February Book of the Month

smarttrust

Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy, and Joy in a Low-Trust World

Author: Steven M. R. Covey

From Amazon.com

 

Smart Trust is without doubt one of the most powerful and seminal books of our age” (Warren Bennis).

After illustrating the global relevance of trust with his book The Speed of Trust by selling more than one million copies in twenty-two languages, Stephen M. R. Covey again illuminates the hidden power of trust to change lives and impact organizations in Smart Trust. In a compelling and readable style, he and long-time business partner Greg Link share enlightening principles and anecdotes of people and organizations that are not only achieving unprecedented prosperity from high-trust relationships and cultures but—even more inspiring—also attaining elevated levels of energy and joy.

The sustainable success these leaders and enterprises are exhibiting is paradoxically being produced in what has proved to be the lowest trust climate in years, if not decades. Smart Trust shows what they are doing and the five actions they are commonly taking to prosper, against the odds, in the same circumstances causing so many others to fail.

With penetrating insights illuminated by their unique access to many of the world’s most successful leaders and organizations, the authors lay out a breakthrough process and skill set in a practical and actionable formula that makes trust a performance multiplier for leaders, teams, organizations, and even countries. They show why trust is fast becoming the most consequential life and leadership skill of our time—a career-critical competency required to navigate and compete in this perilous twenty-first-century interdependent, global economy. Covey and Link teach how to cut through traditional either/or thinking to extend “Smart Trust,” enabling you to exercise sound judgment in a low-trust world by minimizing risk and maximizing possibilities.

Smart Trust has met the strict scrutiny of business leaders around the globe and is validated by research from multiple sources that confirms that high-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations by nearly three times. Smart Trust shares findings that verify how enduring success, vitality, and happiness are directly related to the level of trust in our relationships—whether in our professional or personal lives.

Find out why trusted people are more likely to get hired or promoted, get the best projects and bigger budgets, and are last to be laid off. This sea-changing book will forever shift your perspective as it reveals and validates, once and for all, the transformational power of trust. ReadingSmart Trust will increase your probability of thriving in this increasingly unpredictable marketplace. The more unpredictable it becomes, the more your (and your organization’s) sound judgment and ability to trust in this low-trust world will give you a tremendous competitive advantage—and the capacity to navigate the uncertainty low trust creates.

December Book of the Month

CYC Stack of books300X400

Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense

Author: Betty Kincaid and Greg McFarlane

Amazon.com Review:

If You Only Read One Financial Book All Year, This Should Be It

“Of all the financial disasters of the last few years–the subprime mortgage crisis, the monster budget deficit, the stock market losing half its value, centuries-old investment banks going out of business–every last one happened because people who could have taken responsibility for their money chose to do something else instead.”

This is a passage from the preface of Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense by Greg McFarlane and Betty Kincaid and it sets the tone for a book that not only motivates you to actually act upon your new years resolution of better money management, but also provides you with a more than basic knowledge of where to start and how to do so.

Buy it from Amazon.com.

November Book of the Month

Fierce Conversations

Fierce Conversations

Author: Susan Scott

Amazon.com Review

Susan Scott believes that interpersonal difficulties–at work and at home–are a direct result of our inability to communicate well. Fierce Conversations is based on principles from her international consulting practice, in which she teaches executives how to conduct such exchanges more dynamically and ultimately more effectively, thereby improving the relationships they enjoy with their various dialogue partners “one conversation at a time.” Using identifiable anecdotes from her experience to inspire and inform, along with a series of practical exercises designed to impart the requisite skills, Scott walks readers through the individual steps she’s developed to build better associations through more robust and honest discourses. Addressing all aspects of the process, from several methods for listening more attentively to specific ways she’s fashioned to confront and resolve issues “that stand between you and success,” Scott offers the type of concrete advice and confidence-building counsel that should help even the most reticent improve their communication skills dramatically.

Buy it from Amazon.com.

October Book of the Month

Onward-Schultz-Howard-9781611744910

 

Onward

Author: Howard Schultz

Onward is not a puff piece. In just under 400 brisk pages, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz details the multitude of factors–the recession, new consumer behavior, overexpansion–that led to the company’s downturn during 2007-2008. Obviously, Schultz was successful, and his book has plenty of valuable lessons about management and leadership–standard features for most business books. But the most interesting thing about Onward is Schultz’s honesty about the whole process, from his determination to make difficult personnel changes to his admission that he considers it a personal failure when he sees someone with a competitor’s cup of coffee. Schultz even makes the chapters about his agonies over the company’s breakfast sandwiches a fascinating study in the minute decisions that go into running a multibillion-dollar company. Conflicts, raw emotions, high stakes: Onward is a business book that goes beyond feel-good maxims and actually has a story to tell. –Darryl Campbell

 

September Book of the Month

great failures

Great Failures of the Extremely Successful

Author: Steve Young

Product Description from Amazon.com

Babe Ruth spent his childhood years in an orphanage and, as a baseball player, struck out 1,330 times…on his way to the Hall of Fame. Elvis Presley was banished from the Grand Ole Opry after one performance and told: “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son.” Oprah Winfrey was fired from her television reporter’s job and advised: “You’re not fit for TV.” Author/interviewer Steve Young relates how hardships, roadblocks, rejections and even physicial infirmities cannot stop people determined to succeed! This collection of motivational stories and anecdotes of famous and everyday “failures” shows that success rests on changing “I can’t” into “I will.” From the worlds of business, science, entertainment, sports, education, politics and the arts come inspirational, often humorous but always helpful, reflections from those who refused to let defeat stop them on their road to victory. Personal stories by: Erin Brockovich; John Wooden; Jane Goodall; Johnny Unitas; Sam Donaldson; Teddy Pendergrass; Ann Richards; Bill Walton; Steve Allen; Billy Idol; Dr. Audrey Manley; Jimmy Breslin; and many more.

