, on the economic and political roots of global Islamism, are filled with the kind of close reporting and intimate yet accessible analysis that have been hard to come by. This book should end up on the front seats of quite a few Lexuses and SUVs of all stripes.
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Now Discover Your Strengths
Marcus Buckingham
Did you know that your brain makes over 1000 decisions everyday? And almost all those decisions are based on your top five talents? Identify your top five, hone the corresponding skills, and you will be even more successful. Buckingham's great book shows us how to identify those talents, neutralize weaknesses, and do the things we like to do. People like Colin Powell, Cal Ripken, and Charles Schultz were great at what they did because they loved it AND had the talents for it. Everyone in business should listen to this book and take the talent test.
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Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable
Pat Lencioni
Imagine running into the ultimate management mentor late one night on an otherwise deserted commuter train, and walking away from the strange encounter with an encapsulated guide to success in the corporate world. That's exactly what screenwriter and business coach Patrick Lencioni has done in The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable, placing his tale in an easy-reading and thought- provoking kind of self-help novel. Designed to be read in a single sitting, this book uses the unexpected meeting between troubled high-tech honcho Andrew O'Brien and a mysterious old man named Charlie to explore a series of common traps that can unwittingly ensnare any hard-driven executive. Lencioni hones in on the five "temptations" of the workplace: desires to jealously guard career status, consistently remain popular with subordinates, unfailingly make correct decisions, constantly strive for an atmosphere of total harmony, and always appear invulnerable. A discussion of the story's events and their real-world implications follows, as Lencioni shifts from screenwriter mode to business coach to help answer some of the questions he raises. --Howard Rothman
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Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
T. Harv Eker
Eker's claim to fame is that he took a $2,000 credit card loan, opened "one of the first fitness stores in North America," turned it into a chain of 10 within two and a half years and sold it in 1987 for a cool (but somewhat modest-seeming) $1.6 million. Now the Vancouver-based entrepreneur traverses the continent with his "Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar," on which this debut motivational business manual is based. What sets it apart is Eker's focus on the way people think and feel about money and his canny, class-based analyses of broad differences among groups. In rat-a-tat, "Let me explain" seminar-speak, Eker asks readers to think back to their childhoods and pick apart the lessons they passively absorbed from parents and others about money. With such psychological nuggets as "Rich people focus on opportunities/ Poor people focus on obstacles," Eker puts a positive spin on stereotypes, arguing that poverty begins, or rather, is allowed to continue, in one's imagination first, with actual material life becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. To that end, Eker counsels for admiration and against resentment, for positivity, self-promotion and thinking big and against wallowing, self-abnegation and small-mindedness. While much of the advice is self-evident, Eker's contribution is permission to think of one's financial foibles as a kind of mental illness?one, he says, that has a ready set of cures.
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Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
By Verne Harnish
Many of our audio books tell us what to do to operate a business. The Habits tells us HOW. This three-hour audio could change the way you operate your business, nonprofit organization, or even your church. From 90-day goal setting to the daily 15 minute "huddle," this book will assist you in keeping your teams in alignment, meet or exceed your goals, and work your plan flawlessly. Companies that use Verne Harnish's concepts as a template to operate their organizations are the most enthusiastic promoters of the book.
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Cash-Flow Quadrant
Robert T. Kiyosaki
This is one of the best of the Rich Dad Poor Dad audios. The core idea in this series is that being an investor or business owner gives one more freedom and a higher upside than being someone else's employee or being an owner-operator of a business. With vivid personal stories, the authors show that many people, including the author's "poor" dad (an educational administrator), choose working for others because of insecurity or misguided trust in organizations. One builds true financial freedom by accumulating assets that make money, especially rental property. Though others have offered this advice, it's clearer and more potent here, and worth listening to many times if your financial insecurity or complacency needs a push.
