Sage advice is hard to come by – you know, the kind of advice that makes you change the way you look at the world and in turn act better in the world. We often look to experienced leaders and educators to point the way. James Ellis, the former Dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, served students for over two decades as professor and leader. Before that, he…
An oft-cited fact is that most small businesses don’t succeed. They fall prey to a common set of challenges – namely, that entrepreneurs never transition their work from a job into building a business. In this book, Michael Gerber shines light on this common error and shows ways to overcome it. He uses a parable of Sarah starting her own business as a way to interject life into these principles and illustrate how entrepreneurs can…
Steve McConnell is one of the best writers about software practices in our generation. Over decades, each of his books pushes the field forward, and each new book updates his thought with oodles of new data. This book, an evidence-based look at Agile, is no exception. Agile has become a catch-all term for a lot of software practices, but McConnell recenters his study about Agile on what’s most important in a business – getting results.…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has immense, obvious power inside, but to many business leaders, the disruptive potentialities scare them. Will they lose their jobs? Will their company lose its place? Is this just another technical fad that will sunset sometime soon? Author Geoff Woods wants readers to say a resounding “no” to all three questions and instead to learn how to harness AI’s power to add strategic value to their leadership. He views AI as a…
Leadership as a CEO is among the most demanding roles in a business environment. Everyone hangs on your every word, for better or for worse, and people are reticent to criticize the leading leader, even when the leader needs desperately to hear critical feedback. The promises of making an impact are great, but so are the opportunities to make a mistake. The authors, senior partners at the McKinsey & Company business research firm, seek to…
Change is the key challenge to any leader because there’s no great way to predict its course. New things arise, and no clear direction exists. All we can do is to prepare ourselves and our mindsets to embrace new challenges with a realistic yet positive attitude. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key case in point. As a paradigm-shifting technology, it is changing the way workplaces operate, and those who don’t adapt well – or don’t…
When observing the world, many see that true leadership does not reflect positions of power; rather, it reflects a quality of personal character. Robert Greenleaf looked at 1970s America and the 1970s world and observed a lack of leadership. We had educated talent out the wazoo, but lacked people able to usher in lasting, good change. He wrote this book to cultivate such leadership qualities in its readers. Leadership, to him, was of a servant’s…
Most contemporary management books from scholars tend to center on a central “secret of management” upon which an entire philosophy is built. Henry Mintzberg instead flips the idea on its head and observed dozens of managers from various industries in the field. Then he tried to describe what they were doing empirically. Then he made that into a framework. In this bottom-up approach, he observed managers doing all sorts of things throughout a day, without…
We’d like to think that our social lives and businesses are meritocracies, but they clearly aren’t. The best ideas don’t always win, and much depends on how one presents themselves. In a world where people make quick judgments about leaders, quickly conveying trust matters more than ever before. Communications expert Nick Morgan teaches us how to master those soft skills of leadership. Generally, this book is filled with solid advice about public speaking in settings…
This book’s conclusion encourages readers to reread this book again at a later time. At the beginning of the book, I would find that admonition a bit pompous; even halfway through, I would have laughed at the suggestion. However, the book finishes much stronger than it begins, and in that light, I can see the value of rereading it for several reasons. First, this quick read is organized in short, digestible segments that are easy…