Indie Management-Business Science

NeuroSelling: Mastering the Customer Conversation Using the Surprising Science of Decision Making

This book is directed to help sales professionals excel at their job, and it takes an unusual perspective to get there. It teaches modern neuroscience from knowledge emerging from scientific labs and applies it to the art of a customer relationship. …And it does a surprisingly effective job in my estimation. In my scientific education, I know that the brain has been a moving frontier for the first quarter of this century, and research is…

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Leadership Management-Business

Leading Through: Activating the Soul, Heart & Mind of Leadership

Throughout history, many leaders have approached their task with the desire to hold power over others. Ancient roman rulers epitomized this approach, and literature indicates that other great empires shared this mindset. However, history’s nuances also contain a subtler narrative of empowering others to fulfill their individual aspirations. Aristotle’s phrase of “human flourishing” comes to mind. This book’s authors harken to this humanistic tradition to describe their empowering view on leadership: “Leading through.” Leading through…

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Leadership Management-Business Software-Technology

The Engineering Executive’s Primer: Impactful Technical Leadership

Encoding software is a highly technical task, but effective leadership is often anything but technical. Combining the two thus can be supremely difficult, but this pair of skills is necessary to fill roles like Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Unfortunately, advice is hard to come by in the literature since only a few extended books in this space. To better fill these gaps, Will Larson, known for his deep looks at…

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Management-Business Software-Technology

The Software Architect Elevator: Redefining the Architect’s Role in the Digital Enterprise

Traditionally, companies live and die by a fixed hierarchical approach where power and influence are garnered by climbing to the top of the ladder. However, recent decades have witnessed the rise of digital companies promising an economic disruption. Stereotypically, a smart young kid writes some code to change the way business is done and become rich in the process. We, in the public, then use their software for decades to come. Many companies still have…

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Management-Business

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments & Bad Behavior

Handling difficult conversations comprises a key element for navigating life successfully, yet most of us have little training about how to accomplish this. We end up listening to mentors or pastors to refine our skillset. Is there any science or education that could lend insight to how to, at the very least, survive these conversations? This set of authors, who penned the famously successful book Crucial Conversations, submit this guide to aid individuals’ journeys. They…

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Leadership Management-Business Program Management

Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership

Organizational life in America has grown much flatter and more mobile in recent decades. A lifetime career with one company is now the exception rather than the norm. As such, an individual’s ability to contribute quickly to a team has become more important than their upward mobility. However, much literature about leadership and cultural practices remain fixed on the idea of one all-powerful person at the top commanding legions of followers. To counter this narrative,…

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Management-Business

The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future

A work colleague recently tipped me off to bullet journaling. Ok, truth be told, she tipped me off to it a year ago when it transformed her life. My work environment was pretty well organized at the time and remains so; thus, I passed on her tip. About one year later, she brought it up in another context, but this time I bit the bait because I have felt the need to get my personal…

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Biography-Memoir Leadership Science

Breaking Through: My Life in Science

First, who is Katalin Karikó? She is the primary scientist who showed how mRNA can be synthesized to create a vaccine. Why is that important? This technology enabled the COVID19 vaccines, which recently carried the world out of a pandemic. So Karikó’s impact and legacy are tremendous. What’s more is that she has a meaningful, inspiring life story that overcame the odds both in her native Hungary and in the halls of academe in America’s…

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Biography-Memoir History Leadership

William McKinley

William McKinley is generally known to history as the US president before Teddy Roosevelt (TR). He was assassinated early in his second term, and as his vice president, TR assumed office. Most historians view TR as proper founder marking the beginning of the American century. In this book, Kevin Phillips says, not so fast. He contends that much of TR’s administrative foundation was laid by his predecessor and that had he lived, McKinley, not TR,…

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Leadership Management-Business Mentoring

Coaching for Performance: The Principles & Practice of Coaching & Leadership

The field of workplace management has moved, in recent decades, from just being about organizing people for financial profits to also incorporating social and even spiritual values into employees’ career development. Today, good employees demand not just a paycheck but a place where they can grow and develop in some way. How are managers to avoid being caught flat-footed to these changing circumstances? Most managers lead by how they’ve been managed in the past, and…

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