New Business Book Summary Available for Strategy for Be the Business

In Be the Business, Martha Heller demonstrates how the steady evolution of technology has resulted in IT becoming the heart of every business. No longer existing as merely a support function, IT now drives from the backseat. As businesses adapt to this new technology model, their CIOs must transform from technologists to strategists and from account managers to financial leaders. They have no choice but to develop new competencies to successfully confront the host of new challenges stemming from the rapidly evolving and growing role of technology.

New Business Book Summary Available for The New Alpha

In The New Alpha, Danielle Harlan makes a case for New Alpha leadership, a movement in which professionals work toward becoming the best versions of themselves in order to develop the skills to effectively lead others. Unlike traditional leaders, New Alphas aim to make a meaningful impact on the world by focusing on the three core values of personal excellence, personal leadership, and organizational leadership. A step-by-step development program, The New Alpha provides professionals with the tools and techniques to optimize their human potential while simultaneously improving their capacity to become exceptional leaders.

New Business Book Summary Available for The Power of Peers

As Leon Shapiro and Leo Bottary explain in The Power of Peers, isolation can be detrimental to a CEO’s effectiveness in today’s fast-paced business world. The solution to CEO isolation lies in working with a group of other CEOs from diverse industries. Such groups can provide empathy for the complexities of the position and different perspectives on shared challenges and opportunities. CEOs can transform standard peer influence into a more powerful resource called peer advantage. Working together and stepping outside their own industries gives business leaders a better vantage point for achieving lofty goals.

New Business Book Summary Available for Pivot Points

In Pivot Points, Julia Tang Peters explores the five pivotal decisions that nearly all professionals must make during their careers. These pivot points lead some to success and others to failure, and how people manage them will determine whether they continue to grow or stagnate. In this book, Peters examines five highly successful business leaders, analyzes their personal pivot points, and discusses the long-term effects of their decisions.

New Business Book Summary Available for The 10 Laws of Trust

In The 10 Laws of Trust, Joel Peterson examines the importance of trust in the corporate world and beyond. He presents 10 easily followed concepts to building, maintaining, and even repairing trust. Peterson differentiates between high- and low-trust organizations and, through case studies and examples, shows that it is the high-trust environment that is the most successful. He asserts that not only does trust work, but it makes for good business.

New Business Book Summary Available for Leaders Don’t Command

A boss is not always a leader. In fact, the term "boss" is often associated with someone who simply tells his or her employees what they have to do. A "leader," conversely, puts his or her ego aside and focuses on developing and inspiring team members to work toward a common vision. In Leaders Don't Command, Jorge Cuervo details the many characteristics that constitute a truly great leader.

New Business Book Summary Available for Chess Not Checkers

As Mark Miller explains in Chess Not Checkers, leading a company can be like a game of checkers--highly reactionary and fast-paced. However, in today's complicated business climate, the game is changing, and leadership is now more like a game of chess. In chess, strategy and focus are vital and individual pieces can make unique contributions. Chess Not Checkers follows the fictional story of CEO Blake Brown as he begins his journey to improve the performance of his company and increase employee morale by using key moves from the world of chess.

New Business Book Summary Available for HBR Guide to Leading Teams

HBR Guide to Leading Teams by Mary Shapiro is a handbook designed to help leaders get better results from their teams. The book covers the team-building process from beginning to end, including insight on what to look for when assembling a team to how to properly wrap up a project.

New Business Book Summary Available for Return on Character

In Return on Character, Fred Kiel provides evidence that the character of leaders has a direct impact on the success of their organizations. Between 2006 and 2013, Kiel oversaw a survey of over 120 CEOs and their employees and examined the affect that their behaviors had on the financial results of their organizations. The surprising finding was that the most principled CEOs, the Virtuoso CEOs, achieved almost five times the return on assets of Self-Focused CEOs, or those with the lowest character habits.

New Business Book Summary Available for Coherence

Business leaders face incredible challenges on a daily basis, each taking its toll on their energy levels and ability to respond and react positively. In Coherence, Dr. Alan Watkins sheds light on the basic issues that can limit people's overall effectiveness in the workplace and offers solutions that address the physiological and psychological factors that play a role. Watkins shows leaders how to become younger, smarter, healthier, and happier, giving them the ability to make exceptional decisions under pressure and achieve sustainable success at every level.

New Business Book Summary Available for HBR's 10 Must Reads 2015

Developing high-performance leaders, maximizing marketing effectiveness, and creating an engaged company culture are just a few of the common issues that challenge leaders and managers across companies and industries. In HBR's 10 Must Reads 2015, editors at the Harvard Business Review address some of the most common leadership and management issues through a collection of essays written by a wide variety of respected business experts.