August Book of the Month

Social Boom!

Social Boom!: How to Master Business Social Media to Brand Yourself, Sell Yourself, Sell Your Product, Dominate Your Industry Market, Save Your Butt, … and Grind Your Competition into the Dirt

Author: Jeffrey Gitomer

Product Description from Amazon.com

Social BOOM! contains every aspect of social media, including the business periphery (blog, personal website, e-zine) that you need in order to create the real law of attraction.  When you create a connection, it’s an indicator that that prospect, or that customer, or that person wants to continue the online relationship, which may lead to real business. Graduate from social media to business social media by creating value that others will perceive as important to fulfilling their needs.

 As you go through each aspect of this foundation-building, platform-building book, you will read the ideas that Gitomer and others are using right now. None of the ideas are random. All of them are fully tested and can be implemented by you, too.  None of the ideas contain solicitation (buy my product, make a lot of money). All of them get you and your brand out there in a systematic way that will bring in dollars. 

Gitomer has invited a number of social media experts to “guest speak” in the book, to help you get a wider range of views and options. The best part about this book is that the minute you begin to read it, if your laptop or mobile device is handy, you can begin to implement it in the same minute.

Buy it from Amazon.com.

July Book of the Month

deliving happiness

Delivering Happiness

Author : Tony Hsieh

Amazon.com Review

The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success.

Pay new employees $2000 to quit. Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. Focus on company culture as the #1 priority. Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. Help employees grow both personally and professionally. Seek to change the world. Oh, and make money too.

Sound crazy? It’s all standard operating procedure at Zappos.com, the online retailer that’s doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales every year.

In 1999, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO.

In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing.

In his first book, Tony shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from a lemonade stand and pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Ultimately, he shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life.

Buy it from Amazon.com.

June Book of the Month

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Never Eat Lunch Alone

Author: Keith Ferrazzi

Review From Publisher’s Weekly

The youngest partner in Deloitte Consulting’s history and founder of the consulting company Ferrazzi Greenlight, the author quickly aims in this useful volume to distinguish his networking techniques from generic handshakes and business cards tossed like confetti. At conferences, Ferrazzi practices what he calls the “deep bump” – a “fast and meaningful” slice of intimacy that reveals his uniqueness to interlocutors and quickly forges the kind of emotional connection through which trust, and lots of business, can soon follow. That bump distinguishes this book from so many others that stress networking; writing with Fortune Small Business editor Raz, Ferrazzi creates a real relationship with readers. Ferrazzi may overstate his case somewhat when he says, “People who instinctively establish a strong network of relationships have always created great businesses,” but his clear and well-articulated steps for getting access, getting close and staying close make for a substantial leg up. Each of 31 short chapters highlights a specific technique or concept, from “Warming the Cold Call” and “Managing the Gatekeeper” to following up, making small talk, “pinging” (or sending “quick, casual” greetings) and defining oneself to the point where one’s missives become “the e-mail you always read because of who it’s from.” In addition to variations on the theme of hard work, Ferrazzi offers counterintuitive perspectives that ring true: “vulnerability… is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today”; “too many people confuse secrecy with importance.” No one will confuse this book with its competitors.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

April Book of the Month

thank-you-economy

The Thank You Economy

Author: Gary Vaynerchuk

Book description (from Amazon.com)

If this were 1923, this book would have been called “Why Radio Is Going to Change the Game” . . .

If it were 1995, it would be “Why Amazon Is Going to Take Over the Retailing World” . . .

[Read more...]

March Book of the Month

BookCover

The Xs and Os of Success

A Playbook for Leaders in Business and Life

Authors: Lon Kruger and DJ Allen

When it comes to building and revitalizing college basketball programs, Lon Kruger has proven to be the master of the turnaround. He found a unique formula for success that brings out the best in his players and teams, and done it with dignity. Imagine if you could use those same principles to help improve your business or personal life?
In The Xs & Os of Success: A Playbook for Leaders in Business and Life, Kruger, and co-author DJ Allen, lay out Coach’s principles for taking over cultures, changing them into positive, successful environments. The book addresses the parallels between coaching a winning basketball team and creating a positive business environment that brings out the best in people. The book’s 40 simple yet powerful leadership lessons can be immediately applied to enhancing performance in the world of business and in everyday life. It was written for executives, entrepreneurs, business owners, athletes, sports fans, and anyone interested in improving their chances of success.

Buy it from Amazon.com