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Simply Brilliant How Great Organizati...
Brief Summary
Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways
A new era of business and leadership cries out for new stories of success, and new strategies for bringing them to life. Today, the way to win big, argues bestselling author William C. Taylor, is to relentlessly rethink the everyday. The unthinking assumptions your industry makes about its processes and its customers are ripe territory for innovation. Taylor goes inside nineteen unique organizations that have become unlikely change agents in their otherwise humdrum fields. For example:
• At a 150-bed hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, a shift in language helped the staff feel more invested in patient health--and produced extraordinary health outcomes in the local Native American community.
• Miami Beach's 1111 Lincoln Road is a parking garage that also serves as a wedding venue, apartment complex, shopping center, and social hub.
• USAA, which provides insurance to military officers, teaches salespeople empathy through a simulated overseas deployment in which they subsist on MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and don Kevlar vests.
• Pal's Sudden Service, a cult favorite fast-food restaurant, delivers unmatched speed and order accuracy thanks to its unique approach to employee training.
Taylor reveals that these businesses share a set of core principles that help them pioneer unlikely innovation: They strive to be the only ones doing what they're doing instead of competing in crowded fields; they don't let past experience limit what they can imagine; they seek ways to be kind as well as clever; and they share they value they create with those who helped create it. By embracing these strategies, Taylor argues, leaders in any industry will be well on their way to upending the status quo, and finding opportunity where competitors didn't or couldn't look.
ISBN:9781591847755
Author:William C. Taylor
Leading with Questions How Leaders Fi...
Brief Summary
Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask
Many leaders are unaware of the amazing power of questions. Our conversations may be full of requests and demands, but all too often we are not asking for honest and informative answers, and we don’t know how to listen effectively to responses. When leaders start encouraging questions from their teams, however, they begin to see amazing results. Knowing the right questions to ask—and the right way to listen—will give any leader the skills to perform well in any situation, effectively communicate a vision to the team, and achieve lasting success across the organization.
Thoroughly revised and updated, Leading with Questions will help you encourage participation and teamwork, foster outside-the-box thinking, empower others, build relationships with customers, solve problems, and more. Michael Marquardt reveals how to determine which questions will lead to solutions to even the most challenging issues. He outlines specific techniques of active listening and follow-up, and helps you understand how questions can improve the way you work with individuals, teams, and organizations.
This new edition of Leading with Questions draws on interviews with thirty leaders, including eight whose stories are new to this edition. These interviews tell stories from a range of countries, including Singapore, Guyana, Korea, and Switzerland, and feature case studies from prominent firms such as DuPont, Alcoa, Novartis, and Cargill. A new chapter on problem-solving will help you apply questions to your toughest situations as a leader, and anew "Questions for Reflection” section at the end of each chapter will help you bring Marquardt’s message into all of your work as a leader.
Now more than ever, Leading with Questions is the definitive guide for becoming a stronger leader by identifying—and asking—the right questions.
ISBN:9781118658130
Author:Michael J. Marquardt
World Without Mind The Existential Th...
Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations.
We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information.
These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy.
They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection—a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success.
Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science—from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stuart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley—Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology.
The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide.
At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They’re monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.
Stand Out How to Find Your Breakthrou...
Brief Summary
Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It
Standing out is no longer optional
Too many people believe that if they keep their heads down and work hard, they’ll be recognized on the merits of their work. But that’s simply not true anymore. "Safe” jobs disappear daily, and the clamor of everyday life drowns out ordinary contributions. To make
a name for yourself, to create true job security, and to make a difference in the world, you have to share your unique perspective and inspire others to take action. But in a noisy world where it seems everything’s been said—and shouted from the rooftops—how can your ideas stand out?
Fortunately, you don’t have to be a genius or a worldwide superstar to make an impact. Drawing on interviews with more than fifty thought leaders in fields ranging from business to genomics to urban planning, Dorie Clark shows how these masters achieved success and how anyone—with hard work—can do the same. Whether it’s learning to ask the right questions, developing and building on an expert niche, or combining disparate fields to get a new perspective, Clark outlines ways to develop the ideas that set you apart.
