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Reading List |
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You can learn a lot from
good
books. The discounts marked on some covers are from www.chapters.indigo.ca |
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The Game Changer A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan
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Read this book and get a huge list of new ideas on how you can help your strategic clients grow and prosper. A. G. Lafley and his leadership team have integrated innovation into everything P&G does and created new customers and new markets. Through eye-opening stories A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan show how P&G and companies such as Honeywell, Nokia, LEGO, GE, HP, and DuPont have become game-changers. Their inspiring lessons can help you learn how to:
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 Strengths Based LeadershipGreat Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow Tom Rath and Barry Conchie
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Great team leadership is essential for strategic client success. This book focuses on how you can leverage each person's unique strengths for client growth and development. Nearly a decade ago, Gallup unveiled the results of a landmark 30-year research project that ignited a global conversation on the topic of strengths. More than 3 million people have since taken Gallup's StrengthsFinder assessment, which forms the core of several books on this topic, including the #1 international bestseller StrengthsFinder 2.0. In recent years, while continuing to learn more about strengths, Gallup scientists have also been examining decades of data on the topic of leadership. They studied more than 1 million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, and even interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to ask exactly why they followed the most important leader in their life. In Strengths Based Leadership, #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Rath and renowned leadership consultant Barry Conchie reveal the results of this research. Based on their discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others' strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership. A unique access code (enclosed in the back of this book) allows you to take a new leadership version of Gallup's StrengthsFinder program. The new version of this program provides you with specific strategies for leading with your top five strengths and enables you to plot the strengths of your team based on the four domains of leadership strength revealed in the book. |
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 All for One 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships Andrew Sobel |
This book outlines and excellent approach to client development for sustained business growth in today's tough economic environment. Corporate clients are putting relentless pressure on their professional advisors. They want more value and better service. They are consolidating the number of firms that they are willing to work with. They are scrutinizing, more than ever, the fees they pay. To respond, service firms must turn individual relationships into broad-based, institutional ones and build a collaborative culture that mobilizes the right people, ideas, and resources—from across the organization—into each client relationship. The goal is to build a trusted partnership that adds value, reduces risk, and creates stability for both your clients and your firm. Based on a five-year study of leading firms in professional services and other advice-based businesses, relationship authority Andrew Sobel has created a comprehensive guide to developing what he calls "Level 6" clients—those flagship relationships that are broad, deep, and endure for many years. In Sobel's first book, Clients for Life, he laid out a clear path to take you from expert-for-hire to trusted client advisor. All for One takes you and your firm to the next level—trusted partner—with practical advice illustrated by more than 100 examples of best practices from the world's top services firms. |
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Practice of Adaptive LeadershipTools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky |
This book gives you access to six decades of management experience which is essential for successful change management. It's not and easy read, but it's a worthwhile investment of you time. We live in a time of danger and opportunity. Individuals, organizations, communities, and countries must continuously adapt to new realities just to survive. Wanting more, wanting to thrive even under constantly shifting and often perilous conditions, people in all sectors are called on to lead with the courage and skill to challenge the status quo, deploy themselves with agility, and mobilize others to step into the unknown. Heifetz and Linsky, joined by Alexander Grashow, have distilled the learning from their combined sixty-plus years of leadership consulting, teaching, and training around the globe into a practical, hands-on guide to making your leadership both more effective and more powerful. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership will help you think more clearly and execute better in a constantly shifting environment. It offers a comprehensive and systematic approach to candidly assessing the situation and yourself, and then taking action. Its wisdom and advice are drawn from the experiences of people like you, committed to advancing what you care about most.
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Power of 2 Wagner and Muller
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Here is another worthwhile read based on Gallup's research and the StrengthFinder. Understanding the issues of creating successful partnerships is essential for strategic client development. Many of the greatest accomplishments can be reached only by two people working together. Tenzing and Hillary were the first to scale Mt. Everest. Malone and Stockton were the key to each other's success on the basketball court. Eisner was never as effective at Disney without Wells. But while some partnerships reach great heights, others fall short. Why do some people click while others clash? What do great pairs have in common? And what can you learn from the most powerful partnerships to strengthen collaboration in your work and personal life? Power of 2 details the eight elements that prepare partners to succeed in their most important endeavors. Rodd Wagner, coauthor of the bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing, and Gallup World Poll leader Dr. Gale Muller share the science and the secrets of successful collaboration. Mixing key insights about human nature, field-tested discoveries, and inspiring stories of partnerships that reached the pinnacle, Power of 2 will change the way you think about working with someone else.
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LEADERSHIP in the Era of ECONOMIC
UNCERTAINTY Ram Charan
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Here is a book written a few months ago, and published for guidance in today's uncertain economy. It's a fast read for people who need to execute now. Business Advisor Ram Charan demonstrates the importance of a high sense of urgency and describes steps you can take right now to steer your organization successfully in uncertain times. You'll find practical techniques that will help you cope with:
Great business thinkers like Ram Charan see opportunity in chaos. His innovative, commonsense way of approaching problems has made him one of the world's most sought-after consultants. Here, he provides help to leaders at every level, from the CEO to department heads and team leaders in finance, marketing, sales, and manufacturing. |
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What the CUSTOMER Wants You to Know Ram Charan |
Here is another fast read for action oriented people from Ram Charan. Strategic Account Management is a high priority and proven strategy for success during an "Era of Economic Uncertainty". This book is essential reading for leaders at all levels and especially strategic account managers. It reinforces everything we have talked about in terms of how you and your account teams can execute "value creation selling" to help clients grow their clients. Ram Charan provides a clear list of actions that need to be executed immediately for success in challenging times and positioning for the longer-term.
