Suggested Reading – Topical Authors
We are highlighting books that have come across our table that we thought you would enjoy reading. They are sorted by category (Business Teachers, Business Management Tools, Provocative Authors, Business Leaders, Topical Authors and General Reading) and cover a wide range of topics to enhance your knowledge.
Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars
A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues into Competitors by Patrick Lencioni
A bestselling management expert’s fifth book offers solutions to a key leadership issue: the impact of turf wars and political infighting on organizational effectiveness, written in the form of a realistic but fictional story.
The Five Temptations of a CEO
A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
Highly sought-after management consultant Patrick Lencioni deftly tells the tale of a young CEO who, facing his first annual board review, knows he is failing, but doesn’t know why. Refreshingly original and utterly compelling, this razor-sharp novelette plus self-assessment serves as a timeless and potent reminder that success as a leader can come down to practicing a few simple behaviors – behaviors that are painfully difficult for each of us to master. Any executive can learn how to recognize the mistakes that leaders can make and how to avoid them.
Death By Meeting
A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problems in Business by Patrick Lencioni
Best-selling author Lencioni’s latest business fable takes on meetings – why people hate them, why they shouldn’t, and how to make them great. Through fictional narrative, modeling, and practical suggestions, Lencioni shows how to turn meetings from painful and tedious to productive, compelling, and even energizing.
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
In this stunning follow-up to his best-selling book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, Patrick Lencioni offers up another leadership fable that’s every bit as compelling and illuminating as its predecessor. This time, Lencioni’s focus is on a leader’s crucial role in building a healthy organization-an often overlooked but essential element of business life that is the linchpin of sustained success. Readers are treated to a story of corporate intrigue as the frustrated head of one consulting firm faces a leadership challenge so great that it threatens to topple his company, his career, and everything he holds true about leadership itself. In the story’s telling, Lencioni helps his readers understand the disarming simplicity and power of creating organizational health, and reveals four key disciplines that they can follow to achieve it.
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job
A Fable for Managers (and their employees) by Patrick Lencioni
A bestselling author and business guru tells how to improve your job satisfaction and performance. In his sixth fable, bestselling author Patrick Lencioni takes on a topic that almost everyone can relate to: the causes of a miserable job. Millions of workers, even those who have carefully chosen careers based on true passions and interests, dread going to work, suffering each day as they trudge to jobs that make them cynical, weary, and frustrated. It is a simple fact of business life that any job, from investment banker to dishwasher, can become miserable. Through the story of a CEO turned pizzeria manager, Lencioni reveals the three elements that make work miserable — irrelevance, immeasurability, and anonymity — and gives managers and their employees the keys to make any job more fulfilling. As with all of Lencioni’s books, this one is filled with actionable advice you can put into effect immediately. In addition to the fable, the book includes a detailed model examining the three signs of job misery and how they can be remedied. It covers the benefits of managing for job fulfillment within organizations — increased productivity, greater retention, and competitive advantage — and offers examples of how managers can use the applications in the book to deal with specific jobs and situations. Patrick Lencioni (San Francisco, CA) is President of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health. As a consultant and keynote speaker, he has worked with thousands of senior executives and executive teams in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to high-tech startups to universities and nonprofits. His clients include AT&T, Bechtel, Boeing, Cisco, Sam’s Club, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Allstate, Visa, FedEx, New York Life, Sprint, Novell, Sybase, The Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Lencioni is the author of six bestselling books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He previously worked for Oracle, Sybase, and the management consulting firm Bain & Company.
The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family
A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life by Patrick Lencioni
In this unique and groundbreaking book, business consultant and New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni turns his sights on the most important organization in our lives-the family. As a husband and the father of four young boys, Lencioni realized the discrepancy between the time and energy his clients put into running their organizations and the reactive way most people run their personal lives. Having experienced the stress of a frantic family firsthand, he and his wife began applying some of the tools he uses with Fortune 500 companies at home, and with surprising results.
Getting Naked
A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty by Patrick Lencioni
Another extraordinary business fable from the New York Times bestselling author Patrick Lencioni
– Offers a key resource for gaining competitive advantage in tough times
– Shows why the quality of vulnerability is so important in business
– Includes ideas for inspiring customer and client loyalty
– Written by the highly successful consultant and business writer Patrick Lencioni
This new book in the popular Lencioni series shows what it takes to gain a real and lasting competitive edge.
The Goal
A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry – even to your bosses – but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant – or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days – Jonah – to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. The story of Alex’s fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas, which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC), developed by Eli Goldratt.