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Patton on Leadership: Strategic Lessons for Corporate Warfare
By Alan Axelrod
General George Patton may have been the most controversial military man in the history of warfare. Patton on Leadership is one the finest books on leadership, goal setting, and execution ever written. Patton had few rules, no exceptions to his rules, and his people loved him. After the war, many soldiers were asked where they served. Most answered the "Pacific," or "Europe." Patton's men proudly said, "I served with Patton!" This is not just a military book. It relates even more to the business world.
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E-Myth Mastery
Michael Gerber
Small business guru and best-selling author Gerber is an enthusiastic champion of small business owners, and his constant cheering underlies this latest attempt to provide a comprehensive plan for entrepreneurial success. The key messages here are similar to those of his previous books (The E-Myth Revisited, etc.): that "knowing how to do the work of a business has nothing to do with building a business that works"; that entrepreneurs learn their skills through practice, practice, practice; and that anyone willing to adopt that same kind of discipline can be successful too, all sound and practical practices. Gerber's volume provides a wealth of practical guidelines, charts, forms (available online) and instructions on how to run, improve and manage a business of any size. And, by the end, readers will feel as though they've been given a full course of one-on-one coaching sessions with Gerber. This is a book with a business plan that anyone could implement...and should want to.
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The One Thing You Need To Know
Marcus Buckingham
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Death by Meeting
Pat Lencioni
Meetings are boring and everybody hates them- but it doesn't have to be that way. Pat Lencioni's book shows us how meetings can be fun, productive, short, and the life blood of any organization. Written in narrative form, Death by Meeting shows us that the use of drama and conflict can actually make people look forward to attending, and make meetings very effective.
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Doing It Now
Edwin C. Bliss & David Allen
Doing It Now offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta-do's clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists--all purportedly to free your mind to focus on whatever you're working on. However, it still operates from the decidedly Western notion that if we could just get really, really organized, we could turn ourselves into 24/7 productivity machines. (To wit, Allen, whom the New Economy bible Fast Company has dubbed "the personal productivity guru," suggests that instead of meditating on crouching tigers and hidden dragons while you wait for a plane, you should unsheathe that high-tech saber known as the cell phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.) As whole-life-organizing systems go, Allen's is pretty good, even fun and therapeutic. It starts with the exhortation to take every unaccounted-for scrap of paper in your workstation that you can't junk, write down every unaccounted-for gotta-do cramming your head onto its own scrap of paper and throw the whole stew into a giant "in-basket." That's where the processing and prioritizing begin; in Allen's system, it gets a little convoluted at times, rife as it is with fancy terms, subterms, and sub-subterms for even the simplest concepts. Thank goodness the spine of his system is captured on a straightforward, one-page flowchart that you can pin over your desk and repeatedly consult without having to refer back to the book. That alone is worth the purchase price. Also of value is Allen's ingenious Two-Minute Rule: if there's anything you absolutely must do that you can do right now in two minutes or less, then do it now, thus freeing up your time and mind tenfold over the long term. It's commonsense advice so obvious that most of us completely overlook it, much to our detriment; Allen excels at dispensing such wisdom in this useful, if somewhat belabored, self-improver aimed at everyone from CEOs to soccer moms (who we all know are more organized than most CEOs to start with).
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Winning
Jack Welch
While different from the steadier stream of war stories and real-life examples of Welch's first book, Winning is a very worthwhile addition to any management bookshelf. It's not often that a CEO described as the century's best retires, and then chooses to expound on such a wide range of management topics. Also, aside from the commentary on always-relevant issues like employee performance reviews and quality control, Welch suffuses this book with his pugnacious spirit. The Massachusetts native who fought his way to the top of the world's most valuable company was in many ways the embodiment of Winning, and this spirit alone will provide readers an enjoyable read.
