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Leading is learning ... and learning faster! Here are several new releases and excerpts, the latest refresher book reviews and the best business books and resources - and there are many more in the archives!
       
             
   
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The CEO Refresher Reviewers

BEST BOOKS

Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer
by Jill Griffin
   
Upstarts! Upstarts!
by Donna Fenn
   
I Love You More Than My Dog I Love You More Than My Dog
by Jeanne Bliss
   
Just Listen Just Listen
by Mark Goulston
   
Master Leaders MASTER LEADERS
by George Barna
   
Maestro Maestro
by Roger Nierenberg
   
The Power of Strategic Commitment The Power of Strategic Commitment
by Josh Leibner, Gershon Mader and Alan Weiss
   
Strategic Customer Service Strategic Customer Service
by John A. Goodman
   
Chaotics Chaotics
by Philip Kotler and John A. Caslione
   
Take Their Breath Away Take Their Breath Away
by Chip R. Bell and John R. Patterson
   
Marketing Metrics in Action Marketing Metrics in Action
by Laura Patterson
   
LEADERSHIP RE:VISION Leadership RE:Vision
by Jim Seybert
   
Running with the Rhinos Running with the Rhinos
by Christian Warren
   
Human Sigma
by John H. Fleming and Jim Asplund
   
Radical Careering Radical Careering
by Sally Hogshead
   
Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins
by Annette Simmons
   
Customer Service Made Easy
by Paul Levesque
   
Big Vision, Small Business
by Jamie S. Walters
   
Hit the Ground Leading!
by Angela Mondou
   
Chief Customer Officer
by Jeanne Bliss
   
The Must-Have Customer
by Robert Gordman with Armin Brott
   
Exceptional Selling
by Jeff Thull
   
The Innovation Killer
by Cynthia Rabe
   
The Laws of Lifetime Growth:
by Dan Sullivan and Catherine Nomura
   
Pop!
Stand Out in Any Crowd!
by Sam Horn
   
Kiss Theory Good Bye
by Bob Prosen

The Best Books
2009
2008
2007

2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001

The Best Business Books
of All Time!


refresherbooks

 

 

 
Complicit

Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable
by Mark Gilbert
The credit crunch is affecting every investor and every consumer, every industry and every government program, yet few people truly understand how it happened. Subprime mortgages have been center stage, but behind the scenes a conspiracy of greed among bankers, investors, rating agencies and regulators has imperiled everyone’s financial future. We need to know what went wrong and how to change the practices that led to this calamity. Bloomberg columnist Mark Gilbert shows how Wall Street’s tolerance for extremes made the global credit crunch both foreseeable and inevitable. He offers a blow-by-blow account of what went wrong and what lessons need to be learned from the crisis.

   
Leadership Under Pressure

Leadership Under Pressure: Tactics from the Frontline
by Bob Stewart
In Leadership under Pressure, Col. Bob Stewart draws on his experiences in the army and in business, using those experiences to illustrate the key attributes of a leader. In this timely and personal view of leadership, readers learn how to maintain morale in tough times, deal with a crisis, show courage to colleagues, and lead others by example. Having served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, where he was British battalion commander, he has faced life and death situations and the toughest decisions any leader can make. Great stories and excellent insights. (ed.)

   
Y-Size Your Business

Y-Size Your Business: How Gen Y Employees Can Save You Money and Grow Your Business
by Jason Ryan Dorsey
Jason Ryan Dorsey, The Gen Y Guy®, presents a step-by-step methodology for best employing Gen Y without investing a lot of time or money. A member of Gen Y himself he delivers an insider's view of his generation as well as more than fifty cost-effective, ready-to-use strategies that deliver immediate measurable results. Dorsey collected these creative strategies from the frontlines of business during his work with executives, managers, and entrepreneurs in businesses large and small around the world.  He shows you exactly how to attract the best Gen Y employees, quickly develop their workplace skills, and then unlock their performance, motivation, and loyalty.

   
Lead Your Boss

Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up
by John Baldoni
Brimming with examples and insights, Lead Your Boss guides you through the subtle yet highly effective leadership style of managing up. It's a powerful new approach that relies on initiative, resilience, empathy, courage, and other positive traits to bring people together-your boss, your peers, and your team-for the benefit of all.

   
The Communication Problem Solver
The Communication Problem Solver: Simple Tools and Techniques for Busy Managers
by Nannette Rundle Carroll

Managers need top-flight communication skills to keep their staffs productive and collaborative. But often, those who manage lack the ability to get things back on track once miscommunication occurs. This book helps readers analyze their communication skills and challenges and explains how they can use simple problem-solving techniques to resolve the people issues that derail productivity at work. This no-nonsense guide is packed with practical tools to help any manager be immediately effective, as well as a handy list of common communication problems and corresponding solutions.
   
The Integration Imperative
The Integration Imperative
by Suzanne C. Lowe
When it comes to competing effectively, achieving financial success and delivering optimal client service, professional and B2B firms keep looking for the Holy Grail in all the wrong places. The real Holy Grail can be found by ensuring that marketing and business development are integrated into every function. The Integration Imperative summarizes three structural and cultural frameworks that professional- and B2B service firms can employ to achieve new effectiveness in marketing and business development, and ultimately, improve the firm's value to clients.
   
The Surprising Solution
The Surprising Solution: Creating Possibility in a Swift and Severe World
by Bruce Piasecki
With their disproportionate power, big businesses now wield a tremendous ability to shape our social landscape, and the author impresses the importance of “Social Response Capitalism,” an approach that emphasizes a business's “social brand” as well as the price and quality of their product or service. The Surprising Solution describes the revolution in business in which the corporations that can best address environmental and social issues by creating superior products will thrive and profit in this new world.
   
Leadershift
Leadershift: Reinventing Leadership for the Age of Mass Collaboration
by Emmanuel Gobillot
Leadershift is about adapting and changing traditional models of leadership in response to the influence of mass collaboration, a form of collective action which occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project.  Mass collaboration requires a form of leadership that is prepared to let go of the experience, expertise and control it holds precious.  Emmanuel Gobillot describes how to adapt traditional leadership roles, and presents the tools necessary to succeed in this new age.
   
Girl on Top
Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success
by Nicole Williams
Nicole Williams is the tell-it-like-it-is career expert who you wish could fight your work battles for you. But with her ingenious approach-taking the tactics used to land a man and applying them to your career-you'll be able to handle any work situation and come out on top. Here, Nicole introduces twenty tried-and-true dating rules such as "Don't Give Away the Milk for Free" and "Don't Waste the Pretty" and reveals how they can be applied just as effectively in the office. Nicole's keen insight and candid advice will teach you how to recognize the good guys from the bad, win the kudos of those who matter, and create the career of your dreams.
   
Who Turned Out the Lights
Who Turned Out the Lights?: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis
by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson
We don't know exactly what the price of gas will be by the time you have this book in your hands, but whether it's high, low, or somewhere in between, the fact of the matter is just the same: this country faces a huge, complicated, and scary energy problem. Not only is it huge, complicated, and scary, it's daunting for most of us because it's nearly impossible to understand unless you're some kind of full-time energy wonk. We all recognize symptoms such as soaring gas prices and pricey home heating oil. But when it comes to the disease -- what's causing the country's energy problems and how to cure them -- that's another story entirely. Confused R Us is more like it.
   
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs - How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience
by Carmine Gallo
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s wildly popular presentations have set a new global gold standard—and now this step-by-step guide shows you exactly how to use his crowd-pleasing techniques in your own presentations. Communications expert Carmine Gallo has studied and analyzed the very best of Jobs’s performances, offering point-by-point examples, tried-and-true techniques, and proven presentation secrets that work every time. With this revolutionary approach, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to sell your ideas, share your enthusiasm, and wow your audience the Steve Jobs way.
   
Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer
Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World
by Jill Griffin
Customer loyalty strategies have turned a whole new page. Have you? Today's customers typically begin their selection process by using Internet search engines, which provide an endless array of choices, as well as the ability to compare everything—price, delivery, product specifications—at the click of a mouse. Businesses unprepared to address this new breed of buyer are losing market share by the minute. In Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer, customer loyalty expert Jill Griffin addresses this storm of change head-on. She examines the relentless, new selling landscape and offers practical advice for winning customer loyalty.
   
Upstarts

Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success
by Donna Fenn
Upstarts examines and analyzes this entrepreneurial revolution to reveal eight critical lessons every entrepreneur and marketer must learn. Fenn describes a generation of entrepreneurs that is highly collaborative and team-oriented. It’s quick and alert when it comes to new technologies. It’s hell-bent on changing the world. And it’s totally impatient with outmoded business models. The sooner you adapt to the new way of business, the greater chance you have to grow and profit in the years ahead.

   
International Communications Strategy
International Communications Strategy : Developments in Cross-Cultural Communications, PR and Social Media
by Silvia Cambie and Yang-May Ooi
International Communications Strategy is about the cross-cultural challenges currently facing PR practitioners. Providing information on alternative communication approaches as well as cross-cultural case-studies and examples, International Communications Strategy will give readers points of reference and ideas to use every time they are asked to provide strategic communication guidance to senior management or clients.
   
Master Leaders
MASTER LEADERS
by George Barna
In MASTER LEADERS, best-selling author and researcher George Barna gives you the opportunity of a lifetime to sit down with 30 of the world’s most respected leaders as they provide intriguing answers to some of the toughest questions and challenges facing leaders today. Based on personal interviews and never before published conversations with “the greats” (including Seth Godin, Patrick Lencioni, Colleen Barrett, Ken Blanchard, Ben Carson, Tony Dungy, Newt Gingrich, and many others). MASTER LEADERS offers 16 essential leadership keys to help you honor God, strengthen and equip others, and manage a high-functioning team. The way you view leadership will never be the same.
   
Full of Bull

Full of Bull: Unscramble Wall Street Doubletalk to Protect and Build Your Portfolio
by Stephen T. McClellan
In Full of Bull, you’ll learn how to look for analysts’ favoritism and blind spots; how to react appropriately to upgrades, downgrades, and price targets; and to recognize what company announcements really mean. Drawing on his immense body of experience analyzing top companies, McClellan shows you how to systematically evaluate a company’s prospects yourself and choose investments based on principles that work. This is exactly the kind of objective, focused guidance you won’t be getting from your broker!

