Management Leadership Success

The subject of “design thinking” is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press - due in large part to work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this audiobook to reveal how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is an audiobook for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

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.

Hollywood producer and pitch master Brant Pinvidic has sold more than 300 TV shows and movies, run a TV network, and helmed one of the largest production companies in the world with smash hits like The Biggest Loser and Bar Rescue. In his nearly 20 years of experience, he’s developed a simple, straightforward system that’s helped hundreds - from Fortune 100 CEOs to PTA presidents - use top-level Hollywood storytelling techniques to simplify their messages and say less to get more. Pinvidic proves that anyone can deliver a great pitch, for any idea, in any situation.

Every day, leaders around the world make decisions that affect millions of people. The results of these decisions are mixed. Sometimes - like when Nelson Mandela led the fight against apartheid - our leaders inspire positive change on a grand scale. But at other times - like when various leaders failed to respond adequately to Hurricane Katrina - poor leadership yields disastrous outcomes. Anyone can claim to be a leader in times of calm, but crisis situations sift the true visionaries from the false ones.

This game-changing book puts you behind the curtain at Toyota, providing new insight into the legendary automaker's management practices and offering practical guidance for leading and developing people in a way that makes the best use of their brainpower. Drawing on six years of research into Toyota's employee-management routines, Toyota Kata examines and elucidates, for the first time, the company's organizational routines - called kata - that power its success with continuous improvement and adaptation.

For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.

Difficult people are the worst part of a manager's job. Whether it comes from direct reports or people above, outbursts, irrational demands, griping, and other disruptions need to be dealt with - and it's your responsibility to do it. Leading the Unleadable turns this dreaded chore into a straight forward process that gently, yet effectively, improves behaviors.

There are moments when we achieve peak performance: An athlete plays a perfect game; a business has a quarter with once-in-a-lifetime profits. But these moments are often elusive, and for every amazing day, we may have a hundred ordinary and even unsatisfying days. Fulfillment doesn’t come from isolated peak experiences, but rather from many consistent good days. So how do we sustain performance, while avoiding burnout and maintaining balance? In Optimal, Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss reveal how emotional intelligence can help us have a great day, any day.

In The Partnership Charter, psychologist and business mediation expert David Gage offers a comprehensive guide to the art of establishing and maintaining a business partnership. The centerpiece of his approach is the Partnership Charter, a document that clearly outlines the goals, expectations, responsibilities, and relationships of the principals. The charter identifies potential sources of conflict and how they will be resolved, while addressing such sensitive issues as personal styles, values, money, and power.

A practical must-listen, FranklinCovey’s Everyone Deserves a Great Manager is the essential guide for the millions of people all over the world making the challenging and rewarding leap to manager. Based on nearly a decade of research on what makes managers successful - and includes new ways of thinking, tips, and techniques - this volume has been field-tested with hundreds of thousands of managers all over the world.

The ultimate handbook for fostering and cultivating a strong team culture, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Culture Code and The Talent Code.

If there's one lesson Oren Klaff has learned over decades of pitching, presenting, and closing long-shot, high-stakes deals, it's that people are sick of being marketed and sold to. Most of all, they hate being told what to think. The more you push them, the more they resist. What people love, however, is coming up with a great idea on their own, even if it's the idea you were guiding them to have all along. Often, the only way to get someone to sign is to make them feel like they're smarter than you.

Negotiation is not a zero-sum game. It’s an essential skill for your career that can also improve your closest relationships and your everyday life. Still, people often shy away from it, feeling defeated before they’ve even started. In this groundbreaking new book on negotiation, Alexandra Carter - Columbia law professor and mediation expert who has helped students, business professionals, the United Nations, and more - offers a straightforward accessible approach anyone can use to ask for and receive more.

In Boundaries for Leaders, Dr. Henry Cloud gives leaders the tools and techniques they need to achieve the performance they desire - in their organizations and in themselves. Drawing on the latest findings from neuroscience, Dr. Cloud shows why it's critical for leaders to set the conditions that make people's brains perform at their highest levels. How do great leaders do this? One way is through the creation of "boundaries" - structures that determine what will exist and what will not.

A straight-shooting Silicon Valley executive reveals insider career strategies to becoming a great leader, developing your network, succeeding without wasting time, and managing trade-offs between your work and life so your life works. Patty Azzarello became the youngest general manager at Hewlett-Packard at age 33, ran a $1 billion software business at 35, and became a CEO at 38 - all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk. In Rise, Azzarello shares the insider secrets to advancing your career (while having a life) in three practical steps.

Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution? Now there’s a surefire way to answer these important questions: the Design Sprint, created at Google by Jake Knapp. This method is like fast-forwarding into the future, so you can see how customers react before you invest all the time and expense of creating your new product, service, or campaign.

Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg came to Google over a decade ago as proven technology executives. At the time, the company was already well-known for doing things differently, reflecting the visionary - and frequently contrarian - principles of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. If Eric and Jonathan were going to succeed, they realized they would have to relearn everything they thought they knew about management and business.

The key to success in life and business is to become a master at Conversational Intelligence. It's not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success. Conversational Intelligence translates the wealth of new insights coming out of neuroscience from across the globe, and brings the science down to earth so people can understand and apply it in their everyday lives.

In this timely manifesto, the authors of the New York Times best-seller Rework broadly reject the prevailing notion that long hours, aggressive hustle, and "whatever it takes" are required to run a successful business today.

Through a combination of inspiring stories about unlikely high performers and evidence from the bleeding edge of behavioral science, we present you with a toolkit for learning intention-not as a fluffy concept, but as five very trainable skills.