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Execution
Larry Bossidy
Disciplines like strategy, leadership development and innovation are the sexier aspects of being at the helm of a successful business; actually getting things done never seems quite as glamorous. But as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan demonstrate in Execution, the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is, in fact, the ability to execute. Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and as such, making it happen is the business leader's most important job. Bossidy and Charan point out that without it, breakthrough thinking on managing change breaks down, and they emphasize the fact that execution is a discipline to learn, not merely the tactical side of business. Supporting this with stories of the "execution difference" being won (EDS) and lost (Xerox and Lucent), the authors describe the building blocks that need to be in place to manage the three core business processes of people, strategy, and operations. Both Bossidy, CEO of Honeywell International Inc., and Charan, adviser to corporate executives, present experience-tested insight into how the smooth linking of these three processes can differentiate one company from the rest. Developing the discipline of execution isn't made out to be simple. Bossidy and Charan offer good advice on a neglected topic, making Execution a smart business leader's guide to enacting success rather than permitting demise.
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Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending
Muhammad Yunus
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Getting Things done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity
David Allen
Getting Things Done is a great book about organizational skills.
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You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself
Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford Beckwith
This husband and wife team help you to be able to sell yourself in any situation, from picking your favorite to selling products for your company.
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The Tao of Warren Buffett
Mary Buffett and David Clark
Anna Fields does an expert job of spinning out the down home rules of investing and life that have made Warren Buffett the most successful investor in history. Basically, companies produce high returns over the long term when their management team has integrity, which then gives the company an enduring competitive advantage. It is easier to stay out of trouble than it is to get out of trouble is just one of the Zen like insights that make this audio so much fun. Written by a true insider, its an intimate portrait of the great man's solid operating philosophies, a thoughtful analysis of how to pick good companies, and a hugely entertaining array of Buffetts many kitchen table aphorisms.
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The Travelers Gift
Andy Andrews
Andrews effectively combines self-help with fiction to catch readers interest, sustaining momentum while simultaneously passing on instructions for positive thinking. With his can do style, Andrews (Storms of Perfection; Tales from Sawyerton Springs) tells the allegorical tragedy of one David Ponder, whose woes begin when he loses his job, his confidence and essentially his drive for living. After a succession of losses, Ponder is rendered unconscious after a car accident, and is magically transported into seven key points in history. At each stopping point, he is met by historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank, King Solomon, Harry Truman and Christopher Columbus, each of whom imparts one of the seven key decisions that Andrews asserts are essential for personal success.
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Leadership
Rudolph Giuliani
Through much of his tenure as mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani was a controversial figure whose personal weaknesses often overshadowed his political strengths. After September 11, however, the world focused on Giulianis ability to lead with courage and controlled emotion. In LEADERSHIP, Giuliani demonstrates through vivid, practical examples how he used an aggressive, hands-on management style to deal with everything from petty crime to terrorism.
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You Can Negotiate Anything
Herb Cohen
Every day, you negotiate for something: prestige, money, security, love. This straight talking guide will show you how to get what you want by dealing successfully with your mate, your boss, MasterCard, your children, your best friends and even yourself. As Herb Cohen counsels, Power is based upon perception-- if you think you have got it then you have got it. Be patient, be personal, be informed-- and you can bargain successfully for anything. Based on his book that spent over nine months on the New York Times bestseller list, the author presents specific guidelines, personal anecdotes and practical advice drawn from his three decades of successful negotiating experience. Here is a wealth of information and the motivation that you need to succeed.
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Freakonomics
Steven D. Levitt
Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life dont need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections.
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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Patrick M Lencioni
Once again using an astutely written fictional tale to unambiguously but painlessly deliver some hard truths about critical business procedures, Patrick Lencioni targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. And like those preceding it, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is an entertaining, quick read filled with useful information that will prove easy to digest and implement. This time, Lencioni weaves his lessons around the story of a troubled Silicon Valley firm and its unexpected choice for a new CEO: an old-school manager who had retired from a traditional manufacturing company two years earlier at age 55.
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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Chip Heath, Dan Heath, Charles Kahlenberg
Unabashedly inspired by Malcolm Gladwells bestselling The Tipping Point, the brothers Heath—Chip a professor at Stanfords business school, Dan a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication. Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of stickiness—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories.