   
The World According to twitter

The World According to Twitter
by David Pogue
New York Times technology columnist David Pogue has tapped into the brilliance of his half-million followers on Twitter by posting a different, thought-provoking question every night. Out of 25,000 tweets, Pogue has gathered the very best 2,524 into this irresistible, clever, laugh-out-loud funny book. It's a very interesting social networking experiment.

   
Just Listen
Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone
by Mark Goulston
Over his career as an organizational consultant, relationship counselor, and hostage-negotiation trainer, Dr. Goulston has found what works, consistently, to reach all kinds of people in any type of situation. He discovered that the counter-intuitive step of listening is the real key to getting through and influencing others. In this very engaging work, he demonstrates through a wide range of workplace and relationship-related scenarios, how mirroring what others are feeling naturally works to break down barriers and open the way to winning their attention, trust and cooperation. It's an excellent read!
   
Maestro
Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening
by Roger Nierenberg
The author, a veteran conductor, is the creator of The Music Paradigm, a unique program that invites people to sit inside
a professional symphony orchestra to think about leadership and communication in an entirely new way. The book is a parable of how a rising executive facing tough challenges befriends an orchestra conductor and experiences a most profound transformation. There are many very powerful insights here that the best leaders can apply to take their teams to a new level of harmony and excellence. Highly recommended and one of the best of the year!
   
The Other Kind of Smart
The Other Kind of Smart: Simple Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence for Greater Personal Effectiveness and Success
by Harvey Deutschendorf
The author is an Emotional Intelligence (EI) coach, and in this book uses the the techniques of storytelling, quotes and exercises to show readers how to apply the principles of EI at work and in life. It's an excellent read and a very useful guide to develop stress tolerance, cultivate empathy, increase flexibility, boost assertiveness, resolve problems successfully, and overcome self-limiting barriers to achieve one's true potential. Congratulations Harvey, great work!
   
I Love You More Than My Dog
I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad
by Jeanne Bliss
In her first book Chief Customer Officer  Jeanne Bliss established herself as a foremost authority and advocate of customer experience, focus and profitability. She challenged the C-Suite to go beyond "lip service to passionate action", and provided the road map to make it so. In I Love You More Than My Dog she explores how only an elite number of businesses have achieved a level of customer devotion she's called "beloved" -  with passionate, loyal and vocal customers and advocates that sustain their business even in tough times. It's an exciting, edgy and captivating read driven by Jeanne's passion and 'soul', and filled with examples that will thrill you with what's possible! It's guaranteed to "twist your head" and have you take a very good look in the mirror to consider your values, choose your "story," and understand the five key decisions that lead to a "beloved" level of customer devotion.  It's brilliant, and one of the very best of the year! (ed.)
   
No
No: The Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home
by Jim Camp
In his previous business best-seller, Start with No, Camp challenged the prevailing win-win school of negotiation made famous by “getting to yes” and its imitators. His big idea, then and now, is that negotiating based on feel-good emotions, assumptions, and compromises will get you demolished at the negotiation table. Camp’s “No” method takes an ethical, unemotional, highly structured, and disciplined approach to any type of negotiation, and provides a step-by-step way to achieve the best possible outcome for your side every time.
   
The Hamster Revolution for Meetings
The Hamster Revolution for Meetings: How to Meet Less and Get More Done
by Mike Song, Vicki Halsey and Tim Burress

The best-selling authors of The Hamster Revolution are at it again, this time with a book that tackles the most wearisome and wasteful practice in business: meetings. Through engaging, lively, and witty dialogue featuring the harried “businesshamster” Iris and a productivity coach she meets on a delayed flight, this fast-paced book packs tips, tools, and tricks into a 90-minute read that’s guaranteed to give readers a new outlook on time—and help them stop spinning their wheels in meetings.
   
Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
The U.S. economy is in shambles. Government intervention into the economy is increasing by the day. Americans are alarmed and desperate for answers: What caused the crisis? What is the solution? That might sound like a description of today's world, but in fact it's sketch of the world of Ayn Rand's 1957 classic novel Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.

   
Now What

Now What?: 90 Days to a New Life Direction
by Laura Berman Fortgang
In Now What? pioneering life coach Laura Berman Fortgang shares the process that she has used so successfully to help hundreds of clients make major changes in their lives. Whether it's moving on from a dead end job, discovering an entirely new creative outlet, or answering the age old question "What am I meant to do with my life?" this book provides a clear and infinitely practical 90-day program that can help you make major changes in your life. Full of inspiring and empowering exercises and tools, this book guides readers-day by day and step by step-through a 90-day process that will lead to true life satisfaction and fulfillment.

   
The Power of Strategic Commitment
The Power of Strategic Commitment: Achieving Extraordinary Results Through Total Alignment and Engagement
by Josh Leibner, Gershon Mader and Alan Weiss
This outstanding book shows readers how to improve strategic processes and execution by engaging the support of managers, employees, boards, suppliers, investors and all stakeholders, outlining the key factors that determine commitment, and powerful ways to build buy-in and alignment. The authors offer a blueprint for moving beyond compliance towards that magical point where every initiative is embraced by every employee at all levels. This is indeed one of the very best of the year!
   
Stop Organizationitis

STOP Organizationitis
by Don Burnstine
Through a series of working sessions Burnstine outlines his "Expectation Agreement" approach to resolving conflict and contention within organizations. Following the procedure outlined in the book a simple half-hour of honest discussion and respectful behaviour can resolve days, weeks, months, or even years of unproductive and unresponsive behaviour. This is a quick and easy read that will give you new tools to improve workplace relationships and productivity. Great work Don!

   
Young Guns

Young Guns: The Fearless Entrepreneur's Guide to Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own
by Robert Tuchman
In Young Guns", Tuchman shows readers how to start out on a business venture, how to gain a client base, how to keep those clients, and what they need to sacrifice along the way in order to succeed. He reveals the myths and realities about starting a business when you're young. Filled with real-life examples of entrepreneurs under 35 who have made it to the top, this is the book that will show readers how to go for the gold and lead a passionate, daring and successful life.

   
On The Firm

On The Firm
by Philip Bryer
Philip Bryer’s first novel, None Of Your Business, introduced Johnson and detailed his growing frustration at the antics of teambuilding geeks, clipboard-toting buffoons, and micro-managing corporate bullshitters. Seeking revenge, Johnson aimed high and resorted to comic sabotage. In the sequel, On The Firm, Johnson finds himself occupying a semi-official role for Her Majesty’s Government with a brief to develop his talents and carry out a campaign of subversion against Britain’s competitors in the international marketplace. Excellent work Philip! It's provocative, a little outrageous and highly entertaining! (ed.)

   
Why Loyalty Matters

Why Loyalty Matters: The Groundbreaking Approach to Rediscovering Happiness, Meaning and Lasting Fulfillment in Your Life and Work
by Timothy Keiningham and Lerzan Aksoy with Luke Williams
In Why Loyalty Matters, renowned loyalty experts Timothy Keiningham and Lerzan Aksoy draw from the most comprehensive study of loyalty ever conducted, the landmark Ipsos Loyalty Study, to show why loyalty is critical to our happiness as individuals and our success as a society.

   
I Hate People

I Hate People!: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job
by Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon
I Hate People! is a witty, counter-intuitive, and irreverent turn on the classic workplace self-help book that will show you how to identify the Ten Least Wanted--the people you hate--while revealing the strategies to neutralize them. The authors also will teach you how to carve out more time for yourself by becoming a "Soloist"-- one of those bold individuals daring to work alone or collaborate with a handful of other talented people ... while artfully deflecting the rest.

   
Counter Clockwise
Counter Clockwise
by Ellen Langer
If we could turn back the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back physically? For more than thirty years, award-winning social psychologist Ellen Langer has studied this provocative question, and now has a conclusive answer: opening our minds to what’s possible, instead of clinging to accepted notions about what’s not, can lead to better health at any age. Scientifically riveting and practically empowering, Counterclockwise holds enormously exciting implications for our general health—including vision, old age, cancer, weight, and heart health—as well as for our fundamental happiness.
   
Rebuilding Your Life After Redundancy

Rebuilding Your Life After Redundancy - The New Life Network Handbook
by Janet Davies
Rebuilding your life after redundancy - the trauma of redundancy currently haunts thousands of people every working day and the media is full of reports about people who are worried about their job security and how to re-invent their careers in today's uncertain and demanding times. Would you know how to rebuild your life if your old career disappeared? If you need a book that will put redundancy into perspective, give some sensible advice and guidance, provide follow-up resources and contacts and do all this without being patronising - this is it. It's also useful if you want to change career or jump out of your box".

   
womenomics
Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success
by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay
Veteran journalists Claire Shipman and Katty Kay marshal the evidence to show how women's management style is ideally suited to the new business world, resulting in more profitable companies with happier employees. They also show how women can use this power to get what they really want -more time and freedom in their jobs without falling off the professional ladder. Most women will happily trade some responsibility and some cash for more time-that's the new currency. Shipman and Kay give personal accounts from their own lives-the mistakes as well as the triumphs-and they share the stories of women around the country who have carved out great work-life scenarios. Above all they stay positive, encouraging, and humorous.
   
Luck by Design

Luck by Design: Certain Success in an Uncertain World
by Richard E Goldman
In 1975 Richard Goldman invested $3,000 into the stock of a three-store retail company - Men's Wearhouse - and helped build it into one of the most successful retailing enterprises in North America. Part memoir and part handbook on leadership, In Luck by Design Goldman offers his wisdom and experiences in trusting your intuition, living with integrity and creating the life you were meant to live. It is a very 'refreshing' read - it's personal, filled with poignant stories and engaging in the values and principles he presents. As I was reading the book, the thought - "a life well lived" - came to mind often. It's a very positive legacy. Thank you Richie for a excellent book!

   
Crucial Conversations
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan
Learn how to keep your cool and get what you want when emotions flare. When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation badly and suffer the consequences; or read Crucial Conversations and discover how to communicate best when it matters most. This wise and witty guide gives you the tools you need to step up to life's most difficult and important conversations, say what's on your mind, and achieve positive outcomes.
   