Of course, having a breakthrough insight is only half the battle. If you really want to share your ideas, you have to find a way to build an audience, communicate your message, and inspire others to embrace your vision. Starting small is fine; Clark provides a step-by-step guide to help you leverage your existing networks, attract new people to your cause, and, ultimately, build a community around your ideas.
Featuring vivid examples based on interviews with influencers such as Seth Godin, David Allen, and Daniel Pink, Clark shows you how to break through and ensure that your ideas get noticed. Becoming a thought leader in your company or in your profession is the ultimate career insurance. But—even more important—it’s also a chance to change the world for the better. Whatever your cause, perspective, or point of view, the world can’t afford for the best ideas to remain buried inside you. Whether it’s how to improve the educational system or how to make your company more efficient, your ideas matter. The world needs your insights, and it’s time to be bold.
ISBN:9781591847403
Author:Dorie Clark
The Excellence Dividend Meeting the T...
Brief Summary
The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last
For decades Tom Peters has been preaching the gospel of putting people first, and in today's rapidly changing business environment, this message is more important than ever. With his unparalleled expertise and inimitable charisma, Peters offers brilliantly simple, actionable guidelines for success that any business leader can immediately implement.
He provides a roadmap for your organization and for you as an individual to thrive amidst the tech tsunami, and he has a lot of fun doing it. The Excellence Dividend is an important new book from one of today’s greatest business thinkers.
ISBN:9780525434627
Author:Tom Peters
Empires of the Mind Lessons To Lead A...
Brief Summary
Empires of the Mind: Lessons To Lead And Succeed In A Knowledge-Based World
Empires of the Mind is a revolutionary book that offers answers to men and women interested in "reengineering" their jobs as well as their corporations. Providing dozens of specific techniques and tools for maximizing personal potential, Denis Waitley uncovers the key foundations of authentic self-leadership and delivers career-enhancing strategies on how to thrive on risk and adversity, inspire yourself and others to maximum performance, become more powerful by sharing power, and much more.
With Empires of the Mind, you learn how to get ahead and stay ahead in a fast-paced world where the only rule is change.
ISBN:9780688147631
Author:Denis Waitley
Do More Faster Tech stars Lessons to ...
Brief Summary
Practical advice from some of today's top early stage investors and entrepreneurs Tech Stars is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator with operations in three U.S. cities. Once a year in each city, it funds about ten Internet startups with a small amount of capital and surrounds them with around fifty top Internet entrepreneurs and investors. Historically, about seventy-five percent of the companies that go through TechStars raise a meaningful amount ofangel or venture capital.
Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is a collection of advice that comes from individuals who have passed through, or are part of, this proven program. Each vignette is an exploration of information often heard during the TechStars program and provides practical insights into early stage entrepreneurship.
Contains seven sections, each focusing on a major theme within the TechStars program, including idea and vision, fundraising, legal and structure, and work/life balance Created by two highly regarded experts in the world of early stage investing Essays in each section come from the experienced author team as well as TechStar mentors, entrepreneurs, and founders of companies While you'll ultimately have to make your own decisions about what’s right for your business, Do More Faster: Tech Stars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup can get your entrepreneurial endeavor headed in the right direction.
ISBN:9780470948798
Author:David G. Cohen and Brad Feld
Wild Ride Inside Ubers Quest for Worl...
Brief Summary
In your pocket is something amazing: a quick and easy way to summon a total stranger who will take you anywhere you'd like. In your hands is something equally amazing: the untold story of Uber's meteoric rise, and the massive ambitions of its larger-than-life founder and CEO.
Before Travis Kalanick became famous as the public face of Uber, he was a scrappy, rough-edged, loose-lipped entrepreneur. And even after taking Uber from the germ of an idea to a $69 billion global transportation behemoth, he still describes his company as a start-up. Like other Silicon Valley icons such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, he's always focused on the next disruptive innovation and the next world to conquer.
Both Uber and Kalanick have acquired a reputation for being combative, relentless, and iron-fisted against competitors. They've inspired both admiration and loathing as they've flouted government regulators, thrown the taxi industry into a tailspin, and stirred controversy over possible exploitation of drivers. They've even reshaped the deeply ingrained consumer behavior of not accepting a ride from a stranger--against the childhood warnings from everyone's parents.
