Small Leadership

Today's most successful businesses are storydoers. They create products and services that, from the very beginning, are manifestations of an authentic and meaningful story - one told primarily through action, not advertising. In True Story, creative executive Ty Montague argues that any business, regardless of size or industry, can embrace the principles of storydoing. Indeed, our best-run companie - from small start-ups to global conglomerates - organize around a coherent narrative that is then broadcast through every action they take (from product design to customer service to marketing).

Engaging and informative, this book skillfully examines what usually goes wrong on the road to entrepreneurship, revealing what business owners regret and what you can do to address these issues. Along the way, it provides an overview of the personality traits and qualities that make success in entrepreneurship more likely, and also explores how the weight of wearing the entrepreneurial hat can affect you.

Urgency - that frantic feeling that we need to be doing more, and faster - is a destructive force in today's workplace. Unnecessary urgency can be toxic, causing stress and burnout. But not all urgency is bad, and sometimes we really do need to get things done quickly. Too little urgency can lead to inaction and lost productivity. So how do we find the right balance where we can use urgency as a meaningful tool to keep productivity up without generating burnout? Urgent! is a guide to using urgency for good to help achieve your goals, to drive success, and minimize stress.

The Business of Expertise, David’s previous book, set the stage by suggesting a narrow focus and then capitalizing on the patterns that emerge from repeated application of your expertise. This book builds on that work by suggesting how to craft a consulting practice with those insights.

In this revised and expanded edition of his groundbreaking Thinkertoys, creativity expert Michael Michalko reveals life-changing tools that will help you think like a genius. From the linear to the intuitive, this comprehensive handbook details ingenious creative-thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. Through fun and thought-provoking exercises, you'll learn how to create original ideas that will improve your personal life and your business life.

You and a partner go into business together and split the equity 50/50. You do all the work and your partner slacks off. He owns half your business - now what? Slicing Pie outlines a process for calculating exactly the right number of shares each founder or employee in an early stage company deserves.

You will learn: How to value the time and resources an individual brings to the company relative to the contributions of others.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski reveals his personal principles for leadership, from dealing with adversity in life or on the basketball court, to taking responsibility for your actions and learning how to trust your heartfelt instincts in times of trouble. Leading with the Heart is about bringing out the best and demanding the best, from ourselves, from those around us, and from any organization that is playing to win.

Problem: Most Americans don't realize the potential gold mine in blue-collar business. By blue-collar business I mean a business providing a specialized service requiring a trained employee and manual labor. In my case it is chimney sweeping, but it can range from construction to gardening to plumbing and junk removal. There are literally thousands and thousands of opportunities, but many people don't consider blue-collar work as an option and are missing out as a result.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur takes energy and drive. Less than 20% make it beyond the first three years. Achieving the next level, the status of business titan - the upper echelon of leadership - takes an unrelenting commitment to turn an idea into a plan, a plan into a startup venture, and a venture into a successful business. The chances of getting to the top are slim at best, relying on a particular set of skills and attributes.

Mindful Business Leadership presents a new model of leadership. It introduces 10 very different leadership roles that are required to meet the challenges of modern business. Memorable metaphors and images are created for each, and they are placed in a matrix. Listeners are shown how to develop these roles within themselves. Potentially negative aspects of each are discussed, along with material on how to put these to creative use.

In The Leadership Wisdom of Jesus, Charles Manz looks to the New Testament to see what it holds for today's leaders. What he finds are powerful leadership lessons that can enable both leaders and followers to maintain integrity, live on a higher plane, and ultimately, reach personal and professional goals through sound practical principles.

In 12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence, bestselling author and motivational expert Brian Tracy teams up with global learning expert Dr. Peter Chee to reveal simple, straightforward principles any business leader can use to make lasting positive changes in his or her organization.

Small Church Essentials is for leaders of smaller congregations. It encourages them to steward their role well, debunking myths about small churches while offering principles for leading a dynamic, healthy small church. Based on the popular six-hour lecture that Karl Vaters delivers to church leaders across the country, Small Church Essentials will affirm small church leaders and show them how to identify what they do well and how to do it even better.

Find your company's unique innovation style and nurture it into a powerful competitive advantage.

The number one reason most new businesses fail is that their owner or owners did not have enough business knowledge. An established and highly successful entrepreneur himself, John cuts through the motivational pep talks and teaches you proven business-building methods that have been used by the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. He provides you with specific steps you must take to build a profitable business that lasts.

To create a more sustainable transformation in the people you coach, you need to start with your own mindset. As a coach, you know you can’t change what you do, unless you alter what you believe first. By shedding the ineffective scripts, trappings and beliefs that a lifetime of personal interactions, professional training and even your parents have taught you, you can reset your thinking to a beginner’s mentality and so begin a fulfilling and exciting journey to coaching mastery.

Few business topics have aroused more skepticism in recent years than the notion of corporate purpose, and for good reason. Too many companies deploy purpose, or a reason for being, as a promotional vehicle to make themselves feel virtuous and to look good to the outside world. Some have only foggy ideas about what purpose is and conflate it with strategy and other concepts like “mission,” “vision,” and “values.” Even well-intentioned leaders don’t understand purpose’s full potential and engage half-heartedly and superficially with it....

Hype Yourself is an invaluable toolkit for getting you and your business featured in the media: newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. Crammed full of insider advice, from the building blocks of your PR strategy to the execution of creative campaigns, it includes expert tips from journalists and industry specialists and is supported by a stack of online resources. Lucy Werner has over 15 years of publicity experience, including running her own specialist consultancy focused on startups and entrepreneurs.

Samit has been at the helm of businesses in the ecommerce, digital video, social media, mobile communications, and software industries, helping to navigate them through turbulent economic times and guide them through necessary transformation so that they stay ahead of the curve and profitable. In Disrupt You!, he reveals how specific strategies that help companies flourish can be applied at an individual level. By challenging assumptions, pinpointing one's unique value, and identifying weaknesses in the structure of current industries, anyone can achieve success and lasting prosperity.

In Too Big to Ignore, recognized technology expert and award-winning author Phil Simon explores an unassailably important trend: Big Data, the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever. Never before have we seen data with the volume, velocity, and variety of today. Big Data is no temporary blip of fad. In fact, it is only going to intensify in the coming years, and its ramifications for the future of business are impossible to overstate.