Business & Economics

Do you face the challenge of building and leading a new team? Revitalizing a stagnant one?

Extreme Teams examines the team practices driving growth in seven of the world’s most cutting-edge firms. They do this by challenging conventional wisdom and doing things differently. The book takes you inside these bold companies and examines the teamwork approaches powering their results, including how:
-Pixar’s teams use rapid-cycle feedback and no-holds debate to transform initially flawed films into billion-dollar hits
-A culture of radical “freedom and responsibility” helps Netflix execute on the next big thing and transform its industry
-Whole Food’s super-autonomous teams embrace tough metrics and friendly competition to drive performance
-Zappos embraces the weirdness and fun that sustains its success

Times change, and so must teams. Designing and managing high-performance teams requires upgrading outdated beliefs and behaviors, and creating in your company the level of intensity and collaboration needed to face down any challenge.

The definitive history, packed with untold stories, of one of America’s most controversial and powerful companies: Facebook

As a college sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network.

Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from its first, modest iteration. In light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing “fake news” accounts, the handling of its users’ personal data, and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO—who has enormous power over what the world sees and says—never has a company been more central to the national conversation.

Millions of words have been written about Facebook, but no one has told the complete story, documenting its ascendancy and missteps. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life, or the imperative of this book to document the unchecked power and shocking techniques of the company, from growing at all costs to outmaneuvering its biggest rivals to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram, to developing a platform so addictive even some of its own are now beginning to realize its dangers.

Based on hundreds of interviews from inside and outside Facebook, Levy’s sweeping narrative of incredible entrepreneurial success and failure digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.

The complexity and relentless pace of our world places exceptional demands on leaders today. They work incredibly hard and yet feel that they are not meeting their own expectations of excellence. They feel disconnected from their own values and overburdened. By the thousands, they seek out books on leadership skills, time management, and “getting things done,” but the techniques these volumes offer, useful as they are, often don’t speak to the leader’s fundamental sense that something is missing.

Janice Marturano, a senior executive with decades of experience in Fortune 500 corporations, explains how Mindful Leadership training integrates the practice of mindfulness–meditation and self-awareness–with the practical tools of management, enabling leaders to bring a wider range of their capacities to the challenges at hand. We already know from scientific research that mindfulness practices enhance mental health and improve clarity and focus. Finding the Space to Lead shows how this training has specific value for leaders.

This is not a new “leadership system” to add to the burden of already overworked people. It brings the concepts of mindfulness into the everyday life of anyone in a leadership role, through specific exercises that address practical issues–the calendar, schedule, phone usage, meetings, to-do list, and strategic planning, as well as interpersonal challenges such as listening and working with difficult colleagues.

Leaders who have experienced mindfulness training report that it provides a “transformative experience” with significant improvements in innovation, self-awareness, listening, and making better decisions. In Finding the Space to Lead, Marturano masterfully lays out her proven techniques for promoting mindfulness in the busy executive’s working life.

Now that five different generations are on the job simultaneously–from Traditionals to Generation Y to Millennials–it’s more important than ever for companies to understand how their people can not only coexist and cooperate, but thrive together as a team.

Written by a father-daughter team of two generational experts, Generations, Inc. offers the perspectives of people of different eras to elicit practical insights on wrestling with generational issues in the workplace.

The book provides Baby Boomers and Linksters alike with practical techniques for addressing conflicts, forging alliances with coworkers from other generations, getting people with different values and idiosyncratic styles to work together, and running productive meetings where all participants find value in each other’s ideas. The generation we were born in influences our expectations, actions, and mind-sets.

Generations, Inc. includes realistic strategies for relating to your team members’ different views of loyalty, work ethic, and the definition of a job well done–and tips to make those perspectives work together to strengthen your workforce and grow your business.

With increased pressure from digital natives, now is the time for established companies to address outdated and antiquated practices in order to respond quickly to the ever-increasing speed of market changes.

The pace of change in business today is such that it is becoming easier to go from a legendarily high-performing company to liquidation in a short period of time. Getting to Nimble shares the stories of organizations that were able to successfully transform their people practices, processes, technology, ecosystems and strategy for the digital era. The book also covers once dominant companies like Circuit City and Kodak that neglected to change and were impaired or died as a result.

Highlighting a framework to follow along with best practices that others can emulate, Getting to Nimble includes case studies from major organizations such as Capital One, FedEx, CarMax, The Washington Post, Domino’s Pizza, Walmart and the country of Estonia.