Once, there was a remarkable person who led with love. Her company succeeded where its competitors struggled. Its customers were loyal, its employees loved to work there, and it was profitable year after year, for decades. This loving leader began her career as an executive secretary, yet the company's founder chose her to succeed him as president. When asked why, he said, "Because she knows how to love people to success." She is Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines. Lead with LUV is an extraordinary, wide-ranging conversation between Barrett and the legendary Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager. Drawing on personal experience, Barrett and Blanchard reveal why leading with love is the most powerful way to lead and how it can help you achieve truly amazing levels of performance. Discover: What "love" really means in the organizational context. Why leading with love is not "soft" management! How to use redirection and tough love to handle inappropriate behavior or performance. Why "servant leadership" is love in action, and how to make it work. How to build the compelling vision and culture that sustains leadership with love.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 2011A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 TitleOne of The Economist’s 2011 Books of the Year One of The Wall Steet Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields—including economics, medicine, and politics—but until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book.In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.

Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best book ever written on business" (Weekly Standard). "I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?" With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities—his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission—but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers—numbers!—collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors. What these geek numbers show—no, prove—is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. Billy paid attention to those numbers —with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to—and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win...how can we not cheer for David?"One of the best baseball—and management—books out....Deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame."—Forbes

Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths. To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in 2001 which ignited a global conversation and helped millions to discover their top five talents. In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades. Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself--and the world around you--forever. Available exclusively in StrengthsFinder 2.0:(using the unique access code included with each book) * A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment * A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year * A more customized version of your top five theme report * 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)

HE SAYS, SHE SAYS: “How Can We Do Business?” It’s no surprise that communicating with the opposite sex can be tricky. Hidden in the glitches are often misleading assumptions about each gender that beg for help. Finally, help is here. Learn the secrets to accurately reading between the gender lines, and uncover a new edge for your business—the power to effectively talk business and successfully network with the opposite sex. See the research at BusinessNetworkingandSex.com: 12,000 + business professionals weigh in on the opposite sex—see what they had to say. ”Ivan Misner’s insightful work explores how to best understand the similarities and differences between the sexes and what that means for your business relationships. Don’t let your gender hinder your networking ability!”Harvey Mackay, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive ”Networking is about relationships, plain and simple. Understanding the opposite sex in a new and positive light is the key to building lasting business relationships for increasing success. The sooner you read Business Networking and Sex, the sooner you will achieve success.”John Gray, bestselling author of Men are From Mars and Women are from Venus ”Impeccably researched, backed up by hard-hitting statistics, filled with laugh-out-loud humor, and packed with cutting-edge information on how to take your networking results to the next level—Business Networking and Sex is the must-have networking guide for the 21st century.”Jack Canfield, bestselling author of the Chicken Soup series and The Success Principles ”Wow! This book shows you how to build and maintain quality business networking contacts with the other 50 percent of the population.”Brian Tracy, author of The Power of Charm "There's something I love about Ivan Misner's approach to business -- he's so focused! In this wonderful new book he takes yet another new and novel look at networking, and tells us why it works, how it works, and why it is so necessary for all of us to take it as seriously as we do the most important functions in our businesses…or live to pay the price. Read this book, and send a copy to a friend. Important stuff for all of us determined to grow in this difficult, difficult world. Thank you, Ivan, for your focus. We all need it!" -- Michael E. Gerber, author of the world's #1 small business book, The E-Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What To Do About It. "I've never been one to mix business with pleasure but with this book it's impossible not to--whether you're reading for business or reading for pleasure, Business Networking and Sex delivers a thoroughly informative, thoroughly entertaining experience from cover to cover." -- Lisa Nichols, Featured teacher in The Secret and author of No Matter What! "You've heard the phrase 'sex sells,' but have you ever heard anyone explain how to sell to the opposite sex? No matter what your product or service, your business depends on sales and increased sales depend on how effective you are at building relationships and networking--with women and men alike. Business Networking and Sex outlines the key similarities and differences between the genders when it comes to networking so you'll never have to guess again about the best way to sell to the opposite sex." -- Dr. Tony Alessandra, author of The Platinum Rule and Non-Manipulative Selling "A wonderfully revealing look at the way men and women interact in the world of business and beyond." -- Marci Shimoff, New York Times bestselling author of Happy for No Reason and Love for No Reason

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable.  The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively.  Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

The Challenge:Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study: For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards:Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons: The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings: The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept: (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

