Showing posts with label leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leadership. Show all posts

Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry Review

Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
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A CEO business book which doesn't follow the tired Gilda Radner formula of `Enough of me talking about me...let's hear what others think about me!'. This is a fun to read book chock-full of no-holds-barred advice on everything a growth company faces. In short easy to read chapters, Benioff writes instructively about everything from fostering an innovative product development and marketing machine, to driving explosive sales in existent and new/emerging markets, to focusing on customers while simultaneously inspiring a culture of employee hyper-success. His chapters on giving back to the community should be standard reading at all business schools today. In short, this is a practical guide on how to grow a successful business without selling your soul to Mephistopheles. The enthusiasm infused in the writing is contagious. For those looking for MBA jargon, four quadrant charts, circles with arrows, new buzzwords, or formulaic bromides on business success brought about by `the cult of the leader', don't pick up this book. Benioff and Adler have penned an easy to read practical, no-nonsense step-by-step `how to' guidebook on building and running a great company. John Henry - Danville, CA

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How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company in less than a decade? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate.
In Behind the Cloud, Benioff shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.


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Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results Review

Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results
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Some months ago I completed a Project Management course for which the textbook was the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) by the Project Management Institute (PMI). As I went through the 9 PM knowledge areas, 5 process groups, 44 processes and the countless tools and techniques in each process, I could not help thinking that something was missing. While the PMBOK does a good job covering project management methodologies, it barely talks about the people skills that Project Managers need for success. Anthony Mersino's "Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers" does an excellent job bridging this gap in the discipline of Project Management.
This book is broken into four parts. It starts with an introduction to Emotional Intelligence, a term that Mersino defines as "knowing and managing our own emotions and those of others for improved performance". The remaining parts deal with Self-management, Building project stakeholder relationships and Using Emotional Quotient (EQ) to lead project teams. To me, the highlight of the book was Mersino's Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management This builds upon and customizes (for project management) Daniel Goleman's Framework of Emotional Competencies.
The Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management has five domains:
1. Self-awareness
2. Self-management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management
5. Team leadership
Mersino has over 20 years of project management experience and teaches courses at Northwestern University. Overall, this book is well researched and well presented. In addition, it is an excellent compilation of resources on emotional intelligence for project management. It is a great addition to every Project Manager's book-shelf.

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In order to run projects successfully, project managers need to master more than the requisite technical knowledge. The more complex the project, the more significant their interpersonal skills become to achieving a successful outcome. Without the people skills necessary to lead effectively, even the most carefully orchestrated project can quickly fall apart. Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers introduces readers to the basic concepts of emotional intelligence and shows how to apply them to their project goals. Readers will learn how to: Set the tone and direction for the project Communicate more effectively Improve listening skills Create a positive work environment Motivate, coach, and mentor team members Productively handle stress, criticism, and blame And more. Complete with checklists and self-assessments, this handy guide enables project managers to apply these important skills to their projects right away.

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The New Entrepreneurial Leader: Developing Leaders Who Shape Social and Economic Opportunity (Bk Business) Review

The New Entrepreneurial Leader: Developing Leaders Who Shape Social and Economic Opportunity (Bk Business)
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A fascinating look at the mind and worldview of the "new" entrepreneur. The book lays out three key principles of entrepreneurial leadership based on years of research and the expertise of business school professors who give lively, first-hand accounts of training MBA students at Babson College, the top business school for entrepreneurship in the country. Especially interesting is the idea of "cognitive ambidexterity" which posits the necessity of using both analytical reasoning and experiential, action-based learning. In other words, a leader must be able to shift from logic to creativity and back again to succeed in the business climate of the future. As an educator myself, I was heartened by the stated mission of the authors who believe that the next generation of managers must be inculcated with values that go beyond creating profit to embrace concepts like "maximizing the common good and minimizing social injustice and environmental impact." Filled with colorful detail and stories from the trenches of real entrepreneurship at work, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in leadership, education, or social justice.

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In years past, the keywords for leaders were confidence, single-minded purpose, and strategic planning. But today's vastly complex, globalized, and fast-evolving world requires a different kind of leadership. This game-changing book details a new approach—entrepreneurial leadership—developed at Babson College, the number-one school for entrepreneurship in the world.

Entrepreneurial leadership is inspired by, but is separate from, entrepreneurship. It is a leadership approach that can be applied in any organizational situation, not just start-ups. Based on two years of extensive research, it embraces three principles that add up to nothing less than a fundamentally new worldview of business and a new logic of decision making.

The authors discovered that rapid change and increasing uncertainty require leaders to be "cognitively ambidextrous," able to shift between traditional "prediction logic" (choosing actions based on analysis of known trends) and "creation logic" (taking action despite considerable unknowns). Guiding this different way of thinking and acting is a different worldview of business and society, where simultaneous creation of social, environmental, and economic value is the order of the day. Entrepreneurial leaders also leverage their understanding of themselves and their social context to guide effective action.

