The Achiever Newsletter
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Encouraging our clients to read books has always been an integral part of our business. As a result, we’d like to periodically share 10 books that we feel should be included in your business and/or personal library. These books are not listed in order of sales, popularity, or recommendation. The numbers are used only for reference purposes.
Carolyn Corbin is cofounder and president of the Center for the 21st Century, a think tank providing executive briefings, organizational training, consulting, and studies. She is also the author of the best-selling Strategies 2000 and Conquering Corporate Codependence. This renown business strategist and futurist cites critical issues that impact all organizations. This thought-provoking book on leadership makes a nice connection to the need to lead differently in the face of powerful, irresistible forces that are becoming stronger. This book offers many diagnostics to give you a sense of where and how you might become more effective. The author heads a think-tank called the Center for the 21st Century, and she draws on a lot of forecasts to describe important issues for the new century in terms of trends. Basically, she is calling for a convergence of forces in a way that will make organizations uncomfortable places for many to work. She sees leadership as being the answer. “Leaders determine whether an organization succeeds or fails,” she says. This will require a new model of leader who is more of a strategist, innovator, seer, speeder-upper, and user of new technologies in a more free form environment with mostly project workers involved.
Stephen Covey has been teaching people and organizations how to be more effective since 1989. He has, at times, been criticized for not using enough real-life inspirational stories in his motivational speeches and texts. This book strives to rectify that situation. Covey presents 70 short stories of people as they meet challenges and practice the 7 Habits. Some are ordinary slices of life while others are pivotal moments or life changes. The stories are organized thematically into four areas labeled Individual, Family, Community & Education and Workplace. Covey, himself, stitches the stories together with commentary. If you liked Covey’s previous work, if you practice the 7 Habits, and if you seek inspiration and a feeling of community ... you’ll want to add this book to your library.
“Within a decade, the companies that do the best job of marketing to women will dominate every significant product and service category!” predicts best-selling author, Faith Popcorn. Following her success with The Popcorn Report and Clicking, her third book continues to break new ground and chart exciting new territory as she explores marketing to women. Faith Popcorn runs a marketing consultancy in New York called BrainReserve and has been a real presence in the business world for the past two decades. She is not to be dismissed lightly as she boasts a roster of big-time clients ranging from BMW to IBM and Nabisco. When she speaks, they listen. They want her to tell them the pulse of the economy from a consumer standpoint. After all, she predicted the great success of SUV’s and the failure of New Coke. She knows of what she speaks. The bottom line is that women today have the economic power, and corporations and marketers who want to succeed had better figure that out. Women “purchase or influence the purchase of 80% of all consumer goods.” With references to EVEolve, EVEangelical and EVEsdropping, Popcorn shares eight essential truths of EVEolution — the trend that will redefine the way companies create profitable and lasting relationships with women.
The best-selling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series join forces to show you how to hit your business, personal, and financial targets with absolute certainty. Whether they are corporate professionals, budding entrepreneurs, or home-business owners, most people are looking to achieve more in less time, while earning enough money to live comfortably. This book reveals the proven techniques thousands of people have used to attain all of the money they wanted while living healthy, happy, and balanced lives. This book is a practical, no-nonsense guide that shows readers how to reach their business, personal, and financial goals without getting burned out in the process. Discover the three most important fundamentals for consistent success and ten powerful focusing principles as you enjoy numerous anecdotes and inspiring stories that reinforce each principle.
How’s this for performance? Southwest Airlines has turned a profit every year since 1973, yet it maintains the lowest fares in the industry. It has never laid off an employee, regularly ranks best in customer service, and has a consistently high safety record. It is continually rated as one of the ten best companies to work for in America and the CEO and employees have all been labeled as NUTS! This book will explain how Southwest Airlines can be so NUTS and so successful at the same time. The authors describe the inner workings of one of America’s biggest success stories, complete with 60 color photos. The book is conveniently divided into several different parts that emphasize various perspectives. You’ll learn the history of how the culture was born, some key principles of the company’s vision and culture, and how the culture is maintained and encouraged. The final section takes a more leadership oriented perspective. You’ll discover how Southwest manages problems under tight constraints and intense competition. You’ll learn how they think and act “out of the box” to achieve faster results. You’ll discover how to re-define the rules and make the impossible happen. You’ll gain valuable insights into corporate recruiting and employee retention. You'll learn to manage in difficult times, how to manage with limited resources, how to be optimistic and how to overcome heavy odds in your personal life to fulfill your dreams. You’ll also laugh to yourself from cover to cover!
Harvey Mackay practices what he preaches. He would be the first to tell you that his success in a variety of fields can be attributed to his vast knowledge and practice of networking. Mackay gained recognition with his previous best-selling books: Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive and Beware The Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. In this outing, Mackay offers a very practical, readable, and relevant guide for anyone who has discovered the importance of knowing the right people to accomplish any task. Networking is not rocket science, yet some authors would have us think that we require mystical abilities in order to accomplish our networking goals. Mackay, on the other hand, lays out a game plan for us. He tells you exactly who you need to know and what to do once your rolodex is full. This book is a must for anyone who wants to get ahead by reaching out.