Reinvention

Reinvention: How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life
by Brian Tracy
It's not until you deal with the dissatisfactions of the present that you can move onward and upward to create the wonderful future that is possible for you. In Reinvention, Brian Tracy reveals how every one of us is engineered for success, and with the right focus, can re-make ourselves and put an end to the chronic stress, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction we might feel in our careers and lives. This unique, life-altering book gives readers an interactive series of exercises they can use to focus on what they really want for themselves.

   
Luxury Strategy
Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands
by Jean-Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien
The Luxury Strategy analyses in depth the essence of luxury, highlights its managerial implications and rationalizes the highly original methods - often very far from the usual marketing strategies - used to transform small family businesses such as Ferrari, BMW, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Chanel, Armani or Ralph Lauren into worldwide successes. Luxury experts Jean-Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien unveil how in any market, including B to B, a company can learn from luxury strategies to differentiate itself profitably.
   
Strategic Customer Service
Strategic Customer Service
by John A. Goodman
Companies that strategically align customer service with their overall corporate strategy can transcend typical good business to become a profitable word-of-mouth machine that will transform the bottom line. The author draws on over thirty years of research for companies such as 3M, American Express, Chik-Fil-A, USAA, Coca-Cola, FedEx, GE, Cisco Systems, Neiman Marcus, and Toyota. Filled with proven strategies and eye-opening case studies, this book challenges many aspects of conventional wisdom using hard data and reveals how any organization can earn more loyalty, win more customers...and improve their financial bottom line.
   
Brand Immortality
Brand Immortality: How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper
by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field
Brand Immortality is a health manual for brands that seek immortality. Full of examples drawn from household brands, it examines how the nature of brands has changed over time and continues to evolve, and the implications this has for marketing. It identifies the factors that are essential to a brand's long term survival -- especially those which defend and strengthen a brand's place in the hearts and minds of consumers.
   
Chaotics
Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence
by Philip Kotler and John A. Caslione
We have entered into an entirely new era, an age of increasingly frequent and intense periods of turbulence in the global economy. Unlike past recessions, today’s crises have precipitated a need for businesses to develop a new mindset, one that takes into account intermittent periods of disturbance, allowing them to thrive while under the constant threat of chaos. Complete with metrics and measurements, Chaotics outlines a powerful new system for managing waves of uncertainty affecting customers, employees, and other stakeholders. (The best of the year so far! ed.)
   
Five Deadly Sins
Five Deadly Sins CEO Make in Sales
by Jim Lewis
Whether you are the CEO of a small company with only one salesperson or you manage thousands, it's very likely that you have committed at least one of the sins described in this book. Don't worry; you are not alone. The logic that leads senior executives to commit these sins over and over makes sense and is pervasive. This book is based on the work and experience of the author, who admits to having committed all five sins. Fortunately, he found out soon enough to be able to help others avoid the same fate. The story is short, enlightening, and provocative.
   
Twitter Power
Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
by Joel Comm with, Ken Burge
In Twitter Power, Internet marketing and Web innovation expert Joel Comm shows businesses and marketers how to integrate Twitter into their existing marketing strategies to build a loyal following among Twitter members, expand awareness for their product or service, and even handle negative publicity due to angry or disappointed consumers. The book also presents case studies of companies on the forefront of the Twitter movement, to help reader's develop their own social networking strategies. (Hey, after reading this I signed up and am following Joe on Twitter! Great work!)
   
The Sticking Point Solution The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business from Stagnation to Stunning Growth InTough Economic Times
by Jay Abraham
Businesses can plateau, stall, or stagnate...without the owners or key executives even realizing it. The purpose of The Sticking Point Solution is to help entrepreneurs and executives recognize the ways in which their businesses may be stuck, and to then give them tools for getting unstuck and enjoying exponential growth. The results: freedom from stagnation and stalling; new levels of profitability and success; and a much greater sense of control and pleasure from running the enterprise.
   
Experiential Marketing
Experiential Marketing: A Practical Guide to Interactive Brand Experiences
by Shaz Smilansky
Author Shaz Smilansky offers practical advice and guidance to help you every step of the way with your experiential marketing campaigns. She shows how to set objectives, target markets, bring your message to life, and measure the results. She reveals how to maximise brand experience by careful selection of venue and activity, and how to evaluate and gauge the effectiveness of the whole experiential marketing process. Combining practical insight and experience with practitioner interviews and international case studies, Experiential Marketing will provide a robust platform for you to develop and measure your own brand experience plans.
   
A Class with Drucker
A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher
by William A. Cohen
In A Class with Drucker, Cohen shares many of Drucker’s teachings that never made it into his countless books and articles, ideas that were offered to his students in classroom or informal settings. Cohen expands on Drucker’s lessons with personal anecdotes about his teacher’s personality, lack of pretension, and interactions with students and others. He also shows how Drucker’s ideas can be applied to the real-world challenges managers face today. Enlightening and intriguing, this book will enable anyone to gain from the timeless wisdom of the inspiring man himself.
   
Take Their Breath Away
Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers
by Chip R. Bell and John R. Patterson

This ingenious, real-world guide explores a variety of exciting, creative customer experience ideas using examples from remarkable customer-centric organizations. The key to a successful enterprise is value-added service, but the secret to great customer service is surprising customers with a value-unique experience. Take Their Breath Away™ provides ideas and insights for all who want to create a stunning, mind-blowing customer experience.
   
Be Yourself
Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken: Transform Your Life with the Power of Authenticity
by Mike Robbins
“Authenticity is enjoying a new sense of freedom to be who you really are - yourself, natural and without a mask.” In Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Already Taken, Robbins offers five powerful principles of authenticity and then provides action plans, exercises, resources, and anecdotes that demonstrate how to apply these principles on a daily basis in your life. Written for people who want to enhance, expand, and deepen, their lives, their work, and their relationships, this book is brimming with inspiration and practical help.
   
Think Like a Champion
Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life
by Donald J. Trump, with Meredith McIver
Donald J. Trump is the very definition of the American success story, continually setting standards of excellence while expanding his passionate interests in real estate, gaming, sports, and entertainment, which include runaway hits The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. He is one of the most recognizable and credible “brands” in the world. His newest book is a personally selected collection of never-before-published engaging pieces that reflect his philosophy of how to achieve lasting personal and business success.
   
Made to Stick
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds – from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony – draw their power from the same six traits. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winningideas – and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.
   
Greater Than Yourself
Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership
by Steve Farber
Steve Farber is a masterful and engaging story teller, and if you appreciate a little mystery, guitar playing and jamming with your leadership principles you will certainly enjoy this quick read. Farber shows that the goal of a genuine leader is to help others — teammates, employees, and colleagues — become more capable, confident, and accomplished than they are themselves. Through the actions of a forward-thinking and extraordinarily successful CEO, Farber reveals the three keys to achieving this: Expand Yourself, Give Yourself, and Replicate Yourself. Great work Steve, and an excellent follow-up to The Radical Leap. (ed.)
   
Marketing Metrics in Action
Marketing Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance-Driven Marketing Organization
by Laura Patterson
Talk about marketing accountability has become almost commonplace. And most marketing executives get it. They understand the need to know the numbers. The real question is, Which numbers? Marketing Metrics in Action answers those questions and addresses those problems with a balance of sound theory and technique and practical application. The author, a veteran of marketing on both sides, the client side and the consultant side, explains how you need to make marketing metrics work for you. It provides wise counsel for identifying which metrics matter most to your organization and practical guidance for putting all the sophisticated marketing tools to profitable use in your company.
   
Strategic Acceleration
Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life
by Tony Jeary
Tony’s latest book details a methodology that will help you get clear, stay focused, and efficiently execute relevant, high-value activities... thereby getting you the results, and success, you really want.... faster! It's about developing a clear vision, outlining priorities and objectives, and tackling goals with a real sense of urgency and focus. Once understood and deployed, Strategic Acceleration will have a powerful, long-term positive influence on the results and success that so many people want. This is on of the best of the year! (ed.)
   
The Money Makers
The Moneymakers: How Extraordinary Managers Win in a World Turned Upside Down
by Anne-Marie Fink
When real money is at stake, it tends to clarify the mind, and for over a decade, Anne-Marie Fink has had literally billions of dollars resting on her assessments of companies. As an equity analyst and professional investor, she has been charged with understanding whether businesses are solid, long-term moneymakers–or rotten tomatoes–before investing with them. This is an excellent read for all CEOs and business owners who want to 'get it right!' It's one of the best of the year!
   
LEADERSHIP RE:VISION
Leadership RE: Vision
by Jim Seybert
A go-to book for any leader, whether in the church or business world, Leadership RE:Vision provides daily meditations written to help leaders think through their problems and challenges from a fresh perspective. It’s about looking at your leadership habits from a new perspective and using a different set of standards to measure the success of your efforts. In Leadership RE:Vision, Jim Seybert challenges conventional leadership thinking, sets a fresh context for leaders’ actions, and calls for a new direction of principled leadership!
   
Investing in a Sustainable World
Investing in a Sustainable World: Why Green Is the New Color of Money on Wall Street
by Matthew J. Kiernan
Investing in a Sustainable World offers clear proof, through facts, figures, and hard documentation, that “going green” leads directly to better stock market performance...and that investors and companies who ignore it will, in fact, lose money. The book reveals the most powerful global mega­trends—from the ongoing focus on emerging markets to natural resource depletion—which are transforming the very basis on which companies will compete, and offers an approach to sustainability-enhanced investing beneficial to both investors and companies.
   
Big Vision Small Business
Big Vision, Small Business
from Jamie S. Walters and Ivy Sea
In these tumultuous and challenging times many formerly employed individuals will need to chart a new course as entrpreneurs - self-employed or creating small businesses. Jamie Walters is a visionary and your wise counsel and we have her book listed as one of the very best of all time! Big Vision, Small Business resonates today more than ever, and it will help you face your issues with greater clarity and positive momentum. Please allow yourself to be inspired and create your future with confidence and on purpose.
   
