Books about Effectiveness from Amazon.com

With all of the pressures successful business leaders have today, none is more urgent or challenging than learning the ability to execute strategy.

While larger businesses have the luxury of budgets and resources to meet this challenge, it's the small and midsized businesses that now have a tremendous opportunity to level the playing field, leapfrog the expensive, outdated approaches of the past, and attack the challenge of execution in a revolutionary way. The key insights are:

• Excellence is the enduring pursuit of balanced strategy and execution
• Planning and executing, while at the same time dealing with the inevitable surprises, is the biggest challenge in business
• Overcoming this challenge is what we mean by solving the one problem that makes all others easier
• Failing to solve the problem destines your organization to a reactive, fire-fighting future.

Based on breakthrough research, field testing and proven best-practices, the thought-leading vision described by Gary Harpst in Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution sets a new course for how small and midsized businesses can finally confront the never-ending challenge of executing strategy.

As a follow-up to the success of Six Disciplines for Excellence, Harpst's new book, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution, details the elements of a complete strategy execution program, clarifies how it could only have happened now, and explains why such a program will soon become a mainstream requirement for your business..
Price: $8.29 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What do you do? Tim Ferriss has trouble answering the question Depending on when you ask this
controversial Princeton University guest lecturer, he might answer:

“I race motorcycles in Europe.”
“I ski in the Andes.”
“I scuba dive in Panama.”
“I dance tango in Buenos Aires.”

He has spent more than five years learning the secrets of the New Rich, a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the “deferred-life plan” and instead mastered the new currencies—time and mobility—to create luxury lifestyles in the here and now.

Whether you are an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, this book is the compass for a new and revolutionary world. Join Tim Ferriss as he teaches you:

• How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
• How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
• How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
• How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and freuent "mini-retirements"
• What the crucial difference is between absolute and relative income
• How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it’s beyond repair
• What automated cash-flow “muses” are and how to create one in 2 to 4 weeks
• How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet
• What the management secrets of Remote Control CEOs are
• How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50–80% off
• How to fill the void and create a meaningful life after removing work and the office

You can have it all—really..
Price: $11.02 [Notify me when price goes down.]

About the Author
John Kotter has been on the faculty at Harvard Business School since 1972. He is the author of eleven award-winning titles and frequently gives speeches and seminars at Harvard and around the world. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Holger Rathgeber spent his early professional career in Asia. He has worked in industry since the early 1990's and is now with one of the leading medical technology companies, Bectom Dickinson. Raised in Frankfurt, Germany, Rathgeber currently resides in White Plains, New York.

Watch a video clip featuring author John Kotter

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Price: $9.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Completely Updated and Revised

This revised edition of Peter Senge’s bestselling classic, The Fifth Discipline, is based on fifteen years of experience in putting the book’s ideas into practice. As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices.

In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire.

The updated and revised Currency edition of this business classic contains over one hundred pages of new material based on interviews with dozens of practitioners at companies like BP, Unilever, Intel, Ford, HP, Saudi Aramco, and organizations like Roca, Oxfam, and The World Bank. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book’s inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus (getting started), Strategies, Leaders’ New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future.

Mastering the disciplines Senge outlines in the book will:

• Reignite the spark of genuine learning driven by people focused on what truly matters to them
• Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity
• Free you of confining assumptions and mindsets
• Teach you to see the forest and the trees
• End the struggle between work and personal time.
Price: $14.02 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A Clear and Effective Approach to Learning DBT Skills

First developed for treating borderline personality disorder, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) has proven effective as treatment for a range of other mental health problems, especially for those characterized by overwhelming emotions. Research shows that DBT can improve your ability to handle distress without losing control and acting destructively. In order to make use of these techniques, you need to build skills in four key areas--distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

This book, a collaborative effort from three esteemed authors, offers straightforward, step-by-step exercises for learning these concepts and putting them to work for real and lasting change. Start by working on the introductory exercises and, after making progress, move on to the advanced-skills chapters. Whether you are a professional or a general reader, whether you use this book to support work done in therapy or as the basis for self-help, you'll benefit from this clear and practical guide to better managing your emotions.