Praise for The New Entrepreneurial Leader

"The Babson team cracked the code on global entrepreneurial leadership for the 21st century. Their three principles—cognitive ambidexterity, responsibility and sustainability, and self- and social awareness—are the bedrock for winning on the competitive global playing field of tomorrow. A conceptually sound and very practical guidebook for leadership success." —Noel Tichy, Professor and Director, Global Citizenship Initiative, University of Michigan, and coauthor of Judgment (with Warren Bennis)

"Helps us understand the imperative for developing leaders who create both economic and social value. Importantly, this book offers a blueprint for how educators across the curriculum can prepare students to have the vision and ability required to achieve integrated value." —Nancy McGaw, Deputy Director, Business and Society Program, Aspen Institute

"Precisely what our turbulent and uncertain environment requires: a new leader with good self-knowledge and passion, able to reconcile the apparent contradictions (in the yin-and-yang tradition of the Chinese) brought by complexity. The model will be a source of inspiration, and action, for all those concerned about leadership today." —Henri-Claude de Bettignies, Emeritus Professor of Leadership and Responsibility, INSEAD, and Emeritus Professor of Global Responsible Leadership, CEIBS

"Working with Babson College, we've seen how its entrepreneurial approach to management education can unlock the growth and job-creation potential of small businesses across the United States. The New Entrepreneurial Leader is a must-read for anyone who is interested in positioning American students and businesses owners as the cornerstones of this country's economic recovery." —Dina Powell, Global Head of Corporate Engagement and President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, Goldman Sachs Group

"As business schools reconsider their point of arrival and their future destinations, The New Entrepreneurial Leader provides a vocabulary and conceptual road map for those institutions that consider entrepreneurship and innovation as the way forward. The book both provides a toolbox and shows the power of a core focus on entrepreneurship in developing a distinctive educational program that has implications for all business schools." —Rakesh Khurana, Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Harvard Business School, and author of From Higher Aims to Hired Hands

"This book is an exemplar of the new wave of thinking about how to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs, leaders, and managers for the 21st century. The discussion is framed by tractable concepts and is grounded in practical application. You will gain a valuable perspective on what matters and how to deliver transformational learning to students." —Robert F. Bruner, Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, and author of Deals from Hell "In a world overwhelmed with problems, we desperately need more entrepreneurial problem solvers—whether that's young people starting companies from scratch or change agents inside big companies launching breakthrough initiatives. This remarkable book showcases the newest thinking from Babson College, one of the world's most-admired centers of entrepreneurial education, about two timeless questions: what makes entrepreneurs special, and what are the most effective ways to teach aspiring entrepreneurs to succeed? The best education doesn't just tell you what you need to know; it changes how you think. This powerful book does just that." —William C. Taylor, cofounder and Founding Editor, Fast Company, and author of Practically Radical "In The New Entrepreneurial Leader, Babson extends its own leadership in management education. Indeed, this book effectively argues that 21st-century management requires entrepreneurial leadership. Larger companies should require this book for every executive." —Stephen Spinelli, President, Philadelphia University, and cofounder, Jiffy Lube International "More than thirty years ago, Babson College was the first institution to teach entrepreneurship as a discipline, and once again, with the publication of The Entrepreneurial Leader, Babson has demonstrated that it is an innovator in management education. This is a thought-provoking book that provides very practical insights on ways to teach future entrepreneurs how to think and act more critically and analytically, strive for greater self- and social awareness, and achieve outstanding results." —William D. Green, Chairman, Accenture "This book provides a vision for developing leaders who aspire to create social, environmental, and economic value simultaneously. It offers practical advice on how to transform management education to realize this vision." —Liz C. Maw, Executive Director, NetImpact "This is a book that was long overdue...the chapters that discuss the challenges of defining metrics for CSR and the difficulty of linking CSR to corporate social performance (CSP) have the potential to impact the content of our business curriculum." —Dr. Norean Sharpe, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Programs, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University

"Reinvention is essential and must be done with guts and in a vigorous manner. In The New Entrepreneurial Leader, you will find a viable approach to reinvent management education. This book is a must-read for all who run, teach in, or plan to attend a business school." —Kevin C. Desouza, Associate Professor and Director, Institute for Innovation in Information Management, University of Washington, and author of Intrapreneurship "This book builds on Babson's thirty years of pioneering researching and teaching entrepreneurship. It challenges conventional business education by arguing convincingly that the entrepreneurial mindset is key to success in our incredibly complex world—not just for entrepreneurs but also for managers, whether they operate in businesses or nonprofit organizations, in highly advanced or in emerging economies. It is a must-buy book." —Guy Pfeffermann, CEO and Chairman of the Board, Global Business School Network


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The Shift: The Transformation of Today's Marketers into Tomorrow's Growth Leaders Review

The Shift: The Transformation of Today's Marketers into Tomorrow's Growth Leaders
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Davis spells out perfectly a leadership roadmap for marketers seeking to join the C-suite and influence a growth agenda for business.

