Friday Books and Talks 10-25-2013

Human Sigma
by Jim Asplund, John H. Fleming, Ph.D.

Human Sigma offers an innovative, research-based approach to one of the toughest challenges businesses face today: how to drive success by effectively managing the moments when employees interact with customers. The authors offer essential ideas for business leaders at all levels and show how sales and service companies can flourish in today’s new global economy. Blending strategic analysis with hands-on, practical steps and advice, this book summary will change how you view your work, your employees, and your customers.

Rule 1: You can’t measure and manage employee and customer experiences as separate entities; they must be managed together under a single organizational entity.

Rule 2: Feelings are facts, and emotions frame the employee-customer encounter.

Rule 3: Think globally, measure and act locally: You must measure and manage the employee-customer
encounter locally.

Rule 4: There is one number you need to know. We can quantify and summarize the effectiveness of the employee-customer encounter in a single performance metric that is powerfully related to financial performance.

Rule 5: If you pray for potatoes, you had better grab the right hoe. Improvement in local  performance requires deliberate and active intervention through attention to a combination of transactional and transformational intervention activities.

The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor

In his international bestseller The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen exposed this crushing paradox behind the failure of many industry leaders: by placing too much focus on pleasing their most profitable customers, these firms actually paved the way for their own demise by ignoring the disruptive technologies that aggressively evolved to displace them. In The Innovator’s Solution, Christensen and coauthor Michael E. Raynor help all companies understand how to become disruptors themselves.

Clay Christensen and Raynor not only reveal that innovation is more predictable than most managers have come to believe, they also provide helpful advice on the business decisions crucial to truly disruptive growth. Citing in-depth research and theories tested in hundreds of companies across many industries, the authors identify the processes that create successful innovation—and they show managers how to tailor their strategies to the changing circumstances of a dynamic world.

Chaotics
by John Caslione, Philip Kotler

As the fallout from the financial meltdown of 2008 grows progressively worse, companies, industries, and entire markets cling precariously to life or have ceased to exist altogether. And the turbulence may not be over anytime soon. Here, noted business strategists Kotler and Casilone argue that these troubled times are not an aberration, but the new face of normal. Chaotics teaches how to be prepared for –– and thrive in –– this New Age of Turbulence.

The Talent Powered Organization
by Robert Thomas, Peter Cheese, Elizabeth Craig

The key to strategic success is talent –– an organization’s people, from its current and future leaders to its frontline employees. But today, talent is harder to find and nurture, and easier to waste and lose. This has caused talent to move quickly to the top of every leader’s strategic agenda, but few organizations are managing their talent strategically. Combining strategic insight with proven and practical methods, The Talent Powered Organization is essential for people at all levels in any organization.

Everyone Communicates, Few Connect
by John C. Maxwell

In Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, world-renowned leadership expert John C. Maxwell says if you want to succeed, you must learn how to connect with people. And while it may seem like some folks are just born with it, the fact is anyone can learn how to make every communication an opportunity for a powerful connection. In this book summary, Maxwell offers his proven method — Five Principles and Five Practices — so you can connect one-on-one, in a group, or with an audience.

Leading Outside the Lines
by Jon R. Katzenbach, Zia Khan

An all-new approach to understanding the (in)formal connections of an organization
From the bestselling coauthor of the business classic The Wisdom of Teams comes an all-new exploration of the modern workplace, and how leaders and managers must embrace it for success. Katzenbach and Khan examine how two distinct factions together form the bigger picture for how organizations actually work: the more defined “formal” organization of a company-the management structure, performance metrics, and processes-and the “informal”-the culture, social networks, and ad hoc communities that spring up naturally and can accelerate or hinder how the organization works. With dynamic examples from enterprises around the world, this book takes a timeless organizational approach and creates a powerful paradigm-shifting tool set for applying it. Leading Outside the Lines illustrates how leaders can make the two distinct factions work together to get the best of both.

Exploiting Chaos
by Jeremy Gutsche

In this executive book summary of Exploiting Chaos, one of the best trend spotters in North America reveals powerful strategies for thriving in any economic climate. Author Jeremy Gutsche offers examples of successful iconic companies — Disney, Hyatt, MTV, and more — that started during periods of recessions, arguing that periods of uncertainty actually fuel opportunity, reshuffle the deck and change the rules of the game.

Change the Culture, Change the Game
by Roger Connors, Tom Smith

In the newest release from the best-selling authors of The Oz Principle, you will learn how to build a culture of accountability in your organization. The authors reveal how to transform your entire organization through each level of the Results Pyramid: Experiences, Beliefs, Actions and Results.

The Thank You Economy
by Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Thank You Economy principles are about the way we communicate, the way we buy and sell, and the way businesses and consumers interact online and offline. Companies and brands are now competing on a whole new level in an entirely new business era. The Thank You Economy reveals how businesses can harness all the changes and challenges inherent in social media and turn them into tremendous opportunities for profit and growth.

Absolute Value
by Itamar Simonson, Emanuel Rosen

Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen show why consumer behavior has changed while fundamental thinking about marketing has not. Absolute Value answers the question of what influences customers in this new age and describes how a company should design its communication strategy, market research program, and segmentation strategy in order to adopt a new way of thinking about marketing in this new environment.

Beyond Performance
by Scott Keller, Colin Price

In Beyond Performance, McKinsey & Company’s Scott Keller and Colin Price give you everything you need to build an organization that can execute in the short run and has the vitality to prosper over the long term. Drawing on the most exhaustive research effort of its kind on organizational effectiveness and change management, Keller and Price put hard science behind their big idea: that the health of an organization is equally as important as its performance.

Escape Velocity
by Geoffrey A. Moore

Geoffrey Moore’s now-classic Crossing the Chasm became a must-read book by presenting an innovative framework to address the make-or-break obstacle facing all high-tech companies: how to gain market share from early adopters and from mainstream consumers. Now, Moore’s Escape Velocity offers a pragmatic plan to engage the most critical challenge that established enterprises face in the twenty-first-century economy: how to move beyond past success and drive next-generation growth from new lines of business.