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The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell
The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life, writes Malcolm Gladwell, is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do. Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwells The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
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Tough Choices
Carly Fiorna
For her six years as CEO of technology giant Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina was one of the most public faces in business, consistently chosen as the most powerful woman in corporate America. But after being ousted by the HP board of directors in early 2005, she stepped away from the spotlight. She returns to the public eye with her new memoir, Tough Choices, the story of her tenure at HP and of her unprecedented--and unexpected--rise to the top. While much of the early attention to the book will no doubt focus on her battles with the HP board and her dismissal--and she lays out her side of that story in full detail--what is more likely to give her book a wide and lasting readership is her account of the choices she made to get to that point. As she says, she never expected to become a captain of industry; she never planned to go into business at all. But what she found, as she tells in a straightforward, personal style, was that she had a talent and a taste for working with people and making the kinds of decisions that business leadership requires. In a series of tough choices that give her book its name, she gravitated toward the most challenging paths that were offered her. Those choices, which many around her told her not to make, were what led her to the top in record time.
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Book Yourself Solid
Michael Port
The Fastest, Easiest and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing and Selling
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Selling The Invisible
Harry Beckwith
The transformation from a manufacturing-based economy to one that is all about service has been well documented. Today it is estimated that nearly 75 percent of Americans work in the service sector. Instead of producing tangibles--automobiles, clothes, and tools--more and more of us are in the business of providing intangibles--health care, entertainment, tourism, legal services, and so on. However, according to Harry Beckwith, most of these intangibles are still being marketed like products were 20 years ago.
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The Speed of Trust
Steven M. R. Covey
Trust is so integral to our relationships that we often take it for granted, yet in an era marked by business scandals and a desire for accountability this book by leadership expert Covey is a welcome guide to nurturing trust in our professional and personal lives. Drawing on anecdotes and business cases from his years as CEO of the Covey Leadership Center (which was worth $160 million when he orchestrated its 1997 merger with Franklin Quest to form Franklin Covey), the author effectively reminds us that there is plenty of room for improvement on this virtue. Following a touching foreword by father Stephen R. Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and related books), the junior Covey outlines 13 behaviors of trust-inspiring leaders, such as demonstrating respect, creating transparency, righting wrongs, delivering results and practicing accountability. Coveys down-to-earth approach and disarming personal stories go a long way to establish rapport with his reader, though the books length and occasional lack of focus sometimes obscure its good advice.
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The Power of Full Engagement
Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
The authors, founders of and executives at LGE Performance Systems, an executive training program based on athletic coaching programs, offer a program aimed at stressed individuals who want to find more purpose in their work and ways to better handle their overburdened relationships. Just as athletes train, play and then recover, people need to recognize their own energy levels. Balancing stress and recovery is critical not just in competitive sports, but also in managing energy in all facets of our lives. Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings. Case studies demonstrate how some modest changes can have an immediate impact.
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Think and Grow Rich
Napolean Hill
From world renowned motivational author Napoleon Hill comes his classic work that has inspired millions, Think and Grow Rich.
Anything your mind can conceive and believe you can achieve. That is the philosophy of Napoleon Hill, author of the motivational book, Think and Grow Rich. Napoleon Hill gives you the money making secrets that earned Carnegie unprecedented riches. Think and Grow Rich tells you what to do and how to do it. Apply the basic techniques to your life and you too can master the secret of enduring success.
Success is not an accident. Think and Grow Rich is where that habit begins. Throughout this inspirational masterpiece, which has influenced men and women on every continent, Hill gives examples and detailed analysis of how hundreds of exceedingly wealthy people earned and maintained their fortunes. It has sold millions of copies by laying down a blueprint for a life of prosperity, and helping people become the winners they always wanted to be. His plan will inspire you, motivate you, and enable you to make your dreams come true!
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High Trust Selling
Todd Duncan
Author and speaker Todd Duncan believes that being successful in sales has a lot to do with what is on the inside of the person and the his/her ability to establish and foster loyal relationships. In High Trust Selling, Duncan shows you how to connect who you are and what you are about in your selling career, giving you phenomenal and long-lasting results.
