Small Leadership

With over $500 million a year in sales, the Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. But beginning in the 1980s, the Bassett company suffered from an influx of cheap Chinese furniture as the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately was forced to send its production offshore to Asia. Only one man fought back. That man is John Bassett III, a descendant of the Bassetts who is now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of over $90 million.

Traditional workplace conversations - which are based on a parent-child model - stymie growth and erode commitment. The Showkeirs advocate instead authentic conversations that are based on an adult-adult model. These conversations tell the truth, let go of the illusion of control, and view people as in charge of their own motivation. The result is a conversation revolution that creates greater commitment, real accountability for results, and improved organizational performance.

The modern practice intended to motivate individuals has ensured that humans no longer think for themselves. Using rewards, punishment, and feedback undermines not just our personal growth, but the very fabric of life and living systems. Award-winning author and business disruptor Carol Sanford proposes a smarter, faster, and deeper key to unlock a future of profound creativity and success. This guide allows you to challenge prevailing theories, promote a holistic understanding of education and change, and redefine the way we approach our work and the results we seek.

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

While today's technological, social, and economic changes have helped the business world, they have also increased anxiety for employees, business owners, and especially managers. Experts Ken Blanchard and Michael O'Connor offer practical, proven solutions to help managers and their organizations reduce pressure while enhancing productivity.

People often spend years on working on startup ideas that fail - and they could have known long before, had they asked the hard questions earlier. Five-time tech founder Dave Parker has been there, and in Trajectory: Startup he offers a path to get you from ideation to launch and revenue in just six months. Parker shares advice on: what makes a good idea that makes money; recruiting and working with cofounders; asking customers what product they want (customer development); how to build a tech product even as a non-tech founder; and more.

Rising Tide Car Wash in Parkland, Florida, isn’t average in any way. When Tom D’Eri and his father John bought the location in 2013, it was struggling. Now it’s one of the highest-volume washes in Florida. Its employee retention rate is five times that of its competitors. It has spun off into two additional locations that have been immediately successful, and the business is absurdly profitable.

In the best-selling tradition of Liar's Poker comes a devastatingly accurate and darkly hilarious behind-the-scenes look at the wonderful world of management consulting.

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

Musicians may just hold the keys to innovation in business. They don’t think like we do, and in the creative process, they don’t act like we do. It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s most respected creators are also entrepreneurs. In Two Beats Ahead, Panos A. Panay, senior vice president for strategy at Berklee College of Music, and R. Michael Hendrix, global design director at IDEO, interview some of the nation’s top musicians and business leaders about how they approach innovation differently.

Seth Godin, one of today's most influential business thinkers, writes best-selling books like Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars. And in between those annual books, he delivers a daily stream of ideas on one of the world's most popular blogs.

Adam Braun began working summers at hedge funds when he was just 16 years old, sprinting down the path to a successful Wall Street career. But while traveling as a college student, he met a young boy begging on the streets of India. When Braun asked the boy what he wanted most in the world, he simply answered, "A pencil." This small request became the inspiration for Pencils of Promise, the organization Braun would leave a prestigious job at Bain & Company to start with just $25 at the age of 24.

Make achieving your goals and finding success possible with this one-of-a-kind guide by Robert Irvine, popular host of Food Network’s Restaurant: Impossible.

You can be one of those super-successful people who not only have a successful career but also a successful business! We start with the key things any start-up needs, giving you insight into helpful things to consider as you start your business. Then, we take you back as far back in time as middle school. We then go through what kind of internships and educational choices you’ve made or are going to make.

We explore various proven methods of implementing AI within your organization, drawing inspiration from the principles advocated by esteemed scholars such as Chris Argyris, Michael Porter, and Larry Greiner. We will examine top-down approaches, where leadership drives AI adoption throughout the entire organization, as well as bottom-up approaches, empowering individual employees to explore and implement AI solutions in their daily work.

In The Perfect 10, Dave Liniger, cofounder of RE/MAX, the company that revolutionized real estate for agents and home buyers everywhere, shares fifty-plus years of business insights to help guide future generations of entrepreneurs as they pursue their professional dreams. Beyond being a real estate magnate, Liniger is a major philanthropist, a serial investor in new ventures, a franchising expert, an educator, a former NASCAR team owner and driver, and the proprietor of one of the world’s most successful Arabian horse breeding operations.

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

Start a successful business mid-life When you think of someone launching a start-up, the image of a twenty-something techie probably springs to mind. However, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers are just as likely to start businesses and reinvent themselves later in life. Never Too Old to Get Rich is an exciting road map for anyone age 50-plus looking to be their own boss and launch their dream business.

Every start-up founder feels overwhelmed and uncertain at various times. From Start-Up to Grown-Up gives you, the founder and CEO of a great start-up, the knowledge and experience that executive coach Alisa Cohn has gained from helping companies such as Etsy, Foursquare, InVision, and The Wirecutter become headline names. The audiobook provides you with effective and practical ways of maximizing your strengths, defusing your triggers, controlling your self-doubt, and building on your motivators.

Stephen Lynch takes you through the proven strategic planning and business execution processes you need to drive better business results. This is not just theory. Stephen works in the trenches. As Chief Operating Officer of Results.com - the Business Execution Experts - he knows what it's like to run and grow a business.