Friday Books and Talks 04/03/2014

Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours
by Robert C. Pozen

In Extreme Productivity, author Robert Pozen reveals the secrets to workplace productivity and high performance. This book is for anyone feeling overwhelmed by an existing workload — facing myriad competing demands and multiple time-sensitive projects. Offering antidotes to a calendar full of boring meetings and a backlog of e-mails, Extreme Productivity explains how to determine your highest priorities and match them with how you actually spend your time.

The Pause Principle
by Kevin Cashman

The constant barrage of information can overwhelm a person’s decision-making ability. In The Pause Principle, Kevin Cashman makes the argument that today’s leaders need to take the necessary time to deeply pause before acting. Leaders must make an effort to create vision, understanding, clarity and agility. Cashman describes the need to pause to grow personal leadership, develop others, and foster a culture of innovation. By following the pause practices Cashman describes, executives will learn how to step back to lead forward.

Talent is Never Enough
by John C. Maxwell

Read the headlines, watch the highlights, or just step out your front door: Some talented people reach their full potential, while others self-destruct or remain trapped in mediocrity. What makes the difference? Maxwell, the go-to guru for business professionals across the globe, insists that the choices people make-not merely the skills they inherit-propel them onto greatness. Among other truths, successful people know that:

• Belief lifts your talent.
• Initiative activates your talent.
• Focus directs your talent.
• Preparation positions your talent.
• Practice sharpens your talent.
• Perseverance sustains your talent.
• Character protects your talent.

It’s what you add to your talent that makes the greatest difference. With authentic examples and time-tested wisdom, Maxwell shares thirteen attributes you need to maximize your potential and live the life of your dreams. You can have talent alone and fall short of your potential. Or you can have talent plus, and really stand out.

Low-Hanging Fruit
by Jeremy Eden, Terri Long

How can anyone, from the shop floor up to the C-suite, make their companies better? Despite years of corporate initiatives and implementing big fixes, are there really more simple and smart ways to improve productivity? In Low-Hanging Fruit, co-authors Jeremy Eden and Terri Long not only answer that question, they show how to get it. Low-Hanging Fruit is a fast-paced, fun read with 77 different ways to make a difference at your company. Eden, a former McKinsey consultant and Long, a former bank executive use many great examples from working with teams at Fortune 1000 companies helping them cut through the complexity, the politics and the waste. Low-Hanging Fruit gives you the best ideas culled from their experience such as how to deal with the “unintentional squelch” “zombie projects” and why mom was wrong about always doing your best.

This isn’t a theoretical business tome. This is an indispensable guide that should sit on every career-minded person’s desk to be referenced regularly. Often contrarian, always passionate, Low-Hanging Fruit has the power to change your career and your organization.

How Did That Happen?
by Roger Connors, Tom Smith

The economy crashes, the government misfires, businesses fail, leaders don’t lead, managers don’t manage, and the people we count on for the results that affect our own performance don’t follow through, leaving us asking, “How did that happen?” Surprises caused by a lack of personal accountability plague almost every organization today, from the political arena to every large and small business. How Did That Happen? offers a proven way to eliminate these nasty surprises, gain an unbeatable competitive edge, and enhance performance by holding others accountable in a positive, principled way.

The Definitive Drucker
by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim

For sixteen months before his death, Elizabeth Haas Edersheim was given unprecedented access to Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the father of modern management. At Drucker’s request, Edersheim, a respected management thinker in her own right, spoke with him about the development of modern business throughout his life-and how it continues to grow and change at an ever-increasing rate. The Definitive Drucker captures his visionary management concepts, applies them to the key business risks and opportunities of the coming decades, and imparts Drucker’s views on current business practices, economic changes, and trends-many of which he first predicted decades ago. It also sheds light onto issues such as why so many leaders fail, the fragility of our economic systems, and the new role of the CEO.

Drucker on Leadership
by William A. Cohen, Ph.D.

