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Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Nav...
Brief Summary
For the first time in American history, a significant number of mothers are heading major corporations, including General Motors, Ulta Beauty, and Best Buy. Over the past several decades, women have made gains throughout executive suites. Yet these “Power Moms” still struggle with balancing their management responsibilities with raising children. Joann S. Lublin draws on the experiences of the nation’s two generations of these successful women to measure how far we’ve come—and how far we still need to go.
Lublin combines her own insights with those of eighty-five executive mothers across industries—including experienced public-company chiefs such as Carol Bartz, the first woman to command Autodesk and Yahoo; Hershey’s Michele Buck, DuPont’s Ellen Kullman, ITT’s Denise Ramos, and WW International’s Mindy Grossman—and twenty-five of their grown daughters. Lublin reveals how trailblazer boomers, many now in their sixties, often endured sweeping disapproval for their demanding management careers, even as their own daughters sometimes rejected their choices. While the second wave of executive mothers—all under forty-five—handle working parenthood with less angst, they still lead stressful lives.
Power Moms provides lessons and advice to help today’s professional women, their families, and their employers navigate this challenging terrain. Lublin looks at the trade-offs mothers are too often forced to make between work and family and the root causes, including the dearth of large-scale paid parental leave and other family-friendly policies. While it celebrates the gains women have made, Power Moms makes clear how much more must be done to make being a working mother easier.
The Myth of the Strong Leader: Politi...
Brief Summary
In this magisterial and wide-ranging survey of political leadership over the past hundred years, Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that strong leaders - those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process - are the most successful and admirable.
Within authoritarian regimes, a more collective leadership is a lesser evil compared with personal dictatorship where cultivation of the myth of the strong leader is often a prelude to oppression and carnage. Within democracies, although 'strong leaders' are seldom as strong or independent as they purport to be, the idea that one person is entitled to take the big decisions is dangerous nonetheless, and the advantages of a collegial style of leadership are too often overlooked.
In reality, only a minority of political leaders make a big difference, by challenging assumptions about the politically possible or setting in motion systemic change. Yet in a democracy that is rare. It is especially when enlightened leaders acquire power in an authoritarian system that the opportunity for radical transformation occurs.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, Willy Brandt and Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping and Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair are among the leaders whom Brown examines in this original and illuminating study.
Purpose Mindset: How Microsoft Inspir...
Early on in the Microsoft story, Bill Gates and other key executives met to decide how they would incentivize employees to make a charitable impact. The status quo at that time was to offer some small percentage of your paycheck as a pretax deduction to a charity selected by your company. Microsoft decided to so something revolutionary instead.
The Purpose Mindset tells the inside story behind how Microsoft built its culture of giving, including powerful stories from Microsoft alumni who were in the room when these decisions were made or who went on to make powerful change in the world, emboldened by their time at Microsoft.
The Purpose Mindset also tells the story of how this culture of giving that has been so successful at Microsoft in regard to job satisfaction, recruiting, and employee retention can be duplicated in your own work life, whether you are a business leader or you are seeking employment at a company that contributes to something greater than themselves.
Throughout these pages, charitably-engaged alumni such as author Akhtar Badshah, the head of Microsoft’s Philanthropy program from 2004-2014, take readers through the first-of-its-kind decisions that have empowered and incentivized employees:
- Hear the first-hand accounts from interviews with Microsoft executives such as Jeff and Tricia Raikes, Patrick Awuah, Paul Maritz, and many others.
- Learn how Microsoft’s early decision to encourage employees to support causes personal to them was a key impetus to multiplying the impact.
- Get insider accounts on the key decisions Microsoft has made along its journey to make individual philanthropy a core element of their culture.
- See how its culture of giving is one of the key elements to Microsoft’s success in attracting and retaining top talent.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The ...
Brief Summary
In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical - and accessible - plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.
He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions-suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits an...
Brief Summary
Widely respected and admired, Philip Fisher is among the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, introduced almost forty years ago, are not only studied and applied by today's financiers and investors, but are also regarded by many as gospel.
This book is invaluable reading and has been since it was first published in 1958. The updated paperback retains the investment wisdom of the original edition and includes the perspectives of the author's son Ken Fisher, an investment guru in his own right in an expanded preface and introduction
"I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits...A thorough understanding of the business, obtained by using Phil's techniques...enables one to make intelligent investment commitments."
―Warren Buffet
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for t...
In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye.
It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.
The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.
Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.
Start a Small Business: The complete ...
Brief Summary
This is a fully updated new edition of the bestselling guide for anyone who is thinking of starting their own business. It covers both the strategic and practical issues in the ideal level of detail for budding entrepreneurs, and is full of insider tips which will help give your business the edge in a tough marketplace.
Beyond Order 12 More Rules For Life b...
The sequel to 12 Rules for Life offers further guidance on the periolus path of modern life.
In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. Peterson helped millions of readers impose order on the chaos of their lives. Now, in this bold sequel, Peterson delivers twelve more lifesaving principles for resisting the exhausting toll that our desire to order the world inevitably takes.