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HOW Dov Seidman |
The flood of information and unprecedented transparency reshaping today's business world has dramatically changed the rules for retaining and managing strategic accounts. It's no longer what you do that sets you apart from others, but how you do what you do. "Whats" are commodities, easily duplicated or reverse-engineered. Sustainable advantage and enduring success ... for both companies and the people who work for them ... now lie in the realm of "how," the new frontier of conduct. For more than a decade, Dov Seidman has helped some of the world's most respected companies build "do it right," winning cultures that differentiate them from competitors in the minds of clients.
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Outliers Malcolm Gladwell
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Why do some people succeed far more than others? There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them — at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. The story of success is more complex — and a lot more interesting — than it initially appears. The lives of outliers — those people whose achievements fall outside normal experience — follow a peculiar and unexpected logic, and in making that logic plain Gladwell presents a fascinating and provocative blueprint for making the most of human potential. If you're interested in positioning strategy, this is a very entertaining read.
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What the CEO Wants You to Know Ram Charan |
How different is it to run a big company than to sell fruit from a cart or run a small shop in a village? In essence, not very, according to Ram Charan. The best CEOs have a knack for bringing the most complex business down to fundamentals. They have business acumen ... the ability to focus on the basics and make money for the company. What the CEO Wants You to Know captures these insights and explains in clear, simple language how to do what great CEOs do instinctively and persistently. This is a great book for strategic account teams to work through in order to craft new and unique business strategies to help clients grow their clients.
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Judgment Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis |
Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have each spent decades studying and teaching leadership and advising top CEOs such as Jack Welch and Howard Schultz. Now, in their first collaboration, they offer a powerful framework for making tough calls when the stakes are high and the right path is far from obvious. They show how to recognize the critical moment before a judgment call, when swift and decisive action is essential, and also how to execute a decision after the call. |
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 The Age Curve Kenneth W. Gronbach |
In business, one thing is certain: What worked 15 years ago won't work today, and what works today will at some point in the future fall flat. This book lets you in on the best ways to position your business to roll with the changing populations of ripe consumers... including how to succeed despite the looming challenges posed by the relatively small Generation X, and leverage the huge opportunities afforded by the massive young Generation Y. |
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 Confronting Reality By Bossidy & Charan |
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 How To Sell at
Margins Higher Than Your Competitors Lawrence Steinmetz and William Brooks |
How to Sell at Higher Margins than Your Competitors highlights profitable sales truths to assist us in selling for maximum return. This book is well researched, logical and affirming words validate the simple fact that as a premium company we deserve premium margins. |
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Think Better Tim Hurson |
Think Better is a really profitable read. It opens our eyes to how with a little bit of effort, we can significantly increase our creative and innovative potential. The book is very well written and organized, easy to understand, and lots of fun. The techniques are great for facilitating group planning sessions. |
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Know-How: |
Here is another great read on General Management from Ram Charan, one of
the world's top executive advisors and coaches. Ram's priorities focus
on what you have to do to effectively execute business initiatives.
These include: 1. Finding ideas that meet customer needs 2. Detecting patterns in the complex external world 3. Getting the right people together 4. Calibrating people and matching them to the job 5. Molding effective business teams 6. Setting realistic business goals 7. Setting laser-sharp priorities 8. Dealing with forces beyond the market. |
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Hot, Flat and Crowded Thomas L, Friedman |
Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world's middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is "hot, flat, and crowded." Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things--unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green. | |
Mavericks at Work William C. Taylor & Polly LaBarre
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Taylor co-founded Fast Company magazine and LaBarre was a senior editor. Together they have researched today's business priorities with special emphasis on open-source approaches to building value.
