Career Success Leadership

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”.

Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 200 "nudge units" in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful "choice architecture" - a concept the authors invented - to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society.

Kym Gold's mantra - "never settle for a no, always look for a yes" - is what led her to co-create True Religion Brand Jeans, a major retail clothing company that she sold for close to a billion dollars in 2013. In Gold Standard, she finally gives her side of the story of how the once fledgling jeans company that nobody wanted,went on to become a giant, revolutionizing player in the fashion industry.

The coauthors of the New York Times best-selling Difficult Conversations take on the toughest topic of all: How we see ourselves. Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen have spent the past 15 years working with corporations, nonprofits, governments, and families to determine what helps us learn and what gets in our way. In Thanks for the Feedback, they explain why receiving feedback is so crucial yet so challenging. They blend the latest insights from neuroscience and psychology with practical, hard-headed advice.

There’s an old saying that if the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’re done with the worst thing you’ll have to do all day. For Tracy, eating a frog is a metaphor for tackling your most challenging task - but also the one that can have the greatest positive impact on your life. Eat That Frog! shows you how to organize each day so you can zero in on these critical tasks and accomplish them efficiently and effectively.

Martha Stewart is an undeniable force in the business world. One of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, she turned her personal passion into Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, a billion dollar business. This fall she's breaking new ground with two television shows from NBC -- her reality show The Apprentice: Martha Stewart and her daytime syndicated show Martha -- as well as a radio program on Sirius satellite radio which will provide daily round-the-clock how-to content. What's her secret for success?

It’s difficult to totally disconnect from our jobs outside of work hours. But not doing so can cause long-term stress, burnout, and loss of the joy we find in work. As a top tech leader, Bruce Daisley has seen up close how an around-the-clock work culture can lead employees to feel perpetually stressed-out, disengaged, and unhappy. In this workshop, Daisley lays out specific strategies to help us break free from the unhealthy work habits that lead to burnout and shows us that protecting our personal time can lead to more inspiration and more joy on the job.

The Go-Giver Influencer is a story about two young, ambitious businesspeople: Gillian Waters, the chief buyer for Smith & Banks, a midsize company that operates a national chain of pet accessory stores; and Jackson Hill, the founder of Angels Clothed in Fur, a small but growing manufacturer of all-natural pet foods. Each has something the other wants.

Productivity expert Paula Rizzo shows how you can use lists to your maximum advantage. She helps you assess the work you have in front of you and identify how to best spend your time - figuring out what to work on versus what to delegate, what’s important versus what can wait. From evaluating tasks through the lens of your top priorities to embracing your own productivity rhythm and scheduling free time to recharge, her tips will empower you to accomplish more of what’s meaningful.

Making progress on complex, problematic situations requires a new approach to working together: transformative facilitation, a structured and creative process for removing the obstacles to fluid forward movement. This book is for anyone who helps people work together to transform their situation, be it a professional facilitator, manager, consultant, coach, chairperson, organizer, mediator, stakeholder, or friend. It offers a broad and bold vision of the contribution that facilitation can make to helping people collaborate to make progress.

In Decisive, the Heaths, based on an exhaustive study of the decision-making literature, introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. Written in an engaging and compulsively listenable style, Decisive takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from a rock star’s ingenious decision-making trick to a CEO’s disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions.

Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process—a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.

Number-one New York Times bestdselling author John C. Maxwell believes that any setback, whether professional or personal, can be turned into a step forward when you possess the right tools to turn a loss into a gain. Drawing on nearly fifty years of leadership experience, Dr. Maxwell provides a roadmap for winning by examining the eleven elements that constitute the DNA of learners who succeed in the face of problems, failure, and losses.

In 2010 world-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen gave a powerful speech to the Harvard Business School's graduating class. Drawing upon his business research, he offered a series of guidelines for finding meaning and happiness in life. He used examples from his own experiences to explain how high achievers can all too often fall into traps that lead to unhappiness. Full of inspiration and wisdom, this book will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment.

Simplicity isn’t just a design principle at Apple - it’s a value that permeates every level of the organization. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It’s what helped Apple recover from near death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011. Thanks to Steve Jobs’s uncompromising ways, you can see Simplicity in everything Apple does: the way it’s structured, the way it innovates, and the way it speaks to its customers.

The second edition of this best seller reveals how motivation science is essential for solving the most vexing leadership issues—from hybrid work and retention to employee engagement.

In business, the right behaviors matter. But getting it right is tricky. Even when we acknowledge the need to change what we do and how we do it, life has a habit of getting in the way, upsetting even the best-laid plans. And just how do we manage those situations that can provoke even the most rational among us into behaving in ways we would rather forget?

This book will inspire you to: control the negotiation before you enter the room; persuade others to do what you want - for their own reasons; manage emotions on both sides of the table; understand the rules of negotiating across cultures; set the stage for a healthy relationship long after the ink has dried; and identify what you can live with and when to walk away.

Relationships are at the heart of every positive human experience. Maxwell, a master communicator and relational expert, makes learning about relationships accessible to everyone. The most sophisticated leaders and salespeople will pick up on skills that will make them even better, and relational novices will learn skills that can transform them into relational dynamos.

In this empowering guide for women who are tired of being told “just be yourself,” host of the chart-topping The Influencer Podcast and business coach Julie Solomon teaches you how to shake off outdated ideas of what is possible and use your newfound confidence to make anything you want happen. In this book, you will learn how to overcome self-loathing, feel good about yourself, and gain the confidence to accept and love yourself for who you are.