Book Summaries - You Exec

Why do so many products fail? Most products fail not because they are built

or marketed poorly, but because they don’t delight customers. The most

important thing is to achieve product-market fit. The Lean Startup Movement

is known to help teams stay true to customer needs and rapidly build

game-changing products. Read this book summary for a step-by-step process

to identify target customers, measure feedback on your MVP, and ultimately

create products that delight.

Do you or your salespeople find that most of your sales efforts go to

waste? Most sales divisions rely on existing clients instead of a new

business. When you understand the top reasons why people fail to generate

new sales, you will no longer only babysit your current accounts and can

then become a true sales hunter. This book presents practical and hands-on

tips and simple and structured approaches that can increase your sales

revenue. Read this book summary to learn how to sharpen your sales weapons,

the magic words to use during a cold call, and the most effective structure

for your sales story.

How do you outperform competitors and acquire a better understanding of key

profitability drivers in your industry?

This book, by the legendary Michael Porter, has redefined how Fortune 500

companies formulate strategy and has become essential reading in top MBA

programs worldwide. Read this summary to unlock the analytical tools that

govern competition and profitability, predict competitor moves, and create

a game-changing strategy.

How can you reach new customers, keep them active, and grow your revenue

with a dash of programming smarts and a shoestring budget? Traditional

marketing methods cost millions of dollars for uncertain payoffs. Growth

hacking, on the other hand, uses an analytical approach to build marketing

into products themselves and stimulate organic growth. This book uncovers

case studies that explain why your competitors are doing what they’re

doing, and why you should be growth hacking, too. Read this summary to

learn how to turn growth on autopilot with high-tempo testing and

experimentations.

How can you lead highly engaging meetings that unlock creativity,

effectiveness, and dynamism? While meetings are often tiresome and

unproductive, they are a huge part of everyday corporate life. Managers

attend 12 meetings every week. Over 55 million meetings take place every

day in the United States and they cost an incredible $1.4 trillion

annually. This book draws on extensive cutting-edge research to give you

proven tactics to lead highly productive and engaging meetings. With these

meeting leadership skills, you can create better team wins, ensure career

growth, and create organizational value.

What is stopping you from doing your best work? Are you constantly

frustrated by silo-ed functions, meeting overload, and slow

decision-making? It’s not your strategy or your business model that’s the

problem—it’s your Operating System. Your legacy organization can become a

smarter, healthier, and more dynamic evolutionary organization when you

improve or even overhaul your current Operating System. Read this book

summary to find out how to focus on self-sufficient teams that experiment,

innovate, and ultimately allow your organization to run itself.

What management tactics should you follow to not only survive but thrive

like Google? Infinite information, connectivity, and computing power have

fundamentally disrupted the business landscape, and old rules no longer

work in the Internet Century. In this book, Google Executive Chairman and

ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former Senior Vice-President Jonathan Rosenberg

reveal the management principles that powered the rise of Google from a

dorm room startup to a tech giant. Read this book summary to learn proven

ways that Smart Creatives and help you build a circle of innovation and

achieve 10X growth.

Tired of wasting your time on brainstorming sessions that only improve upon

existing offerings marginally? Invention does not always lead to

innovation. Based on exhaustive case studies and research on industry

trends and innovation, researchers have found ten distinct types of

innovation that substantially drive progress. Rather than continuing to

spin your wheels, use the ten types of innovation as a framework to turn

your company’s next big thing into a successful reality.

We all know people who make our lives more difficult—colleagues, bosses, or

friends who sabotage our work, care only about themselves or generally

bring us down. Often, our own behavior is just as baffling; we react to

things in inappropriate or self-defeating ways. The key to the surprising

behavior of ourselves and others is: human nature. Drawing on the past

hundred years of literature in psychology, science, and philosophy this

book is the definitive guide to human nature. Using detailed biographical

stories of famous people throughout history, The Laws of Human Nature

illustrates the 18 fundamental laws that affect why people behave the way

they do. Armed with this knowledge, you can become a calmer and more

strategic observer of other people, able to interpret their behavior and

judge their character. The book shows you how to out-think toxic people;

how to motivate and influence others; and how to alter your own negative

behavior patterns. Ultimately, The Laws of Human Nature shows you how to

unleash your own true potential.

Have you experienced strategy meetings that promise a breakout growth that

rarely materializes? Do you feel that the social dynamics in the strategy

room might have reduced breakthrough ideas to safe bets? And even when

strategies succeed, the results are often just modest. What happened? Based

on in-depth empirical research on thousands of companies, McKinsey Partners

Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit provide a data-driven “outside

view” to overcome social dynamics and create effective strategies. This

book offers ten performance levers that dramatically increase your chances

to outperform competitors and create breakout growth.