Useful Links to understand open-sourcing potential for new ideas: NineSigma enables clients to source innovative ideas, technologies, products and services from outside their organizations quickly and inexpensively by connecting them to the best innovators and solution providers from around the world. Solvers - Join the InnoCentive community to apply your expert knowledge and creativity to InnoCentive Challenges™ that span a wide variety of domains. Challenges are posted by Seeker organizations eager to present their toughest problems to thousands of the world's most creative minds, and offer rewards of up to $100,000 for the best solution. TopCoder is an organization that operates software development competitions and taps into some of the best software developers around the world. Dr. John Sullivan runs the human resources management program at San Francisco State University and advises several leading companies on HR strategies. The website has a wealth of resources and advice for planning HR strategy. |
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The Future of Management
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Gary Hamel is one of the leading management thinkers in the world. He makes the point that most management practices of today originated over 100 years ago and are out of date in many situations. He emphasizes that management innovation is the only sustainable competitive advantage in today's hyper-competitive world markets. Key questions for the management innovation agenda are: 1. How can you broaden the scope of employee freedom by managing less, without sacrificing focus, discipline and order? 2. How can you create a company where the spirit of community, rather than the machinery of bureaucracy, binds people together? 3. How can you enlarge the sense of mission that people feel throughout your organization in a way that justifies extraordinary contribution? |
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 The Elements of Great Managing Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter
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This book is based on Gallup's research into employee engagement. It is a must read for people leading and managing teams. It focuses on how to leverage Gallup's 12 key questions that measure employee engagement. This book suggests some good approaches for applying Gallup's StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment tool. For more information visit:
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Small Giants
Bo Burlingham |
Here is some research that's really important for private companies. Good to Great by Jim Collins talked about the priorities eleven public companies followed to move from being good performers to being great performers. All are big well known companies. Big is not necessarily great. Small Giants chronicles how fourteen private companies have become great performers in their chosen markets. They managed size and focus to provide their owners and employees with a fulfilling career and balanced life. |
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StrengthFinder 2.0
NOW, DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS |
The StrengthFinder is a great tool for career planning and building teams with complementary talents. The test highlights each person's top five talents and provides a list of instructions on how each person can leverage these strengths on a daily basis. The objective is to position yourself in career assignments where everyday you do what you do best. Focusing on personal strengths is the key to a happy and successful career. Most performance management systems focus on people's weaknesses. Most weaknesses are due to people not having the essential talents for a particular position. This book suggests various approaches for working around talent gaps. Many participants in the Knowledge Based Selling Program at York University have taken this test with good results and are using it planning their careers.
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CHANGE OR DIE |
Change or Die deconstructs and debunks age-old myths about change and empowers us with three critical keys - relate, repeat, and reframe - to help us make important positive changes in our lives. This book documents some of the most remarkable change situations you will ever come across. In fact, the odds are nine to one that, when people like us are faced with a dire need to change we won't.
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Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve
Exponential Growth |
This book details seven essential priorities to position and lead a
business for exceptional growth. It is based on research on over 350
U.S. companies that went public since 1980 and grew revenues to over
$1Billion. The seven growth essentials can be applied to businesses of
all sizes and include: 1. Creating a breakthrough value proposition 2. Exploiting high growth market segments 3. Developing strategic customers 4. Building alliances for leverage 5. Achieving solid bottom line results from the outset 6. Leading with a balanced external-internal focus 7. Inviting outside experts to join the board. |
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Managing Global Accounts |
So you thought managing strategic accounts was difficult, Read Managing Global Accounts. Noel Capon, from Columbia University, and his colleagues have spelled out the nine critical factors for success in global account management. Capon also authored a book on Key Account Management. This latest book is a really great review of the critical success factors for strategic account management that we have all talked about but with a global perspective. The critical success factors include:
What this really boils down to is execution is the #1 priority in strategic account management. Good luck! |
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Competition Demystified |
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 Blue Ocean Strategy
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 Angel Customers & Demon Customers By: Selden & Colvin |
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 First, Break All The Rules |
One of the best
business
books for giving you insights into how you affect your own
career is First, Break All The Rules, by Marcus
Buckingham and Curt Coffman. It includes a quiz, where you rate
yourself from 5 -- strongly agree, to 1, on 12 aspects of how
you fit your organization.
Here are three questions, to give you an idea of what Buckingham and Coffman are driving at. I've added some comments by me on what I've learned from the thousands of sales professionals who have attended my courses, either at York University or customized and presented inside their own companies. Often, the people I've helped educate tell me that taking my courses is part of a major change program in how their sales departments are managed, and now their answers to these kinds of questions are much more positive than they would have been under the old management style. |
Looking deeper into
FIRST, BREAK ALL THE RULES
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The GE Work-Out |
· The GE Work-Out provides hands-on examples and case histories to help you implement GE's heralded Work-Out methodology in your organization. · Written by GE employees and consultants who were key partners in the creation and rollout of GE's original Work-Out program and unique in that it addresses Work-Out from both perspectives. · This no-nonsense book will help you develop a realistic understanding of what Work-Out can and can't do, as well as the attitudes that must be in place throughout any organization before Work-Out can be successful. |
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LEADERSHIP in the Era of ECONOMIC
UNCERTAINTY Ram Charan
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Here is a book just written and published for guidance in today's uncertain economy. It's a fast read for people who need to execute now. Business Advisor Ram Charan demonstrates the importance of a high sense of urgency and describes steps you can take right now to steer your organization successfully in uncertain times. You'll find practical techniques that will help you cope with:
Great business thinkers like Ram Charan see opportunity in chaos. His innovative, commonsense way of approaching problems has made him one of the world's most sought-after consultants. Here, he provides help to leaders at every level, from the CEO to department heads and team leaders in finance, marketing, sales, and manufacturing. |
 Execution By: Bossidy & Charan |
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 Discover Your Sales Strengths By Smith & Rutigliano |
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For more information, contact Brian Smith at BrianSmith@BrianHarrisonSmith.com
Updated December 2009 |
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