Sales 2.0
Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology
by Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway
Driven by an explosion of online products and changing customer buying preferences, Sales 2.0 is the marriage of Web 2.0 technologies with innovative sales processes. The book shows readers how to redeploy their sales teams for greater bottom-line results and reveals all the differences between Sales 2.0 and traditional selling. Through real world case studies, readers will learn how industry leaders achieved phenomenal results and a competitive advantage. Applicable to sales teams in any industry, Sales 2.0 presents the future of sales today.
   
SKIRTS in the Boardroom
SKIRTS in the Boardroom: A Woman's Survival Guide to Success in Business & Life
by Marshawn Evans
SKIRTS in the Boardroom is designed to equip women with the strategies necessary to combine confidence and compassion, style and substance, and, of course, beauty and brains. A must-have for all women looking to maximize their professional potential, SKIRTS in the Boardroom offers refreshing and inspiring business advice that is savvy, sensible, straightforward – and long overdue!
   
The Cult of the Customer
The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Customer Experience That Turns Satisfied Customers Into Customer Evangelists
by Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken shows how to design a strategy that leads both customers and employees through five distinct cultural phases – from "uncertainty" to "amazement." By presenting dozens of case studies that show how great companies made this journey, Hyken identifies the critical internal and external changes that allowed them to build a Cult of the Customer – and shows how you can do it too. Hyken’s message is both powerful and timely: the happier your customers and employees are, the more successful your company will be. The Cult of the Customer is your guide to creating a customer-focused culture that turns satisfied customers into customer evangelists.
   
Running with the Rhinos
Running with the Rhinos
by Christian D. Warren

Through the metaphor of the magnificent rhino, Warren invites leaders to live a bold and courageous life and create a future without sacrificing their integrity, ideals, or humanity. Based on the premise that there is a leader in everyone, Warren uses the strong and fiercely independent rhino as an unlikely guide to leadership principles that include vision, understanding, inspiration, power, endurance, conviction, support and heart. Running with the Rhinos is an outstanding resource of leadership and one of the very best books of the year!
   
101 Boardroom Problems
101 Boardroom Problems and How to Solve Them
by Eli Mina
Eli Mina has firsthand experience in dealing with the myriad of problems that boards face. Here he shows readers how to identify board dysfunctions and the damage they inflict, deal with boardroom problems with confidence, increase the likelihood of their board achieving the right decisions, minimize or eliminate flawed decisions, and make a board more credible and trustworthy with its community and stakeholders. This is an easy-to-use guide to help you bring order and sense to any boardroom and enable the best possible decision-making.
   
The Global Achievement Gap
The Global Achievement Gap
by Tony Wagner
Despite the best efforts of educators, our nation's schools are dangerously obsolete. Instead of teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, we are asking them to memorize facts for multiple choice tests. An education manifesto for the twenty-first century, The Global Achievement Gap is provocative and inspiring. It is essential reading for parents, educators, policymakers, business leaders, and anyone interested in seeing our young people succeed as employees and citizens.
   
The Amaryllis Way
The Amaryllis Way
by Derrick Mueller
Leadership books come in all forms today, but some of the best are stories that convey important truths. Derrick Mueller combines his loves for gardening and leadership development in a compelling story about how leaders train other leaders. His eight-step methodology provides a beautiful picture of the heart of leadership. (Marvin Brubacher). The Amaryllis Way is a most mindful and engaging story of nurturing and caring leadership, and growing leaders of leaders. It's an essential read today! (ed.)
   
The Age of Speed
The Age of Speed: A Strategy for Thriving in a More-Faster-Now World
by Vince Poscente
Is our 24/7, CrackBerry, more-faster-now culture eating us alive or setting us free? For everyone feeling trampled by the speed of life and business, author Vince Poscente reveals why harnessing the power of speed is the ultimate solution for our time-starved era. The Age of Speed shows this and other groundbreaking revelations at work with case studies drawn from renegade companies such as Netflix, Geico, and Nintendo. With smart personal revelations, addictively clever pop science, practical case studies, and a fresh voice, The Age of Speed is a fast, fun read.
   
Leading With Kindness
Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results
by William F. Baker and Michael O'Malley
Being kind is a crucial attribute of some of the world's most successful business leaders - whose success is anchored in their integrity, credibility, vision, insight, inclusion, and fairness. And kindness is not some intangible quality that one either "has" or doesn't, it is a combination of quantifiable, learnable, and refinable traits and skills. Leading with Kindness identifies six ingredients of kindness - compassion, integrity, gratitude, authenticity, humility, and humor that are absolutely essential to powerful leadership.
   
The Heart of Humor
by Raju Mandhyan
Raju Mandhyan, author of The Heart of Public Speaking is your guide on an adventure to experience "practical tools and suggestions to dispense humor on demand." More praise: "Clear, sensitive and a delight! Through vivid stories and accessible strategies, Mandhyan wittily persuades how anyone can and should churn out humor for a more vibrant existence." “Full of fun and foibles that make you ponder, explore and grow!” Thanks Raju (ed.)
   
The Integrity Dividend
THE INTEGRITY DIVIDEND: Leading By The Power Of Your Word
by Tony Simons
Simons has found that employees who believe that their managers can be counted on to keep their word, show deeper commitment to the business, leading to lower employee turnover and superior customer service - which in turn results in higher profitability. Behavioral integrity also increases the strength and efficiency of relationships with customers, suppliers, and unions. All of these improvements can be expected to show up on the bottom line as “the integrity dividend.
   
Becoming an Extraordinary Manager: The 5 Essentials for Success
by Len Sandler
Nearly all managers dream of being inspiring leaders who elicit the most from their people. But while they may understand the skills needed to manage their teams, very few know how to put their knowledge into practice. Now, any manager can get exceptional results and make an important contribution to the organization. Becoming an Extraordinary Manager focuses not just on "understanding" principles of good management, but on taking action. Lively in style and thorough in content, this is the book that gives every manager a complete guide to avoiding the ordinary and becoming the best.
   
Managing Thought: How Do Your Thoughts Rule Your World?
by Mary J. Lore
Managing Thought serves as an indispensable guide to those who want to change the way they think and improve their lives. The book takes the power of positive thinking to a new level and provides a step-by-step guide to managing our thoughts to become more creative, inspired, balanced and "on purpose." It's an illuminating and yet very actionable work and one of the best of the year!
   
100% Leadership: Guidelines for Successful Leaders
by Gabriel Hevesi
There is no recipe for success. If there were, we would all use it and it would cease to be effective. Yet, there are many roads that can lead to success. The secret is to choose the right road for your organization among all options. It takes skilled judgment to apply the right method at the right time, under the right circumstances. Using sound judgment, we know when to act, when to coach, and when to delegate. 100% Leadership provides checkpoints for day-to-day decisions and actions. It is a very comprehensive and very readable leadership handbook.
   
Toy Box Leadership: Leadership Lessons from the Toys You Loved as a Child
by Ron Hunter and Michael E. Waddell
What can LEGOS teach you about building your business through connection? How can Slinky Dog demonstrate the value of patience when you're growing your organization? What has every little boy learned from his Little Green Army Men that he can use in business strategy? Whether you are an executive, a manager, or a parent, in Toy Box Leadership you'll you will find the toy box a great place for lessons to successfully influence and lead others. Very enjoyable read! ed.
   
Relevance
Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters
by Tim Manners
After years studying remarkable companies and speaking to some of the most influential leaders, Tim Manners has proposed a solution to the marketing woes of many brands. Stop worrying about demographics, fads, and cutting-edge advertising. Instead, focus on relevance. Manners shares how the best of the best create solutions to their customers' problems and help them live happier lives. The principles? Insight, Innovation, Investment, Design, Experience and Value -all accountable to the happiness of people who would buy your brands.
   
The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook
The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook: When It All Comes Together
by Jeana Wirtenberg, David Lipsky, and Bill Russell
Building an organization’s commitment to sustainability is not just a means to enhancing the health, diversity, and strength of the world’s ecosystems but a financially and socially sound best practice as well. Collecting the wisdom of an outstanding network of experts, the editors help readers understand what sustainability means and how they can implement it in their organizations. The book includes metrics to measure efforts in promoting an environmentally responsible organization, and presents models, tools, case studies and examples from a wide range of companies to bring the concept to life. A very timely resource indeed!
   
Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship
by Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig
This book shares the unique FranklinCovey Sales Performance Group methodology to transform a sales culture with clarity, authenticity, and emotional intelligence. Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig argue that salespeople do best when they focus 100 percent on helping clients succeed. When customers are successful, both buyer and seller win. When they aren't, both lose. It's no longer sufficient to get clients to buy—a salesperson must also help the client reduce costs, increase revenues, and improve productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.
   
Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands
Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands
by Nancy Ortberg
Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands is an engaging and insightful look into the qualities, attributes, and practices that turn ordinary leaders into extraordinary ones. Nancy Ortberg's unique twist on vision casting; managing tensions; nurturing healthy conflict; motivating those around you; fostering creativity, passion, and trust is unlike anything you've ever read before! At times challenging, at times candid, but always inspiring, Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands will bring out the best in even the most seasoned leaders. (Nancy's stories and faith will engage and inspire, and this is one of the best of the year! ed.)
   
Influence
Influence: Science and Practice
by Robert B. Cialdini
Robert B. Cialdini concisely explores six strategies that persons with good and/or bad intentions can use in influencing others to do something or not to do it. These strategies are authority, commitment and consistency, liking, reciprocation, scarcity, and social proof. Whether you wish to understand what shapes you own personal decisions or need to persuade in a job or business, this very interesting book is indispensable.
   
Five Hidden Mistakes CEOs Make; How to Unlock the Secrets that Drive Growth and Profitability
by Tom Northup
Five Hidden Mistakes CEOs Make is essential reading for business owners, senior executives, and entrepreneurs seeking to rise above the status quo. As the former CEO of three successful businesses, author Tom Northup is a results-oriented executive who understands how to build successful organizations. In this book, he reveals expert insight and proven methods readers can use to improve competitive advantage, innovate in their marketplace, and build sustainable growth and profitability year after year.
   
