The Extraordinary Business


Book Description

Managing a business can be hard, and I'm guessing you have read the statistics that state the risk of failure for new businesses is high. Nearly 20% fail during the first year and only 25% survive beyond 15 years. How are Extraordinary companies different? Although the word extraordinary can sound like hyperbole, the definition simply means: Beyond what is usual, ordinary, regular, or established, and exceptional in character.For a business, that translates into a company that is Sustainable, Customer Centric, and Focused. Sustainable companies have a mission, governance, and management structure that protects the brand and is designed to last beyond any one person, shareholder, or product.Mike's book addresses Branding & Strategy, Finance & Accounting, Management, Planning, Recruiting, Governance and Crisis management. It's an easy read and lists 36 principles for successful executives.




Be Unreasonable


Book Description

When you're reasonable, you use the same strategies everyone else uses. You do things like set your goals a bit higher than last year's, say yes to things because everyone else likes them, and pad your deadlines so you can reach them on time. Being reasonable about your business will only bury you deeper in the pack. If you want to get out in front, you have to break away from yesterday's conventional thinking. Paul Lemberg shows you how unreasonable strategies can bring you unprecedented success. Through real-life case studies of successful and unreasonable businesspeople, Lemberg shows you how to BE Uncompromising by sticking to your goals no matter what. BE Demanding by expecting more, not less, from everybody. BE Critical by changing old systems that just don' t work. BE Outrageous by creating your own Business Brain Trust. BE Prepared for real success on your terms. Paul Lemberg, one of the world's leading business growth consultants, teaches top level executives and entrepreneurs how to get more out of themselves, their companies, and their clients by using strategies that sidestep the prevailing business thinking. Being unreasonable is about assessing the situation and leaping into the unknown-not foolishly, but courageously. Only by going against the norm, and perhaps ruffling feathers, can you be competitive, innovative, and successful.




Inspired Leadership


Book Description

Elevate your leadership to achieve the extraordinary Inspired Leadership is the essential guide to performing at the highest level every day. As CEO of Porsche, author Kevin Gaskell led the company from near-bankruptcy to the most profitable car company. During his four years at BMW, the company saw 80% growth in sales and 500% increase in profitability. Good leaders get results and great leaders get great results—but Inspired Leaders get extraordinary results, turn around companies, ensure people development and turn brands into household names. This book shows you how to become an Inspired Leader. Workable strategies, practical frameworks, and real-world essential skills give you a concrete curriculum for success, while anecdotes and examples drawn from the author's experiences illustrate important concepts in action. Inspirational, aspirational, and deeply instructional, this guide will become your go-to resource for navigating the leader's role. From tricky situations to everyday interactions, you'll learn the skills and outlook you need to take your leadership to the next level. Learn what Inspired Leadership looks like in terms of results Discover the key factors that separate Inspired leaders from the merely "great" Adopt the tools and processes that get extraordinary results in the real world Understand the essential core of high performance, and incorporate it into your day-to-day Quality leadership is the difference between success and failure, but Inspired Leadership is the difference between success and world-class performance. It requires 360-degree attention, laser focus, authentic relationships, and a rock-solid understanding of the leader's role. When you're ready to achieve the extraordinary, Inspired Leadership is the resource to keep within arm's reach.




The Regenerative Business


Book Description

"The work that Carol Sanford describes in The Regenerative Business profoundly changed my life, and I'm confident it will change yours too." - Jeffrey Hollender, Founding CEO, Seventh Generation What if leaders stripped away all preconceptions about how business operates, allowing the organization to go back to its core and build itself back up to become something new-something so responsive, so innovative and resilient, it becomes virtually non-displaceable in the market? The Regenerative Business sets the stage for what is now only dreamt of by most of today's forward-thinking leaders and paves the path to make it possible. The book features: Real stories from companies leading innovation and transformation across the globe including; Google, Colgate Europe, Seventh Generation, Nike and others A logical, comprehensive approach that factors in the complexities of the modern organization The work of internationally recognized leadership expert Carol Sanford, who for decades has been designing and leading systemic business change




