Small Business Leadership

Scrum is the most successful framework for agile product development, and much has been written about how to follow the Scrum process, but the key to success is in the leadership skills of the product owner. Product Mastery explores the traits of the best product owners, offering an insight into the difference between good and great product ownership and explaining how the best product owners are driven to be successful.

The Making of a Well-Designed Business is the insiders' guide to helping others overcome the challenges of owning a business. The strategies it provides to ensure success include: The importance of establishing your company mission and core values, how to assemble a team of experts and mentors, where and how to find (and attract) the ideal client, the significance of making customer service your top priority, and why owning your worth is the key to profitable selling.

From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the "nail it then scale it" method is based on pattern recognition of the timeless principles and key practices used by successful entrepreneurs to repeatedly innovate. These processes and principles have now been distilled into a handbook to guide entrepreneurs and innovative product managers to victory. Stop following conventional wisdom, and join the few entrepreneurs that can consistently take their innovative idea all the way to a successful company launch.

Imagine what Atari might have achieved if Steve Jobs had stayed there to develop the first massmarket personal computer. Or what Steve Case might have done for PepsiCo if he hadn't left for a gaming start-up that eventually became AOL. What if Salomon Brothers had kept Michael Bloomberg, or Bear Stearns had exploited the inventive ideas of Stephen Ross? Scores of top-tier entrepreneurs worked for established corporations before they struck out on their own and became self-made billionaires.

In the new edition of this fascinating book, a book that has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Slashdot.org, Lifehacker.com and in the New York Times, best-selling author Scott Berkun pulls the best lessons from the history of innovation, including the recent software and web age, to reveal powerful and surprising truths about how ideas become successful innovations - truths people can easily apply to the challenges of today.

In this compelling book, strategy guru Roger L. Martin and Skoll Foundation President and CEO Sally R. Osberg describe how social entrepreneurs target systems that exist in a stable but unjust equilibrium and transform them into entirely new, superior, and sustainable equilibria. All of these leaders - call them disrupters, visionaries, or changemakers - develop, build, and scale their solutions in ways that bring about the truly revolutionary change that makes the world a fairer and better place.

The Cofounder’s Handbook brings business partnerships into the spotlight where they belong. Most people don’t realize how much their partnership affects the strength of their business. The right cofounder multiplies your success. But the wrong partner divides your attention and effort, hinders your business’s progress, and potentially destroys it from within.

Seeing What's Next is a framework for predicting industry winners and losers. Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data, and can lead to costly errors in judgment. Internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth, present this guide for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry.

Negotiation has always been at the heart of solving problems at work. Yet today, when people in organizations are asked to do more with less, be responsive 24/7, and manage in rapidly changing environments, negotiation is more essential than ever. What has been missed in much of the literature of the past 30 years is that negotiations in organizations always take place within a context - of organizational culture, of prior negotiations, of power relationships - that dictates which issues are negotiable and by whom.

Most small business owners never achieve their goals because they do not know what to do or do not understand why they need to do it and/or cannot figure out how to do it. Running Your Small Business like a Pro is a commonsense guide for learning how to run your business as a professional enterprise. It provides you with a fundamental understanding of the challenges small businesses face with real-world solutions that drive results.

Managing complex projects can stretch you to the limits. But with a book full of experts coaching you each step of the way, you'll never be baffled, blocked, or misdirected again. Packed with essays and insights from the field's top professionals, The AMA Handbook of Project Management is the resource professionals and students rely on for its practical guidance and big picture overview of the entire field. Whether you need advice keeping projects on track or help preparing for certification, this new edition explains every principle, process, and development.

Debra Traverso tells you how to prepare for the surprises most likely to throw small businesses off course. She helps you anticipate both predictable hurdles and devastating ordeals, so that no crisis will catch you off guard. No need to waste emotions, time, and money when a crisis hits: you can get a good night's sleep!

In The Business Playbook, serial entrepreneur Chris Ronzio walks you through his proven framework for building a playbook: the profile of your business, the people who work in it, the policies that guide it, and the processes that operate it. He shows you how to codify your culture and create a living document that allows you to let go of day-to-day responsibilities and empower your team to run the business without you. If you want to build a company that doesn’t rely on you putting in more hours, this book will show you the way.

Some call them creative geniuses. Others label them workaholics. Either way, if you’re going to keep up with them, you’d better be moving quickly. These driven individuals are the movers and shakers building the world around us. Somehow, they’re able to capitalize on opportunities before others even notice them. Fueled by endless passion and ideas, they have unlimited energy to get things done. While we might not understand them, we can’t help but notice that they have something special inside. That’s The EntreSpirit.

Leadership succession made easy. Leaders leave. It's inevitable. It might even happen today. Are you prepared? Every organization needs a plan for leadership succession, but few leaders know how to start the process. Who Comes Next? solves that problem and easily guides you through the steps of creating and implementing a viable succession plan. This essential guidebook simplifies the process and gives you the tools you need to build and activate your leadership succession.

Dental practice owners and their teams often dream of growing a successful dental group or DSO. Then complexity sets in. Today, successful practitioners have to survive the world of business: marketing, messaging, HR, finance, compliance. It's a lot for any team to manage. DSO Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dental Empire uncovers those secrets. Whether your goal is to be a top clinician in a single practice or to build your own multi-practice portfolio, this book has the resources you're looking for.

Unstoppable takes the most valuable lessons and top commonalities from how to succeed and lays out the nine principles for unlimited success...in both business and in life. Proven by author Kelly Roach's award-winning career in corporate settings and as an entrepreneur, Unstoppable is set to inspire everyone from the new entrepreneur to the seasoned CEO.

Dominate your market through an inside and out business structure: Martin Pettigrew's proven concept with over $40 million in yearly gross roofing sales. In The Roofing Machine, Martin shares a unique business structure that can enable you to grow your sales revenue to over $40 million per year. It is based on the obsession with customers to provide them with what they deserve...the best.

How to Close A Deal like Warren Buffett offers an original spin on Buffett’s near-mythic dealmaking prowess that will catch the attention of millions of Buffet fans worldwide. Here, Tom Searcy and Henry DeVries acknowledge leaders in sales and sales training and deconstruct the Buffett approach for dealmaking to give listeners a wealth of Warren wisdom to help close every deal.

What is the difference between a good leader, and a great leader? What results do great leaders consistently achieve, and what activities do they perform in order to accomplish these results? In this audiobook Brad Giles provides a detailed step-by-step process for leaders to identify their key opportunities, evolve beyond their leadership comfort zone and implement tools to achieve enduring greatness as a leader.