The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm
by Kenneth W. Gronbach
This groundbreaking book lets you in on the best ways to position your business to roll with changing populations of consumers - including how to succeed despite the looming challenges posed by the relatively small Generation X, and leverage the explosive opportunities afforded by massive young Generation Y. With its simple yet profound insights (along with eye-opening examples of companies who succeeded or failed spectacularly in leveraging or weathering the demographic storm), The Age Curve will forever change the way you look at your business, and how you perceive the generational impact on the entire commercial (and political!) landscape.
   
Left on Red: How to Ignite, Leverage and Build Visionary Organizations
by Bill Glynn
Left on Red reveals how visionary thinkers and risk-takers build great companies. Bill Glynn provides an insider's view into some of the world's coolest deals in a refreshingly politically incorrect, intelligent manner. Google, Apple, and YouTube are the products of leaders who break the old rules of business to bring their radical ideas to life. Armed with a wealth of examples and innovative insights, Glynn shows entrepreneurs and executives how to navigate a business landscape often littered with great ideas and innovators who are unprepared to lead.
   
Management Gurus: Lessons from the Best Management Books of All Time
from Soundview Executive Book Summaries
Since 1978, Soundview Executive Book Summaries has offered its subscribers condensed versions of the most relevant and influential business books published each year. The company has won acclaim as the definitive selection service for business book readers. These summaries distill thousands of pages about leadership, strategy, crisis management, organizational behavior, and more—perfect for busy executives and students. An excellent read!
   
The Granularity of Growth: How to Identify the Sources of Growth and Drive Enduring Company Performance
by PatrickViguerie, Sven Smit and Mehrdad Baghai
While growth is a top priority for companies of all sizes, it can be extremely difficult to create and maintain—especially in today's competitive business environment. In order to achieve this goal, you need to think through the growth challenges your organization faces and follow a detailed approach that will allow you to uncover, understand, and capture potential growth opportunities.
   
Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't
by Jim Champy
This concise, fast-paced book shows how you can achieve breakthrough growth by consistently outsmarting your competition. Champy reveals the surprising, counterintuitive lessons learned by companies that have achieved super-high growth for at least three straight years. Drawing on the strategies of some of today’s best “high velocity” companies, he identifies eight powerful ways to compete in even the roughest marketplace. Excellent book and one of the best of the year!
   
Becoming a Resonant Leader: Develop Your Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sustain Your Effectiveness
by Annie McKee, Richard E. Boyatzis and Frances Johnston
What distinguishes great leaders? Exceptional leaders capture passion. They lead for real: from the heart, smart and focused on the future, and with a commitment to being their very best. The authors share vivid, real-life stories illuminating how people can develop emotional intelligence, build resonance, and renew themselves. Reflecting twenty years of longitudinal research and practical wisdom with executives and leaders around the world, this new book is organized around a core of experience-tested exercises. These tools help you articulate your strengths and values, craft a plan for intentional change, and create resonance with others.
   
The Accidental Entrepreneur: The 50 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Business
by Susan Urquhart-Brown
Like many business owners, Susan-Urquhart Brown never expected to end up as an entrepreneur. Launching her own business spoke to her passions, but she soon realized there was much more to being a successful owner than she ever expected. In The Accidental Entrepreneur, she takes all the mystery out of going solo. For those who are just beginning to consider starting a venture as well as those who want to take their organization to the next level, she offers advice on what works and what doesn’t.
It's an excellent read!
   
The AMA Guide to Management Development
by Daniel R. Tobin, Margaret Pettingell
Management development is a crucial task for every enterprise. This book gives readers the guidance they need to make sure that both current and future managers have the abilities their organizations need to prosper. Based on the set of managerial competencies specially developed by the American Management Association for a new core management curriculum, The AMA Guide to Management Development provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of how to continually develop managers throughout their entire organization.
   
The Offsite
The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable
by Robert H. Thompson
Drawing on the leadership theories in the management classic The Leadership Challenge, Robert Thompson effortlessly incorporates these ideas into a fable of leadership and growth. Based on a company's three-day offsite meeting, we follow this tale of transition through the eyes of two former rival pharmaceutical companies creating a joint sales strategy. The characters ultimately learn how to adopt the five practises that form The Leadership Challenge. This is a very enjoyable and entertaining read that will also inspire!
   
The Leadership Challenge
by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
This leadership classic continues to be a bestseller after three editions and twenty years in print. It is the gold standard for research-based leadership, and the premier resource on becoming a leader. This new edition, with streamlined text, more international and business examples, and a graphic redesign, is more readable and accessible than ever before. We have added The Leadership Challenge to our lists of The Best Books of 2008 and The Best Business Books of All Time! It's a superb handbook for contemporary leaders!
   
The Secret of Transitions: How to Move Effortlessly to Higher Levels of Success
by Jim Manton
Manton's own deeply moving personal journey of transitions is a thread that runs through this book like a novel you can't put down. He teaches principles with electrifying, dramatic stories of life and death in the combat zone of Viet Nam, intriguing martial arts learning experiences, real-world stories of personal courage and growth, and unsolvable workplace dilemmas solved through transitioning techniques all readers can use. Jim Manton draws on his many years as a top high-tech executive as well as his current work as a career coach to give the reader a true handbook for success in this rapidly-changing world ... a book that shows you how to make your transitions yourself - with vision, skill, and purpose.
   
A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative
by Roger Von Oech
This is the 25th anniversary edition of the creativity classic by Dr. Roger von Oech. The book has been stimulating creativity in millions of readers, translated into eleven languages, and used in seminars around the world. Now Roger von Oech's fully illustrated and updated volume is filled with even more provocative puzzles, anecdotes, exercises, metaphors, cartoons, questions, quotations, stories, and tips designed to systematically break through your mental blocks and unlock your mind for creative thinking. This new edition will attract an entire new generation of readers with updated and mind-stretching material.
   
The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation
by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan
Over the past seven years, Procter & Gamble has tripled profits; significantly improved organic revenue growth, cash flow, and operating margins; and averaged earnings per share growth of 12 percent. How? A. G. Lafley and his leadership team have integrated innovation into everything P&G does and created new customers and new markets. Through eye-opening stories A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan show how P&G and companies such as Honeywell, Nokia, LEGO, GE, HP, and DuPont have become game-changers. Innovation is not a separate, discrete activity but the job of everyone in a leadership position and the integral, central driving force for any business that wants to grow organically and succeed on a sustained basis.
   
The Milkshake Moment: Overcoming Stupid Systems, Pointless Policies and Muddled Management to Realize Real Growth
by Steven S. Little
The Milkshake Moment is that instant in time when the 21st century “organizational person” realizes they are allowed to do the right thing even though that may contradict the “systems” already in place. Through this one potent illustration, Little lays groundwork for the irrefutable proposition that “stupid systems, pointless policies, and muddle management,” are the greatest barriers to any organization’s future success. This one will "twist your head" and get you to re-think your "rules." Time to unleash the creativity of your people! (ed.)
   
Value Creation
Value Creation
by Ron Strauss and William Neal
The authors demonstrate a measurement system that allows the brand owner to measure brand value and brand equity and diagnose a brand’s strengths and weaknesses in the marketplace. Ron Strauss and Bill Neal each bring 35-plus years of in-the-trenches marketing and marketing research observations and experiences with some of the world’s leading companies. Their ideas and concepts are new and powerful, and are sure to stimulate much thought and discussion on the part of practitioners, academics and students. Best of all, Neal and Strauss show the reader how to improve performance in a way that is understandable and actionable.
   
Executive Stamina: How to Optimize Time, Energy, and Productivity to Achieve Peak Performance
by Marty Seldman and Joshua Seldman
In Executive Stamina, you'll find hundreds of tips and tools that will help you maximize your career potential, while maintaining your health, staying in touch with your values, and avoiding costly tradeoffs in your personal life. It starts by learning how to align your career ambitions with your core values, commitments, current priorities, and long-term goals. You'll learn to determine what is most important to you, whether your schedule is actually aligned with your priorities, and how to find your career sweet spot. It's an excellent resource.
   
The Breakthrough Imperative
by Mark Gottfredson and Steve Schaubert
Knowing what to do and in what sequence can be an overwhelming challenge. Nearly every CEO and general manager today is expected by his stakeholders to achieve new breakthroughs in performance. Despite the intensity of these pressures, despite the high expectations and short time frames, a number of CEOs and general managers turn in truly exceptional results. The managers who succeed do so because they have a firm handle on the fundamentals of their business. Where are they today? Where do they need to go? And how will they get there?
   
Hug Your People: Hire, Inspire and Recognize Your Employees to Achieve Remarkable Results
by Jack Mitchell
"Giving great personalized customer service has always been the foremost goal in my family, but one thing we never lose sight of is that you can't possibly deliver great service if you don't treat your own associates right." So says Jack Mitchell, CEO of his family's astoundingly successful chain of clothing stores. In Hug Your People, he shares his secrets for creating happy employees, secrets as simple as they are revolutionary. (Thanks Jack!)
   
The Integrated Enterprise Excellence System: An Enhanced, Unified Approach to Balanced Scorecards, Strategic Planning, and Business Improvement
by Forrest W. Breyfogle III
Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) introduces a new organizational governance system that integrates analytics with innovation. This book discusses how the application of IEE methods, tools and techniques can overcome the enterprise management challenges of the twenty-first century and the limitations of traditional business measurement systems. If you are familiar with Lean and Six Sigma you will be very impressed with how the author takes it beyond. (ed.)
   
How To Talk To Customers Create a Great Impression Every Time with MAGIC
by Diane Berenbaum and Tom Larkin
Every once in a while, we as consumers have a truly wonderful experience as a customer of a company. These interactions leave us feeling so positive about our purchase, our relationships with the company, and ourselves that we say, “The experience was magic!” From LL Bean to American Century Investments to Nordstrom there are a select few organizations—some that you have heard of and some that you haven't—that serve their customers at world-class levels day in and day out. How to Talk to Customers outlines how world-class companies Make A Great Impression on the Customer every time with every customer. Just as important, the book shows how these wonderfully positive instances of customer contact create the key to long-term success: customer and employee loyalty.
   