Wild Ride is the first truly inside look at Uber's global empire. Veteran journalist Adam Lashinsky, the bestselling author of Inside Apple, traces the origins of Kalanick's massive ambitions in his humble roots, and he explores Uber's murky beginnings and the wild ride of its rapid growth and expansion into different industries.
Lashinsky draws on exclusive, in-depth interviews with Kalanick and many other sources who share new details about Uber's internal and external power struggles. He also examines its doomed venture into China and the furtive fight between Kalanick and his competitors at Google, Tesla, Lyft, and GM over self-driving cars. Lashinsky even got behind the wheel as an Uber driver himself to learn what it's really like.
Uber has made headlines thanks to its eye-popping valuations and swift expansion around the world. But this book is the first account of how Uber really became the giant it is today, and how it plans to conquer the future.
ISBN:9780735211391
Author:Adam Lashinsky
The Age of Magic
Brief Summary
This novel takes us on a journey, a magical, and a literal one. A tightly knit group of filmmakers travel from Paris together to make a documentary. Unknown to themselves they carry a lot of unwanted baggage - fear, anger, jealousy, love.
When they arrive in an idyllic Swiss village ringed by mountains and reflected in a lake, they discover a haunted world that will compel them to confront the demons they have been trying to escape.
A mind-blowingly beautiful book, full of unexpected, poetic and metaphysical revelations.
ISBN:9781784081478
Author:Ben Okri
Africas Third Liberation The New Sear...
Brief Summary
Between 2000 and 2010, six of the ten fastest-growing economies worldwide were African. In this favorable environment, how do we make sure jobs and poverty reduction follow? Now is the time for African countries to consider how economic growth and political liberalization should reinforce each other.
Africa has experienced two liberations: the first from colonial and racist regimes and the second from the autocrats who often followed foreign rule. At the end of the 1970s, just three African countries regularly held multiparty elections; more than 40 do today. Africa’s political evolution points to a third liberation, one from political economies characterized by graft, crony capitalism, rent-seeking, elitism and social inequality.
This liberation will open up the economic space in which business can compete, a necessary condition for expanding employment. The debate is about how Africa can realize its economic potential and avoid the disappointments of the first 50 years of independence. Using examples from Central and South America, South-East and South Asia, and the Middle East, the authors examine what means are best to match political liberalization with growth.
ISBN:9780143528883
Author:Greg Mills and Jeffrey Herbst
Sleep No More
Brief Summary
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Penn Cage series explores the dangers of obsession in this gripping psychological thriller.
John Waters is a successful businessman and a happy family man—but his life comes crashing down around him with one word from a beautiful stranger: "Soon.”
Suddenly, he is face to face with a memory from his past—of an obsession that he thought he had escaped. One that now plunges him into the darkest side of love and passion…
ISBN:9780451208767
Author:Greg Iles
Capital A Critique of Political Econo...
Brief Summary
Unfinished at the time of Marx’s death in 1883 and first published with a preface by Frederick Engels in 1894, the third volume of Capital strives to combine the theories and concepts of the two previous volumes in order to prove conclusively that capitalism is inherently unworkable as a permanent system for society.
Here, Marx controversially asserts that—regardless of the efforts of individual capitalists, public authorities or even generous philanthropists—any market economy is inevitably doomed to endure a series of worsening, explosive crises leading finally to complete collapse. But he also offers an inspirational and compelling prediction; that the end of capitalism will culminate in the birth of a far greater form of society.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
ISBN:9780140445701
Author:Karl Marx
Anybody out there
Brief Summary
Anna Walsh is officially a wreck. Physically broken and emotionally shattered, she lies on her parents' Dublin sofa with only one thing on her mind: getting back to New York. New York means her best friends, The Most Fabulous Job In The World™ and above all, it means her husband, Aidan.
But nothing in Anna's life is that simple anymore... Not only is her return to Manhattan complicated by her physical and emotional scars – but Aidan seems to have vanished.
Is it time for Anna to move on? Is it even possible for her to move on? A motley group of misfits, an earth-shattering revelation, two births and one very weird wedding might help Anna find some answers – and change her life forever.
ISBN:9780061240850
Author:Marian Keyes
Out of Eden
Brief Summary
Book Summary of Out Of Eden: The Peopling Of The World In 1988, "Newsweek" headlined the discovery that everyone alive on the earth can trace their maternal DNA back to one woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago.