It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For


Book Description

Who is Roy Spence and what makes him the Pied Piper of Purpose? Over the last thirty-five years, Roy Spence has helped organizations such as Southwest Airlines, BMW, the University of Texas, Walmart, the Clinton Global Initiative, and many others achieve greatness by getting them to obsess about one big idea: purpose. With purpose as the North Star, employee engagement is higher, competition is less threatening, customers are more loyal, and innovation flows. It's the secret to developing a more fulfilling work life as well as a healthier bottom line. Simply put, purpose is a definitive statement about the difference you are trying to make in the world. As Spence writes, "It's your reason for being that goes beyond making money, and it almost always results in making more money than you ever thought possible." It's not soft stuff, as some might scoff. Especially during times of great economic uncertainty, purpose is the key to creating and maintaining a high-performing organization. It deserves just as much attention as strategy, execution, and innovation. A real purpose can't just be words on a piece of paper. It has to get under the skin of every member of your organization like Southwest's purpose of democratizing the skies or Walmart's of saving people money so they can live better. If you get it right, your people will feel great about what they're doing, clear about their goals, and excited to get to work every morning. No organization is too big or too small, too niche or too mundane, to benefit from a clearly defined purpose. Spence and coauthor Haley Rushing share their insider insights and case studies to help you discover your organization's purpose, proclaim it to the world, and apply it to everything you do. This book will force you to address some tough and profound questions: •What difference do we want to make in the world? •What do we really stand for? •Do we have purpose-based leaders in key roles? •Do our employees feel like what they do matters? •Would our customers miss us if we ceased to exist? •Do we bring our purpose to life everywhere we can both internally and externally? Spence's hard-won lessons will change the way you view your job, your business model, your leadership style, and your marketing. They will help you make money, make a difference, and with a little luck,make history.




The Future of Time


Book Description

**Business Book Awards 2023: People, Culture & Management Book of the Year** The way we value and manage time at work is broken. Businesses are squandering time when making decisions, delivering work and managing people. Employees are rewarded for 24/7 availability, speed of response and hours worked. The results are clear: low productivity; high stress and burnout; falling retention; and stalling diversity. The Future of Time reveals how ‘re-working’ time – transforming organizations by adopting positive time practices – can help you build a more diverse, engaged and productive workforce. Diagnostics to quickly assess the ‘time defects’ damaging your business Compelling evidence, case studies and strategies to ‘re-work’ time successfully Timelines and tools to bring about fast, effective change. Helen Beedham, MA Cantab, speaks, consults and leads research on how to create more inclusive, productive workplaces where everyone can flourish. For the past 25 years, as management consultant then chair of a City-wide professional network, she has led change programmes for FTSE 100 businesses and regularly brought together Heads of HR, Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing to exchange market-leading practices.




Unprepared to Entrepreneur


Book Description

SHORTLISTED: Business Book Awards 2022 - Start Up/Scale Up Times have changed: you can launch a successful enterprise with your phone, sell through social media and tap into a whole world of opportunities. Unprepared to Entrepreneur is an honest guide to launching your own business, sharing real stories from real people who have tested, failed and won at business. It profiles the underdogs, those who brainstormed ideas whilst travelling on the bus, started a business from their phone and managed to create three income streams whilst maintaining a full-time job in the city to show you that you can do it too. From a working Google doc as your business plan, to ideation strategies that live and die off Instagram engagement; they won't teach you this at business school. Sonya Barlow takes a look at the resilience needed to make it in business, the incredible tax on mental health and the non-negotiable steps to creating a viable business. This is the ultimate guide to side hustling, freelancing and entrepreneurial freedom of the future.




The Business of Happiness


Book Description

Leonsis presents a plan to build happiness, and help you learn that happiness breeds success.




From the Other Side of the World


Book Description

Elmira Bayrasli's colourful narrative takes readers through the world of high-growth entrepreneurs as they overcome vexing obstacles to build businesses that create jobs and economic growth and, perhaps most important, shift mindsets. Here are the people who personify the transformative force of entrepreneurship from parts of the world that will be the source of the overwhelming amount of economic growth over the next twenty-five years.Bayrasli takes us on an extraordinary journey, with fascinating eyewitness accounts of courage, endurance and ingenuity, as people in some of the world's most challenging societies build globally competitive products and services that garner international praise and investment.




Unfinished Business


Book Description

After losing his job, Lee Kravitz, a workaholic in his midfifties, took stock of his life and realized just how disconnected he had become from the people who mattered most to him. He committed an entire year to reconnecting with them and making amends. Kravitz takes readers on ten transformational journeys, among them repaying a thirty-year-old debt, making a long-overdue condolence call, finding an abandoned relative, and fulfilling a forgotten promise. Along the way, we meet a cast of wonderful characters and travel the globe-to a refugee camp in Kenya, a monastery in California, the desert of southern Iran, a Little League game in upstate New York, and a bar in Kravitz's native Cleveland. In each instance, the act of reaching out opens new paths for both personal and spiritual growth. All of us have unfinished business-the things we should have done but just let slip. Kravitz's story reveals that the things we've avoided are exactly those that have the power to transform, enrich, enlarge, and even complete us. The lesson of the book is one applicable to us all: Be mindful of what is most important, and act on it. The rewards will be immediate and lasting.