Leadership and Self-Deception
Getting out of the Box by the Arbinger Institute
Since its original publication in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Its sales continue to increase year after year, and the book’s popularity has gone global, with editions now available in over twenty languages.
Through a story everyone can relate to about a man facing challenges on the job and in his family, the authors expose the fascinating ways that we can blind ourselves to our true motivations and unwittingly sabotage the effectiveness of our own efforts to achieve success and increase happiness.
This new edition has been revised throughout to make the story even more compelling. And drawing on the extensive correspondence the authors have received over the years, they have added a section that outlines the many ways that readers have been using Leadership and Self-Deception to improve their lives and workplaces—areas such as team building, conflict resolution, and personal growth and development, to name a few.
Read this extraordinary book and discover what millions already have learned—how to consistently tap into an innate ability that dramatically improves both your results and your relationships.
The Anatomy of Peace
Resolving the Heart of Conflict by the Arbinger Institute
What if conflicts at home, conflicts at work, and conflicts in the world stem from the same root cause?
What if we systematically misunderstand that cause?
And what if, as a result, we systematically perpetuate the very problems we think we are trying to solve?
Every day.
From the authors of Leadership and Self-Deception comes an international bestseller that instills hope and inspires reconciliation. Through a moving story of parents who are struggling with their own children and with problems that have come to consume their lives, we learn from once-bitter enemies the way to transform personal, professional, and global conflicts, even when war is upon us.
Get Out of Your Own Way
The 5 Keys to Surpassing Everyone’s Expectations by Robert K. Cooper
Break through your self-imposed limitations by learning how your own brain can be your biggest obstacle—or your greatest ally. You’d expect your brain to be an always-reliable ally in your quest for a successful, satisfying life, but surprisingly the opposite is usually true. That’s because your brain is pretty much the same model your ancestors were using thousands of years ago when mere survival was everyone’s primary goal. It tells you now what it told them then: Play it safe. Avoid risk. Evade confrontation. Don’t venture outside the territory you already know. And never break the habits that have gotten you this far. Once you know what really drives you, you can switch off the counterproductive parts of your brain, engage the helpful parts, and set out on the path to accomplishing what everyone else thinks you can’t.
The Other 90%
How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life by Robert K. Cooper
For centuries, it has been assumed that there are vast limits to human capacity. Now, although a host of scientific discoveries prove this wrong, a mindset of limits persists, blocking us from our greatest possibilities and leaving us feeling bombarded by stress, change, and uncertainty. No matter how hard we work, no matter how much we give, we’re still not getting what we hoped for. There is another way. The most exciting breakthroughs will not come from advances in technology but from a deeper realization of what it means to be most human and alive. Many of the choices that can dramatically change our lives are simple and practical – yet few people know what these choices are or how to apply them in work and life. The Other 90% is your guide to new territory and new challenges.
The Simple Truths of Service
Inspired By Johnny the Bagger by Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz
Your competitive edge in today’s business environment is in how your customers are treated. If you want to succeed, it’s time to get creative about customer service! The Simple Truths of Service unforgettable true story about a very special young man who takes a chance and changes the culture of a grocery store. Each and every member of your team will be coming up with their own ideas of how to deliver that extra special service after they read this book
Johnny is young man living with Down Syndrome who changes the culture of a grocery store by being creative and giving the customers more than they expect. He puts his own personal signature on each and every interaction. Read about Johnny plus other great customer service stories from Ken Blanchard. Your customer service team will be bursting with new ways to make your company stand out from the crowd.
Gung Ho!
Turn On the People in Any Organization by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowes
Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, co-authors of the New York Times business bestseller Raving Fans, are back with Gung Ho! Here is an invaluable management tool that outlines foolproof ways to increase productivity by fostering excellent morale in the workplace. It is a must-read for everyone who wants to stay on top in today’s ultra-competitive business world.
Raving Fans taught managers how to turn customers into full-fledged fans. Now, Gung Ho! brings the same magic to employees. Through the inspirational story of business leaders Peggy Sinclair and Andy Longclaw, Blanchard and Bowles reveal the secret of Gung Ho–a revolutionary technique to boost enthusiasm and performance and usher in astonishing results for any organization. The three principles of Gung Ho are:
- The Spirit of the Squirrel
- The Way of the Beaver
- The Gift of the Goose
These three cornerstones of Gung Ho are surprisingly simple and yet amazingly powerful. Whether your organization consists of one or is listed in the Fortune 500, this book ensures Gung Ho employees committed to success.