The IT Value Stack: The Boardroom Guide to It Leadership
by Ade McCormack
Successful IT value realisation is a cloudy subject. This in part contributes to the overall dissatisfaction many organisations have with IT. This book tackles the subject of IT value realisation head on. Most importantly it provides a model to help CIOs and business leaders maximize the return on their IT investment. This book is based on the author’s IT Value Stack methodology, which helps business leaders take control of their IT investment. Boardroom-bound CIOs will also find this book of value. As will those that advise on strategic business-IT matters.
   
Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
by Dan Roam
Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply "get". Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can't draw. The Back Of The Napkin proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.
   
Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want
by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever
Ask for It explains why it’s essential to ask (men do it all the time) and teaches you how to ask effectively, in ways that feel comfortable to you as a woman. Whether you currently avoid negotiating like the plague or consider yourself hard-charging and fearless, Babcock and Laschever’s compelling stories of real women will help you recognize how much more you deserve.
   
Pearls, Politics, & Power: How Women Can Win and Lead
by Madeleine M. Kunin
Pearls, Politics, and Power is a call to action for new political engagement and leadership from the women of America. Informed by conversations with elected women leaders from all levels, former three-term Vermont Governor and Ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine M. Kunin asks: What difference do women make? What is the worst part of politics, and what is the best part? What inspired these women to run, and how did they prepare themselves for public life?
   
The Expert's Edge: Become the Go-To Authority People Turn to Every Time
by Ken Lizotte
An action-ready program of proven success strategies, this easy-to-follow game plan can turn any level of entrepreneur into the must-have expert that prospects and media seek out before all others. You raise your profile, expand demand for your services, and increase your profits. Just follow the “Five Pillars of Thoughtleading”: publish articles and books; speak regularly to groups and companies;. inspire with “fresh” thinking; attract ongoing media attention; and leverage the Internet creatively.
   
What To Do When You Become The Boss
by Bob Selden
This is an exceptional handbook for the new manager. It's comprehensive - covering leading and managing, managing your team, managing upwards and sideways, managing your meetings and managing yourself. It's an extremely valuable off-the-shelf personal management development training course, with very relevant case studies and actionable insights all based on the most contemporary and sound leadership values and principles. A very unique and engaging feature is the opportunity to use the book according to your preferred approach to learning. Selden has "put it all together" in one of the best management handbooks I have ever read. This should be required reading for all new managers and a required "refresher" for everyone else.
   
Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding
by Dan Herman
Dr. Dan Herman is breaking new ground and old saws with his book, Outsmart the MBA Clones. The book cracks the secret of companies that have been immensely successful for many years, are adored by their customers, and yet are not imitated by competitors. This position, coined "Unfair Advantage" by Dr. Herman, provides companies with their own private monopoly. This is a must read for anyone who thinks strategically about their business, and it will "twist your head" to see strategy, marketing and branding in a new and refreshing light. Excellent work Dan!
   
Myself and Other More Important Matters
by Charles Handy
The author of The Age of Unreason, The Empty Raincoat, and The Elephant and the Flea shares more of his bestselling brand of wisdom concerning the big choices we have to make in life. The well-known business guru draws on the lessons of his own life to help us map out the main stages of our lives, and shows us how to navigate through the tough decisions we have to make at every phase. He gives us his personal thoughts on life's big questions and turning points, mining his own experience to tell us what he's learned along the way.
This is a very interesting and enjoyable read.
   
The Open Brand: The When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World
by Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins
Push marketing tactics have been superseded by new forms of influence. These include the creating, sharing and influencing behaviors of an online population no longer content merely to consume, and the potent pairing of digital notoriety and network effects, which has given rise to the icitizenry. The authors illuminate a new business imperative - to open up to consumer involvement in a brand's messages and offerings. The essential consumer experiences are On-demand, Personal, Engaging, and Networked experiences, representing the chief values of the web-made world. (Wow! ed.)
   
Moose on the Table: A Novel Approach to Communications @ Work
by Jim Clemmer
Failed communications are crippling workplaces across the globe – sapping energy from staff and weakening entire organizations. Jim Clemmer calls this breakdown the Moose-on-the-Table. Just like dysfunctional families, many teams find it easier to avoid tough conversations. But rarely do problems get better when left unaddressed. Rather, the moose grow larger, breed, and increase the size of the herd. How many moose are lurking in your organization? How do you know? What are you doing to reduce the moose? Great work Jim! (ed.)
   
The Source of Leadership: Eight Drivers of the High-impact Leader
by David M. Traversi
David Traversi identifies and instructs how to develop eight personal drivers, energies deep within - presence, clarity (of thought, emotion, and behavior), openness, intention, personal responsibility, intuition, creativity, and connected communication - each of which drives several of the traits and functions of the effective leader. The leader who develops these personal energies will achieve maximum effectiveness as a leader, as well as a deep sense of contentment and fulfillment as a person. With the burgeoning trend toward seeking a deeper grounding personally as a means of performing better professionally, The Source of Leadership is the early "defining voice" of this new trend in the leadership area.
   
EPIC Change
EPIC Change: How to Lead Change in the Global Age
by Timothy R. Clark
Dr. Timothy R. Clark unveils the "Power Curve of Change" framework and EPIC system for change management (Evaluate, Prepare, Implement, Consolidate) for leaders who are charged to lead high-stakes change initiatives in their organizations. Epic Change presents a strategic-level road map, along with tactical level tools, for the every-day needs of leaders who must respond to all types of adaptive challenge to remain competitive. It represents a comprehensive, research-based program for leaders who want to develop the indispensable competency of leading change in a permanently and profoundly different age.
   
What the Customer Wants You to Know: How Everybody Needs to Think Differently About Sales
by Ram Charan
This book defines a new approach to selling — which Charan calls value creation selling. It will enable you to: gain a deeper knowledge of your customer’s problems; understand how your customer’s company really makes decisions; help your customer improve margins and drive revenue growth; connect sales with other key functions such as finance and manufacturing; come up with new customized offerings; make price much less of an issue. VCS differentiates you from the competition, paving the way to better pricing, better margins, and higher revenue growth, built on win-win relationships that deepen over time. All good stuff! (ed.)
   
Speak to Win
Speak to Win: How to Present with Power in Any Situation
by Brian Tracy
The ability to speak with confidence and deliver winning presentations can accelerate your career, earn people’s great respect, and enable you to achieve your greatest -- even most impossible-seeming goals. But what many people don't realize is that anyone can learn to be a great speaker, just as easily as they can learn to drive a car or ride a bike! As one of the world’s premier speakers and personal success experts, Brian Tracy is the ideal instructor. Brimming with unbeatable strategies for winning people over every time, Tracy lets readers in on his most powerful presentation secrets in this indispensable handbook.
   
Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking - The Scientific Thinking Mechanism
by Shigeo Shingo
Once again Dr. Shigeo Shingo will amaze you. Along with Taiichi Ohno, Dr. Shingo co-developed TPS (LEAN) with his deep understanding of how to improve the overall process of production. Dr. Shingo reveals how he taught Toyota and other Japanese companies the art of identifying and solving problems. Many companies in the West are trying to emulate Lean but few can do it. Why not? Possibly, because we in the West do not recognize, develop and support the creative potential of every worker in solving problems. Toyota makes all employees problem solvers. Dr. Shingo gives you the tools to do it. Fascinating book (ed.)
   
One Foot out the Door: How to Combat the Psychological Recession That's Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business
by Judith M. Bardwick
As many as two-thirds of our employees are either actively looking for new jobs or merely going through the motions at their current jobs. This phenomenon, identified by renowned author Judith M. Bardwick as "the psychological recession," can have a devastating effect on a company’s financial health. Using hard numbers and current studies that prove the direct connection between a company’s financial performance and its employees’ commitment, this book is a wake-up call to organizations desperately needing to restore the broken spirits at the heart of their companies, and enhance their bottom lines.
   
Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?
by Seth Godin
Meatball Sundae has the absolute worst book cover I have ever seen however, content rules and Seth never fails to enlighten and poke you into the new era of marketing. It's the definitive guide to the fourteen trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains what to do about the increasing power of stories, not facts; about shorter and shorter attention spans; and about the new math that says five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don’t. (Please read that last sentence again!) Godin doesn’t pretend that it’s easy to get your products, marketing messages, and internal systems in sync. But he’ll convince you that it’s worth the effort.
   
Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative Products
by Denis J. Hauptly
From an electronic hotel kiosk that provides return airline boarding passes for guests, to something as mundane as the evolution of the toaster, the book provides entertaining, illuminating examples that show how to determine what customer needs aren’t being met, using simple methods to arrive at revolutionary conclusions. For example, "What is a product really used for?" The question may seem elementary, but the right answer is far from obvious. This and other key questions demonstrate how readers can move beyond mere market research to get to the root of real innovation.
   
Launching a Leadership Revolution: Mastering the Five Levels of Influence
by Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward
Utilizing an abundance of historical examples, the authors have developed a unique 5-step plan that charts a course for creating and maintaining strong leadership in any organization.The plan guides the reader through the "Five Levels of Influence": Learning - a leader must be able to learn from anyone; Performing - perservere through failure to find success; Leading - extend your ability by expanding your team; Developing Leaders - learn to trust your people; Develop Leaders who Develop Leaders - create a legacy. This book is full of prescriptive advice, quotes and anecdotes that illustrate their principles.
   
Human Sigma: Creating Value at the Employee - Customer Encounter
by John H. Fleming and Jim Asplund
The groundbreaking methodology Six Sigma changed the face of manufacturing quality. Now, HumanSigma is poised to do the same for sales and service. It incorporates cutting-edge research in the neurosciences and behavioral economics — including brain imaging research into customer’s emotional connections to the companies they love — with proven techniques for improving workforce performance and revenues generated from existing customers. This practical handbook appeals to senior leaders and line managers alike who are looking for a way to dramatically increase productivity, retain high value customers, and enhance organizational performance.
   
It's Not About the Coffee: Leadership Principles from a Life at Starbucks
by Howard Behar
Howard Behar, former President of Starbucks International, has written a most sincere and concise manifesto of leadership for this age. You will enjoy this little book and I'm sure you will relate to the stories of leading and learning of how Starbucks has become such an incredible institution in our world today. It is about the coffee, and it is about creative leadership, important principles and values. The one contribution that most inspires is Yes as the most powerful word in the world. "Yes is freeing and inspiring. It means permission. It means possibility. Saying yes makes you feel good." Thank you Howard - you've done great work!
   
