Extreme Ownership

by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.

Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields.

Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment.

A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.

Presenting to Win

by Jerry Weissman

Thirty million presentations will be given today. Millions will fail. Millions more will be received with yawns. A rare few will establish the most profound connection, in which presenter and audience understand each other perfectly…discover common ground… and, together, decide to act.

In this fully updated edition, Jerry Weissman, the world’s #1 presentation consultant, shows how to connect with even the toughest, most high-level audiences...and move them to action! He teaches presenters of all kinds how to dump those PowerPoint templates once and for all and tell compelling stories that focus on what’s in it for the audience.

Weissman’s techniques have proven themselves with billions of dollars on the line. Thousands of his elite clients have already mastered them. Now it’s your turn!

• What you must do to tell your story - Focus before Flow: identifying your real goals and message

• The power of the WIIFY: What’s In It For You - Staying focused on what your audience really wants

• Capture your audience in 90 seconds… and never let go! - Opening Gambits and compelling linkages

• Master the art of online Web conferencing - Connecting with your invisible audience

• From brainstorming through delivery - Crafting the Power Presentation, one step at a time

POWER

by Jeffery Pfeffer

Some people have it, and others don’t—Jeffrey Pfeffer explores why in Power. One of the greatest minds in management theory and author or co-author of thirteen books, including the seminal business school text Managing With Power, Pfeffer shows readers how to succeed and wield power in the real world.

RANGE

by David J. Epstein

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.

Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

Author David Epstein says diverse experiences are helpful in science, music, parenting and even sports. One example: Roger Federer. He decided to focus on tennis after growing up playing several sports. Epstein joins "CBS This Morning" to make the argument for generalization over specialization.

David Epstein discusses his book, "Range", with Daniel Pink at Politics and Prose. In The Sports Gene, Epstein explored what goes into the making of top athletes. His new book builds on that research, revealing the factors that enable people to excel not only in sports but in the arts, business, and science.

BEYOND PRODUCT

by Jill Soley and Todd Wilms

It's the Golden Age of the entrepreneur. Hundreds of thousands of new businesses are started in the US alone every year. A plethora of tools and platforms make it easy to bring new apps and services to life.

But a great product is not enough.

A great idea needs a smart strategy to reach the right market. In Beyond Product, marketers Todd Wilms and Jill Soley bring over 50 business leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors together to help founders take their organization through each stage of growth, overcome obstacles and learn from common mistakes.

You'll discover:

• What marketing work needs to happen long before a product is built

• When to bring on the first marketing hire

• How to find great resources--even on a budget

• What founders should focus on at each stage of their growth

• How founders can control their exit, even if it is far in the future

"THE marketing book for non-marketers. Startups, small business owners, even product managers at larger companies, this book is for you."

The Challenger Sale

by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies,The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance.Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.

Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman

Blitzscaling reveals the secret to starting and scaling massively valuable companies.

What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?

The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion –as quickly as possible.

When growing at a breakneck pace, getting to next level requires very different strategies from those that got you to where you are today. In a book inspired by their popular class at Stanford Business School, Hoffman and Yeh reveal how to navigate the necessary shifts and weather the unique challenges that arise at each stage of a company’s life cycle, such as: how to design business models for igniting and sustaining relentless growth; strategies for hiring and managing; how the role of the founder and company culture must evolve as the business matures, and more.

Whether your business has ten employees or ten thousand, Blitzscaling is the essential playbook for winning in a world where speed is the only competitive advantage that matters.

Disrupting Class by Clayton M. Christensen

According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn't always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need "disruptive innovation."

The same apply for learning in business. The way we trained and maintained our knowledge are obsolete. New systems for disruptive learning need to be implemented. This is the reason why we recommend “Disrupting Class” in our Transformation manual < Idea to Impact >

Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen's now-famous theories of "disruptive" change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you're a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you'll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories. You'll learn how:

• Customized learning will help many more students succeed in school

• Student-centric classrooms will increase the demand for new technology

• Computers must be disruptively deployed to every student

• Disruptive innovation can circumvent roadblocks that have prevented other attempts at school reform

• We can compete in the global classroom-and get ahead in the global market

Filled with fascinating case studies, scientific findings, and unprecedented insights on how innovation must be managed, Disrupting Class will open your eyes to new possibilities, unlock hidden potential, and get you to think differently. Professor Christensen and his coauthors provide a bold new lesson in innovation that will help you make the grade for years to come.

The future is now. Class is in session.

CONNECTING THE DOTS by John Chambers

We refer “Connecting the dots” in our transformational manual < idea to Impact > because it represents a great insight into a thinking of a strategic and succesful leader. It served us as a platform for taking a business mindset and show hot to translate it into an operational one.

Chambers is sharing his unique strategies for winning in a digital world. His playbook on how to act before the market shifts, tap customers for strategy, partner for growth, build teams, and disrupt themselves is a good summary for succesful business conduct. He also adapted those lessons to transform government, helping global leaders to create new models for growth.

OUR ICEBERG IS MELTING by JOHN KOTTER

In our book < Idea to Impact > we included as our favorite read Our Iceberg Is Melting, by John P. Kotter because of its effective description of the delicate dance that is necessary in order to navigate the hierarchy of power and leadership while getting acknowledgment and permission to initiate change. it is a simple story about doing well under the stress and uncertainty of rapid change.

On an iceberg near the coast of Antarctica, group of beautiful emperor pen­guins live as they have for many years. Then one curious bird discovers a potentially devastating problem threatening their home—and almost no one listens to him.

The characters in the story—Fred, Alice, Louis, Buddy, the Professor, and NoNo—are like people you probably recognize in your own organization, including yourself. Their tale is one of resistance to change and heroic action, seemingly intractable obstacles and clever tactics for dealing with those obstacles. The penguins offer an inspiring model as we all struggle to adapt to new circumstances.

Our Iceberg Is Melting is based on John Kotter's pioneer­ing research into the eight steps that can produce needed change in any sort of group. After finishing the story, you'll have a powerful framework for influencing your own team, no matter how big or small.

ZONE TO WIN by Geoffrey Moore

In our book < Idea to Impact > we included a description of Geoffrey Moore’s four zones as a foundation for understanding a business lifecycle. Unless you are the one who innovates and disrupts markets, you are forced to respond to waves of innovation from others with waves of transformation just to stay competitive. It’s rarely the whole business that needs to be transformed, however—usually it is just one area or another that is impacted.

Silicon Valley legend Geoffrey A. Moore describes this business lifecycle in his book Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption

Any surfer knows that you’ve got to catch a wave at just the right moment. The same holds for companies. To grow, they need to catch the next wave of innovation before a competitor does.

In fact, the best way for a company to grow rapidly is to introduce a new product or service that turns an industry on its head: consider the innovations of online marketing, cloud computing or electric vehicles.

Being an innovative market leader can be extremely profitable, often yielding 20 percent revenue growth over the first five to seven years after a new product or service is introduced.

On the other hand, if you miss the wave, there’s no way to catch it later. You’re best off searching for another swell later on!

Companies that experience continuous growth are experts at catching innovation waves. For instance, Apple caught not one but three waves in the last ten years: digital music, smartphones, and tablets. In doing so, the company completely transformed the market for mobile technology.

If you want to learn more we recommend reading <Geoffrey’s book>