The truth is, being a great leader doesn’t mean you need to have a fancy job title. You don’t have to be overly assertive, and you don’t need to rule with an “iron fist”. Following the simple framework in this book, you can quickly go from putting out fires at work to building a collaborative and cooperative team. A team that respects and follows you, not because you’re a manager, but because you are the boss. But the choice is yours. You can keep second-guessing every decision you make. Or you can bring out the strong leader within and inspire your team to success.

Do you have a grip on your business, or does your business have a grip on you? All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations: personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. Decisions never seem to get made, or once made, fail to be properly implemented. But there is a solution. It’s not complicated or theoretical.

The world’s most trusted guide for leaders in transition. Transitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success.

Visionaries have groundbreaking ideas. Integrators make those ideas realities. This explosive combination is the key to getting everything you want out of your business. It worked for Disney. It worked for McDonald's. It worked for Ford. It can work for you. From the author of the best-selling Traction, Rocket Fuel details the integral roles of the visionary and integrator and explains how an effective relationship between the two can help your business thrive.

There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are.

Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer a simple, four-step method for hiring with confidence, designed for everyone from the CEO on down. Who shows you how to avoid the most common pitfalls of hiring, how to identify "A Players" - people who can perform their job better than 90 percent of the candidates in their field - and how to make sure the best candidate will be excited to join your organization.

What is it about the top tech product companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, and Tesla that enables their record of consistent innovation? Most people think it's because these companies are somehow able to find and attract a level of talent that makes this innovation possible. But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products.

The authors unveil research that identifies Mobilizers and provide a roadmap for how sales and marketing teams can find them, engage them with disruptive insight, and leverage them to drive consensus across the customer organization. Once you have identified the Mobilizers among your customers, almost any rep, with the right coaching, tools, and marketing support can start a chain reaction that leads to a whole organization getting on board with even the most provocative ideas.

Nearly a quarter century ago Carter Cast seemed to have it all together: he had a first-class education, an all-American athletic career, and was a very bright and energetic rising star on the fast track at a Fortune 100 company, PepsiCo. But blissfully unaware of how negative perceptions were shaped, he was stunned when called into his boss's office, and told he was "unpromotable" because he was "obstinate", "resistant", and "insubordinate".

Strong leaders at all levels within an organization are a requisite for business success. Yet the leadership pipeline—the internal architecture for growing leaders—is often broken or non-existent. This updated edition of the best-selling The Leadership Pipeline has been revised to help address the challenges of today’s business environment. Anchored in experience, it offers a tested model for planning leadership succession and development that has proven to get results.

Creating something from nothing is an unpredictable journey. The first mile births a new idea into existence, and the final mile is all about letting go. We love talking about starts and finishes, even though the middle stretch is the most important and often the most ignored and misunderstood. Broken into three sections with 100-plus insights, this no-nonsense audiobook will help you find your way through the hardest parts of any bold project or new venture.

A straight-shooting Silicon Valley executive reveals insider career strategies to becoming a great leader, developing your network, succeeding without wasting time, and managing trade-offs between your work and life so your life works. Patty Azzarello became the youngest general manager at Hewlett-Packard at age 33, ran a $1 billion software business at 35, and became a CEO at 38 - all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk. In Rise, Azzarello shares the insider secrets to advancing your career (while having a life) in three practical steps.

Managers want great teams, but most build them around decades-old ideas and practices made popular by companies that have lost their edge. Extreme Teams looks at the new generation of teams driving growth in today's most innovative firms. They do this by doing things differently: hiring the right person instead of the best person; focusing on one priority while leaving room to explore new ideas; creating an environment where people are comfortable dealing with the uncomfortable.

It's not enough to build a company full of people with leadership skills. The Performance Pipeline digs deep into the real work of executing business results at each leadership layer. It is filled with lessons and examples from the author's 40 years of experience, and explains how to set performance standards, make sure the right work is being done, and remove performance barriers.

Being a CEO at any of the world’s largest companies is among the most challenging roles in business. Billions, and even trillions, are at stake—and the fates of tens of thousands of employees often hang in the balance. Yet, even when “can’t miss” high-achievers win the top job, very few excel. For those who shoulder the burden of being the one on whom everyone counts, a manual for excellence is sorely needed. To identify the 21st century’s best CEOs, the authors of CEO Excellence started with a pool of over 2,400 public company CEOs.

Selling is tougher than ever before. Potential customers are under extreme pressure to do more with less money, less time, and fewer resources, and they're wary of anyone who tries to get them to buy or change anything. Under such extreme conditions, yesterday's sales strategies no longer work. Sales strategist Jill Konrath tells you how to overcome obstacles, get more appointments, speed up decisions, and win sales with today's short-fused, frazzled customers.

Drawing on case studies, many from client companies, the authors show how to establish clear expectations and manage the unmet expectations that inevitably occur. And they offer a positive, principled way that engages hearts and minds. This book can help people at every level---from senior executives to front-line workers---enjoy greater productivity, profitability, and job satisfaction.

Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with thousands of leaders, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that “tolerance for ambiguity” has become a clichéd job requirement. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Managers want great teams, but most build them around decades-old ideas and practices made popular by companies that have lost their edge. Extreme Teams looks at the new generation of teams driving growth in today's most innovative firms. They do this by doing things differently: hiring the right person instead of the best person; focusing on one priority while leaving room to explore new ideas; creating an environment where people are comfortable dealing with the uncomfortable.

How the world's leading innovators push their ideas to fruition, time and time again. Edison famously said that genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world's problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be strengthened by anyone willing to build their organizational habits and harness the forces of community.

After two decades in the trenches of helping companies design and build better, more efficient operations, Karen Martin has pinpointed why performance improvement programs usually fail: Chaos, the sneaky but powerful force that frustrates customers, keeps business leaders awake at night, and saps company morale. In The Outstanding Organization, Karen offers a toolbox for combating chaos by creating the organizational conditions that will allow your improvement efforts to return greater gains.

Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie educate listeners on one of the hottest trends in business development: "design thinking", or the ability to turn abstract ideas into practical applications for maximal business growth. Jeanne Liedtka's recent book, The Catalyst: How YOU Can Lead Extraordinary Growth, was named a Top Innovation and Design Thinking Book by Business Week. Tim Ogilvie has been hailed as a visionary for his pioneering contributions to service innovation, business model innovation, and customer experience design.

Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer a simple, four-step method for hiring with confidence, designed for everyone from the CEO on down. Who shows you how to avoid the most common pitfalls of hiring, how to identify "A Players" - people who can perform their job better than 90 percent of the candidates in their field - and how to make sure the best candidate will be excited to join your organization.

Design-oriented firms such as Apple and IDEO have demonstrated how design thinking can directly affect business results. Yet most managers lack a real sense of how to put this new approach to use for issues other than product development and sales growth. Solving Problems with Design Thinking details 10 real-world examples of managers who successfully applied design methods at 3M, Toyota, IBM, Intuit, and SAP; entrepreneurial start-ups such as MeYou Health; and government and social sector organizations.

The small-business guru behind Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine teaches listeners how to establish lasting commitment in their employees, customers, and businesses. Why are some companies able to generate committed, long-term customers while others struggle to stay afloat? Why do the employees of some organizations fully dedicate themselves while others punch the clock without enthusiasm?