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How to Become a Rainmaker
Jeffrey J. Fox
This is an afternoon read, pure and simple. And chances are good that once readers accept Foxs hard hitting yet commonsense approaches, they will accept his sales process, which applies, by the way, to selling widgets, promoting intangible services, or selling yourself. Every one of the author chapters contains just one nugget of information more than the preceding section, enough to keep the momentum and the attention. A sad story about the hazards of drinking coffee (it spilled, and the prospect was then distracted by a second crisis) is followed by a notice not to eat a major meal during a sales lunch, which is promptly followed by no pen in the shirt pocket advice. Foxs seemingly disparate hints and tips, in short, comprise a very logical and memorable way of rainmaking, and a short tome that will show anyone the keys.
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The Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell
Now that he has gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers, why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the self made man, he makes the democratic assertion that superstars dont arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky.
Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. But there is more to it than that. Throughout all of these examples, and in more that delve into the social benefits of lighter skin color, and the reasons for school achievement gaps, Gladwell invites conversations about the complex ways privilege manifests in our culture. He leaves us pondering the gifts of our own history, and how the world could benefit if more of our kids were granted the opportunities to fulfill their remarkable potential. Mari Malcolm
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The Fred Factor
Mark Sanborn
The Fred Factor is a powerful, poignant parable of success. It is about going the extra mile and always doing more than is expected. It is revolutionary, yet simple. It is life changing.
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Leadership and Self Deception
The Arbinger Institute
Using the story format so popular these days, Leadership and Self-Deception takes a novel psychological approach to leadership. Its not what you do that matters, say the authors, but why you do it. Latching onto the latest leadership trend wont make people follow you if your motives are selfish, people can smell a rat, even one that says its trying to empower them. The tricky thing is, we dont know that our motivation is flawed. We deceive ourselves in subtle ways into thinking that were doing the right thing for the right reason. We really do know what the right thing to do is, but this constant self justification becomes such an ingrained habit that its hard to break free of it, its as though were trapped in a box, the authors say.
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The Snowball, Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Alice Schroeder
In this startlingly frank account of Buffetts life, Schroeder, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, and hand picked by Buffett to be his biographer, strips away the mystery that has long cloaked the words richest man to reveal a life and fortune erected around lucid and inspired business vision and unimaginable personal complexity. In a book that is dominated by unstinting descriptions of Buffetts appetites, for profit, women (particularly nurturing maternal types), food (Buffett maintained his and his familys weight by dangling money), it is refreshing that Schroeder keeps her tone free of judgment or awe; Buffetts plain speaking suffuses the book and renders his public and private successes and failures wonderfully human and universal. Schroeders sections detailing the genesis of Buffetts investment strategy, his early mentoring by Benjamin Graham (who imparted the memorable cigar butt scheme: purchasing discarded stocks and taking a final puff). Inspiring managerial advice abounds and competes with gossipy tidbits (the married Buffetts very public relationship with Washington Post editor Katherine Graham) in this rich, surprisingly affecting biography.
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The Little Red Book of Sales Answers
Jeffrey Gitomer
Salespeople need answers, fast! Now, one book brings together all the proven, tested, instant answers theyll ever want: Little Red Book of Sales Answers. This is the legendary Jeffrey Gitomer, the worlds #1 sales presenter and author of the inspirational 250,000 copy bestseller Little Red Book of Selling. This new book goes beyond anything Gitomers ever done, offering 99.5 quick, real world answers guaranteed to make sense, and make money! Youll discover the best ways to leave voicemail...ask for appointments...start presentations...follow up...ask for the sale...respond to angry customers...earn referrals...Here are perfect answers for establishing rapport...improving humor and creativity...making cold calls...getting past gatekeepers...controlling phone conversations...overcoming price objections...recognizing buying signals...using the Internet...getting reorders...finding role models and mentors...becoming a better writer...picking the right contact software...ordering the right business lunch...creating stand-out proposals...setting goals...adding value in every possible way. In your business, you cant afford to settle for the second-best approach. This book provides an extension of a successful brand by moving from a generic selling book to a book that gives a personal, practical guide to fulfilling your goals.
