The Achiever Newsletter

Top 10 Books - Edition 5

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. 

#1
Everyone a Leader
A Grassroots Model for the New Workplace
by Horst Bergmann, Kathleen Hurson, & Darlene Russ-Eft

For years now, AchieveMax^® consultants, trainers, and speakers have promoted the idea that true leaders can and do emerge from every level of the organization. We have witnessed organizations who believe, promote, and benefit from this approach and we have sadly observed companies who disbelieve, refuse to encourage, and pay the price as a result.

An employee doesn't necessarily need a title, seniority or position to demonstrate leadership. Initiative, creativity, and ideas can and do come from every level of the organization. Imagine a company where every employee does what it takes to help his or her organization reach its goals! 

If chaos and confusion come to mind, think again! Spreading leadership and decision-making responsibilities liberates, inspires, and motivates everyone to achieve more and contribute the maximum — making a positive impact on both productivity and business results.

Based on a landmark study that involved 2,000 people across 450 organizations, Everyone A Leader explores the critical moments when employees at all levels step forward into leadership roles. The findings are summarized in five key strategies the authors call the CLIMB model of leadership effectiveness:

Create a compelling future
Let the customer drive the organization
Involve every mind
Manage work horizontally
Build personal credibility

The CLIMB model's step-by-step tools for grassroots leaders build competencies such as presenting thoughts and ideas, listening proactively, giving recognition, managing priorities, turning conflict into collaboration, identifying and meeting unspoken customer needs, and many, many more.

To remain flexible and responsive in today's dynamic, highly competitive marketplace, successful organizations recognize the critical need for greater flexibility, knowledge, and adaptability across the entire organization. To do so means everyone must learn to be a leader.

#2
The Guru Guide
by Joseph Boyett & Jimmie Boyett

Wouldn't it be nice if you had the time to read all of the business books that hit the bestseller list? Well, if you're striving to make your mark in the business world, you simply don't have that kind of time. However, it's obvious that you do need the essential information they contain. You need to keep up with the latest business trends and understand emerging ideas and new terminology. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have concise, penetrating explanations of today's most advanced thinking on business management and leadership.

In this easy-to-use primer, two internationally respected business consultants provide an executive summary of the most effective and successful management ideas put forth by the leading business thinkers and doers of our time: Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey, Warren Bennis, Michael Hammer, Margaret Wheatly, Peter Senge, and many more. They also give you:

The Guru Guide is a must for your personal and/or Corporate library!

#3
1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back
by Donna Greiner & Theodore Kinni

You can now have the customer-service secrets of the world's most successful businesses right at your fingertips. The authors spent five years uncovering how Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton, American Express, and many other world-class companies keep their customers for life. You'll find these customer-retention ideas to be timely, entertaining, and brilliantly inventive. You'll discover the secrets to:

This book identifies the companies and individuals who have found successful techniques, strategies, and programs that not only satisfies customers but keep them coming back and bringing others. It's a quick, easy read that you'll want to share with your entire staff.

#4
Heart at Work
by Jack Canfield & Jacqueline Miller

This is a priceless, best-selling collection of inspirational stories about bringing back self-esteem to the workplace and creating a happier environment that ultimately leads to greater productivity and profit. Compiled by Jack Canfield, co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and Jacqueline Miller, this treasury of soulful wisdom shows leaders from every level how to use the power of self-esteem to empower, energize, and motivate their co-workers to bring out the best.  Overflowing with positive yet practical advice, proven strategies, and personal testimonies from every rung of the corporate ladder — from CEOs to busboys — Heart At Work is a much needed dose of inspiration for today's increasingly impersonal workplace.

#5
Heads You Win! 
How the Best Companies Think — and How You Can Use Their Examples to Develop Critical Thinking Within Your Own Organization
by Quinn Spitzer & Roe Evans

Remember New Coke, The Walt Disney Company's aborted theme park near the Manassas battlefield or AT&T's acquisition of the NCR Corp? Were these merely the mistakes of individual decision makers, or do they represent larger, organizational deficiencies in critical thinking?  How confident are you in the collective brainpower of your organization?

The most crucial task facing any business leader in today's brutally competitive economy is to sharpen his or hers organization's ability to effectively solve problems, make decisions, and cut through the information clutter. In this book, Kepner-Tregoe's CEO Quinn Spitzer, and executive Ron Evans cite the experiences and share the advice of presidents and CEOs of some of the world's most innovative companies — organizations like Johnson and Johnson, Chrysler Corp., British Airways, and Harley Davidson, Inc. — they are successful because they capitalize on the brainpower of every employee.