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Small Business Management: Entrepreneurship and Beyond Review

Small Business Management: Entrepreneurship and Beyond
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This book is expensive - is making the book sellers and publishers rich. This is another example of schools very frequently requiring new versions of a book, with just a few changes, to make it seem as if you MUST purchase the newest version, while an older, dicounted version would suit you just as well.
My shool did not have any used books for sale. The school was charging @$200.00 plus, I paid @$150.00 here, and the last version sold here for @ $25.00! If you are considering purchasing this book, look for an older version.
The book does have valuable information for people who are starting a new business.

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Small Business Management provides a balanced introduction to both entrepreneurship and small business management with a focus on achieving and maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage as a small organization. Current issues including global opportunities, service, quality and technology are highlighted throughout the text. The streamlined format allows instructors to cover the entire text of 18 chapters within a standard semester timeline without sacrificing important topics. The Fifth Edition features a special focus on the impact of the financial crisis on small business management.The online Business Plan Guide and templates provide some of the most extensive information available on business planning.

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Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead Review

Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead
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Charlene Li is one of the authors of Groundswell and that book helped set the stage for business use of social technologies. In Open Leadership, Li breaks away from her co-authors providing a discussion and examination of the social technology's impact on the enterprise in more detail. She enters a crowded world of recent social technology based books and adds value to the social technology conversation and less to the leadership conversation.
Overall this is a good book providing a starting point for people looking to understand what social technology is and what it may mean for the enterprise. However, the state of social technology has moved beyond naming names and describing solutions to understanding the tough decisions and executing plans to realize value in the enterprise. Li tries to take on these issues, but falls short, keeping this from being a great book. This is a four star social technology book and a two and a half star leadership book.
Open Leadership has more to say about social technology than a leadership or management. It spends most of its pages talking about social technologies and its implementations. The leadership aspects to this book are not unique to social technologies You can see this in terms of her new rules for open leadership
1.Respect that your customers and employees have power
2.Share constantly to build trust
3.Nurture curiosity and humility
4.Hold openness accountable
5.Forgive failure
These rules are important, but they are not unique to social technology. In fact similar rules have been the subject of management books for the last 15 years. It is not that these are wrong, or bad advice, but these are things that students of management and leadership already know.
I was looking for how one would use social technology to create open leadership and less about how social technology requires open leadership. Leaders should read this book, but more to get a sense of what others are doing, or can do with social technology than to see how their job and role changes in the enterprise.
STRENGTHS
The book is comprehensive covering a range of topics and questions. Li covers a wide swath of ground in social technology and the enterprise.
The book positions its discussion in multiple frameworks and classifications ranging from rules for open leadership, to types of leaders, to assessments and action plans. These are helpful to understand the issues and to coalesce the thinking described in the book.
The use of company examples and descriptions provide real life examples, which is good. The examples are from multiple industries, which is another plus. The case examples descriptive but do not provide sufficient depth for the reader to understand the issues they faced, the alternatives available and the reasons why they chose a particular course of action. Leaders need that depth of analysis as Li's recommendations seek to change their deeply held behaviors.
The book mentions a wide array of social technology solution providers, providing a market scan of what people are using and some of the benefits they are getting. This is helpful for right now, but the long-term value of these names will diminish over time.CHALLENGES
This book describes a first generation approach where companies use social technology as an overlay or channel for their existing marketing, sales and support activities. These first generation solutions are powerful and important, but they also do not fundamentally challenge what it means to be a leader or a manager - in large part because the solutions described do not change the fundamentals of the enterprise.
The tools in the book are understandable, straightforward and applicable to a broad audience. This is good but it can leave corporate executives with the impression that they are trivial for their situation. I know that the book has case examples from CISCO, Ford, Best Buy and others, but when you go to use the advice you use the tools not the stories. The business cases examples illustrate this point. They are hypothetical and in some cases double count benefits. They illustrate terrific returns on investment in percentage terms, but they do not show the tens of millions of dollars in benefits that would lead executives to consider changing their approaches.
The book distills leadership and management issues down into a set of policy upgrades that Li calls "sandbox covenants." It is a catchy idea and policy changes are important, but Li does not address leadership issues of organizational structure, business process, performance measurement, among others to make this a book about leadership. Omission of these leadership issues further reflects the use of social media at it inception as an overlay and channel rather than a deep force requiring reform and change across the enterprise.
The book's multiple frameworks, recommendations and chapter structure do not fit together as well as they could. It is as if Li is unsure of which argument to advance so the author provides multiple ones. Examples of this include the five rules and the overall chapter structure - they are similar in some areas but not in others. The major themes form the case studies in the last chapter do not connect to the rules, or the other aspects of the book. This is understandable given the breadth the author is trying to cover, but it detracts from the impact of the book as its always telling me new things that are loosely related with the old.
OVERALL
You may think that I dislike this book. I don't.
It's a good book and one that you will benefit from reading. But, this is much more of a book about social technology than about leadership and management. If in this review, your feel that I have been too critical, then please accept my apology as it is not my intent to do so. Given the exploding number of books out on social technology and the limited reading time we all have, I thought that it would be better to be clear about this book's content and strengths which fall more in the area of social technology than leadership or management.
If you are new to social technology, I recommend this book over Groundswell, as the state of the art has advanced and this book provides a good overview of where people stand in terms of social technology. It is a four star book in terms of social technology.
If you are a student of social technology, then you can read this book to learn more, but do not expect to learn a great deal more about changes in leadership or management. It is a two and half star book about leadership.
If you are a manager looking to learn more about social technology, how it changes your job etc. Then you can read this book as well, but know its limitations.