In a time when the human will increasingly imposes itself over every sphere of life—from our social structures to our emotional states—Peterson warns that too much security is dangerous. What’s more, he offers strategies for overcoming the cultural, scientific, and psychological forces causing us to tend toward tyranny, and teaches us how to rely instead on our instinct to find meaning and purpose, even—and especially—when we find ourselves powerless.
While chaos, in excess, threatens us with instability and anxiety, unchecked order can petrify us into submission. Beyond Order provides a call to balance these two fundamental principles of reality itself, and guides us along the straight and narrow path that divides them.
Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Emp...
Brief Summary
To those who travel there today, the West Indies are unspoiled paradise islands. Yet that image conceals a turbulent and shocking history. For some 200 years after 1650, the West Indies were the strategic center of the western world, witnessing one of the greatest power struggles of the age as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar-a commodity so lucrative it became known as "white gold." As Matthew Parker vividly chronicles in his sweeping history, the sugar revolution made the English, in particular, a nation of voracious consumers-so much so that the wealth of her island colonies became the foundation and focus of England's commercial and imperial greatness, underpinning the British economy and ultimately fueling the Industrial Revolution.
Yet with the incredible wealth came untold misery: the horror endured by slaves, on whose backs the sugar empire was brutally built; the rampant disease that claimed the lives of one-third of all whites within three years of arrival in the Caribbean; the cruelty, corruption, and decadence of the plantation culture.
While sugar came to dictate imperial policy, for those on the ground the British West Indian empire presented a disturbing moral universe. Parker brilliantly interweaves the human stories of those since lost to history whose fortunes and fame rose and fell with sugar.
Their industry drove the development of the North American mainland states, and with it a slave culture, as the plantation model was exported to the warm, southern states. Broad in scope, rich in detail, The Sugar Barons freshly links the histories of Europe, the West Indies, and North America and reveals the full impact of the sugar revolution, the resonance of which is still felt today.
Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach...
Brief Summary
Champions do extra.
They sweep the sheds.
They follow the spearhead.
They keep a blue head.
In Legacy, best-selling author James Kerr goes deep into the heart of the world’s most successful sporting team, the legendary All Blacks of New Zealand, to reveal 15 powerful and practical lessons for leadership and business.
Legacy is a unique, inspiring handbook for leaders in all fields, and asks: What are the secrets of success – sustained success? How do you achieve world-class standards, day after day, week after week, year after year? How do you handle pressure? How do you train to win at the highest level? What do you leave behind you after you’re gone?
What will be your legacy?
That Will Never Work: The Birth of Ne...
Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought-leveraging the internet to rent movies-and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning.
But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair-with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO-founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts and determination can change the world-even with an idea that many think will never work.
What emerges,though, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success?
From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, That Will Never Work is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable, but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.
Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
For years, we’ve been told that being more healthy and productive is a matter of willpower: that we should follow the latest fad and make constant changes to our lifestyles. But whether in our diets, fitness plans or jobs, radical overhauls never work. Instead we should start with quick wins ― and embed new, tiny habits into our everyday routines.
The world expert on this is Silicon Valley legend BJ Fogg, pioneering research psychologist and founder of the iconic Behaviour Design Lab at Stanford. Now anyone can use his science-based approach to make changes that are simple to achieve and sticky enough to last.
In the hugely anticipated Tiny Habits, BJ Fogg shows us how to change our lives for the better, one tiny habit at a time. Based on twenty years research and his experience coaching over 40,000 people, it cracks the code of habit formation.
Focus on what is easy to change, not what is hard; focus on what you want to do, not what you should do. At the heart of this is a startling truth ― that creating happier, healthier lives can be easy, and surprisingly fun.
The rules of work by Richard Templar
Brief Summary
For some people, work's a breeze: they glide effortlessly through all the office politics and back stabbing, always saying and doing the right thing, getting raises, getting promotions, getting results. What do they know that everyone else doesn't? The rules of work.
Those rules are surprisingly easy to learn -- and once you know them, they're equally easy to live by. Now, Richard Templar's brought them all together in one place: the quick, irreverent The Rules of Work: A Definitive Guide to Personal Success. Templar doesn't just show you how to LOOK more effective: he shows you how to BE more effective in today's workplace environments.
Discover how to get ahead without compromising your principles; how to project the air of confidence and energy that wins respect; how to carve out a powerful niche for yourself; how to handle conflict without alienating the warriors; how to read your corporate culture; when to speak and when to remain silent; when to stay late and when to leave early; and how to capitalize on the key moments that can supercharge your career.
Marketing Automation: Practical Steps...
Brief Summary
In today's market, it takes more than good products and services to succeed.
Successful marketing requires more precise segmentation and more sophisticated communications with customers--the lifeblood of every business--than ever before. Expertly explaining the components of marketing automation and their application and benefit to the marketing process, Marketing Automation shows you how to develop more effective and targeted direct marketing campaigns, from the planning and execution of promotions to the complete leveraging of marketing to increase your profits.
- Designed to get you quickly up to speed, you will discover:
- How to evolve complex, yet agile, customer communication strategies
- Ways to focus already limited marketing resources on the right opportunities
- Advice on viewing, tracking, and measuring results
- How to optimally use current software applications to empower you to effect stronger, more responsive marketing programs
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest f...
