Leadership Problems

Using stories from his time at Netscape, Apple, and Slack, Michael Lopp presents a series of small but compelling practices to help you build leadership skills. You’ll learn how to create teams that are highly productive, highly respected, and highly trusted. The essays in this book examine the practical skills Lopp learned from exceptional leaders - as a manager at Netscape, a senior manager and director at Apple, and an executive at Slack. You’ll learn how to apply these lessons to your own experience.

What’s the most pressure you’ve ever been under? How did you react? What helped? What didn’t? Over the past five years, Dane Jensen has asked these questions of thousands of high performers - from Olympic gold medalists to Navy SEALs, politicians, executives, and busy parents. What has emerged from these conversations is that while everyone’s experiences under pressure are unique, pressure follows patterns and develops in predictable ways. If we can recognize the patterns, we can improve our ability to sidestep the biological traps that can sabotage us....

Filled with illuminating case studies and brilliant in-depth analysis, this invaluable book provides a multitude of insights that will help you weather market upheavals, adapt to disruptions, and optimize your resources to your best advantage.

Speed has gotten a bad name in business, much of it deserved. When Facebook made "Move fast and break things" an informal company motto, it fueled a widely held belief that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. That a certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for inventing the future. Leadership experts Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that this belief is deeply flawed—and that it keeps you from building a great company.

"What an asshole!" How many times have you said that about someone at work? You're not alone! In this groundbreaking book, Stanford University professor Robert I. Sutton builds on his acclaimed Harvard Business Review article to show you the best ways to deal with assholes...and why they can be so destructive to your company.

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

All prospects lie, all the time. Never ask for the order. Get an IOU for everything you do. Don't spill your candy in the lobby. Until now, these unique rules (and 45 more) were given out only to Sandler Training clients in special seminars and private coaching. After three decades of proven success, the secrets are out in The Sandler Rules. And when salespeople know the rules, they get results.

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

Whether you're rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful. In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works in three steps.

Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO’s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard? If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again.

In the past few years, a number of well-known firms have failed; think of Blockbuster, Kodak, or RadioShack. When we hear about their demise, it often seems inevitable - a natural part of "creative destruction." But closer examination reveals a disturbing truth: Companies large and small are shuttering more quickly than ever. What does it take to buck this trend? The simple answer is: ambidexterity. Firms must remain competitive in their core markets, while also winning in new domains.

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

In Better, Simpler Strategy, Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee provides executives with a simple tool to cut through technological complexity and market uncertainties. The Value Stick, based on proven economic mechanics, is an extraordinarily powerful tool that helps executives decide where to focus their attention and how to deepen their firm's competitive advantage.

The companion to the blockbuster best seller, Getting Things Done. Since its publication in 2001, Getting Things Done has become, as Time magazine put it, "the defining self-help business book" of the decade. Having inspired millions of readers/listeners around the world, it clearly spoke to an urgent need in an increasingly time-pressured society. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel Making It All Work, Allen unlocks the full power of his methods across the entire span of life and work.

Create the Future is an exciting guidebook for disruptive thinking, innovation, and change, paired with The Innovation Handbook, an updated version of the award-winning book, Exploiting Chaos. The bestseller is loaded with the same tactics, tools, and frameworks that Gutsche's team uses to accelerate 700 of the world's most powerful brands, billionaires, CEOs, and NASA.

This is clearly abook every manager should listen to. One of the issues Mintzberg addresses is the frenetic pace and relentless pressures of the job - most managers hardly have time to think. So Mintzberg has done some revising and some updating and has distilled the essence of his original book into a lean, action-oriented shortened version. The core of the book remains the same: Mintzberg's observations of twenty-nine different managers, from business, government, and nonprofits, working in diverse settings ranging from a refugee camp to a symphony orchestra.

Conventional wisdom today says that to survive, companies must move beyond incremental, sustaining innovation and invest in some form of radical innovation. "Disrupt yourself or be disrupted!" is the relentless message company leaders hear. The Power of Little Ideas argues there's a third way that is neither sustaining nor disruptive.

For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear - but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including more than 200 interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions - and breakthrough insights - and how anyone can create them.

Under the aegis of machine learning in our data-driven machine age, computers are programming themselves and learning about - and solving - an extraordinary range of problems, from the mundane to the most daunting. Today it is machine learning programs that enable Amazon and Netflix to predict what users will like, Apple to power Siri's ability to understand voices, and Google to pilot cars.

Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene 10 years ago and revolutionized the way people communicate when stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong. Since then, millions of people have learned how to hold effective crucial conversations and have dramatically improved their lives and careers thanks to the methods outlined in this book. Now, the authors have revised their best-selling classic to provide even more ways to help you take the lead in any tough conversation.