Success Business Management

There are only two paths in life: average and awesome. The average path is easy because all you have to do is nothing. The awesome path is more challenging, because things like fear only bother you when you do work that matters. The good news is Start gives listeners practical, actionable insights to be more awesome, more often.

From two leaders in executive education at Harvard Business School, here are the mental habits and proven strategies you need to achieve outstanding results in any negotiation.

In True North: Emerging Leaders Edition, renowned leadership expert Bill George and Millennial tech entrepreneur Zach Clayton issue the challenge to emerging leaders—from Gen X to Millennials and Gen Z—to lead their organizations authentically through never-ending crises to make this world a better place for everyone. This edition is filled with stories from successful leaders such as Merck's Ken Frazier to PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, and emerging leaders like OneTrust's Kabir Barday on how they overcame great challenges to build highly successful organizations.

As an incredible glass-ceiling breaker and the woman who brought timeless television shows like The Game and Being Mary Jane to cable, Debra Lee has been the visionary responsible for elevating Black images and storytelling for decades. Now she’s telling her own story, in an intimate and eye-opening tale about the triumphant and tricky moments of a career in entertainment.

Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is Harvey Mackay's last word on how to get what you want from the world through networking. For everyone from the sales rep facing a career-making deal to the entrepreneur in search of capital, Dig Your Well explains how meeting these needs should be no more than a few calls away.

What passes for strategy in too many businesses, government agencies, and military operations is a toxic mix of wishful thinking and a jumble of incoherent policies. Richard P. Rumelt’s breakthrough concept is that leaders become effective strategists when they focus on challenges rather than goals, pinpointing the crux of their pivotal challenge—the aspect that is both surmountable and promises the greatest progress—and taking decisive, coherent action to overcome it.

Do you have the power to get things done? Your ability to lead and influence others is based on your power. Power is a complex combination of one’s knowledge, expressiveness, history, character, and attraction, as well as one’s resources, position, network, and reputation. Understanding the sources of power and knowing how to amass it is the ultimate key to success.

It's about the stuff you learn when you've worked for a boss you'd swear jumped out of a Dilbert cartoon; worked in a business whose performance careened up and down like a runaway clown car; faced legal or ethical problems that needed the wisdom of Solomon to sort out while they roiled your guts at night; and sat on the stand across from some third-rate Perry Mason or tried to be one yourself.

If there's one lesson Oren Klaff has learned over decades of pitching, presenting, and closing long-shot, high-stakes deals, it's that people are sick of being marketed and sold to. Most of all, they hate being told what to think. The more you push them, the more they resist. What people love, however, is coming up with a great idea on their own, even if it's the idea you were guiding them to have all along. Often, the only way to get someone to sign is to make them feel like they're smarter than you.

In Boundaries for Leaders, Dr. Henry Cloud gives leaders the tools and techniques they need to achieve the performance they desire - in their organizations and in themselves. Drawing on the latest findings from neuroscience, Dr. Cloud shows why it's critical for leaders to set the conditions that make people's brains perform at their highest levels. How do great leaders do this? One way is through the creation of "boundaries" - structures that determine what will exist and what will not.

The major difference between achieving people and average people is their perception of and response to failure. John C. Maxwell takes a closer look at failure - and reveals that the secret of moving beyond failure is to use it as a lesson and a stepping-stone. He covers the top reasons people fail and shows how to master fear instead of being mastered by it. Listeners will discover that positive benefits can accompany negative experiences - if you have the right attitude.

People - friends, family members, work colleagues, salespeople - lie to us all the time. Daily, hourly, constantly. None of us is immune, and all of us are victims. According to studies by several different researchers, most of us encounter nearly 200 lies a day. Now there’s something we can do about it. Liespotting links three disciplines - facial recognition training, interrogation training, and a comprehensive survey of research in the field - into a specialized body of information developed specifically to help business leaders detect deception....

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies - neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.

As a workplace strategist and business coach, Erica Keswin has spent over 20 years working with top business leaders and executives to build successful organizations that honor relationships. Featuring case studies from top brands such as, Lyft, Starbucks, Mogul, and SoulCycle, to name a few, Bring Your Human to Work distills the key practices of the most human companies into applicable advice that any business leader can use to build a “human workplace”.

Overwhelmed. Do you wake up in the morning already feeling behind? Does the pressure of keeping it all together make you feel anxious and irritable? Tanya Dalton, CEO and productivity expert, offers you a liberating shift in perspective: Feeling overwhelmed isn't the result of having too much to do - it's from not knowing where to start. Doing less might seem counterintuitive, but doing less is more productive, because you’re concentrating on the work you actually want to be doing.

4DX® is not theory. It is a proven set of practices that represents a new way of thinking essential to thriving in today’s competitive climate, making this 2nd edition a book that no business leader can afford to miss. The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) is a simple, repeatable, and proven formula for executing your most important strategic priorities in the midst of the whirlwind. By following the 4 Disciplines, leaders can produce breakthrough results, even when executing the strategy requires a significant change in behavior from their teams.

In 1999, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr invested nearly $12 million in a startup that had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. Doerr introduced the founders to OKRs and with them at the foundation of their management, the startup grew from 40 employees to more than 70,000 with a market cap exceeding $600 billion. The startup was Google.

The EOS Life will help you to discover, clarify, and customize the life you want to live: one where you do what you love every day, with the people you love doing it with — while at the same time making a huge difference and impact, getting compensated very well for doing it, and still having plenty of time to pursue other passions, hobbies, and interests that energize you.

While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember 20 years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children?

Singletasking explains exactly how to clear and calm your mind, arrange your schedule and environment, and gently yet firmly manage the expectations of people around you so that you can accomplish a succession of tasks one by one - and be infinitely more productive. Singletasking is the secret to success and sanity.