New Business Book Summary of No-Drama Leadership

A lack of leadership results in problematic work behaviors, such as poor performance and absenteeism. Unless supervisors take responsibility for good workplace relationships, their companies' cultures will suffer. The problems start when employees are promoted to leadership positions without the necessary skills and training, which can lead to workplace drama. In No-Drama Leadership, Marlene Chism presents a new model where everyone is a leader--from frontline employees to CEOs. This encourages people at all levels to learn from one another and become more aligned, aware, and accountable.

New Business Book Summary for The Naked CEO

Who would have thought a successful leadership career would stem from a high school suspension. But that is what happened for Alex Malley. His school suspension is just one experience in a line of missteps that yielded important learnings that led him on a path to become a successful CEO, television host, educator, and mentor. All of these experiences inspired him to write The Naked CEO, a compilation of the learnings he has accumulated and shared over the years with young people preparing to leave college and enter the business world. Malley's key message is to never let fear or embarrassment hold people back from pursuing their dreams. Unless individuals are comfortable with their own journeys, they are unlikely to truly help others on theirs.

New Business Book Summary Available for Seven Disciplines of a Leader

Leaders make or break organizations. To help organizations succeed, Jeff Wolf and Ken Shelton have condensed Wolf’s Leadership Development Program into their book, Seven Disciplines of a Leader. It is based on Wolf’s 14 years of executive coaching and management training for international clients. Readers will learn how to motivate and inspire people to improve decision making, teamwork, and employee engagement. As a result, they will help their organizations attract the best people, which is the key to organizational excellence and, ultimately, profitability and growth. Wolf and Shelton have drawn on real-world examples—both positive and negative—to develop and illustrate their ideas. They also emphasize the “soft skills” that separate managers from true leaders.

New Summary Available for Jumpstart Your Leadership

In Jumpstart Your Leadership, Shawn Doyle summarizes 10 key principles that will help current leaders become better leaders and help future leaders get a head start on techniques they will need to become great leaders. The principles, along with tips and techniques, are presented as “jolts” that can jumpstart efforts toward becoming authentic, motivating, and effective leaders. Leaders who apply the principles will see a striking change in results and become the boss on whose team everyone wants to be assigned.

New summary available for Winning from Within

Winning from Within provides a road map to aid readers in understanding their inner landscapes and develop more agility to access all their intrinsic leadership characteristics. It provides a seven-step method for closing the “performance gaps” so many people have in key conversations between what they know they should say or do with their actual behaviors. Using real-life case studies from coaching clients in business critical or personally meaningful conversations, Erica Ariel Fox helps readers learn to navigate high stakes interactions—from business deals, client calls, and team meetings to family arguments, landlord disputes, and parent-teacher conferences—to improve results at work and achieve more of what matters most to them.

New Summary Available for Uncommon Leadership

Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess believe that what is known about good leadership is not commonly practiced. They have written Uncommon Leadership to help bring effective leadership practices out of the shadows. Their five-part model helps leaders identify solutions, change their companies’ cultures, focus on customer service, serve employees, and share power.

New Summary Available for Leadership Blindspots

In Leadership Blindspots, Robert Bruce Shaw explores the ways in which leaders can become negatively impacted by their weaknesses. A blindspot is an unrecognized weakness that could negatively impact a leader’s success. This is different than black swan events, which are completely unpredictable or situational blindness which occurs when it is nearly impossible to see a weakness due to the environment. Blindspots impact all levels of a company, including the leader, the team, and the overall organization. The cost of ignoring blindspots can be very high, causing impacts on multiple levels.

New summary available for Boundaries for Leaders

Boundaries for Leaders by Dr. Henry Cloud offers insight into the roles of the leaders in contemporary businesses. Not only must leaders set production goals and provide guidance, they must also define boundaries that keep negativity out of the workplace. Dr. Cloud, a psychologist, bases many of his leadership principles on the way people’s brains function in different situations. He uses scientific data to illustrate how negative stress shuts down productive activity while positive stress inspires high performance. Additionally, leaders are responsible for helping teams of workers build mutual trust that allows each member to realize his or her full potential. Leaders themselves must earn employee trust to be effective in leading others toward attaining organizational goals.

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New summary available for The Strategist

Entrepreneurs, business owners, and company presidents have big dreams. Dreamers often birth successful businesses, make countries great, revolutionize the marketplace, and in many cases, improve the quality of life for each generation. Entrepreneurs are trailblazers and often leaders, but they are not necessarily strategists. When leadership changes, it can mean the end of a company’s era, unless the next generation of leaders learns the secrets of becoming the strategists for their businesses. In The Strategist, Cynthia A. Montgomery offers insights into how leaders can become strategists, build successful companies, and create unique, valuable services that can stand the test of a downward economy and changing times.