Brief Summary
A thought-provoking and wide-ranging exploration of machine learning and the race to build computer intelligences as flexible as our own.
In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone.
He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.
The Robot in the Next Cubicle: What Y...
Brief Summary
An optimistic and useful look at the coming convergence of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence, and how we can take advantage of this revolution in the workplace.
It’s called the Fourth Industrial Revolution–a revolution fueled by analytics and technology–that consists of data-driven smart products, services, entertainment, and new jobs. Economist and data scientist Larry Boyer lays out the wealth of exciting possibilities this revolution brings as well as the serious concerns about its disruptive impact on the lives of average Americans. Most important, he shows readers how to navigate this sea of change, pointing to strategies that will give businesses and individuals the best chance to succeed and providing a roadmap to thriving in this new economy.
Boyer describes how future workers may have to think of themselves as entrepreneurs, marketing their special talents as valuable skills that machines cannot do. This will be especially important in the coming employment climate, when full-time jobs are likely to decrease and industries move toward contract-based employment. He provides guidelines for identifying your individual talents and pursuing the training that will make you stand out. He also shows you how to promote your personal brand to give more exposure to your unique skills.
Whether we like it or not, automation will soon transform the work place and employment prospects. This book will show you how to look for and take advantage of the opportunities that this revolution presents.
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on AI, Anal...
Brief Summary
Machine learning and data analytics are powering a wave of groundbreaking technologies. Is your company ready?
If you read nothing else on how intelligent machines are revolutionizing business, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand how these technologies work together, how to adopt them, and why your strategy can't ignore them.
In this book you'll learn how:
Data science, driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, is yielding unprecedented business insights Blockchain has the potential to restructure the economy Drones and driverless vehicles are becoming essential tools 3-D printing is making new business models possible Augmented reality is transforming retail and manufacturing Smart speakers are redefining the rules of marketing Humans and machines are working together to reach new levels of productivity.
This collection of articles includes "Artificial Intelligence for the Real World," by Thomas H. Davenport and Rajeev Ronanki; "Stitch Fix's CEO on Selling Personal Style to the Mass Market," by Katrina Lake; "Algorithms Need Managers, Too," by Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan; "Marketing in the Age of Alexa," by Niraj Dawar; "Why Every Organization Needs an Augmented Reality Strategy," by Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann; "Drones Go to Work," by Chris Anderson; "The Truth About Blockchain," by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani; "The 3-D Printing Playbook," by Richard A. D’Aveni; "Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces," by H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty; "When Your Boss Wears Metal Pants," by Walter Frick; and "Managing Our Hub Economy," by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani.
The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering ...
A new classic, cited by leaders and media around the globe as a highly recommended read for anyone interested in innovation.
In The Innovator’s DNA, authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and bestselling author Clayton Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, How Will You Measure Your Life?) build on what we know about disruptive innovation to show how individuals can develop the skills necessary to move progressively from idea to impact.
By identifying behaviors of the world’s best innovators—from leaders at Amazon and Apple to those at Google, Skype, and Virgin Group—the authors outline five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting.
Once you master these competencies (the authors provide a self-assessment for rating your own innovator’s DNA), the authors explain how to generate ideas, collaborate to implement them, and build innovation skills throughout the organization to result in a competitive edge. This innovation advantage will translate into a premium in your company’s stock price—an innovation premium—which is possible only by building the code for innovation right into your organization’s people, processes, and guiding philosophies.
Practical and provocative, The Innovator’s DNA is an essential resource for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovative prowess.
Audiobook: The Art of War by Sun Tzu ...
THE ART OF WAR is game theory from the year 514 B.C. This pure English translation lists the 13 Chapters in bare form for the reader to review and contemplate Sun Tzu’s teachings as it applies to their life. The book includes wisdom for any aspiring leader.
Just as President Johnson controlled the Senate by controlling little steps of the process, THE ART OF WAR is divided into 13 chapters covering all the steps of battle, be it in the office or across continents. Topics include, “Five Essentials for Victory,” “Tactical Dispositions,” “Maneuvering,” and many more.
No student of influence should be without this historic philosophy book on leadership.
The Rules of Life: A Personal Code fo...
Brief Summary
Think about the world’s happiest, most contented, most fulfilled people...
How’d they get that way? Is it their genes? No. Money? Absolutely not.
It’s about the small choices they make, every day.
Things you can do. Things you can change.
It’s about what they know and you can learn:
The Rules of Life .
Here they are:
100 personal, practical rules for dreaming, planning, living, loving, and overcoming even life’s toughest adversities...
For knowing what matters... learning from experience...using your intuition... changing what you can...de-stressing... staying younger... getting stronger.
Read ’em. Learn ’em. Live ’em.
You’ll feel better. You’ll live better.
You’ll be a better friend, partner, parent, child, human being.
You’ll do it: one small, simple step at a time.
One step a day, every day. Starting today.
Introduction xi
Part I: Rules for You 1
Part II: Partnership Rules 105
Part III: Family and Friends Rules 141
Part IV: Social Rules 171
Part V: World Rules 201
