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Book Blog

Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic

12/4/2016

 
Mayo Clinic has a reputation as one of the best medical facilities in the United States. Over 100 years old, it has defied many of the traps that long-tenured businesses fall into. As a service-oritented business, it is a unique case study, and this book presents that study.

If you are in a service business, there are a lot of lessons to take away from reading Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic. There are few services businesses as complex as medical care, and if Mayo Clinic has got it figured out, your business can probably benefit from these lessons as well.

Speaking as a Leader

12/4/2016

 
Whether you are speaking in front of a room of 200 people or to someone in the breakroom, every time you speak you have the opportunity to position yourself as a leader. Speaking as a Leader outlines the components of communication in a manner that will help you focus-in on improving your leadership.

One of the key sections of the book is the Leadership Script, which gives you a simple outline to follow each time you speak. The outline ensures that you are presenting your information in a strong manner that will be interpreted by your audience as having weight and being important.

In addition, the book gives a lot of very practical tips for improving all aspects of communication – from the language you use to the way you use your voice.

The Advantage

3/27/2016

 
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business
​The Advantage is a tactical book focused on improving the health of your company. The premise is that a company must be healthy in order to be successful. Healthy means that there is a cohesive leadership team who is clear on its objectives and operates as a team rather than a collection of department heads.
The book very clearly and concisely lays out the case for building a healthy leadership team and gives very detailed instructions for how to accomplish it.
This is a great book for anyone who feels that there is room to improve a leadership team in their organization. 

Rules of the Hunt

3/27/2016

 
Rules of the Hunt: Real-World Advice for Entrepreneurial and Business Success
Rules of the Hunt is a collection of advice to entrepreneurs from a successful entrepreneur. The author is a sales and marketing person, so a substantial amount of the advice falls into that category, although there is advice covering many, many topics.
The topics are tidbits. These aren’t lengthy chapters on each piece of advice. Some are as short as two sentences. Johnson only takes as much space as he needs for each topic – making this a book you can pick up when you only have a minute or two.
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There probably aren’t many tips in the book that you don’t already know, but it is always good to have a refresher.

Your Own Terms

3/27/2016

 
Your Own Terms: A Woman's Guide to Taking Charge of Any Negotiation
​As the title says, this book is targeted at professional women. It is a study of two things at once: 1) the art of negotiating, and 2) the differences between men and women when it comes to negotiating.
It is a very practical guide. It lays out each part of a negotiation and gives tips for women about how to approach it. It also covers each side of the coin: how to negotiate in a certain situation and how to counter when you are on the receiving side.
Our Own Terms has a secondary topic that is very helpful for any woman who has a goal of leadership. Many of the topics covered are relevant to professional women whether in a negotiation or just trying to get your job done. As a result, I learned a lot about leadership as a byproduct of learning a lot about negotiations.

Bold: How to Be Brave in Business and Win

2/20/2016

 
Bold: How to Be Brave in Business and Win
So much of the focus these days is on tech start-ups. It gives a general sense that the only way to be a cool, energized company is to be working out of a co-working space and worried about your next round of funding. Bold is about huge, long standing, mostly non-tech businesses that are successful, innovative, cool, and energized. The book is basically a collection of case studies of 14 companies. Each chapter highlights a company as told by 4-6 employees of the company (and sometimes a customer). It is like having a conversation with the leadership team of companies like Virgin Galactic, O2, BBH, and Geek Squad.

If you are looking for some inspiration for how to put some energy back into your company, you will find the guidance you need in this book, while also learning a lot about the interworkings of some of the world’s most successful companies.

How the World Sees You

2/20/2016

 
How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination
Most profile assessments focus on how you see the world. This one focuses on how the world sees you, and then combines it with marketing to help you understand how you can add the most value to the world.

The primary focus of the book is on the 49 different archetypes – unique combinations of traits that define how you are at your best. By taking an on-line assessment, you can find your archetype and then learn the best ways to accentuate your distinct value.
The secondary focus is on helping you understand that you can be authentically you and still distinguish yourself from others. The book does not give you instructions about how to change in order to become something else. It focuses on how to take your best qualities and put them to work for you.
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Finally, if you manage a team, there is a lot of value in the book regarding how to understand and leverage the archetypes on the team. 

Billion Dollar Lessons

2/20/2016

 
This eye opening book is focused on providing lessons from strategic mistakes companies have made. Anyone who is in a role where you are setting strategy should get a lot of good information about what not to do from this book.
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After studying 750 business failures, the authors have identified seven common strategy mistakes that companies make. By presenting case studies, we are provided with concrete steps that can and should be taken in order to avoid these pitfalls.
Whether your strategy involves an acquisition, consolidation, or product extension, you will save yourself from the school of hard knocks by learning as much as you can from this interesting read.

Work Simply 

2/20/2016

 
Work Simply: Embracing the Power of Your Personal Productivity Style
​The central thesis of this book is that there are 4 different productivity styles, and by knowing yours, you can become more productive.
After taking a quick assessment to determine your style, the rest of the book covers how to better organize your work so that it emphasizes your strengths. As a side benefit, you also learn how people with productivity styles different from yours work best, which will help you start to adjust your approach when working with someone who has a different style.
If you’ve ever gotten a ‘time management’ tip from a friend or coworker and it didn’t work for you, it is probably because their productivity style is different from yours.
Instead of giving ‘hacks’ for productivity, this book helps you understand and embrace what works and doesn’t work for you, and the tools to adjust your work so that it will work better for you. 

Stand Out

12/23/2015

 
Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It
Stand Out, Dorie Clark’s latest book is a great practical guide for anyone looking to do something more fulfilling in their life. We each have something to offer the world, and for most of us, it isn’t what we are currently doing in our day job. This book walks you step-by-step through the process of identifying your idea, building a following, and turning your idea into a business that makes an impact.
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One of the best features of the book is that Clark provides a list of questions at the end of each chapter that will help you think through the lesson of the chapter. Follow these questions, and by the end of the book, you’ve got yourself a well planned business idea.
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    Disclosure:  Please note that the links to Amazon are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase. 
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