Recommended Resource – How to Win Friends & Influence People

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How To Win Friends and Influence People
by Dale Carnegie

About the Reference

How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is the timeless classic that reveals how leaders can engage and motivate individuals to become teams; joining together to achieve a common purpose and produce more than the sum of their singular efforts. This book unveils:

  • The six ways to make people like you
  • The twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
  • The nine ways to change people without arousing resentment

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like How to Win Friends and Influence People because is provides the reader with easily understood and actionable methods of influencing people without being manipulative; engaging and motivating them to achieve more together than they could as individuals.

StrategyDriven Contributors believe that while leaders naturally act to serve and promote their self interests, it is equally important to benefit those who are supporting those initiatives. Dale Carnegie’s prescription for advancing one’s agenda is a benevolent, win-win approach that influences instead of manipulates. His ‘honorable’ approach to winning people’s support makes How to Win Friends and Influence People a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Recommended Resource – Finance Without Fear

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Finance Without Fear: A Guide to Creating and Managing a Profitable Business
by William S. Hettinger and John Dolan-Heitlinger

About the Reference

Finance Without Fear: A Guide to Creating and Managing a Profitable Business by William S. Hettinger and John Dolan-Heitlinger unveals the mysteries of financial statements in this easy-to-understand, example filled book. William and John arm leaders with the knowledge of what is in each financial statement, how statements relate to each other, and, more importantly, how business operations impact reported financial outcomes.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Finance Without Fear because it imparts the appropriate level of financial report understanding needed to be a successful executive or manager while not requiring the reader to be a CPA. Additionally, the illustrative examples relating business operations to financial statements clearly conveys the relationships and importance of strategic and day-to-day decisions to the financial well-being of the organization.

StrategyDriven Contributors believe it is vitally important for all executives and managers to understand how operational decisions impact financial performance and its conveyance in financial statements. Likewise, it is critical that these leaders be able to draw conclusions about business operations from their financial statements. While newly ascending managers may not have this knowledge, they should seek and be provided this information early in their management careers. Finance Without Fear can be used to impart such knowledge; making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Recommended Resource – Getting to Yes

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Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

by Roger Fisher and William Ury

About the Reference

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury recognizes that professionals are in a frequent state of negotiation and provides them with the tools needed to achieve a desirable outcome. This book probes many diverse negotiation circumstances from both sides of the debate and offers constructive, easy-to-follow methods to achieve one’s desired outcomes by:

  • Disentangling the people from the problem
  • Focusing on interests, not positions
  • Working together to find creative and fair options

These methods help the reader negotiate with anyone at any level of their organization.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors believe that negotiation is a key component to individual and organizational success. Getting to Yes breaks down these give and take situations; providing the immediately actionable tools needed to achieve a favorable outcome and making these situations less intimidating. If we had one criticism of the book, it would be that the authors seek to achieve a ‘fair’ or ‘equitable’ outcome for each side. While this appears admirable, it forfeits an upside gain that an effective negotiation might be able to otherwise achieve.

Getting to Yes provides a thorough, actionable negotiation tool set that is critical to every professional and organization’s success; making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Practices for Professionals – Effective Use of Discretionary Effort

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In this fast-paced marketplace and certainly during these challenging economic conditions, StrategyDriven Professionals typically find themselves working more than forty hours a work. More common among these professionals is a forty-five hour work week with others working fifty hours a week.

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Recommended Resource – I, Steve

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I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words

edited by George Beahm

About the Reference

I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words edited by George Beahm reveals Steve Jobs’ core beliefs about business in a way no other author has been able to achieve… because these insights come directly from Steve Jobs himself. George’s book systematically covers a wide range of topics from ‘Being the Best’ to ‘Risking Failure’, from ‘Passion’ to ‘Values’, and ‘Beyond Recruiting’ to ‘Firing Employees’.

Throughout I, Steve, three predominate themes are revealed:

  • the intersection between design and business values as expressed in products
  • the importance of people, teamwork, and organizational culture in achieving innovation, and
  • the necessity of cutting against conventional wisdom to fulfill what people want before they know they want it.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like I, Steve because it reveals the intimate thoughts and beliefs of a man who was not only a creative genius but who was also a business giant. Most of Steve Jobs’ approaches align well with the principles and philosophies we recommend business leaders adopt to further the success of their organizations. While we recognize that some may disagree with Steve Jobs’ approach to certain circumstances – and on occasion we do too, all agree he was one of the great leaders and visionaries who has shape our modern world.

StrategyDriven Contributors appreciated the layout of I, Steve, the organization of quotes around meaningful topic areas, the dating of each quote, and Steve Jobs’ life story timeline provided at the end of the book. We found that knowing the setting and circumstances of the Steve Jobs’ quotes provided insightful context from which to interpret them. As such, we recommend first-time readers review the ‘Milestones’ timeline presented at the end of the book first and refer to it often when reading individual quotes.

For it’s intimate portrayal of an American entrepreneurial icon, I, Steve is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Tribute to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs who has forever changed our global society. This tribute video by Antonio Marotta and Diana Casadiego was made on one of Steve Jobs’ Macs…

…and this article produced on another.