Management: leadership and motivation Books

Book Synopsis“One of the best investing books ever written.” —Charlie Munger From an award-winning financial journalist, a fresh and insightful book that draws on interviews with more than forty of the world’s super-investors to demonstrate that the keys to building wealth also apply to everyday life.Billionaire investors. If we think of them, it’s with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Clearly, they possess a kind of genius—the proverbial Midas Touch. But are the skills they possess transferable? And do they have anything to teach us besides making money. In Richer, Wiser, Happier, William Green draws on interviews that he’s conducted over twenty-five years with many of the world’s greatest investors. As he discovered, their talents extend well beyond the financial realm. The most successful investors are mavericks and iconoclasts who question conventional wisdom and profit vastly from their ability t

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Book Synopsis“Ace Greenberg did almost everything better than I do—bridge, magic tricks, dog training, and arbitrage—all the important things in life.” —WARREN BUFFETT Alan C. Greenberg, the former chairman of Bear, Stearns, and a celebrated philanthropist, was known throughout the financial world for his biting, quirky but invaluable and wise memos. Read by everyone from Warren Buffett to Jeff Bezos to Tom Peters (“I love this book,” the coauthor of In Search of Excellence said), Greenberg’s MEMOS FROM THE CHAIRMAN comprise a unique—and uniquely simple—management philosophy. Make decisions based on common sense. Avoid the herd mentality. Control expenses with unrelenting vigil. Run your business at the highest level of morality. Free your motivated, intelligent people from the chain of command. Always return phone calls promptly and courteously. Never believe your own body odor is perfume. And stay humble, humble, humble.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis“With cutting-edge research, penetrating insights, and practical examples, Shawn Achor describes a new conception of ‘success,’ and in doing so, reveals exciting new strategies we can use to meet our highest potential.”—Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project “A vibrant book on how to bring out the best in others—and how they can bring out the best in us.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the podcast WorkLifeIn a world that thrives on competition and individual achievement, we’re measuring and pursuing potential incorrectly. Pursuing success in isolation—pushing others away as we push ourselves too hard—not only limits our potential but makes us more stressed and disconnected than ever. Harvard-trained researcher Shawn Achor reveals a better approach. With exciting new research combining neuroscience and psychology with Big Data, Achor shows that our potential is not limited by what we alone can achieve. Instead, it is determined by how we complement, contribute to, and benefit from the abilities and achievements of people around us. When we—as individuals, leaders, and parents—chase only individual achievement, we leave vast sources of potential untapped. But once we put “others” back into the equation, and work to make others better, we ignite a Virtuous Cycle of cascading successes that amplify our own.The dramatic shifts in how we approach work today demand an equally dramatic shift in our approach to success. In Big Potential, Achor draws on cutting-edge original research as well as his work with nearly half of the Fortune 100 and with places like NASA, the NFL and the NBA, and offers a new path to thriving in the modern world.

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Book SynopsisWe live in an age of ethical disputes, making conflict inevitable as we meet others with contrasting ethical positions and contrary communicative expectations. An ethical position held with conviction frequently generates conflict when one encounters another with a differing ethical standpoint embraced with equal assurance. Conflict Between Persons: The Origins of Leadership conceptualizes communication and conflict as a pragmatically essential everyday education for future leadership. Conflict Between Persons: The Origins of Leadership emphasizes creative and constructive reactions to conflict responsiveness with three basic coordinates: (1) learn before, during, and after a conflict, (2) understand what matters to you and others, and (3) acknowledge that conflict engagement involves alertness to, and understanding of, what matters in the interplay of self and others and the immediate and larger communicative environment. Leadership begins with the study and practice of communication ethics understood as background that carries a sense of a given good that we seek to protect and promote. The study of communication ethics does not shelter us from conflict; in fact, it invites conflict, providing clarity about what is important to us and to others. Leadership frames the larger significance of behavior by announcing what matters, turning isolated conduct and conflict into meaningful action situated within a story. The authors conceptualize communication and conflict as an existential education for leadership that begins with a willingness to enter the fray of everyday disagreement propelled by a pragmatic objective: learning from others and difference. Communicative leadership in an era of routine contentiousness must engage and learn from diverse convictions and conceptions of what matters.Conflict Between Persons: The Origins of Leadership: Examines the complex issues of ethical diversity; ethical positions can now generate conflict. Uses the insights of communication/leadership expert Gail T. Fairhurst, the book frames the reality of conflict as an ongoing pragmatic education for leadership. Examines emotion, sentiment, conflict origins, difference, the interplay of relationships and perceptions, self talk and internal conflict, the power of opinion, multiplicity of conflict styles, the danger of anachronistic responses, and alternatives to destructive conflict. Introduces the Odyssey in the final Chapter as a case study to examine the interplay of conflict, ethics in dispute, and leadership in action. Is student friendly! The publication incorporates key terms, glossary, index, and navigational aids such as boldface terms, headings, sub-heads, and informational sidebars to serve as helpful reference points. Is instructor friendly! An instructor's manual includes Chapter objectives, key terms, Chapter outlines, learning activities, suggestions for supplemental movies and books, journal reflection questions, test questions (multiple choice, true/false, and essay), comprehensive Power Point presentations, and summarized Power Point presentations with discussion questions.

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Book Synopsis A 'detective story' that delivers key insights for any businessperson asking the questions: who really are our customers, why do we lose them, how do we regain them?Customers can be a mystery. Despite the availability of more data than ever before, everyone, from the CEO to salespeople in the field, struggles to understand who their customers really are, what they want, why they lose them, and how to regain them.To crack the case, start thinking like a market detective.David Scott Duncan shows how in his entertaining story of Tazza, a fictional chain of cafes with declining sales and leaders urgently seeking to understand why. The vivid characters of Tazza’s market detective force come to their aha moment when they finally understand why their most loyal customers walked out the door—and how they can get them back.The core of the Tazza story is a simple, powerful idea that upends how most businesses view their customers. Customers have “jobs to be done.” They “hire” companies to solve a problem or fulfill a need and “fire” them when unhappy. Duncan’s fresh way of thinking about how to understand your customers’ secret lives provides an innovative path for solving whatever market mysteries you face.

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