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100 Ways to Motivate Yourself
Steve Chandler
Steve Chandlers words of wisdom and motivational techniques have guided me as a public servant and helped me to achieve my goals. If you want to grow as a person and make a difference in the world, put this book on your reading list right now!
Live the life youve always wanted to live! 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself is packed with techniques for breaking down negative barriers and pessimistic thoughts that prevent you from fulfilling your goals and dreams. Its easy to get stuck in a humdrum life and only fantasize about what could have been. Motivational speaker Steve Chandler helps you change that way of thinking to what will be. His ideas will help you create an action plan for living out your vision.
You will be intrigued at some of the real life experiences upon which Steve has based his techniques, from Arnold Schwarzenegger, who told the author in 1976 that he was going to be the number one box office star in Hollywood (at the time, Arnold was only a body builder with a heavy Austrian accent), to Leonard Nimoy, whose life was reshaped through the rational, logical thought of Spock, the character he played on Star Trek.
100 Ways to Motivate Yourself is filled with proven methods for changing the way you think and developing self creation. Steve draws on the feedback he has received from corporate and public seminar students to ensure that his methods work.
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The Power of a Positive No
William Ury
Twenty five years after the publication of the bestselling Getting to Yes, Ury addresses the other side of the coin, but his version of No is not a simple rejection. A Positive No begins with Yes and ends with Yes, he says, because it defines the naysayer self interests and paves the way for a continued relationship. Ury delineates this Yes! No. Yes? pattern recursively, so that each step is itself another three part process. In addition to drawing on his own experiences as a negotiator for conflicts in countries like Chechnya and Venezuela, and the historical examples of activists like Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, he shows how his principles can be used in the home and the workplace. He even throws in a few literary precedents, citing Melvilles Bartleby the Scrivener, whose repetition of the phrase I would prefer not to is cited as a simple and admirable method of polite refusal.
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Tribes
Seth Godin
Tribes is a must read for all of us. It is up to each one of us to lead in todays new kind of world.
Former U.S. senator Bill Bradley
Product Description
A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It is our nature.
Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they are enabling countless new tribes to be born, groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.
And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?
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The Art of the Start
Guy Kawasaki
Kawasaki (Rules for Revolutionaries) draws upon his dual background as an evangelist for Apples Macintosh computer and as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist in this how to for launching any type of business project. Each chapter begins with GIST (great ideas for starting things), covering a variety of facets to consider, from identifying your customer base and writing a business plan to establishing partnerships and building brand identity. Minichapters zero in on particular jobs that will need doing, while FAQ sections address the questions readers are most likely to have: Kawasaki covers the basics in an effectively casual tone. Fortunately, Kawasaki does rise to the occasion here and there. He goes into great detail when it comes to raising capital and offers effective methods for sorting through the nonsense associated with interviewing prospective employees.
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100 Ways to Motivate Others
Steve Chandler
This newly revised, paperback version of 100 Ways to Motivate Others is the culmination of many years of successful leadership coaching and training by best selling author Steve Chandler and attorney Scott Richardson. Chandler and Richardson have crafted a vital, user friendly, inspirational guide for executives, managers, and professionals...and those aspiring to reach their level.
After you have learned to motivate yourself, Chandler and Richardson will show you:
* How to slow down and enjoy a new level of focus.
* Why multitasking is a myth, not a strength, and keeping life simple and straight forward is the goal.
* The power of building on your peoples strengths.
* How to avoid the damaging inclination to obsess about peoples weaknesses.
* A simple and creative way to hold people accountable.
* How to enjoy cultivating the art of supportive confrontation.