Unleashing Excellence
The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service by Dennis Snow and Teri Yanovitch
A step-by-step guide to designing and implementing an amazing customer service culture In today’s competitive business environment, keeping customers happy is the key to long-term success. But some businesses provide much better customer service than others. It’s not always clear what works and what doesn’t, and implementing new customer service practices midstream can be a difficult, chaotic task. Business leaders who want to transform their business culture into one of customer service excellence need reliable, proven guidance. Unleashing Excellence gives you practical tools and step-by-step guidance tailored to your company’s individual customer service needs. It shows you how to navigate your teams through every step of the implementation process to achieve true customer service excellence. The book covers the training and education of your group, how to measure the quality of your service, how to build a culture of personal accountability, and how to recognize excellence and reward it. Fully revised to include updated information on the latest tools and best practices, as well as the stories and lessons learned from those organizations that have used the process described in the book. Offers proven best practices for designing and implementing an excellent customer service culture Simple format divides content into nine “leadership actions” that guide you through a step-by-step process Shows you how to build a common customer service vision for your entire organization Customer service is vital to the survival of your business. If you want to move your organization’s customer service practices from good to great, Unleashing Excellence is the key.
From Mind to Market
Reinventing the Retail Supply Chain by Roger D. Blackwell
Anyone in business today who hopes to be in business tomorrow needs to understand the rules of the new marketplace,” says Roger Blackwell, one of the most sought-after authorities on consumer behavior and marketing. The traditional approach to retailing, beginning at the point of manufacture and ending with the sale to the consumer, is out of date and unrealistic. “In an ultracompetitive marketplace, manufacturers can no longer dictate what consumers will buy. The savvy consumer is more educated than ever as to what he or she wants and where to get it at the best price. Using this information to develop the products consumers are looking for is demand-chain management.”
Featuring visionary companies like Wal-Mart, AT&T and Kinko’s, whose leadership as demand-chain managers is helping them to create the marketplace of the 21st-century, Blackwell illustrates the cutting-edge concept of demand-chain management and its role in revolutionizing retailing in the new millennium.
Best Practices
Motivating Employees Bringing Out the Best in Your People by Barry Silverstein
In today’s high-pressure workplace, motivating all employees to consistently contribute their best can mean the difference between success and failure. Motivating Employees, a comprehensive and essential resource for any manager on the run, shows you how.
Learn to:
– Inspire employees to succeed
– Improve performance through coaching
– Minimize the impact of common de-motivators
– Create a fair and consistent reward system
– Turn negative experiences into positive, motivational opportunities
The Collins Best Practices guides offer new and seasoned managers the essential information they need to achieve more, both personally and professionally. Designed to provide tried-and-true advice from the world’s most influential business minds, they feature practical strategies and tips to help you get ahead.
The Tipping Point
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. 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.
Outliers
by Malcolm Gladwell
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
The Halo Effect…and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers
by Phil Rosenzweig
The Halo Effect is a landmark book that replaces mistaken thinking with a sharper understanding of what drives company performance. It’s a guide for the thinking manager, a way to detect errors in business research and to reach a clearer understanding of what drives success and failure. For managers who want to separate fact from fiction in the world of business, The Halo Effect is a much-needed antidote to the conventional thinking that clutters business bookshelves.
Deliberate Success
Realize Your Vision With Purpose, Passion, and Performance by Eric Allenbaugh
Compelling, practical, and inspirational, this book will provide you with “The 5 Success Strategies” for winning in business and in life, “The 3 Performance Principles” for sustaining long-term results, and hundreds of no-nonsense ideas for immediate application. This book masterfully presents proven success principles and powerful implementation tools that you can immediately apply in bringing out the best of yourself, your team, and your organization. From cover to cover, you will find ways to develop tangible tools that will catapult you to even higher levels of success in business and in life! You will take away from this book: inspirational stories, the sage wisdom of masters in the field who contributed “Deliberate Success Gems,” hundreds of pragmatic ideas, and strategies you can use for a lifetime in getting from where you are to where you want to be. This book will both inspire and challenge you to be and do your best.