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Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization Review

Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization
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Social media is changing the way brands and consumers interact online and digital marketers are beginning to allocate serious resources to social programs. In "Smart Business, Social Business," Michael Brito illustrates that it takes more than just social marketing to succeed in today's dynamic landscape, it takes a real cultural shift in the way companies do business and in the way they interact with customers and prospects.
Brito takes the reader through the people, process, and technology requirements for making this shift and does so with precision and clarity. He covers everything from strategy and governance to measurement and metrics, supporting his insights with real world examples.
I've already bought copies for a few of my clients and highly recommend this book to digital marketers as well as anyone looking to better serve their customers and prospects - it is absolutely a great read.

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This book will help organizations evolve into a fully collaborative social business. It serves as a step by step playbook to achieve organizational change, process efficiencies and technology acumen:

Proven solutions for the real people, process, and technology obstacles businesses face in using social media behind the firewall.
How to have the successful internal conversations with stakeholders, partners and global teams that lead to successful external conversations with the social customer
Strategies for improving organizational dynamics, collaboration, governance, training, engagement, policies, technology integration, workflows, social CRM, and metrics
Many organizations today have already evolved into social brands. They may be active on Twitter and Facebook; they may have corporate blogs and communities and they are trying hard to engage effectively with the social customer. However, behind the firewall, chaos, anarchy, and conflict reign. In Smart Business, Social Business, leading enterprise social business consultant shows how to build an internal framework based on change management that will lead to success with social media: one that will make external engagement more effective, meaningful, and sustainable. Michael Brito systematically identifies the internal culture, process and technology obstacles to long-term success with social media, and offer best practice solutions. He discusses a wide spectrum of issues, offering actionable intelligence and helping decision-makers build strategies and plans that deliver value. Topics addressed include change management, organizational models and dynamics, internal communications, collaboration, governance, metrics, training, employee activation, policies, technology integration, workflows, social CRM, and much more. Drawing on his own experience working for Silicon Valley companies, HP, Yahoo! and Intel, Brito presents dozens of examples and case studies. Using this book, companies can begin to transform their organizations from just a "social brand" to a fully collaborative and dynamic "social business."


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The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) Review

The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)
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Those who have read Denning's The Springboard and/or Squirrel Inc. already know that he specializes in knowledge management and organizational storytelling. In this volume, he develops his core concepts in much greater depth, acknowledging his high regard for Peter Senge's vision of the Total Learning Organization as delineated in his pioneer volume, The Fifth Discipline. Briefly, in it Senge suggests that there are five separate but interrelated "disciplines": building a Shared Vision which enables an organization to build a common commitment to the same long-term goals; formulating Mental Models which guide, inform, and sustain creativity and innovation; encouraging and supporting Team Learning; Personal Mastery of certain skills which enable an individual to learn and understand more and thus perform at a higher level of competence; and finally, Systems Thinking which establishes a holistic view, both of one's organization and of the marketplace in which it pursues success.
In his Introduction to this book, Denning asserts that "the best way to communicate with people you are trying to lead is very often through a story. The impulse here is practical and pedagogical. [The Leader's Guide to Storytelling] shows how to use storytelling to deal with the most difficult challenges faced by leadership today." Denning wholly agrees with Senge that a learning organization is an environment "where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together." However, while agreeing on the importance of "systems thinking" as a way of looking at systems as a whole that will enable people to see complex chains of causation and so solve complex problems, Denning has three concerns which he shares on page 253. By the time his reader arrives at that point in the narrative, she or he may well share the same concerns.
My purpose in this brief commentary is to focus on what I consider to be Denning's key points as he explains why and how storytelling is often the best way for leaders to communicate with those whom they are trying to lead. What he offers is a cohesive and comprehensive system. These are the core principles, as discussed thoroughly in Chapters 3-10:
1. Select and then tell the story which is most appropriate for the given leadership challenge.
2. Tell that story with style, truth, thorough preparation, and effective delivery.
3. Select a narrative pattern based on the primary objective: to motivate others to action, to build trust in you, to build trust in your organization, to transmit your values, to get others working together, to share knowledge, to "tame the grapevine," or to create and share your vision.
Each reader will appreciate Table 1.1. (on page 18) which summarizes key points for each of the eight different narrative patterns discussed separately in Chapters, 3-10. (Additional Tables are provided later in the narrative whenever appropriate.) At the end of each chapter in Part Two, Denning thoughtfully includes a "Template" which poses a set of questions to be addressed when, for example, crafting a "springboard story." Here's the first of ten questions: "What is the specific change in the organization or community or group that you hope to spark with the story?" Then in Part Three (Chapters 11 and 12), Denning explains how to put it all together by using narrative effectively, both to transform an organization and to become an interactive leader.
Of special interest to me Denning's discussion (in the final chapter) of what he calls "Interactive, Tolstoyean" leadership and its relation to other theories in terms of leadership as a trait, as a skill, as a style, as situational, as motivation, and as transformation. This discussion serves as an appropriate conclusion to his book, one in which Denning has spelled out "specific, identifiable, measurable, trainable behaviors that can be used to achieve the goals of transformational leadership."
Storytelling really is a performance art. Some master the requisite skills. Most don't. Denning offers no guarantees but does claim that those who consistently use the narrative tools he has provided will acquire new capabilities. Specifically, to communicate more effectively who they are and what they stand for, to be more attentive to the world as it is now, to speak the truth and do it well, to make their values explicit and take actions which are consistent with those values, to listen to the world and be receptive to innovation. Those who possess these new capabilities will attract the interest, then earn and sustain the trust and respect of those whom they may be privileged to lead.
If this is the kind of leader you aspire to be, Denning's book awaits you...eager to be of substantial assistance.
For whatever reasons, only in recent years has there been an awareness and appreciation of the importance of the business narrative. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Annette Simmons' The Story Factor, Doug Lipman's Improving Your Storytelling, and Storytelling in Organizations co-authored by John Seely Brown, Denning, Katarina Groh, and Laurence Prusak.