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icon steve jobs
Jeffrey Young
This book is about the secret life of maybe the most influential person in technology. Who else can you think of that has put his stamp on three industries computers, music, and movie animation? Once you start reading, you wont want to put it down
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Fierce Conversations
Susan Scott
This book describes ways to handle key conversations.
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Blink
Malcolm Gladwell
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking, the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of thin slices of behavior. The key is to rely on our adaptive unconscious, 24/7 mental valet that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.
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The Go Giver
Bob Burg and John David Mann
This modern day business parable, a quick read in the spirit of The Greatest Salesman in the World and The One Minute Manager, should do well with eager corporate ladder climbers, who may at first be confused by its focus: on putting the other guy first, be it a colleague, competitor, customer, friend or family member. Told through the fictitious story of an ambitious young salesman named Joe, Burg and Mann communicate their points through the advice of an enigmatic (and highly likeable) mentor character known as Pindar. Rather than help Joe snag a fast sale, the consultant introduces him to series of go-givers who personify the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success. Over the course of five days, a restaurateur, a CEO, a financial advisor, a real estate broker and the mysterious Connector teach Joe about the laws of value, compensation, influence, authenticity and receptivity, concepts that make more immediate sense in this fictional context than they would in a formal business book. Burg (Endless Referrals: Network Your Everyday Contacts Into Sales) and Mann (You Call the Shots) write with a simple, informal style that offers a working persons interpretation of the old adage give, and you shall receive.
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Eat That Frog
Brian Tracy
Theres an old saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a live frog, youll have the satisfaction of knowing that its probably the worst thing youll do all day. Eat That Frog! takes this saying as a metaphor for tackling the most challenging task of your day - the one you are most likely to procrastinate on, but also probably the one that will have the greatest positive impact on your life. Bestselling author Brian Tracy shows how successful people dont try to do everything, but instead focus on the most important tasks. With three vital rules of effective personal time management: decision, discipline and determination, and twenty-one practical and doable steps to help you stop procrastinating, this book will appeal to anyone who wants to get more of those important tasks done - today!
Brian Tracy is a leading authority on the development of human potential and personal effectiveness. He addresses over 250,000 people each year on the subjects of personal and professional development.
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Getting Naked
Patrick M Lencioni
Author, speaker and management consultant Lencioni (The Three Signs of a Miserable Job) preaches a business model that may seem antithetical to many, which he calls getting naked: being unafraid to show vulnerability, admit ignorance, and ask the dumb questions when dealing with clients. Lencionis central argument is that by focusing on sales, rather than communication, consultants miss the key part of their job consulting and therefore lose out on valuable long term client relationships. Presented mostly as a parable about a management consultant trying to reconcile two firms in a merger, Lencionis latest is entertaining as well as informative, with a message that sticks (heavy handed though it may be). Straightforward and widely applicable, Lencionis advice should prove useful not only for business consultants, but anyone trying to build long term client relationships.
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The Millionaire Next Door
Thomas Stanley, Ph.D., William Danko, Ph.D.
How can you join the ranks of the wealthy (defined as people whose net worth is over one million dollars). Easy, say doctors Stanley and Danko, who have spent the last 20 years interviewing members of this elite club, you just have to follow seven simple rules. The first rule is, always live well below your means. The last rule is, choose your occupation wisely. There are no pop stars or athletes in this book, but plenty of wall board manufacturers, particularly ones who take cheap, infrequent vacations. Stanley and Danko mercilessly show how wealth takes sacrifice, discipline, and hard work, qualities that are positively discouraged by our high consumption society. You arent what you drive, admonish the authors. Somewhere, Benjamin Franklin is smiling.
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The Success Principles
Jack Canfield
His advice is straightforward, reject rejection and surround yourself with successful people. with quotes from the likes of JFK, Colin Powell, Aldous Huxley, and fellow motivation author Napoleon Hill.
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How the Mighty Fall
Jim Collins
Decline can be avoided.
Decline can be detected.
Decline can be reversed.
Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?
In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins research project, more than four years in duration, uncovered five steps of decline
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