The Knowing-Doing Gap
How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Why are there so many gaps between what firms know they should do and what they actually do? Why do so many companies fail to implement the experience and insight they’ve worked so hard to acquire? The Knowing-Doing Gap is the first book to confront the challenge of turning knowledge about how to improve performance into actions that produce measurable results. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, well-known authors and teachers, identify the causes of the knowing-doing gap and explain how to close it. The message is clear–firms that turn knowledge into action avoid the “smart talk trap.” Executives must use plans, analysis, meetings, and presentations to inspire deeds, not as substitutes for action. Companies that act on their knowledge also eliminate fear, abolish destructive internal competition, measure what matters, and promote leaders who understand the work people do in their firms. The authors use examples from dozens of firms that show how some overcome the knowing-doing gap, why others try but fail, and how still others avoid the gap in the first place. The Knowing-Doing Gap is sure to resonate with executives everywhere who struggle daily to make their firms both know and do what they know. It is a refreshingly candid, useful, and realistic guide for improving performance in today’s business.
The Science of Success
How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company by Charles G. Koch
Praise for THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS “Evaluating the success of an individual or company is a lot like judging a trapper by his pelts. Charles Koch has a lot of pelts. He has built Koch Industries into the world’s largest privately held company, and this book is an insider’s guide to how he did it. Koch has studied how markets work for decades, and his commitment to pass that knowledge on will inspire entrepreneurs for generations to come.” -T. Boone Pickens “A must-read for entrepreneurs and corporate executives that is also applicable to the wider world. MBM is an invaluable tool for engendering excellence for all groups, from families to nonprofit entities. Government leaders could avoid policy failures by heeding the science of human behavior.” -Richard L. Sharp, Chairman, CarMax “My father, Sam Walton, stressed the importance of fundamental principles-such as humility, integrity, respect, and creating value-that are the foundation for success. No one makes a better case for these principles than Charles Koch.” -Rob Walton, Chairman, Wal-Mart “What accounts for Koch Industries’ spectacular success? Charles Koch calls it Market-Based Management: a vision that nurtures personal qualities of humility and integrity that build trust and the confidence to enhance future success through learning from failure, and a culture of thinking in terms of opportunity cost and comparative advantage for all employees.” -Vernon Smith, 2002 Nobel laureate in economics “In a very thoughtful, creative, and understandable way, Charles Koch explains how he has used the science of human behavior to create a culture that has produced one of the world’s largest and most successful private companies. A must-read for anyone interested in creating value.” -William B. Harrison Jr., Former Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co. “The same exacting thought, rooted in the realities of human nature, that the framers of the U.S. Constitution put into building a nation of entrepreneurs, Charles Koch has framed to build an enduring company of entrepreneurs-a company larger than Microsoft, Dell, HP, and other giants. Every entrepreneur should study this book.” -Verne Harnish, founder, Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, CEO, Gazelles Inc.
Selling the Invisible
A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith
SELLING THE INVISIBLE is a succinct and often entertaining look at the unique characteristics of services and their prospects, and how any service, from a home-based consultancy to a multinational brokerage, can turn more prospects into clients and keep them. SELLING THE INVISIBLE covers service marketing from start to finish. Filled with wonderful insights and written in a roll-up-your-sleeves, jargon-free, accessible style, such as:
– Greatness May Get You Nowhere
– Focus Groups Don’ts
– The More You Say, the Less People Hear &
– Seeing the Forest Around the Falling Trees
Total Customer Service
The Ultimate Weapon by William H. Davidow and Bro Uttal
This book offers a six point plan for improving customer service and giving your business a competitive edge.
Yes, You Can
1,200 Inspiring Ideas For Work, Home, And Happiness by Sam Deep and Lyle Sussman
Yes, You Can! gives you good advice, and it gives you more: it tells how you can make that advice part of your daily life. Whether your goal is to speak eloquently, discover hidden talents, or find fulfillment at work, this book can help. It covers more than 125 personal goals with the clear, practical advice for which Deep and Sussman are known. The result is an inspiring guide to improving yourself and improving your relationships, balancing work and home, and building lasting success. Many books will tell you that you can achieve your goals. Yes, You Can! gives you the tools to make that happen.
The Power of Intention
by Wayne W. Dyer
Intention is generally viewed as a pit-bull kind of determination propelling one to succeed at all costs by never giving up on an inner picture. In this view, an attitude that combines hard work with an indefatigable drive toward excellence is the way to succeed. However, intention is viewed very differently in this book. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer has researched intention as a force in the universe that allows the act of creation to take place. This book explores intention—not as something you do—but as an energy you’re a part of. We’re all intended here through the invisible power of intention. This is the first book to look at intention as a field of energy that you can access to begin co-creating your life with the power of intention.