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How leaders can use the right story at the right time to inspire change and action
This revised and updated edition of the best-selling book A Leader's Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few ways to handle the most important and difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future. Using myriad illustrative examples and filled with how-to techniques, this book clearly explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time.
Stephen Denning has won awards from Financial Times, The Innovation Book Club, and 800-CEO-READ
The book on leadership storytelling shows how successful leaders use stories to get their ideas across and spark enduring enthusiasm for change
Stephen Denning offers a hands-on guide to unleash the power of the business narrative.


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Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year Review

Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year
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Before I read this book, I have to admit I wasn't quite sure what a "professional learning community" was. I must confess that, even though I'm a fan of co-author Bill Ferriter's blog, I generally skipped over his posts about this topic.
Through his book, I've learned that it's basically about strategically and intentionally developing a "community of learners" among school staff. Bill and his co-author Parry Graham have put together a very accessible step-by-step guide on how to go about creating this kind of culture, including ways to trouble-shoot potential challenges. The questions that it encourages readers to ask themselves and their colleagues might be the most important parts of the book.
In many ways, the process is similar to doing good community organizing (I spent nineteen years as an organizer prior to becoming a teacher) -- identifying potential leaders, beginning with a vision and having others adapt it to make it their own, focusing on conversations and relationships. This book makes it all applicable and usable in a school situation. In fact, I think it would be a useful book for anyone who is trying to create a collegial learning culture in any type of organization or business.
I have taught in two schools. The school where I've been for the past six years has been lucky enough to have a principal who has worked with teachers to use these methods -- almost to a "tee" -- and develop a culture of collegiality and professionalism that has truly transformed our school.
The one where I taught for my first year had none of these elements, and I believe that it contributed to its being permanently closed-down.
As its epilogue says:
While the challenges of reculturing schools into professional learning communities are great, the rewards -- successful, empowered practitioners and students who are learning regardless of circumstance -- are worth the effort!

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Building a Professional Learning Community at WorkTM: A Guide to the First Year addresses the real-world critical questions that arise when schools begin their work to become professional learning communities. How can administrators and teachers take the promise of a PLC and turn it into reality? How can school leaders transform theories of collaboration into highly effective nuts-and-bolts practices? This book is set in the context of one year in the life of a PLC. It chronicles the efforts of a building principal, Steve, and his teachers to build a true PLC at Central Middle School by focusing on the successes and challenges inherent in the process. Each chapter includes four elements. An opening story highlights an important event in the growth of a learning community. Lessons From the Front Line spotlights the successful decisions and common mistakes made by the characters in the opening story. The Relevant Theory and Research section introduces the theories of experts and connects them to the work of PLCs to provide readers with an approachable framework for understanding and a language for describing the complex, yet predictable, changes that are inevitable when schools restructure as PLCs. The Recommendations section offers a collection of suggestions from which to draw while working through change in a building. The lessons in Building a Professional Learning Community at Work are drawn from the authors own experiences working as teachers, building administrators, consultants, and coaches at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. It emphasizes that powerful collaboration can happen anywhere, but it requires hard work, purposeful steps, and a deep understanding of the PLC model. The tools in this book have been tested time and again by real teachers and teams.

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Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth Review

Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth
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I read some stellar reviews on this book and expected it to be a milestone business guide. I was even enthusiastic through the first couple of chapters. However, if you have any business training and have been within 10 miles of a start-up or growth-stage company in your life, this book is pretty elementary. A value proposition, decent leadership, a Board that can open any door in the universe, a couple of mammoth customers - how can a company fail? Those accomplishments alone will get almost any company to a decent liquidity event unless it was all dumb luck. The most frustrating thing about the book is that it's all about "what." This is what makes it seem, as one reviewer put it, as if it were a PowerPoint presentation. It lists out the "whats" that, in retrospect, some very successful companies did. But it leaves out the "hows." Any company would give a lot to have their industry's equivalent of Tom Siebel on the Board. But Tom's number is not exactly in the phone book. So the question is, *how* does a company get those people on the Board? How does a company identify and even get in the door of those marquee companies? While the book gives a few snippets and a case comparison at the end, it really left my practical appetite unsatisfied. Maybe the whole book was a consulting proposal - if you want the "hows" you pay the piper.