In 1982, Tom Peters introduced himself to the business world by co-authoring one of the most influential management books of all time: In Search of Excellence. Now, through his in-your-face style, bold graphics, astounding facts and figures, and quotes whose sources range from Martha Stewart to Bill Gates, Peters introduces his seventh work, The Circle of Innovation. In this offering, he blows the lid off accepted management styles and opens our eyes to new ways of envisioning the challenges of today’s world. Whether you manage a six-person department or a 60,000-body behemoth, this book empowers you to transform your organization, your career, and yourself. Inspiring and timely, this blueprint for success is pure Peters — a handbook as energetic as it is profound. Tom provides a practical guide that will teach you how to reverse the rising tide of product and service commoditization and foster uniqueness, capitalize on the skyrocketing purchasing power of women, and convert sluggish staff into vital centers of intellectual capital, creativity, and innovation. Tom Peters has become a recognized leading voice in management theory, urging large and small companies to thrive on chaos. This book is certainly a step in that direction.
This book presents the accumulated experience of nineteen business legends, in their own words. Each leader provides inspiring and motivating wisdom that runs the gamut from investing to setting priorities to making the most of opportunity. This book also features thorough background information on each leader, telling the stories of their struggles to succeed, their triumphs — both good and bad — that formed their business philosophies. The nineteen legends, are divided into five categories: Hustling Hard Workers, Self-Made Successes, Bosses, Mavericks, and Salesmen. Thrive on the wisdom of such legends as Thomas Watson (IBM), Andrew Carnegie (Steel), Sam Walton (Retail), John Rockerfeller (Standard Oil), Henry Ford II (Ford Motor), J. Paul Getty (Oil), Mary Pickford (United Artists) Alfred Sloane (GM), David Packard (Hewlett-Packard), Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines), and Ted Turner (Broadcasting) to name just a few.
What makes a business leader great? This is one of the burning questions in companies and boardrooms across America. An even more compelling question: Are there things each of us can learn from these leaders that we can apply to our own lives? Not surprisingly, there is no single answer to copy or formula to follow in order to excel in business. In fact, the leaders selected in Lessons from the Top are wildly different in their personalities, their paths to the top, and the industries they work in. But perhaps the best way to learn how to excel is by studying the strategies and thinking of the wide range of leaders who have proved themselves the best in their industries. Spencer Stuart, specialists in hiring CEOs, is one of the nation's leading executive recruiting firms. Neff is the chairman and Citrin a managing director. After several of their clients had asked them to identify the traits that make a leader successful, the firm commissioned the Gallup Organization to conduct a survey to "nominate" the best leaders in the U.S. on the basis of 10 factors, including vision, long-term performance, customer focus, and impact on business or society. The result was a list of 240 successful leaders, which the authors narrowed using the same proprietary criteria they use to select executives for their clients. This roster of America's 50 best is the end product. Finalists' profiles include their comments on the difficult issues, what they consider to be most important about leadership, and how those factors improve organizational performance. In the final section of the book, the authors distill the surprising number of qualities and characteristics that these extraordinarily accomplished individuals share, to offer lessons to help us in our own lives and careers. It is noteworthy that those at "the top" represent a wide range of leadership styles. A groundbreaking book on business and success, Lessons from the Top should be required reading by leaders—and future leaders—everywhere.
What makes the world's top companies so adept at providing stellar customer service? How do they meet the needs of every customer and still turn healthy profits? And, most important, how can you adapt their practices to fit your business? Thanks to over six years of ongoing research and an investment of $30 million, Arthur Andersen has created its Global Best Practices Database to uncover breakthrough thinking at world-class companies. Now, in Best Practices, Arthur Andersen for the first time shares its understanding of how more than forty best-practices companies focus on their customers, create growth, reduce cost, and increase profits. Managers of any business in any industry can adapt and apply what those companies do best. Unlike most books based merely on an author's own theories or limited anecdotal experience, Best Practices is backed up by 30,000 pages of active, documented data on hundreds of companies worldwide. This book concentrates primarily on customers and how to involve them in everything from the design of products and services to marketing, selling, and product delivery. Perhaps the greatest value of the book lies in its linking of best practices to business processes, thereby encouraging managers to expand their thinking and engage in creative problem-solving with the help of insights from companies inside or outside their own industry. For example, the manager of a clothing store chain can study how Federal Express adapted the concept of just-in-time manufacturing to its rapid delivery of parts between supplier and customer. The owner of a small coffee shop chain might learn from American Express and Peapod how to target customers by offering particular products and predicting exactly when they will make their next purchases. These and other examples will help business people diagnose the processes in place at their own companies and determine how best to improve them. Comprehensive and on the cutting edge, Best Practices will serve as an invaluable information resource. |
Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a firm specializing in custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. He can be reached at 800-886-2MAX or by visiting http://www.AchieveMax.com.
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