Career Leadership

Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever, and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company’s history. His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger - think global - and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

Playing to Win, a noted Wall Street Journal and Washington Post best seller, outlines the strategic approach Lafley, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, used to double P&G’s sales, quadruple its profits, and increase its market value by more than $100 billion when Lafley was first CEO (he led the company from 2000 to 2009). The book shows leaders in any type of organization how to guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business successwhere to play and how to win.

Today's coaches are challenged with the recurring task of weaving threads from several disciplines into a tapestry that is fit for purpose in helping their clients learn and succeed. In this sense, the coach has to become a discriminating eclectic, developing a keen sense of judgment to select which threads are best woven into the fabric and those that it would be better to simply throw away.

Visionaries have groundbreaking ideas. Integrators make those ideas realities. This explosive combination is the key to getting everything you want out of your business. It worked for Disney. It worked for McDonald's. It worked for Ford. It can work for you. From the author of the best-selling Traction, Rocket Fuel details the integral roles of the visionary and integrator and explains how an effective relationship between the two can help your business thrive.

The author of the legendary best seller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini, shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn't lie in the message itself but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

If any of the following behaviors sound like you or someone you work with, beware! In Why CEOs Fail, David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo describe the most common characteristics of derailed top executives and how you can avoid them.

The team behind How Google Works returns with management lessons from legendary coach and business executive Bill Campbell, whose mentoring of some of our most successful modern entrepreneurs has helped create well over a trillion dollars in market value. Bill Campbell played an instrumental role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit, fostering deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt.

In the new edition of this fascinating book, a book that has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Slashdot.org, Lifehacker.com and in the New York Times, best-selling author Scott Berkun pulls the best lessons from the history of innovation, including the recent software and web age, to reveal powerful and surprising truths about how ideas become successful innovations - truths people can easily apply to the challenges of today.

While it may seem like some folks are just born with a commanding presence that draws people in, the fact is anyone can learn to communicate in ways that consistently build powerful connections.

If you're like most driven entrepreneurs and business leaders, you are either starting or running a company that is barely scratching the surface of its growth and profit potential. How do you find the hidden "cash in the walls" and make the leap from ordinary business outcomes to retire-tomorrow, profit-rich results?

Through a captivating business parable, Ken Blanchard and coauthors Susan Fowler and Laurence Hawkins show listeners how to apply the world-renowned Situational Leadership II method to their own development. The story centers on Steve, a young advertising executive who is about to lose his job. Through a series of talks with a One Minute Manager protégé named Cayla, Steve learns the three secrets of self leadership.

Professional success, more often than not, means becoming a manager. Yet nobody prepared you for having to deal with messy tidbits like emotions, conflicts, and personalities - all while achieving ever-greater goals and meeting ever-looming deadlines. Not exactly what you had in mind, is it? Don’t panic. Here are the tools to help you succeed and even thrive as a manager.

In this book, Art Kleiner, a strategy expert; Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist; and Josie Thomson, an executive coach, give a transformative explanation of how cutting-edge neuroscience can help business leaders set a course toward better management. Mapping the functions of a manager onto established patterns of mental activity, they identify crucial brain circuits and their parallels in organizational culture. Strategic leaders, they show, play the role of wise advocates: able to go beyond day-to-day transactional behavior to a longer-term, broader perspective....

For decades, Peter F. Drucker was widely regarded as "the dean of this country's business and management philosophers" ( Wall Street Journal). In this concise and brilliant work, he looks to the most influential position in management - the executive. The measure of the executive, Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done". This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps - and inner mindset - he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his contacts list, people he has helped and who have helped him. And in the time since Never Eat Alone was published in 2005, the rise of social media and new, collaborative management styles have only made Ferrazzi’s advice more essential for anyone hoping to get ahead in business.

Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to - and approach for - overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy”.

Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.

Who's pulling for you? Who's got your back? Who's putting your hat in the ring? Odds are this person is not a mentor but a sponsor. Mentors can build your self-esteem and provide a sounding board - but they're not your ticket to the top.

Ever since he wrote The Art of the Deal, Trump has been the world's most famous negotiator - even though he didn't reveal his actual deal-making secrets. Now, George Ross explains the tactics that took Trump to the top and how you can use those same tactics and strategies in your daily negotiations. A practical, real-world negotiation playbook, this is the ultimate guide for anyone who wants to negotiate like a proven winner.

Strategic Project Management Made Simple, Revised and Updated is an indispensable volume for leaders and workers seeking to transform their approach to planning, driving, and executing projects in their organizations.