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Praise for BLUEPRINT TO A BILLION
"A wonderful, well thought out analysis of entrepreneurship and leadership of a growth company."—Howard Lester, Chairman, Williams-Sonoma, Inc.
"If you dream about growing your business to a billion, this is a fascinating down-to-earth study that you must read. Apply the seven essential principles to your business and you are off and running. Learn about strategy, growth, leadership, team building, and a whole lot more."—Joe Scarlett, Chairman of the Board, Tractor Supply Company
"Blueprint to a Billion is a well-researched and thoughtfully written book that quantifies the growth pattern of America's highest growth companies."—Professor John Quelch, Senior Associate Dean, Harvard Business School
"Eighty percent of the top-performing stocks in the last twenty years were small entrepreneurial companies that had an IPO in the prior eight years. Blueprint to a Billion tells you the seven key things these innovators did in common to become America's greatest growth companies."—William J. O'Neil, Chairman and Founder Investor's Business Daily, www.investors.com
"Thomson has written a masterful work that will catalyze, empower, inspire, motivate, and illuminate entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers. The world needs this book and will profit from it in manifold ways."—David M. Darst, Managing Director, Individual Investor Group Chief Investment Strategist, Morgan Stanley

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The Innovator's Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation Review

The Innovator's Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation
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There are many books out there that have the word "innovation" in the title. THIS one was satisfyingly different in that it actually took me through the process of innovation. Other books talked ABOUT it, and this one was prescriptive and applicable with every chapter. The authors are incredibly well versed on the topic, and bring a rigor that I was not expecting to find with the recent trend of "light business books." This book is certainly not light, it was informative and entertaining while giving practical step-by-step suggestions.
This was time well spent...I'm curious where the authors will go from here.

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Innovation is the ruling buzzword in business today. Technology companiesinvest billions in developing new gadgets; business leaders see innovation as thekey to a competitive edge; policymakers craft regulations to foster a climate ofinnovation. And yet businesses report a success rate of only four percent forinnovation initiatives. Can we significantly increase our odds of succeeding atinnovation? In The Innovator's Way, innovation experts Peter Denning and RobertDunham reply with an emphatic yes. Innovation, they write, is not simply aninvention, a policy, or a process to be managed. Innovation is a personal skill thatcan be learned, developed through practice, and extended into organizations. Denningand Dunham define innovation as the art of getting people to adopt change. They drawa distinction between invention and innovation: many inventions never becomeinnovations, and many innovations do not involve an invention. They identify anddescribe eight personal practices that all successful innovators perform: sensing,envisioning, offering, adopting, sustaining, executing, leading, and embodying.Together, these practices can boost a fledgling innovator to success. Weakness inany of these practices, they show, blocks innovation. Denning and Dunham describeinnovation at scales ranging from the private (a family organization of chores andallowances) to the planetary (the invention and adoption of the World Wide Web).They provide a detailed account of the eight practices and how to accomplish them;and they chart the path to innovation mastery, from individual practices to teamsand social networks.

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Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide Review

Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide
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There are a series of books that I keep on a special - quite small - bookshelf. I try to reread each of them every year or so. While I've gotten to the point that I know what they say, but each time I go through one of them I get an idea or two to try in promoting my business.
This book has made it to that shelf.
It got a decision to be put there while I was reading it at the book store. On page 24 there's a story of a lady wanting to sell helmets in a state with no helmet law. So she started stocking children's helmets. When riders told her they didn't want a helmet she asked, 'What about one for the child, they aren't old enough to make that decision for themselves.' What daddy could resist? Then a month later they were back for a helmet for themselves after the kid was asking, 'Daddy, where's your helmet." So a sale for Daddy, little Jimmy and little Suzie. Three sales for one question.
Then on page 83 there's the advice:
Shoot your web designer if they:
Suggest flash intro pages
Suggest frame pages
Suggest templates.
Yes, Yes, Yes!
One point about the web I do not agree. Learn to do your web site yourself. You may hire a designer to do it at first, but then maintain it yourself. It isn't hard and you won't be nickled and dimed to death over every small change you want.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. All of his ideas won't be applicable, but if you get a good idea or two each time you read through it, the book is worth it's cost many times over.

