Small Business Leadership

What if you learned that to lead well, you’d need to live like a drug addict? During treatment for drug addiction, Michael Brody-Waite learned three principles that became the difference between life and death: Practice rigorous authenticity, surrender the outcome, and do uncomfortable work. Leaving rehab, Michael entered the workplace where he was shocked to see most business leaders doing what he had been taught would kill him. He began to see striking similarities between drug addiction and what he calls “mask addiction”.

“Everyone wants everyone else to change.” That is the fundamental reason why most organizational transformations fail. Leaders want their people to exhibit behaviors that they don’t exhibit themselves. Team members feel powerless to make significant change just because of where they are situated on the organization chart. Improvement Starts with I provides you with a framework to change this through a simple plan that, when followed, will deliver outstanding engagement, improvement, and results, helping you avoid the potholes into which countless companies have fallen.

Gorilla in the Cockpit offers a revolutionary way to understand megaproject failures. It opens the black box to reveal the hidden drivers of project crashes. The root causes cannot be found in traditional project management books. They are neither technical nor financial. They are human.

Business schools teach that the most important prerequisite for starting a business is a business plan. Nonsense, says Carl Schramm in Burn the Business Plan, who for a decade headed the most important foundation devoted to entrepreneurship in this country. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google are just a few of the companies that began without one.

In this offbeat approach to leadership, college president Steven B. Sample - the man who turned the University of Southern California into one of the most respected and highly rated universities in the country - challenges many conventional teachings on the subject. Here, Sample outlines an iconoclastic style of leadership that flies in the face of current leadership thought, but a style that unquestionably works, nevertheless.

Chris Guillebeau, the best-selling author of The $100 Start Up, has created a practical, actionable guide that can help you turn your passion into paychecks - whether within a traditional company or business, or by striking out on your own.

This book reveals what it takes for consultants of all types, as well as organizational leaders, to be really helpful in dealing with the complex, systemic, constantly changing organizational problems of today. They need to rapidly create a relationship of trust and openness that enables clients, subordinates, and team members to reveal what is really on their minds and to jointly develop a sense of what is the problem and what kind of adaptive response could best deal with it.

In late 2014, internationally acclaimed blogger and podcaster Chris Ducker coined the term “Youpreneur” to describe the rise of the personal brand entrepreneur, a new business model that very few people saw coming. Since then, the Youpreneur has risen to the top across sectors. A Youpreneur transcends the old rules of business and builds a sustainable business from the foundation of their experience, interests, and personality - their personal brand. Youpreneurs draw an engaged, loyal audience even as they pursue varying, changing interests.

What does it take to turn ideas into action? What are the elements of a perfect pitch? How do you win the war for talent? How do you establish a brand without bucks? These are some of the issues everyone faces when starting or revitalizing any undertaking, and Guy Kawasaki, former marketing maven of Apple Computer, provides the answers.

Centered on the building and construction industry, The Tokens offer business lessons to help to build a foundation of success that is so vital for sustaining growth and overcoming challenges. It outlines the eleven points for developing and maintaining a successful building or construction business with many of the lessons applicable to any business.

Salespeople, consultants, managers, executives, entrepreneurs... Influence is a crucial tool for absolutely anyone seeking success and prosperity. But how can everyday people actually become more influential? Maximum Influence unlocks the secrets of the master influencers. Now in an all-new edition, the audiobook combines scientific research with real-world studies, presenting the most authoritative and effective arsenal of persuasion techniques ever.

Douglas Kruger, best-selling author of Is Your Thinking Keeping You Poor? and Poverty Proof, returns with his hardest-hitting book yet. This take-no-prisoners exploration of how money works will challenge you on everything you think you know while arming you with economically sound principles for growing your prosperity. No holds are barred when it comes to discussing how governments keep people poor, and which deeply held belief systems promote poverty.

You already know the Starbucks story. Since 1992, its stock has risen a staggering 5,000 percent! The genius of Starbucks success lies in its ability to create personalized customer experiences, stimulate business growth, generate profits, energize employees, and secure customer loyalty - all at the same time. The Starbucks Experience contains a robust blend of home-brewed ingenuity and people-driven philosophies that have made Starbucks one of the world's "most admired" companies, according to Fortune magazine.

Confronting change is incredibly hard, both organizationally and personally. Yet the pace of change in our world will never be slower than it is right now, says Beth Comstock, the former vice chair and head of marketing and innovation at GE. Imagine It Forward is an inspiring, fresh, candid, and deeply personal audiobook about how to grapple with the challenges to change we face every day. It is a different kind of narrative, a big-picture audiobook that combines Comstock’s personal story in leading change with vital lessons on overcoming the inevitable roadblocks.

What does it take to succeed today both personally and professionally? In looking for answers, one obvious place to start would be to talk to self-made men and women who themselves are successful. That's exactly what Michael W. Sonnenfeldt - an accomplished entrepreneur - has done here in this groundbreaking book.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization's products or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

With The Strategy Activation Playbook, author Aric Wood, CEO of XPLANE, teaches you how to do what he's helped organizations around the world accomplish: align and activate the people in your organization to execute your strategy and realize your vision.

Millions of people hate their jobs, or have recently lost one, and would love to start a small business. Yet very few actually try, because the process feels as scary as jumping off a cliff. No matter how boring or stressful a job might be, it's hard to give up a salary and benefits. But for some, it can be the smartest, happiest decision of a lifetime.

What happens when three powerhouse women get together for a candid late-night conversation about the challenges of launching and scaling a business? Destiny unfolds, and a movement of female empowerment begins to take shape. Be…is our labor of love to you. It’s a collaborative synergy of wisdom from our individual journeys to success, paired with stories from women who courageously overcame personal and professional challenges in life and business. Change starts with a deliberate shedding of our self-limiting beliefs.

In the current digital age, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to stay focused. Smartphones, tablets, smart watches, and other devices constantly vie for our attention. In both business and life, we are constantly bombarded with tweets, likes, mentions, and a constant stream of information. The inability to pay attention impacts learning, parenting, prioritizing, and leading. Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus teaches managers and leaders how to help themselves and others sharpen their focusing skills.