Book recommendations

Patrick Lencioni

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.

Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech’s CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni’s utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.

Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.

Laszlo Bock

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

Google receives over 1,500,000 unique applications for jobs every year. This book shows you why. How to learn from your best employees – and your worst. Why you should only hire people who are smarter than you are. Take away managers’ powers over employees. And why not to trust your gut instinct. ‘We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It’s not right that the experience should be so demotivating and dehumanizing.’ So says Laszlo Bock, visionary head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge: this insight is the heart of his brilliant first book. A compelling manifesto with the potential to change how we work and live, Work Rules! offers both a new philosophy of the new world of work and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent and ensuring the brightest and best prosper. Your workplace and how you treat your employees has a huge effect on your success. In twelve vivid chapters, Bock lays out a series of surprising lessons from a range of industries – from household names to little-known innovators. He also takes us inside one of history’s most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world. His years of experience are distilled into a series of entertaining principles that are easy to put into action, whether you’re a team of one or a team of thousands. Work Rules! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do. The way we work is changing – are you?

Tom Peters

Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

The business management guru and author of In Search of Excellence presents a thought-provoking, inspirational look at the changing world of twenty-first-century business that introduces innovative strategies for overcoming outdated company values and procesures to create an aggressive environment that empowers talented individuals. Reprint.

Mitch Albom

Tuesdays with Morrie

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.

Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live.

Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift with the world.

Klaus Leopold

Rethinking Agile: Why Agile Teams Have Nothing To Do With Business Agility

All of the agile cards have been pulled, and nonetheless new products still do not get faster to the market. If this situation seems familiar, you should read this story about a company that prepared their agile transition in exemplary fashion: 600 employees reorganized into cross-functional teams, their work visualized and practically perfect Standups and Retrospectives held. The result: Time-to-Market for the products became worse – and not a trace of business agility.This book shows you what goes wrong with many agile transitions and why the desired improvements fail to materialize. You also learn how to get out of a dead end and what can be done before starting a transformation in order to prevent heading down a dead end to begin with.A little preview: Do not start by making teams agile – this will save your nerves and lots of money!

Matthew Walker

Why we sleep

A New York Times bestseller and international sensation, this “stimulating and important book” (Financial Times) from the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science is a fascinating dive into the purpose and power of slumber. As the Guardian said, Walker explains “how a good night’s shut-eye can make us cleverer, more attractive, slimmer, happier, healthier, and ward off cancer.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Nonviolent Communication

If “violent” means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate—judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who’s “good/bad” or what’s “right/wrong” with people—could indeed be called “violent communication.”

Andy Puddicombe

The Headspace Guide to Mindfulness & Meditation

Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk, the Voice of Headspace, and the UK’s foremost mindfulness expert, is on a mission: to get people to take 10 minutes out of their day to sit in the here and now.

Accessible and portable, The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness offers simple but powerful meditation techniques that positively impact every area of physical and mental health: from productivity and focus, to stress and anxiety relief, sleep, weight-loss, personal relationships…the benefits are limitless. The result? More headspace, less stress. Andy brings this ancient practice into the modern world, tailor made for the most time starved among us.

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