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Duct Tape Marketing is the small business marketing road map - A collection of proven tools and tactics woven together in a step-by-step marketing system that shows small business owners exactly what to do to market and grow their businesses. This guide combines insights gained from over twenty years of successfully working, in the field, with real-life small businesses. There are no theoretical complexities presented in Duct Tape Marketing - just simple, effective and affordable marketing that sticks. CAREFUL! Duct tape is a serious tool... it sticks where you put it. So are the ideas in this book. If you're ready to make a commitment and are willing to make something happen, John's book is a great place to start. --Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow For all those who wonder why John Jantsch has become the leading advisor and coach to small businesses everywhere, Duct Tape Marketing is the answer. I have never read a business book that is as packed with hands-on, actionable information as this one. There are takeaways in every paragraph, and the success of John's blog is living proof that they work. Duct Tape Marketing should be required reading for anyone who is building a business, or thinking about it. --Bo Burlingham, editor-at-large, Inc. magazine, and author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big Duct Tape Marketing is a worthy addition to the growing library of how-to books on small business marketing -- concise, clear, practical, and packed with great ideas to boost your bottom line. --Bob Bly, author of The White Paper Handbook With the world suffering from depleted reserves of trust, a business that sells plenty of it every day tends to create the most value. The great thing about trust as a product feature is that it delivers exceptional returns. With this book, John Jantsch has zeroed in on exactly what small businesses need to sell every day, every hour. --Ben McConnell, co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force John Jantsch has provided small businesses with the perfect perspective for maximizing all marketing activities - offline and on. Jantsch has the plan to help you thrive in the world of business today. Read it, all your competitors will. --John Battelle, cofounding editor or Wired and author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture Duct Tape Marketing is a great read for anyone in business. It has fresh ideas laid out in a practical and useable way. I highly recommend this book for growing any business. --Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder of BNI and Co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Masters of Networking

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The Future of Management Review

The Future of Management
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When you write a book about the future of management, there are bound to be high expectations. When that book is written by one of the more celebrated management thinkers, those expectations go even higher. With that said and recognizing that it is hard to argue with success and stature. I have to say that this book left me flat. Hammel's Future of Management is a continuation on his 2000 work Leading the Revolution (LTR) which combined high impact statements with high design that reflected the height of the internet era. In many ways, the Future of Management is a more somber continuation of the ideas in LTR.
The first section of the book poses a powerful question in terms of what comes next for management innovation. That is followed by an explanation of the importance of management innovation over operational, product and strategic innovation.The section challenges the reader to first imagine, and then invent the future of management. A noble task and one that the author tries to address but unfortunately does not deliver on to the degree that you would expect.
The second section of the book highlights a few case studies such as Whole Foods, WL Gore, and Google. The cases are well written and unabashedly positive highlighting few of the challenges and setbacks people might face in this journey. A few, even anonomyous failures would have been much more illustrative of the concepts Hamel is advocating.
The third and final section is perhaps the best part of the book as it starts to set up some ideas on what future managers and management might look like. Here the results unfortunately are what you might expect, to paraphrase - the future of management will look much like the internet. OK, but I have heard that before from others. Some of the most insightful parts of this section include: the notion of separating what from how, the idea of management DNA and motivation, and the key challenges he poses in terms of the challenges for the future of management. These challenges hearken back to Leading the Revolution and include:
Challenge 1 - Creating a democracy of ideas
Challenge 2 - Amplifying human imagination
Challenge 3 - Dynamically reallocating resources
Challenge 4 - Aggregating collective wisdom
Challenge 5 - Minimizing the drag of old mental models
Challenge 6 - Giving everyone a chance to opt in
The fourth section concentrates on IBM's Emerging Business Opportunities or EBO process and how the company was able to reignite its growth engine by managing new growth initiatives and taking R&D to the market. It's an interesting case study and a good way to wrap up the book.
The future of management is an ok book, more like a toned down east coast consumable version of leading the revolution. This is a book for thinkers rather than practioners. This is one of the reasons why it is not a 5 star rating from me. Hamel attempts to be somewhat Druckeresque, if that is a word, but does not pull off the deep systematic thinking that Peter Drucker did so well. Pushing this analogy, the style of The Future of Management is 80% Drucker and 20% Tom Peters. For me, Hamel's groundbreaking work is still Competing for the Future. If you are a fan of Leading the Revolution or a fan of Hamel you will buy this book and like it. If you are a reader studying the issues and challenges of management you will find that Hamel raises more questions than he answers and that many of the answers are ones that are already out there in the marketplace.


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Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust Review

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
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I was looking forward to reading this book as I work in social media and highly respect the authors. I'm always weary of reviews of social media books because, let's face it, in general the authors know more about reviews/ratings and how to manipulate them more than authors of other books. Anyway, I was very disappointed in Trust Agents. I felt that it was similar to other social media books in that the authors are trying to create catch phrases or buzz words (e.g. "trust agents") being that this is a new industry and creating a buzz phrase is a great marketing tactic. Despite the book's description, this is more of a theoretical book and does not offer practical advice that can be used at the tactical level.
It might not be a bad book if you're new to social media, but if you're experienced you're basically going to hear the same old stuff with different jargon. Then again, if you're new to social media you're much better off reading Groundswell. You'll get plenty of interesting supporting data there rather than anecdotal evidence of why certain strategies work.

