Leadership & Business Growth Books for January 2012

Here are our top picks for the best leadership and business growth reading this month.

What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation by Gary Hamel

This is not a book about one thing. It’s not a 250-page dissertation on leadership, teams or motivation. Instead, it’s an agenda for building organizations that can flourish in a world of diminished hopes, relentless change and ferocious competition.

This is not a book about doing better. It’s not a manual for people who want to tinker at the margins. Instead, it’s an impassioned plea to reinvent management as we know it—to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about capitalism, organizational life, and the meaning of work.

Leaders today confront a world where the unprecedented is the norm. Wherever one looks, one sees the exceptional and the extraordinary:

• Business newspapers decrying the state of capitalism.
• Once-innovative companies struggling to save off senescence.
• Next gen employees shunning blue chips for social start-ups.
• Corporate miscreants getting pilloried in the blogosphere.
• Entry barriers tumbling in what were once oligopolistic strongholds.
• Hundred year-old business models being rendered irrelevant overnight.
• Newbie organizations crowdsourcing their most creative work.
• National governments lurching towards bankruptcy.
• Investors angrily confronting greedy CEOs and complacent boards.
• Newly omnipotent customers eagerly wielding their power.
• Social media dramatically transforming the way human beings connect, learn and collaborate.

Obviously, there are lots of things that matter now. But in a world of fractured certainties and battered trust, some things matter more than others. While the challenges facing organizations are limitless; leadership bandwidth isn’t. That’s why you have to be clear about what really matters now. What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead? Hamel identifies five issues are that are paramount: values, innovation, adaptability, passion and ideology. In doing so he presents an essential agenda for leaders everywhere who are eager to…

• move from defense to offense
• reverse the tide of commoditization
• defeat bureaucracy
• astonish their customers
• foster extraordinary contribution
• capture the moral high ground
• outrun change
• build a company that’s truly fit for the future

Concise and to the point, the book will inspire you to rethink your business, your company and how you lead.

Smart Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey

“Smart Trust is without doubt one of the most powerful and seminal books of our age” (Warren Bennis).

After illustrating the global relevance of trust with his book The Speed of Trust by selling more than one million copies in twenty-two languages, Stephen M. R. Covey again illuminates the hidden power of trust to change lives and impact organizations in Smart Trust. In a compelling and readable style, he and long-time business partner Greg Link share enlightening principles and anecdotes of people and organizations that are not only achieving unprecedented prosperity from high-trust relationships and cultures but—even more inspiring—also attaining elevated levels of energy and joy.

The sustainable success these leaders and enterprises are exhibiting is paradoxically being produced in what has proved to be the lowest trust climate in years, if not decades. Smart Trust shows what they are doing and the five actions they are commonly taking to prosper, against the odds, in the same circumstances causing so many others to fail.

With penetrating insights illuminated by their unique access to many of the world’s most successful leaders and organizations, the authors lay out a breakthrough process and skill set in a practical and actionable formula that makes trust a performance multiplier for leaders, teams, organizations, and even countries. They show why trust is fast becoming the most consequential life and leadership skill of our time—a career-critical competency required to navigate and compete in this perilous twenty-first-century interdependent, global economy. Covey and Link teach how to cut through traditional either/or thinking to extend “Smart Trust,” enabling you to exercise sound judgment in a low-trust world by minimizing risk and maximizing possibilities.

Smart Trust has met the strict scrutiny of business leaders around the globe and is validated by research from multiple sources that confirms that high-trust organizations outperform low-trust organizations by nearly three times. Smart Trust shares findings that verify how enduring success, vitality, and happiness are directly related to the level of trust in our relationships—whether in our professional or personal lives.

The Shaping Of An Effective Leader by Gayle D. Beebe

Leadership is both an art and a science.

We may be tempted to look for a sure-fire formula, but the reality is quite different: effective leaders are exceptional generalists rather than narrow specialists. The best leaders take what the best business experts have to offer, and apply that based on their own abilities, experience and judgment. And these leaders seek real-life mentors and learn from them.

Gayle Beebe, who has spent over a decade as a college president, had the opportunity to study with Peter Drucker, the father of modern management and the author of The Effective Executive. Drawing on Drucker’s influence as well as his own years of experiences as a pastor, administrator and president, Beebe has developed a pyramid of leadership principles. The combination of these defines a leader of influence and integrity.

In these pages you’ll also meet some of Beebe’s other mentors: Steve Sample of USC, Harold A. “Red” Poling of Ford Motor Company, Richard Foster of Renovaré, David McKenna of Asbury Seminary and Bob Emmons of Smart&Final.

In a day of relentless self-direction, strong leaders have a critical role. With this book you can discover what it takes to be effective in your sphere of influence.

Amplified Leadership: 5 Practices To Establish Influence , Build People and Impact Others For A Lifetime by Dan Reiland

The leaders you develop today will determine your ministry’s future.

If you want your ministry to reach its maximum potential, all that God wants for you, it is essential that you develop strong leaders. In Amplified Leadership, “pastor’s coach” Dan Reiland gives you a proven process for developing new leaders that are established spiritually and trained practically.

Not just a checklist of things you should do, Amplified Leadershipprovides an intentional development process that starts with your relationships and ends with empowered leaders who are ready to make an impact. With personal examples and proven advice, Reiland gives you the tools you need to:

• Establish relationships
• Engage followers
• Embrace and equip team members
• Coach your apprentices
• Mentor new leaders

The ability to develop leaders is a life-changing gift. When you successfully empower and release people to leadership, you give them the opportunity to fulfill their potential and advance the mission of the church.

Taking People With You: The Only Way To Make Big Things Happen by David Novak

“This is the best, most practical hands-on book on leadership I’ve ever read. If you apply these principles, your career and the people you work with will flourish.” —Dr. Bob Rotell a, sports psychologist

David Novak learned long ago that you can’t lead a great organization of any size without getting your people aligned, enthusiastic, and focused relentlessly on the mission. But how do you do that? There are countless leadership books, but how many will actually help a Taco Bell shift manager, a Fortune 500 CEO, a new entrepreneur, or anyone in between?

Over his fifteen years at Yum! Brands, Novak has developed a trademarked program he calls Taking People with You. He spends several weeks each year personally teaching it to thousands of managers around the world. He convinces them that they’ll never make big things happen until they learn how to get people on their side. No skill in business is more important. AndYum!’s extraordinary success (at least 13 percent growth for each of the last nine years) proves his point.

Novak knows that managers don’t need leadership platitudes or business school theories. So he cuts right to the chase with a step-by- step guide to setting big goals, getting people to work together, blowing past your targets, and celebrating after you shock the skeptics. And then doing it again and again until consistent excellence becomes a core element of your culture.

This book has specific tools at the end of each chapter that will challenge you to reflect on how you’re really doing on key aspects of leadership. And if you apply it, you’ll immediately start to improve.