“All the management advice in the world won’t help you much if you can’t adapt it to actual situations. That’s where Russ Palmer stands out. These are smart, practical leadership principles that are tried and tested in real-world business circumstances.” --Edward Whitacre, Jr., Chairman Emeritus of AT&T, former Chairman and CEO of AT&T and Southwest Bell   “It is very fitting that Ultimate Leadership is authored by Russ Palmer, the ultimate leader. It was with his guidance and friendship that I successfully transitioned from four orderly decades as a Marine to the arcane world of corporate America.” --General P.X. Kelley, USMC (Ret.), 28th Commandant of the Marine Corps   “Russ Palmer’s Ultimate Leadership is truly the last book you’ll ever need on the subject. Russ shows once again why he is the dean when it comes to explaining why leadership matters. Ultimate Leadership is the ultimate statement on how leaders in business, government, and nonprofits alike can keep up with changes and conquer diverse organizational contexts.” --John J. DiIulio, Jr., Frederic Fox Leadership Professor, University of Pennsylvania, former director, White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives   “This book about leadership from a contextual viewpoint is nothing short of brilliant. Russ’s easy-to-read book is filled with practical examples of leading from the context of a particular situation. The steps to extraordinary leadership are not hugely different, but the applications are endless. Thank you, Russ, for making sense out of a very disputable subject.” --Gerard R. Roche, Chairman of Heidrick&Struggles   “This book is refreshing proof that the essential personal traits of successful leaders are identifiable. Russ Palmer presents them in a manner providing great reading and much food for thought.” --Gordon Bethune, Chairman, Aloha Airgroup, former CEO, Continental Airlines   “Leadership is essential for all seasons, but its effective exercise depends much upon the season. In a masterful account, Russ Palmer draws on his rich store of personal experience to show how adaptive leadership makes the difference. For understanding what actions are required of all leaders--and how those actions must also be tailored to circumstance--Ultimate Leadership is the essential read.” --Michael Useem, Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership at the Wharton School, and author of The Go Point: When It’s Time to Decide   Go Beyond Generic Leadership: Become an Outstanding Leader in Your Unique Environment   To succeed, leaders must understand and apply the core principles of leadership--but that’s not enough. You need to shape your approach for any unique situation. Too many leaders don’t know how to do that--and that’s why they fail. Ultimate Leadership shows how to adapt the principles of leadership to different challenges, contexts, and organizations.   Russell E. Palmer--who has had three very different, highly successful careers as head of one of the world’s largest accounting firms, Dean of the Wharton School, and an entrepreneur--helps you identify the leadership model most appropriate for your environment, and how to lead accordingly. You’ll learn better ways to lead your equals, help an organization weather crises, transform its culture, lead entrepreneurial organizations, lead global organizations...even lead non-profit and academic institutions.   Then, drawing on interviews with an extraordinary spectrum of outstanding leaders, Palmer helps you master the attribute every leader must have: the ability to inspire your unique organization, even in the face of the most daunting challenges.   • Achieving empowerment, even in classic “top-down” organizations     Exercising strong authority without falling victim to ego or closed-mindedness   • Transforming an organization of peers     Driving changes in a strategic direction when key power centers disagree   • Turning danger into opportunity     Mastering the art of rapid, focused, hands-on execution for organizations in crisis   • Leading cultural change that sticks     Reconnecting structures, processes, and strategies with the new realities you face   • Learning from the Wharton experience     Succeeding in an environment with widely diverse, highly influential stakeholders    

INSIDE APPLE reveals the secret systems, tactics and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to churn out hit after hit and inspire a cult-like following for its products.If Apple is Silicon Valley's answer to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, then author Adam Lashinsky provides readers with a golden ticket to step inside. In this primer on leadership and innovation, the author will introduce readers to concepts like the "DRI" (Apple's practice of assigning a Directly Responsible Individual to every task) and the Top 100 (an annual ritual in which 100 up-and-coming executives are tapped a la Skull&Bones for a secret retreat with company founder Steve Jobs).Based on numerous interviews, the book offers exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era. Lashinsky, a Senior Editor at Large for Fortune, knows the subject cold: In a 2008 cover story for the magazine entitled The Genius Behind Steve: Could Operations Whiz Tim Cook Run The Company Someday he predicted that Tim Cook, then an unknown, would eventually succeed Steve Jobs as CEO.While Inside Apple is ostensibly a deep dive into one, unique company (and its ecosystem of suppliers, investors, employees and competitors), the lessons about Jobs, leadership, product design and marketing are universal. They should appeal to anyone hoping to bring some of that Apple magic to their own company, career, or creative endeavor.