It was thought that humans populated the world through a series of migratory waves from their African homeland.
This book reveals the revolutionary theory about our origins.
ISBN:9781841198941
Author:Stephen Oppenheimer
The Shackled Continent Africas Past P...
Brief Summary
Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades. Why? The Shackled Continent, Robert Guest's fascinating first book, seeks to diagnose the sickness that continues to hobble Africa's development. Using reportage, first-hand experience and economic insight, Robert Guest takes us to the roots of the problems.
Two fifths of African nations are at war, AIDS has lowered life expectancy to as young as forty years old and investment is almost impossible as houses that could be used as collateral do not formally belong to their owners.
Most shocking of all is the evidence that the billions of dollars of aid, given to Africa has had little perceptible effect on the poor The Shackled Continent offers, sometimes controversially, explanations for this state of affairs. In this magnificent and engaging book, Robert Guest provides an invigorating history and an inspired commentary on the enigma of modern Africa.
ISBN:9780330419727
Author:Robert Guest
The age of unreason
Brief Summary
In an era when change is constant, random, and, as Handy calls it, discontinuous, it is necessary to break out of old ways of thinking in order to use change to our advantage. Handy examines how dramatic changes are transforming business, education, and the nature of work.
We can see it in astounding new developments in technology, in the shift in demand from manual to cerebral skills, and in the virtual disappearance of lifelong, full-time jobs.
Handy maintains that discontinuous change requires discontinuous, upside-down thinking, and discusses the need for new kinds of organizations, new approaches to work, new types of schools, and new ideas about the nature of our society.
ISBN:9780875843018
Author:Charles B. Handy
The Age of Capital 1848-1875
Brief Summary
In the wake of the French Revolution & the Industrial Revolution, Europe underwent another revolution--this time a revolution of values.
The author examines the rise of industrial capitalism and the consolidation of bourgeois culture, exploring the effects of mounting concentration of wealth, population migrations, and the domination of European culture.
Integrating economics with political and intellectual developments, this account studies the cycles of boom & slump that characterize capitalist economies, of the victims & victors of the bourgeois ethos.
ISBN:9780679772545
Author:Eric Hobsbawm
Age of Iron
Brief Summary
In Cape Town, South Africa, an old woman is dying of cancer. A classics professor, Mrs. Curren has been opposed to the lies and brutality of apartheid all her life, but has lived insulated from its true horrors.
Now she is suddenly forced to come to terms with the iron-hearted rage that the system has wrought. In an extended letter addressed to her daughter, who has long since fled to America, Mrs. Curren recounts the strange events of her dying days. She witnesses the burning of a nearby black township and discovers the bullet-riddled body of her servant's son.
A teenage black activist hiding in her house is killed by security forces. And through it all, her only companion, the only person to whom she can confess her mounting anger and despair, is a homeless man, an alcoholic, who one day appears on her doorstep. Brilliantly crafted and resonant with metaphor, Age of Iron is "a superbly realized novel whose truths cut to the bone."
ISBN:9780140275650
Author:J.M. Coetzee
Africas Agitators Militant Anti-Colon...
Brief Summary
Africa's 'Agitators': Militant Anti-Colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918-1939.
Recounts the opposition to British and French rule practiced by Africans living on the continent and by European anti-colonialists and members of Black Diaspora.
This book covers campaigns waged by an early incarnation of African National Congress and other groups in South Africa who fought against legal and other aspects of white minority rule.
ISBN:9780231700566
Author:Jonathan Derrick
Acts of faith
Brief Summary
Philip Caputo’s tragic and epically ambitious new novel is set in Sudan, where war is a permanent condition. Into this desolate theater come aid workers, missionaries, and mercenaries of conscience whose courage and idealism sometimes coexist with treacherous moral blindness.
There’s the entrepreneurial American pilot who goes from flying food and medicine to smuggling arms, the Kenyan aid worker who can’t help seeing the tawdry underside of his enterprise, and the evangelical Christian who comes to Sudan to redeem slaves and falls in love with a charismatic rebel commander.
As their fates intersect and our understanding of their characters deepens, it becomes apparent that Acts of Faith is one of those rare novels that combine high moral seriousness with irresistible narrative wizardry.
ISBN:9780375725975
Author:Philip Caputo