Book Summaries - You Exec

Finding the right strategy to grow your organization can seem challenging

in a rapidly changing business environment. However, growth is not as

complex as it seems. Tiffani Bova, Growth and Innovation Evangelist at

Salesforce distills decades of tested strategies and consulting expertise

to outline ten clear pathways to growth. Read this book to learn from the

growth paths of hugely successful companies and craft your next winning

growth strategy for top-line growth and bottom-line profitability.

Is your company falling behind competitors, no matter how many new product

iterations you launch? Do you find yourself thinking, “This new feature is

useless, but I have to deliver it to get a bonus”? If so, you may be stuck

in the build trap by focusing on shipping features and developing ideas

instead of on the actual value you can produce for customers. Escaping the

Build Trap shows you how to shift a reactive project factory at risk of

disruption into a successful product-focused organization creating products

that customers love.

How do you make your voice heard in a world of complex deals and

risk-averse customers? How can you maintain control to ultimately win

customer loyalty and drive sales growth? Contrary to traditional wisdom

that places emphasis on nurturing relationships, Adamson and Dixon reveal

the winning skills and behaviors behind the Challenger Sale. Read this book

to unlock the clear-cut strategies that build Challenger behaviors across

the entire sales force and make them a part of your organizational DNA.

Why is it so hard to concentrate in an afternoon meeting? Why do some

people do their best work in the middle of the night? Are there ways to

counter the post-lunch dip? We tend to focus on what: what could we do

better, what should be improved or replaced? But often, the most important

factor to consider is when. Timing is not an art, it’s a science—and the

science shows that our biological clocks, personal circadian rhythms, and

even the time of year, have a profound impact on every aspect of our lives,

most noticeably our productivity.

Do you dread negotiations for fear of the conflict involved? The fact is

that every aspect of our lives involves some form of negotiation—from a

salary discussion to a child’s bedtime, a business deal to a high-stakes

hostage crisis. In these situations, the only way to get what you think is

right is to ask for it. In Never Split the Difference, former expert FBI

hostage negotiator Chris Voss details that the best way to do this is to

use a set of tools that allows you to better connect with others, influence

them, and negotiate for what you want.

Why do some teams deliver performances exponentially better than the sum of

their counterparts, while other teams add up to be much less? How can one

build teams that seamlessly collaborate and act like a single hive-mind?

The answer lies in group culture. New York Times bestselling author Danny

Coyle unlocks the secrets of highly effective group cultures by studying

the finest teams across various industries in the world, including the Navy

SEAL’s, Pixar Studios, and the San Antonio Spurs. The Culture Code

presents the three most important master skills required to transform your

organizational culture.

How can your business make the tough choices that will ensure its survival?

How do you keep your teams on track while encouraging employees to be fully

engaged, even in times of stress and challenge? The Objectives and Key

Results system, pioneered at Intel and perfected at Google, gives an

organization timely and highly relevant data to track their progress. OKRs

surface any organization’s most important work, focusing effort, fostering

communication, and building employee performance and retention.

What does it take to be a brave and courageous leader? How can emotional

responses be channeled effectively in the workplace? Based on interviews

with hundreds of global leaders, research professor Brené Brown - whose TED

talk is one of the five most-watched - summarizes the learnable skills that

underpin daring leadership, and shows how embracing vulnerability helps you

to lead even when you aren’t sure of the outcome. Once you embrace the

power of vulnerability, you can stop avoiding difficult conversations and

being afraid to accept new ideas and start trusting and building

resilience.

How can you succeed in the contemporary economy where creativity and

conceptual work are increasingly valued? How do you motivate your employees

to contribute their best to the company’s goals? The answer to both

questions is to recognize that traditional notions of management—using

carrots and sticks to motivate workers—are outdated. People do their best

creative work when their intrinsic motivation is awakened. Drive explains

the new insights into human motivation uncovered by behavioral scientists

and shows how you can tap into the human desire for autonomy and purpose to

transform how you live and work.

Tap into a new way of thinking about business and ambition by reading this

book summary. Zero to One will challenge you to think for yourself on

topics such as technology versus globalization, business monopolies versus

competitive markets, and the mindset you really need to make a difference

in the world. Learn from tech superstar Peter Thiel (PayPal, Palantir) and

his protégé Blake Masters why the only opportunities really worth pursuing

are those that create something truly unique – that go from “zero to one”

rather than from “one to n.” And, learn the seven questions you should be

asking yourself to find out if what you’re working on passes that test.