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The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller-now in a new, updated paperback edition
Today's online influencers are Web natives who trade in trust, reputation, and relationships, using social media to accrue the influence that builds up or brings down businesses online. In Trust Agents, two social media veterans show you how to tap into the power of social networks to build your brand's influence, reputation, and, of course, profits.
In this revised paperback version, learn how businesses are using the latest online social tools to build networks of influence and how you can use those networks to positively impact your business. Combining high-level theory and practical actions, this guide delivers actionable steps and case studies that show how social media can positively impact your business.
New edition features specific first moves for entering social media for small businesses, educators, travel and hospitality enterprises, nonprofit organizations, and corporations
Authors both have a major presence on the social Web as well as years of online marketing and new media experience
If you want your business to succeed, don't sit on the sidelines while new markets and channels grow. Instead, use the Web to build trust with your consumers using Trust Agents.

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Customer-Driven Operations Management: Aligning Business Processes and Quality Tools to Create Operational Effectiveness in Your Company Review

Customer-Driven Operations Management: Aligning Business Processes and Quality Tools to Create Operational Effectiveness in Your Company
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This is a great framework and overview of the key components for implementing operational excellence, particulalrly in servce and knowledge worker sectors... whets your appetite for more detail with some gresat references.
I plan to use it as a core introductory text to our "Journey to Operational Excellence" program.

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The global economy is witnessing previously unseen levels of competitiveness, forcing business leaders to contend with unprecedented challenges. No longer can companies seize and hold a customer base by operating adequately. In order to enjoy a competitive advantage, an organization must operate at exemplary levels of performance in every facet of business and maintain that degree of excellence indefinitely. This is achieved through careful alignment of operational systems and the use of innovative process management initiatives. "Unless an organization is uniquely qualified to deal with its customers by understanding its own strengths and weakness," writes internationally renowned operational management expert Christopher K. Ahoy, "it will be unable to understand what is required to move from the current paradigm of doing business."

In Customer-Driven Operations Management, Ahoy distills the most current business theories and practices that will help you weed out and eliminate operational inefficiencies and put in place the necessary metrics for providing products and services better, cheaper, and faster than ever. Ahoy walks you through the steps of creating a world-class organization, which include
Mapping your company's processes to target weak points
Realigning management systems from functional to process-focused
Setting benchmarks throughout the process to help quantify levels of success
Establish a system of knowledge management for the seamless alignment of teams and departments
Improving process management using Lean, Six Sigma, and other methodologies
Create a sound strategic planning initiative to eliminate future surprises

With diagrams and figures to highlight salient points, Customer-Driven Operations Management clarifies and simplifies the otherwise daunting task of enacting major changes in your company's operations systems.


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Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community (Kim Klein's Fundraising Series) Review

Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community (Kim Klein's Fundraising Series)
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Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos are community organizers. They built Community Voices Heard with low-income women. In this book they tell us how they did it -- the big ideas, the strategies, and the step-by-step actions. They chart how to recruit leadership, give advice about tracking members, urge us to take the time to reflect on our field work so we better understand what people tell us.
This 438 page book is not meant to be read or swollowed whole. At least I can't do that. I use a chapter or just a couple of pages with board, staff, and volunteers as a task guide. Or I hand it to an intern and say, "See if you can find some good advice for us in here."
If your group gets stuck sometimes, if you ever get stuck, this book has a lot of useful tools to get moving again.

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Cómo Atraer Clientes en esta NUEVA Economía: Mi Sistema -Paso a Paso- para que Atraigas más Clientes en esta Nueva Economía (Spanish Edition) Review

Cómo Atraer Clientes en esta NUEVA Economía: Mi Sistema -Paso a Paso- para que Atraigas más Clientes en esta Nueva Economía (Spanish Edition)
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EXCELENTE, para los que pretendemos tener un negocio en internet. Es como estar en el colegio con una guia del maestro. Y como dice el titulo es real paso a paso, no dudes un segundo en tenerlo. COMPRALO!

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¡ES UN HECHO! Atraer clientes es más difícil en esta nueva economía. Miles de negocios están cerrando sus puertas y, de los que quedan, miles siguen el efecto dominó de los demás. Será el tuyo uno de ellos?La triste realidad es que HOY necesitas más dinero, más publicidad y trabajar hasta el cansancio para ganar menos dinero y atraer una mínima parte de los clientes que atraías. De lo contrario, terminarás cerrando las puertas de tu sueño empresarial. Pero no tiene que ser así. He descubierto, a lo largo de estos años como "La Reina del Mercadeo", con miles de seguidores, cientos de clientes y una agresiva exposición en periódicos, revistas y páginas web, que, para que rápidamente PROSPERES, ganes más DINERO y atraigas MÁS CLIENTES en esta NUEVA economía, necesitas solo seguir 3 simples pasos que comparto en mi nuevo libro.Así que, si te estás preguntando..."Cómo atraerlos continuamente?""Cómo complazco sus necesidades?""Qué hago para que mi teléfono siga sonando?""Cómo hacer para que me atraigan más clientes?""Cómo fidelizarlos para que sigan comprando?""Cómo hago para que sigan regresando a mí?""Cómo saber qué comprarán en el futuro?"Tus preguntas serán contestadas en mi nuevo libro.

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