Part I deals with the principles of intention, offering true stories and examples on ways to make the connection. Dr. Dyer identifies the attributes of the all-creating universal mind of intention as creative, kind, loving, beautiful, expanding, endlessly abundant, and receptive, explaining the importance of emulating this source of creativity. In Part II, Dr. Dyer offers an intention guide with specific ways to apply the co-creating principles in daily life. Part III is an exhilarating description of Dr. Dyer’s vision of a world in harmony with the universal mind of intention
The Myth of Market Share
Why Market Share is the Fool’s Gold of Business by Richard Miniter
Richard Miniter skewers the sacred cow of market share and debunks the conventional wisdom that corporate profits rise as you grab more territory in the marketplace.
Market share is the fool’s gold of modern business. In reality, companies that maximize market share end up minimizing profits, while their smarter rivals earn higher returns. Three times out of four, on average, the most profitable firm is not the one with the largest slice of the market. Yet the myth of market share continues to hobble and kill great companies, while smaller competitors dig out real profits. Executives, entrepreneurs, investors, and regulators will learn why megamergers often fail, brand extensions wither, and stocks tumble. The Myth of Market Share also reveals a positive and proven strategy for transforming a company into a profit leader.
Richard Miniter recounts many cautionary tales of great companies that refused to change—and outlines the practical plans of those that changed and flourished. Managers and investors will profit from knowing why Dell prospers by treating market share as a benchmark, not as a goal. Executives and entrepreneurs can retool their strategies by examining the case studies in this book, including Ryanair, an upstart Irish air carrier that transformed itself into the world’s most profitable airline; International Paper, a manufacturing Goliath that tried to buy success; Boeing, the plane maker that pulled out of a steep dive by jettisoning its market share strategies; and DaimlerChrysler, the carmaker that stalled when it tried to be all things to all people.
By providing a road map for persuading doubtful colleagues and leading a company to profit leadership, The Myth of Market Share is an entertaining, historical review and leadership tutorial, delivering proven strategies for generating long-term profits and sustainable growth during these uncertain times.
The Purpose Driven Life
What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren
Translated into over 50 languages, The Purpose Driven Life is far more than just a book; it is a guide to a spiritual journey that has transformed millions of lives. Once you take this journey, you’ll never be the same again. This new, expanded edition of The Purpose Driven Life, created for a new generation of reader, includes: Video introductions by Rick Warren to chapters 1-40, an audio Bible study at the end of each chapter, with over 30 additional hours of teaching by Rick Warren. Two new bonus chapters on the most common barriers to living a purpose driven life. Access to an online community where you can discuss your journey to purpose, get feedback, and receive support. Living out the purpose you were created for moves you beyond mere survival and success to a life of significance-the life you were meant to live. On your journey you’ll find the answers to 3 of life’s most important questions: The Question of Existence: Why am I alive? The Question of Significance: Does my life matter? The Question of Purpose: What on earth am I here for? Transform your life. Start your journey today.
The Customer-Driven Company
Moving from Talk to Action by Richard C. Whiteley
Rated by Fortune Magazine as one of the best management books of 1991, this instant business classic and bestseller is now recognized as the Bible of customer service.
How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors
Winning Every Sale at Full Price, Rate, or Fee by Steinmetz/Brooks
Praise for How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitor “This is the complete book for both new and experienced salespeople and business owners to learn and re–learn the essentials for success. How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors emphasizes the pricing strategies and tactics to increase the market share and profits of any organization. This is a book that is as important to presidents as it is to salespeople.” —-Bill Scales, CEO, Scales Industrial Technologies, Inc. “As the largest service provider in our industry, we have a significant market advantage. However, we constantly walk the pricing tightrope because, as this book so clearly states, a business is a game of margins …not a game of volume! ” —-John K. Harris, CEO, JK Harris & Company, LLC “If you live and die on price, this book could be your only lifeline.” —-Tom Reilly, CSP, author of Value–Added Selling and Crush Price Objections “How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors successfully illustrates profitable sales truths to assist us in selling for maximum return. This books s well–researched, logical, and affirming words validate the simple fact that as a premium company we deserve premium margins. So, while our competitors reduce or match prices out of fear and scarcity, our managers, thanks to this powerful sales tool, can continue quoting and closing with profitable confidence.” —-Joe Bracket, President, Power Equipment Company “I learned a long time ago that it is pretty difficult to control what my competitors will do, but we must control what we do—-like maintaining margins. This book is a wow! that will help my salesmen crack bad habits. Sales organizations should design their entire training programs around the content in this book.” —-George C. Giessing, President, Brusco–Rich, Inc. “This energizing book is the “right stuff” for every sales force. It should be a required study for every executive and sales professional who seeks to be successful.” —-David R. Little, Chairman and CEO, DXP Enterprises, Inc.
