Suggested Reading – Business Leaders
These are either current or former leaders of Industry. They typically wrote their memoirs in previous times. Today they are writing concurrent to their employment in business. We admire them and respect them based on societal recognition.
Execution
The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck
Working with bestselling author and renowned consultant Ram Charan, Bossidy shows how to make the leap from a vision of a big idea to actually delivering bottom-line results. And he does this within the real-time context of Honeywell, a company challenged by the failed merger with GE and a downturn in the airline business following the events of September 11. Bossidy and Charan show that good execution is the ability to effectively deal with sudden changes in the business environment by making crucial linkages between people, strategy, and the operating plan.
Jack
Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch and John A. Byrne
In this remarkable autobiography-a classic business book and runaway New York Times bestseller now updated with a new afterword by the author-Jack Welch takes us on the rough-and-tumble ride that has been his remarkable life. From his working-class childhood to his early days in G.E. Plastics to his life at the top of the world’s most successful company, Welch tells his intensely personal story with his well-known fire and candor. And although it chronicles billion-dollar deals and high-stakes corporate standoffs, Jack is ultimately a story about people-from a man who based his career on demanding only the best from others and from himself.
Customers For Life
How To Turn That One-Time Buyer Into a Lifetime Customer by Carl Sewell and Paul B. Brown
Drawing on his incredible success in transforming his Dallas Cadillac dealership into the second largest in America, Carl Sewell revealed the secret of getting customers to return again and again in the original Customers for Life. A lively, down-to-earth narrative, it set the standard for customer service excellence and became a perennial bestseller. Building on that solid foundation, this expanded edition features five completely new chapters, as well as significant additions to the original material, based on the lessons Sewell has learned over the last ten years.
Moments of Truth
New Strategies For Today’s Customer-Driven Economy by Jan Carlzon
The book traces the author’s spectacular turnaround successes with three major corporations and spells out his trendsetting approach on meeting the demands of today’s service economy.
Power Ambition Glory
The Stunning Parallels between Great Leaders of the Ancient World and Today…and the Lessons You Can Learn by Steve Forbes and John Prevas
Based on an extraordinary collaboration between Steve Forbes, chairman, CEO, and editor in chief of Forbes Media, and classics professor John Prevas, Power Ambition Glory provides intriguing comparisons between six great leaders of the ancient world and contemporary business leaders.
How Capitalism Will Save Us
Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today’s Economy by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames
How Capitalism Will Save Us transcends labels such as “conservative” and “liberal” by showing how the economy really works. When free people in free markets have energy to solve problems and meet the needs and wants of others, they turn scarcity into abundance and develop the innovations that are the foremost drivers of economic growth. The freedom of democratic capitalism is, for example, what enabled Henry Ford to take a plaything of the rich—the car—and transform it into something affordable to working people.
Henry Ford’s Lean Vision
Enduring Principles from the First Ford Motor Plant by William A. Levinson
Henry Ford’s Lean Vision is a hands-on reference that provides the reader with proven principles and methods that can be applied in any business or service enterprise. It covers all aspects of building and running a successful enterprise, including Ford’s principles for human relationships and the management of physical resources.
Don’t Get Stuck on Stupid
Leadership in Action by Lt. Gen. Russel L Honore
A brilliant, powerful book from one of the most respected retired military leaders of our time, General Russel Honore. Recognized as a national hero after spearheading the post-Hurricane Katrina search-and-rescue mission in New Orleans in 2005, Honore offers effective solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our time. These include hurricane preparedness, healthcare, and gun control, as well as the less-well-known issues of widespread infrastructure failure and the need to intervene in the infamous cradle-to-prison pipeline. His basic message: It’s time to try new ways to solve our problems. Let’s not continue to make the same mistakes with public policy and practice in our country… let’s not stay stuck on stupid!
Leadership in the New Normal
A Short Course by Lt. Gen Russel L Honore
Leadership in the New Normal is a short course on how to be an effective leader in the 21st century. It describes modern leadership principles and techniques and illustrates them with stories from the authors vast life experiences, mostly as a military leader. The book is geared to both leaders and those who aspire to be leaders in todays world in the fields of business, government, religion, military, academia, etc. The author, Lt. General Russel Honoré (U.S. Army, retired), emerged as a national hero and one of the U.S.s best-known military leaders in 2005 after spearheading the Task Force responsible for the massive search-and-rescue mission and the restoration of order in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.
Average is Over
Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen
The United States continues to mint more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever. Yet, since the great recession, three quarters of the jobs created here pay only marginally more than minimum wage. Why is there growth only at the top and the bottom?
Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen explains that high earners are taking ever more advantage of machine intelligence and achieving ever-better results. Meanwhile, nearly every business sector relies less and less on manual labor, and that means a steady, secure life somewhere in the middle—average—is over.
In Average is Over, Cowen lays out how the new economy works and identifies what workers and entrepreneurs young and old must do to thrive in this radically new economic landscape.
The One Thing
The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
YOU WANT LESS. You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. The daily barrage of e-mails, texts, tweets, messages, and meetings distract you and stress you out. The simultaneous demands of work and family are taking a toll. And what’s the cost? Second-rate work, missed deadlines, smaller pay cheques, fewer promotions-and lots of stress. AND YOU WANT MORE.You want more productivity from your work. More income for a better lifestyle. You want more satisfaction from life, and more time for yourself, your family, and your friends.