The individual struggling with overwhelming emotions and DBT therapists will benefit significantly from this workbook. McKay, Wood and Brantley have expanded and translated DBT Skills, making Linehan's iconic work on emotional skill building even more accessible and easy to apply to everyday life.
--Kate Northcott, MA, MFT, is a DBT therapist in private practice with Mindfulness Therapy Associates and is director of New Perspectives Center for Counseling, a non-profit counseling center, in San Francisco, CA.
Price: $13.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

True North shows how anyone who follows their internal compass can become an authentic leader. This leadership tour de force is based on research and first-person interviews with 125 of today’s top leaders—with some surprising results. In this important book, acclaimed former Medtronic CEO Bill George and coauthor Peter Sims share the wisdom of these outstanding leaders and describe how you can develop as an authentic leader. True North presents a concrete and comprehensive program for leadership success and shows how to create your own Personal Leadership Development Plan centered on five key areas:

• Knowing your authentic self
• Defining your values and leadership principles
• Understanding your motivations
• Building your support team
• Staying grounded by integrating all aspects of your life

True North offers an opportunity for anyone to transform their leadership path and become the authentic leader they were born to be.

Personal, original, and illuminating stories from Warren Bennis, Sir Adrian Cadbury, George Shultz (former U.S. secretary of state), Charles Schwab, John Whitehead (Cochairman, Goldman Sachs), Anne Mulcahy (CEO, Xerox), Howard Schultz (CEO, Starbucks), Dan Vasella (CEO, Novartis), John Brennan (Chairman, Vanguard), Carol Tome (CFO, Home Depot), Donna Dubinsky (CEO/cofounder, Palm), Alan Horn (President, Warner Brothers), Ann Moore (CEO, Time, Inc.) and many others illustrate the transitions that shape the type of leaders who will thrive in the 21st century.

Bill George (Cambridge, MA) has spent over 30 years in executive leadership positions at Litton, Honeywell, and Medtronic. As CEO of Medtronic, he built the company into the world’s leading medical technology company as its market capitalization increased from $1.1 billion to $60 billion. Since 2004, he has been a professor at the Harvard Business School. His 2004 book Authentic Leadership (0-7879-7528-1) was a BusinessWeek bestseller. Peter Sims (San Francisco, CA) established “Leadership Perspectives,” a course on leadership development at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and cofounded the London office of Summit Partners, a leading investment firm.

Their Web site is www.truenorthleaders.com..
Price: $14.01 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What makes an effective executive?

The measure of the executive, Peter F. Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.

Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned:

• Managing time
• Choosing what to contribute to the organization
• Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect
• Setting the right priorities
• Knitting all of them together with effective decision-making

Ranging widely through the annals of business and government, Peter F. Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.

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Price: $6.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An innovative guide to how great nonprofits achieve extraordinary social impact. What makes great nonprofits great? Authors Crutchfield and McLeod Grant searched for the answer over several years, employing a rigorous research methodology which derived from books on for-profits like Built to Last. They studied 12 nonprofits that have achieved extraordinary levels of impact—from Habitat for Humanity to the Heritage Foundation—and distilled six counterintuitive practices that these organizations use to change the world. This book has lessons for all readers interested in creating significant social change, including nonprofit managers, donors and volunteers.

Leslie R. Crutchfield (Washington, D.C.) is a managing director of Ashoka and research grantee of the Aspen Institute. Heather McLeod Grant (Palo Alto, CA) is a nonprofit consultant and advisor to Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship and the Stanford Center for Social Innovation. Crutchfield and Grant were co-founding editors of Who Cares, a national magazine reaching 50,000 readers in circulation between 1993-2000..
Price: $15.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book describes the beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and interactions that form the fabric of life in our best classrooms and schools. It focuses on the specific things that great teachers do ... that others do not.

It answers these essential questions:
- Is it high expectations for students that matter?
- How do great teachers respond when students misbehave?
- Do great teachers filter differently than their peers?
- How do the best teachers approach standardized testing?.
Price: $18.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In clear, simple terms Leadership and the One Minute Manager® teaches managers the art of Situational Leadership®--a simple system that refutes the conventional management mandate of treating all employees equally. Here, you'll learn why tailoring management styles to individual employees is so important; why knowing when to delegate, support, or direct is critical; how to identify the leadership style suited to a particular person; and how consistent use of the One Minute techniques will produce better management and enhanced motivation on all levels. This remarkable, easy-to-follow book is a priceless guide to creative, personalized leadership that elicits the best performance from your staff--and the best bottom line for any business.

If your management motto is "everyone should be treated equally," Leadership and the One Minute Manager. will show you why this style not only hinders workplace efficiency, but also frustrates your staff. In clear, simple terms, Ken Blanchard, co-author of the enormously popular The One Minute Manager., coupled with business gurus Patricia and Drea Zigarmi, teach managers the art of Situational Leadership.. You'll learn why tailoring management styles to individual employees is so important; when to delegate, support, or direct; how to identify the leadership style suited to a particular person; and how consistent use of the One Minute techniques will produce better management and enhanced motivation on all levels. This remarkable, easy-to-follow book is a priceless guide to creative, personalized leadership that elicits the best performance from your staffand the best bottom line for any business..
Price: $4.88 [Notify me when price goes down.]