Business Book Talk Business Book Talk

Spring Break has sprung and as we do every year, to give us the time to play with the kids and forget a bit about work, we are republishing a popular  interview from past seasons.

Widgets

The 12 New Rules for Managing Your Employees as if They’re Real People

By Rodd Wagner

New York Times bestselling author Rodd Wagner tackles one of the most destructive problems facing organizations today-the breakdown of the relationship between employees and the organizations they work for.

With this declaration, one of the leading authorities on employee performance rolls up his sleeves against the weasel words, contradictions, bad habits, and intrusions that reduce people to -human resources.- To -FTEs.- To -human capital.- To flesh-and-blood widgets.

Armed with empirical evidence from the provocative studies he leads around the globe, Wagner guides you through the new realities of what it takes to get the highest levels of intensity from people in a more mercenary, skeptical, and wired work world. He explains how elements such as individualization, fearlessness, transparency, recognition, and coolness are reciprocated with loyalty, productivity, innovation, and–inescapably–corporate reputation.

More info Here:

http://www.widgetstheblog.com/widgets-the-book/

Have a great break and see you in a couple of weeks.

Spark

How to Lead Yourself and Others to Greater Success

by Angie Morgan, Courtney Lynch, Sean Lynch

Leadership isn’t about a job title, it’s about action and behavior. In SPARK, entrepreneurs, business consultants and military Veterans Angie Morgan, Courtney Lynch, and Sean Lynch show how anyone can become an extraordinary leader by embracing seven key behaviors.

Many people believe that leaders are the rare few at the upper echelons of a business or other enterprise. But the truth is leaders can be found at any level of an organization. These are the Sparks – the doers, thinkers, innovators, and key influencers who are catalysts for personal and organizational change. Sparks aren’t defined by the place they hold on an organizational chart. They are defined by their actions, commitment, and will.

SPARK’s insights were hard-earned by its authors, Angie Morgan (Marine Corps), Courtney Lynch (Marine Corps), and Sean Lynch (Air Force), who today are sought-after consultants and keynote speakers, through their firm Lead Star, due to the relevant, engaging way they help individuals re-imagine themselves as leaders so they can reach their true potential.

Not only does SPARK provide you with the encouragement and motivation to be a leader, it also offers online resources that will further support your leadership development. With SPARK as a blueprint, anyone can become a catalyst for change, and any organization can identify and develop Sparks.

The Reid Method

A Blueprint for Achieving Sales Mastery

by Everold Reid

Success in sales is tougher than ever to achieve. There is more competition and customers have more choice, information, and advanced technology available to them than ever. Sometimes it seems that they know more about your product or service and the competition than most salespeople!

Do you ever feel that you can’t keep pace? Would you like a step-by-step blueprint to teach you the secrets that the sales pros jealously guard? Learn how to master sales in weeks – instead of trial and error over the years.

No matter what industry you sell in, whether automotive, financial, technology, healthcare, real estate or b2b – the products may be different, but the needs and buying habits of your customers always come first!

By using this blueprint for achieving sales mastery, you make the difference in when a sale closes, or whether a prospect converts to a long term valued client. These techniques are proven, but require a commitment to continuous improvement as a sales professional.

Learn from the author’s twenty-five years of experience in automotive retail sales, advertising and real estate marketing. The Reid Method offers salespeople from rookies to top performers (and everyone in between) valuable tips & techniques to improve how they manage the sales process to get results faster.

All Dreams on Deck

Charting the Course for Your Life and Work

by Jeremy Cage

Set sail for the adventure of your life and work!

As Katie Couric, journalist, author and Yahoo Global News Anchor attests, “Jeremy Cage has written a great book that everyone who thinks about how to better balance work-life issues would benefit from reading….he’s also shown us how to better navigate life’s personal and professional challenges.”

All Dreams on Deck will help you articulate your most important dreams in work and life and will then give you a practical approach for realizing those dreams. Through engaging, real-life examples, you will be inspired to live life to your full potential.

Author Jeremy Cage, President of the Cage Group, begins with the premise that there is no such thing as work-life balance. There is only life balance,of which work is an important part. With this as the foundation, he will guide you through a simple and actionable approach to determining the most important components of your life,the Grab Bags in your LifeBoat,then chart the course to making all the dreams in that LifeBoat a reality.

Jeremy, who has lived and worked in nine countries, has used this approach to help thousands of executives, managers, and their teams unleash their potential. He has also realized his own dreams by taking a sixteen-month sabbatical to sail around the world with his family before returning to the US to launch several exciting new companies. So rather than theoretical mumbo jumbo, Jeremy presents compelling, real-life examples of how to dream specifically, get highly intentional about those dreams, plan and prepare well then summon the courage to set sail.

Fix It

Getting Accountability Right

by Roger Connors, Tom Smith, Craig Hickman, Tracy Skousen, Marcus Nicolls

The hugely popular bestselling authors of The Oz Principle take readers to the next level of experiencing the results of personal and team accountability by revealing the sixteen accountability traits that lie at the heart of success for individuals and organizations. They also provide practical advice on how to “fix it” and get back on track for turning in the kinds of results that make careers and transform organizations.

Since it was originally published in 1994, The Oz Principle has become the worldwide bible on accountability. Now Roger Connors and Tom Smith, along with field practitioners Craig Hickman, Tracy Skousen, and Marcus Nicolls, add another important plank in The Oz Principle series.

In Fix It, the authors present the startling results of their Workplace Accountability Study—conducted over three years, involving more than forty thousand participants from organizations across the globe: the most comprehensive study on workplace accountability ever conducted.

When accountability is not working on the job, in the team or the organization as a whole, everyone is left asking how to fix it. Using never-before-published research and firsthand stories and practices from more than one hundred respected global executives, Fix It provides a practical and definitive guide that will become the troubleshooting handbook of choice, designed to assist the reader in knowing exactly how to fix it and get real results.

The Analytical Marketer

How to Transform Your Marketing Organization

by Adele Sweetwood

Analytics are driving big changes, not only in what marketing departments do but in how they are organized, staffed, led, and run. Leaders are grappling with issues that range from building an analytically driven marketing organization and determining the kinds of structure and talent that are needed to leading interactions with IT, finance, and sales and creating a unified view of the customer.

The Analytical Marketer provides critical insight into the changing marketing organization—digital, agile, and analytical—and the tools for reinventing it.

Written by the head of global marketing for SAS, The Analytical Marketer is based on the author’s firsthand experience of transforming a marketing organization from “art” to “art and science.” Challenged and inspired by their company’s own analytics products, the SAS marketing team was forced to rethink itself in order to take advantage of the new capabilities that those tools offer the modern marketer.

Key marketers and managers at SAS tell their stories alongside the author’s candid lessons learned as she led the marketing organization’s transformation. With additional examples from other leading companies, this book is a practical guide and set of best practices for creating a new marketing culture that thrives on and adds value through data and analytics.