The Innovative Leader: How to Inspire Your Team and Drive Creativity
by Paul Sloane
How can you transform your people from cubicle dwellers into innovation warriors? How can you turn your complacent organization into a powerhouse of invention and entrepreneurial achievement? How can you replace a culture of comfortable incremental progress into one of hungry adventure? Paul Sloane is a recognized expert on innovation, lateral thinking and leadership, and his book is an adventure. It's about two hundred pages of "bite-sized chunks" that will twist your head to see what is possible. So, do as the author suggests and "start biting and start the revolution." Thanks Paul! (ed.)
   
Negotiation Genius
Negotiation Genius: How to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Brilliant Results at the Bargaining Table and Beyond
by Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman
Whether you’ve “seen it all” or are just starting out, Negotiation Genius will dramatically improve your negotiating skills and confidence. Drawing on decades of behavioral research plus the experience of thousands of business clients, the authors take the mystery out of preparing for and executing negotiations—whether they involve multimillion-dollar deals or improving your next salary offer. It gives you detailed strategies that work in the real world even when the other side is hostile, unethical, or more powerful. When you finish it, you will already have an action plan for your next negotiation. You will know what to do and why.
   
The Engine of America: The Keys to Small Business Success From Entrepreneurs Who Have Made It
by Hector V. Barreto

Former administrator of the Small Business Administration Hector Barreto and veteran journalist Bob Wagman reveal the winning business strategies of CEOs from 50 companies. For all those starting or growing their own small business, the wisdom, experience, and counsel of these successful leaders provides inspirational and thoughtful advice on making it as an entrepreneur. Some of those sharing their stories have grown their businesses from the most humble of beginnings into corporate giants. Others may not be instantly recognizable, but what they have in common is success.
   
How to Become a Marketing Superstar
How to Become a Marketing Superstar:
Unexpected Rules That Ring the Cash Register

by Jeffrey Fox

Jeffrey Fox has written many excellent books and his “How to Become a Marketing Superstar” is one of my all time favourites. This is a quick study that every CEO should read before every single marketing presentation from this day forward. And if you’re in marketing making those presentations, you should read it weekly and then once again before you present anything to your CEO, especially if she’s read it lately.
   
Keeper of The Flame
Keeper of The Flame: How to Inspire Others on the Cusp of Change
by Mike Lipkin
The author says it all: "In the New Normal, it's not good enough just being excellent. Excellence merely gives you the right to play. On the Cusp-of-Change, you have to be Brilliant. You have to be A Keeper of The Flame: Someone who goes first; Someone with a heightened awareness of her impact on others; someone who is her own best coach; someone in total sync with her environment; Someone embedded with the authority of both competence and character; Someone who inspires others to be their Personal Best; Someone like you. Someone like the person you will become. Or Someone like the person you need to rediscover." Please allow yourself to be inspired! (ed.)
   
Focus on the Good Stuff
Focus on the Good Stuff:
The Power of Appreciation

by Mike Robbins
Focus on the Good Stuff shows you how you can dramatically enhance the quality of your life and relationships by focusing on what you’re grateful for, who you appreciate, and all the good stuff around you. The book is filled with action items, ideas, and practices that help you bring more appreciation into your life, thus giving you a deep sense of peace, satisfaction, and gratitude. The above link will take you to the first chapter of the book.
   
There is No Box
There Is No Box
by Steve Coats and Tom Heuer
There is No Box describes the internal attributes that were most consistent among those who went out on a limb and stepped up to find imaginative, innovative, even groundbreaking growth opportunities. Rather than providing another look at the tasks or activities that you must do to produce change, this book focuses on what you must have, in order to let go of your self-imposed box of limitations and discover, produce and lead growth. There is No Box clarifies those attributes that you must have in order to do what it takes to change and grow your piece of the world.
   
Microtrends:
The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes

by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne

Mark Penn shows readers how to identify the microtrends that can transform a business enterprise, tip an election, spark a movement, or change your life. In today's world, small groups can have the biggest impact. Penn identifies more than seventy microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, and family life that are changing the way we live. It's fascinating reading with insights on every page.
   
Tales of People Who Get It
by Avil Beckford
Tales of People Who Get It is based on the ideas, actions and beliefs that were uncovered in interviews of 34 successful individuals from Canada, the United States, Sweden, Switzerland, Jamaica and South Africa. It is a practical, interesting and instructive guide of actual experiences in overcoming difficult challenges and achieving success. Avil Beckford identifies several common qualities in the stories and presents them as her 'ItnessPoints" - a wonderful concept. Do you have it? Read this book and you just might 'get it!' (ed.)
   
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success:
A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams

by Deepak Chopra
Seven chapters and seven laws. Deepak Chopra explains the laws of pure potentiality, giving, karma, least effort, intention and desire, detachment, and dharma and includes suggestions on how to apply these fundamental, natural principles if one is truly searching for purpose and a satisfying life. Timeless wisdom and serenity. (ed.)
   

Work Like You're Showing Off: The Joy, Jazz, and Kick of Being Better Tomorrow Than You Were Today
by Joe Calloway
After twenty-six years of studying and working with top performers, Calloway shares the key factors for creating success without pulling any punches. Work Like You're Showing Off advises you to stop talking and start doing. Be focused, productive, and above all else, intentional in your pursuit of happiness. Showoffs go "all in" and call everyone else's bluff with the confidence that their capability and productivity will speak for itself. In the author's words, "Let's be too much. I'm in. How about you?" This book will inspire. (ed.)

   
People Savvy
People Savvy: For Sales Professionals
by Gregory Stebbins, Ed.D.
This is quite an incredible guide to earning customer trust and creating lifelong relationships. In the words of the author, "When customers experience you as someone who has their best interests at heart, they will come to trust and rely on you as a valuable ally in their career." People Savvy is most mindful, well researched and full of proven 'street-wise' techniques to be 'of service.' The author has very generously made the full first chapter available to viewers. Click through the text link above for a most enlightening adventure. This is a very good book! (ed.)
   
The Voice of Authority
10 Communication Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know
by Dianna Booher
Dianna Booher has written over 40 books and this one in my opinion, is her best ever. She is a renowned expert in communications and has put it all together in a focused, insightful, "head twisting", candid and practical guide to getting it 'right.' Is it correct? Is it complete? Is it clear? Is it purposefully unclear? Are you credible? Does your communication make you look competent? This book is an excellent guide to applying
the most effective communications strategies.
   
None of your Business
by Philip Bryer
Johnson soon found out that the corporate world involved too many things that didn't have anything to do with work at all. Things like company 'fun days', outward bound team-building events, psychometric testing, diversity audits, motivational tools and other associated bulls**t. None of your Business is a comic novel which features a rich succession of incompetents, bullies, oddballs and idiots who lead to Johnson becoming increasingly unhinged and reckless. As disillusion takes a grip, Johnson's thoughts turn to revenge. (A very entertaining read. ed.)
   
Business As Unusual
My Entrepreneurial Journey, Profits with Principles

by Anita Roddick
Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, is one of the most outspoken, controversial, provocative and inspiring entrepreneurs of modern times. She was more than slightly ahead of her time in creating an ethical business and challenging the industry status quo at every turn. Her journey was not without many major challenges and her stories of how she navigated through troubled waters are absolutely fascinating. Roddick's passion and principles will inspire - and she exemplifies vision, integrity, courage and humanity in business.
   
Radical Careering
Radical Careering:
100 Truths to Jumpstart Your Job, Your Career, and Your Life

by Sally Hogshead
Do you have a career worth loving? Sally Hogshead redefines "Careering" as taking action to become the most powerful, valuable and fulfilled version of yourself and Radical Careering will definitely inspire you to kick your career into high gear. It's an extremely entertaining, engaging, energizing and edgy handbook that reaches in, twists your head, gives you a swift kick in the pants and inspires you to create your no-compromises future. This is a most unique and exceptional book, enjoy! (ed.)
   
Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here
Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here:
Inside the $300 Billion Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume

by David Verklin and Bernice Kanner
The billion-dollar advertising and marketing industry is undergoing phenomenal changes. In Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here, Verklin and Kanner expose the inner workings of the media, marketing, and advertising industries. Readers will learn why their favorite shows get cancelled, why Oprah gives away cars, and how money, people, politics, and new technologies are transforming TV, the Internet, radio, magazines, and other media people consume every day.
   
Brazen Careerist
Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success
by Penelope Trunk
It's okay to move back in with your parents. And it's okay to work at a string of menial jobs or even take off to Asia for a year. Why? Because eventually these seeming detours will lead not only to a great career but a great life as well. Penelope Trunk gives anything but standard advice to help the new workforce succeed on their own terms in any industry. Trunk asserts that a take-charge attitude and fresh perspective are the only ways to make it in today's job market. These 45 tips will get you thinking bigger, acting bolder, and blazing trails you never thought possible. This is one of the best of the year! (ed.)
   
401 Proven Ways to Retain Your Best Employees
401 Proven Ways to Retain Your Best Employees
by Gregory P. Smith
International business consultant and author Gregory P. Smith is making waves as one of the nation's top employee retention experts. His new book provides practical solutions to promote high employee retention in your workplace. 401 Proven Ways to Retain Your Best Employees provides a wealth of information, tips, advice, and case studies that allow for quick reference and practical application.
   
Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins
Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate With Power and Impact
by Annette Simmons
People float in an ocean of data and disconnected facts that can often overwhelm them with choices. A meaningful story can feel like a life preserver that tethers you to something safe and important - at the very least, to a trace of humanity. Filled with enlightening anecdotes, this practical guide gives readers the tools they need to persuade, inspire, and influence others through the power of story. This is an exceptional work, and one of the best of the year!
   
Hidden in Plain Sight
Hidden in Plain Sight:
How to Find and Execute Your Company's Next Big Growth Strategy

by Erich Joachimsthaler
This is a most mindful work! The author presents a "demand-first innovation and growth methodology that begins with an understanding of the day-to-day behaviours and unmet needs of customers. It's an "outside-in" approach to identify untapped customer needs and then develop sweet-spot solutions to satisfy them. Get this one on your agenda fast to discover the growth opportunities that are right in front of you. (ed.)
   