Although Peter Drucker, “The Father of Modern Management,” died in 2005, his timeless teachings are studied and practiced by forward-thinking managers worldwide. His lessons and wisdom on the topic of leadership-the central element of management-are in constant demand, yet he wrote little under that actual subject heading. In Drucker on Leadership , William A. Cohen explores Drucker’s lost leadership lessons-why they are missing, what they are, why they are important, and how to apply them. As Cohen explains, Drucker was ambivalent about leadership for much of his career, making it clear that leadership was not by itself “good or desirable.” While Drucker struggled with the concept of leadership, he was well aware that it had a critical impact on the accomplishment of all projects and human endeavors. There is no book from Drucker specifically dedicated to leadership, but a wealth of information about leadership can be found scattered throughout his 40 books and hundreds of articles. Drucker’s teachings about leadership have saved many corporations from failure and helped guide others to outstanding success. Many of the leadership concepts revealed in this book will surprise and perhaps shock Drucker’s followers. For example, who would have thought that Peter Drucker taught that “leadership is a marketing job” or that “the best leadership lessons for business or any nonprofit organization come from the military”? Written for anyone who values the insights of the man whose name is synonymous with excellence in management, Drucker on Leadership offers a deeper understanding of what makes an extraordinary leader.

Just Listen
by Mark Goulston

The first make-or-break step in persuading anyone to do any thing is getting them to hear you out. Whether the person is a harried colleague, a stressed-out client, or an insecure spouse, things will go from bad to worse if you can’t break through emotional barricades. Drawing on his experience as a psychiatrist, business consultant, and coach, and backed by the latest scientific research, author Mark Goulston shares simple but power ful techniques readers can use to really get through to people–whether they’re coworkers, friends, strangers, or enemies. Getting through is a fine art but a critical one. With the help of this groundbreaking book readers will be able to turn the “impossible” and “unreachable” people in their lives into allies, devoted customers, loyal colleagues, and lifetime friends.

Sitting people down and lecturing them rarely works, because it makes them defensive and when they’re defensive, they hide things from you. Work side by side with them in a cooperative activity, however, and you’ll lower their guard and get them to open up.

Macrowikinomics
by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

In this follow up to their 2007 bestseller, Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Willliams once again use original research to provide new examples of organizations that are successfully embracing the principles of wikinomics to change the world. Find out how in this executive book summary of Macrowikonomics.

Judgment on the Front Line
by Chris DeRose, Noel Tichy

Management experts Chris DeRose and Noel M. Tichy explain why frontline employees are so important and why it is crucial to involve them in decision making. Judgment on the Front Line provides a five-step process for building a frontline-focused organization and includes examples of frontline leadership in action.

• Define a Customer-Based Vision.
• Develop a Front Line–Focused Culture.
• Obsess over Talent.
• Define the Judgment Playing Field.
• Live on the Line.

Here are some of the books and talks that I enjoyed this week, in no particular order.

Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You
Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear, Make Better Decisions, and Thrive in the 21st Century
by Marc Schoen

“Thanks to technology, we live in a world that’s much more comfortable than ever before. But here’s the paradox: our tolerance for discomfort is at an all-time low. And as we wrestle with a sinking “discomfort threshold,” we increasingly find ourselves at the mercy of our primitive instincts and reactions that can perpetuate disease, dysfunction, and impair performance and decision making.”

“Your Survival Is Killing You can transform the way you live. Provocative, eye-opening, and surprisingly practical with its gallery of strategies and ideas, this book will show you how to build up your “instinctual muscles” for successfully managing discomfort while taming your overly reactive Survival Instinct. You will learn that the management of discomfort is the single most important skill for the twenty-first century. This book is, at its heart, a modern guide to survival.”

Differentiate or Die
Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition
by Jack Trout

“In today’s ultra-competitive world, the average supermarket has 40,000 brand items on its shelves. Car shoppers can wander through the showrooms of over twenty automobile makers. For marketers, differentiating products today is more challenging than at any time in history yet it remains at the heart of successful marketing. More importantly, it remains the key to a company’s survival.”

“In Differentiate or Die, bestselling author Jack Trout doesn’t beat around the bush. He takes marketers to task for taking the easy route too often, employing high-tech razzle-dazzle and sleight of hand when they should be working to discover and market their product’s uniquely valuable qualities. He examines successful differentiation initiatives from giants like Dell Computer, Southwest Airlines, and Wal-Mart to smaller success stories like Streit’s Matzoh and Connecticut’s tiny Trinity College to determine why some marketers succeed at differentiating themselves while others struggle and fail.”

Why Leaders Eat Last
By Simon Sinek

“In this in-depth talk, ethnographer and leadership expert Simon Sinek reveals the hidden dynamics that inspire leadership and trust. In biological terms, leaders get the first pick of food and other spoils, but at a cost. When danger is present, the group expects the leader to mitigate all threats even at the expense of their personal well-being. Understanding this deep-seated expectation is the key difference between someone who is just an ‘authority’ versus a true ‘leader.'”