Time Management
Set Priorities to Get the Right Things Done by John Hoover
There are only twenty-four hours in a day, but you can make them count. Time Management, a comprehensive and essential resource for any manager on the run, shows you how.
Learn to:
– Set and prioritize goals, objectives, and tasks
– Create an effective schedule
– Avoid distractions and interruptions
– Respect other people’s time
– Build a time-conscious organization
The Collins Best Practices guides offer new and seasoned managers the essential information they need to achieve more, both personally and professionally. Designed to provide tried-and-true advice from the world’s most influential business minds, they feature practical strategies and tips to help you get ahead.
Flipping the Switch…
Unleash the Power of Personal Accountability Using the QBQ! by John G. Miller
Asking the right kind of question is only the first step to becoming fullyengaged at work and in life. In his bestselling book QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, John G. Miller revealed how personal accountability helps to create opportunity, overcome obstacles, and achieve goals by eliminating blame, complaining, and procrastination. The result? Stronger organizations, more dynamic teams, and healthier relationships. Now Miller takes readers to the next level to show how they can use the power of the QBQ! and personal accountability every day.
False Economy
A Surprising Economic History of the World by Alan Beattie
In False Economy, Alan Beattie weaves together the economic choices, political choices, economic history, and human stories, that determine whether governments and countries remain rich or poor.
He also addresses larger questions about why they make the choices they do, and what those mean for the future of our global economy. But despite the heady subject matter, False Economy is a lively and lucid book that engagingly and thought-provokingly examines macroeconomics, economic topics, and the fault lines and successes that can make or break a culture or induce a global depression. Along the way, readers will discover why Africa doesn’t grow cocaine, why our asparagus comes from Peru, why our keyboard spells QWERTY, and why giant pandas are living on borrowed time.
QBQ!
The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life by John G. Miller
QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, already a phenomenon in its self-published edition, addresses the most important issue in business and society today: personal accountability.
The lack of personal accountability has resulted in an epidemic of blame, complaining, and procrastination. No organization-or individual-can achieve goals, compete in the marketplace, fulfill a vision, or develop people and teams without personal accountability.
The solution involves an entirely new approach. We can no longer ask, “Who dropped the ball?” “Why can’t they do their work properly?” or “Why do we have to go through all these changes?” Instead, every individual has to ask the question behind the question: “How can I improve this situation?” “What can I contribute?” or “How can I make a difference?”
Succinct, insightful, and practical, QBQ! The Question Behind the Question provides a method for putting personal accountability into daily action, which can bring astonishing results: problems get solved, barriers come down, service improves, teamwork grows, and people adapt to change.
The Truth About Employee Engagement
A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery by Patrick M. Lencioni
In his sixth fable, bestselling author Patrick Lencioni takes on a topic that almost everyone can relate to: job misery. Millions of workers, even those who have carefully chosen careers based on true passions and interests, dread going to work, suffering each day as they trudge to jobs that make them cynical, weary, and frustrated. It is a simple fact of business life that any job, from investment banker to dishwasher, can become miserable. Through the story of a CEO turned pizzeria manager, Lencioni reveals the three elements that make work miserable — irrelevance, immeasurability, and anonymity — and gives managers and their employees the keys to make any job more engaging.
The Ideal Team Player
How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues by Patrick M. Lencioni
In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues.
Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.
The Motive
Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities by Patrick M. Lencioni
In what may be his edgiest page-turner to date, Lencioni thrusts his readers into a day-long conversation between rival CEOs. Shay Davis is the CEO of Golden Gate Alarm, who, after just a year in his role, is beginning to worry about his job and is desperate to figure out how to turn things around. With nowhere else to turn, Shay receives some hard-to-swallow advice from the most unlikely and unwanted source—Liam Alcott, CEO of a more successful security company and his most hated opponent.
Lencioni uses unexpected plot twists and crisp dialogue to take us on a journey that culminates in a resolution that is as unexpected as it is enlightening. As he does in his other books, he then provides a straightforward summary of the lessons from the fable, combining a clear explanation of his theory with practical advice to help executives examine their true motivation for leading. In addition to provoking readers to honestly assess themselves, Lencioni presents action steps for changing their approach in five key areas. In doing so, he helps leaders avoid the pitfalls that stifle their organizations and even hurt the people they are meant to serve.