Master Scheduling
Master Scheduling
by John F. Proud

Building on the four cornerstones of a manufacturing business - customers, products, resources, and suppliers - by the unifying power of vision and competence, you will learn that master scheduling is a competency like engineering, financial management, and logistics. Another step on the journey to business excellence from Oliver Wight International (ed.)
   
Customer Service Made Easy
Customer Service Made Easy
by Paul Levesque
This excellent book is an instructional manual for creating a customer-focused culture in any business - and becoming a 'flashpoint business' - the place that's always jumping with turbocharged workers and lines of delighted customers, where employee and customer excitement catch fire and fuel each other. This is a must read for anyone who wants to go beyond lip service to customer service to make it real! Great work Paul! (ed.)
   
The Innkeeper Tales
The Innkeeper Tales
Modern-Day Canterbury Tales to Entertain, Enlighten & Empower
by John L. Herman Jr.
This collection of stories is told by business travelers whiling away a long day, stranded at The Abacrombie by an early spring blizzard. With Herman (the real-life Abacrombie owner) keeping the food and conversations going, each traveler tells a story drawn from his own life. This is a very engaging and entertaining read. Perhaps a visit to Baltimore is in order to contribute to the conversation. (ed.)
   
Visionaries
Visionaries
The 20th Century's 100 Most Important Inspirational Leaders

by Satish Kumar and Freddie Whitefield
Visionaries brings together the lives and works of a hundred great men and women who offer inspiration, hope, and healing. Their influence helped bring to an end colonialism and imperialism, apartheid, and authoritarian regimes, and they also helped foster the resurgence of an ecological, holistic, and spiritual vision that increasingly resonates in the world today. Fascinating and inspiring! (ed.)
   
Executive Intelligence
Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have
by Justin Menkes
Executive Intelligence is indeed a breakthrough in the science of leadership, identifying the critical-thinking skills and the rigor of the thinking process common to the most successful leaders in business. Menkes argues that what star leaders do is not magic, and their accomplishments are made possible by specific, identifiable skills that can be measured - and learned. He provides an excellent and very useful summary of the specific individual skills that comprise Executive Intelligence in terms of tasks, people, and oneself. This is one of the best books of the year!
   
The Definitive Drucker
The Definitive Drucker
by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim
For sixteen months before his death, Elizabeth Haas Edersheim was given unprecedented access to Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the father of modern management. At Drucker's request, Edersheim, a respected management thinker in her own right, spoke with him about the development of modern business throughout his life-and how it continues to grow and change at an ever-increasing rate.This is a celebration of this extraordinary man and his life's work, as well as a unique opportunity to learn from Drucker's final business lessons how to strategize, compete, and triumph in any market.
   
The Woman Road Warrior
The Woman Road Warrior: A Woman's Guide to Business Travel
by Kathleen Ameche
Kathleen Ameche debunks travel myths and demonstrates concrete ways to solve every kind of on-the-road challenge. She presents practical and time-tested-yet up-to-the-minute-tips for today's business professionals: Travelers of all levels of experience, from the new college graduate to the veteran road warrior, will benefit. The Woman Road Warrior shows you how to be at your most productive while staying sane, healthy, and in control on the road.
   
Happy Hour is 9 to 5
Happy Hour is 9 to 5: Learn How to Love Your Job, Create a Great Business and Kick Butt at Work
by Chief Happiness Officer Alexander Kjerulf
This book is about happiness at work. About loving your job - or finding one you can love. Because today, happiness at work is no longer a luxury - it's essential. People are discovering, that when they love their jobs, they are more productive, creative and motivated. They're also happier in life. Similarly, happy companies find they are more efficient, innovative and make more money than their unhappy competitors. (This one will challenge you to greatness! ed.)
   
Measure What Matters
Measure What Matters
Reconnecting Marketing To Business Goals

by Laura Patterson
Laura Patterson, co-founder of VisionEdge Marketing presents a comprehensive metrics framework that marketing professionals and company executives can use to ensure marketing is tightly connected to business goals, and provides an approach marketers can employ to demonstrate marketing’s contribution.
   
The No Asshole Rule
The No Asshole Rule:
Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't

by Robert I. Sutton
The author builds on the ideas he first set forth in his landmark Harvard Business Review essay of the same name to show managers how hiring mean-spirited employees--no matter how talented or qualified--can be a costly mistake. This outstanding book includes a self test - signs that your inner-jerk is rearing its ugly head, the calculaton of the annual costs of one asshole, the dirty dozen asshole actions, and how to enforce the no asshole rule. This is a must read for anyone who has had to endure assholes at work, which I'm sure is just about everyone. (ed.)
   
Service Icon
Becoming a Service Icon in 90 Minutes a Month
by Jeff Mowatt

Jeff Mowatt gets to the core of customer service - the organization's underlying service and sales culture and provides a roadmap for improvement. This is an entertaining and most valuable guide for anyone in the 'business' of service. (ed.)
   
The Flip Side
The Flip Side:
Break Free of the Behaviors That Hold You Back

by Flip Flippen
This is an incredibly personal, moving and inspiring book. You are guaranteed to be guided to have a good look in the mirror and see the attitudes and behaviours that keep you from attaining real success - the top "killer constraints" that most of us are confronted with everyday. And there's good news, in the very practical approach presented to conquer your constraints. This one will twist your head and that's a good thing. (ed.)
   
Getting Your Way Everyday
Getting Your Way Every Day:
Mastering the Lost Art of Pure Persuasion

by Alan Axelrod
Classical rhetoric is the most powerful system of persuasion, perfected by the likes of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. While the discipline may not sound sexy, its timeless principles really work. Alan Axelrod offers a new take on the classic strategies -- modernizing them and making them relevant to any business or social situation.
   
Rocking Wall street
Rocking Wall Street
by Gary Marks
How do we get to the Holy Grail? By getting to a million or ten million or a billion dollars? Or by increasing our time spent playing music, or walking on the beach, or playing with our children, or just becoming a better person? The "End Game" is a place where we can live off of a safe income stream and no longer be forced to "play" the game. We want to get to the point where the game is not playing us. Gary Marks has a step-by-step approach to get you there.
   
Hit the Ground Leading
Hit the Ground Leading!
by Angela Mondou

The best of the year!
This is an action-packed, head-twisting, edgy and powerful handbook that will show you how to lead your own adventure and turn your plans into reality. This is one of the best leadership guides of all time and a must read for all of your leaders of the future! (ed.)
   
Know-How
Know-how: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't
by Ram Charan
For well over four decades, Ram Charan has been learning in the most visceral way the underlying reasons why leaders succeed and fail. As one of the most influential advisers to top management teams of leading companies around the world, he has had a front-row seat to observe the cause and effect of leadership practices and behaviors. Ram Charan’s insight into the real content of leadership provides you with the eight fundamental skills needed for success in the twenty-first century.
   
3D Negotiation
3-D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals
by James K. Sebenius and David A. Lax
I thought that this book was going to be about negotiations. It's a lot more than that. After years of doing negotiations, I was skeptical that a new concept could emerge. I was very surprised by the concepts not because it was incredibly revolutionary, but because it had a lot of common sense. The book teaches business strategy and negotiations. It forces you to look at your business and focus on the right partners and business channels to be able to successfully negotiate. This book has been invaluable to me and would recommend it to any business person. Ms. Hyun Kim, President, Bynari Inc. Dallas, TX
   
No Yelling
No Yelling: The Nine Secrets of Marine Corps Leadership You Must Know to Win in Business
by Wally Adamchik
No Yelling draws upon the real-life experiences of those currently serving in the Marines and those now in the civilian sector to explain how anyone can incorporate the nine essential behaviors of Marine Corps leadership into their daily business life. The book includes more than 100 interviews with current and former Marines, and offers side-by-side comparisons of their application in military and civilian settings.
   
Lightning in a Bottle
Lightning in a Bottle: The Proven System to Create New Ideas and Products That Work
by Michael Reid and David Minter
The book is about Idea Engineering, and is revolutionary in that it contradicts the conventional idea-generating systems of the vast majority of today's corporations. David Minter and Michael Reid know innovation. For more than 25 years, they have contributed to the growth of such companies as Dole, Viacom, Sony and Einstein Bagels. Lightning in a Bottle is simple, and it works.
   
The Innovation Killer
The Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine - And What Smart Companies Are Doing About It
by Cynthia Rabe
This excellent book ranks very high on our scale of mindfulness and will take you through the perversions of "group-think" and the absolute innovation killing "expert-think" that are rampant and inevitable in most organizations today. The author proposes a most innovative solution - injecting "zero-gravity thinkers" to help people "escape the weight of what they already know." A brilliant book and one of the best of the year! (ed.)
   
Get Out of Your Own Way at Work
Get Out of Your Own Way at Work... and Help Others Do the Same: Conquering Self-Defeating Behavior on the Job
by Mark Goulston
An extremely practical guide to help workers and managers deal with the self-sabotage that stands in the way of career advancement and satisfaction. Illustrated with anecdotes and "useable insights" drawn from Dr. Goulston's more than twenty years in clinical and organization settings, Get Out of Your Own Way at Work shows anyone how to stop being their own worst enemy.
Now in paperback!
   
Making Your Company Human
Making Your Company Human: Inspiring Others to Reach Their Potential
by Le Herron
Making Your Company Human explains how leaders can create a more successful organization where people enjoy and are turned on by their work. In a business climate where the excesses of some CEOs have driven a wedge between workers and management, the personal and organizational rewards of this book's philosophy can be tremendous. Rich in the timeless wisdom of an extraordinary leader, this book is a must read for anyone who aspires to help people experience more fulfillment, joy, and success in their work.

The CEO Refresher Archives - Refresher Reviews
Reviews of interesting and important books. All are recommended as we only feature those we think are valuable.
 
   
The CEO Refresher Archives - Recommended Reading
Highlights, press releases and excerpts of new and important books on business, leadership and strategy.
 

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