Filled with practical tips and techniques, and lightened with amusing real-life anecdotes, this book is an indispensable tool for sorting through the complexities of running a business today and identifying the essential skills that determine a company's success.

#6
The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management
by David Thielen

WAIT! Don't skip this particular review because you lack interest in technology or maybe even despise Bill Gates. This book offers it's readers a wealth of information, ideas, and strategies that can easily be adapted to any organization. It's a quick read, very candid and to the point. 

You may admire him for his chutzpah or detest him for his audacity, but you can't deny that Bill Gates has developed a company capable of dominating any market it resolves to enter. This is not an accident, contends David Thielen — a 20 year veteran of the technology industry who once toiled at Microsoft as a senior software developer on Windows 95 and other projects — and in fact stems directly from the Chairman's own unique attitudes on corporate administration.

The author reveals a dozen key elements he learned during 3 years at Microsoft. This book is an inside look at the way Gates and his lieutenants have successfully harnessed those particular practices that initially put the firm on the map and subsequently used them to build their business into one of the world's largest. "Microsoft's management style is it's core strength", writes the author. "There are other companies that produce better software, market better, and make fewer mistakes. However, no other large company manages its business as well."

This book puts forth a convincing case for the competitive advantage that exists in Microsoft's management style: a big company's resources with a small company's agility and focus. While other books talk about Microsoft's success and what they have done, this books tells you how Microsoft became successful.

#7
A Whack on the Side of the Head
by Roger von Oech

Although first published in the early 80's, this masterpiece has been enhanced and revised three times to provide cutting edge approaches to becoming more creative in both your business and personal lives. It's back — and better than ever — with more bright ideas and expanding exercises to bring it's famous innovation boosters to a new generation.  Identifying the fundamentals of creative thinking, this book evolves around the ten mental locks that prevent you from being more creative. More importantly, you'll learn how to unlock each as von Oech devotes an entire chapter to each of the ten while providing various exercises in support of his explanations.

Over the last two decades, the author has conducted a number of creativity workshops working with imaginative people in a variety of industries and disciplines. This book contains stories, anecdotes, insights, and ideas that evolved from those workshops.

This book should be read in combination with A Kick in the Seat of the Pants ... and preferably read first. Just a suggestion. This is a book you'll refer to often after your initial exposure.

#8
301 Ways to Have Fun at Work 
by Dave Hemsath & Leslie Yerkes

It's quite obvious that any employee would like to have more fun at work. However, it's a little more of a challenge to convince management that creating a fun atmosphere in the workplace can increase productivity and morale while having a positive effect on the bottom line. In this fun-filled book, the authors will tell you how to do just that.

It's one thing to have someone offer you their suggestions for improvement. In this book, however, the authors share examples from hundreds of companies who have found a wide variety of methods for focusing on fun within the work environment. They've developed Fun Icons which lead you through the book by identifying Fun Facts, Fun Resources, and Fun Quotes. They have included their Twelve-Step Method to Fun which they suggest you follow and implementing one step a month for a year.

They also offer a list of suggested readings — books they highly recommend for your reading pleasure and to aid you in your pursuit of fun at work.

#9
If It Ain’t Broke, Break It! 
And Other Unconventional Wisdom for a Changing Business World
by Robert J. Kriegel

Before tickling our funny bones with his best-selling classic Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers, Bob Kriegel shared his unconventional wisdom with readers via this hard-to-put-down, uniquely humorous approach to the subject of change.

In this book, the author points out that today's business people have to turn the old rules inside out, upside down, and backwards not only to succeed, but to survive! He shows us how to unlock the creative thinker within us, to work smarter, not harder, and to explore new and different paths. You will discover how to break the rules of business — and break away from the pack. 

You'll enjoy hundreds of real-life examples of Break-It Thinking from the annals of Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Apple Computer, The U.S. Olympic Team, PepsiCo., The L.A. Lakers, Procter & Gamble, Levi-Strauss, AT&T, L.L. Bean, The San Francisco 49ers, and many, many more.

You'll laugh and learn with this must have addition to any business library!

#10
Don’t Fire Them, Fire Them Up
by Frank Pacetta

This is a maverick's guide to motivating yourself and your team by the man who turned around sales teams at Xerox. Learn how to build a better business team: how to develop trust, create loyalty, and generate enthusiasm and excitement. This book explains how to build or rebuild an organization, lead and energize it, and put it on top and keep it there, year after year.

The author includes his Top Ten Tips, which were featured in The Wall Street Journal and have been copied and posted on office bulletin boards everywhere. He also adds Ten More Top Tips in this book.