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Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround
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by Louis V. Gerstner
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ISBN: 0060523794, Hardcover- $17.61 BUY
Gerstner quarterbacked one of history's most dramatic corporate turnarounds. For those who follow business stories like football games, his tale of the rise, fall and rise of IBM might be the ultimate slow-motion replay. The book's opening section snappily reports Gerstner's decisions in his first 18 months on the job-the critical "sprint" that moved IBM away from the brink of destruction. The following sections describe the marathon fight to make IBM once again "a company that mattered."
One of Gerstner's first tasks was to redirect the company's attention to the outside world, where a marketplace was quickly changing and customers felt largely ignored. He succeeded mightily. Upon his retirement this year, IBM was undeniably "a company that mattered." Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? is a well-rendered self-portrait of a CEO who made spectacular change on the strength of personal leadership.
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Good to Great - Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't
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by Jim Collins
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ISBN: 0066620996, Hardcover- $16.50 BUY
Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great, Collins concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success.
Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come.
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A New Brand World - Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century
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by Scott Bedbury, Stephen Fenichell (Contributor)
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ISBN: 0670030767, Hardcover- $17.47 BUY
Bedbury, who headed advertising and marketing divisions for Nike and Starbucks during their phenomenal growth, coaches on establishing a memorable brand. Observing consumers overwhelmed by countless choices, he argues that now's the time to build a brand that evokes trust from its customers.
"Unless your brand stands for something, it stands for nothing," he declares, as he explains methods for companies big and small to articulate their essence and ethos to core customers, potential customers and employees. Bedbury elaborates his belief that "the brand is the sum total of everything a company does" with lively anecdotes from the experiences of Harley-Davidson, Microsoft and others. He calls for advertising and marketing that will inspire rather than merely inform (ie: "Just Do It").
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Raving Fans - A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service
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by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Sheldon Bowles (Contributor)
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ISBN: 0688123163, Hardcover- $13.00 BUY
Kenneth Blanchard continues his trend of writing easy-to-read books with BIG ideas for making your business better. Raving Fans is a book of stories relating how fictional companies have created an environment of delivering awesome customer service. A guy that has just been put in a managment position requiring a turnaround goes on a fictional trip with his "angel" to visit businesses that have figured out their vision and their system to deliver customer service extraordinary. Based on three simple principles (Decide, Discover, Deliver), each company has created a group of Raving Fans (not just customers, but fans) who wouldn't consider shopping anywhere else for what one of these companies offers.
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Differentiate or Die - Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition
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by Jack Trout, Steve Rivkin (Contributor)
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ISBN: 0471357642, Hardcover- $17.61 BUY
There are no two ways about it with Jack Trout. Either you've got a product or service that you can say is different, or you don't have much at all. In today's global marketplace and at its lightning-fast rate of change, there's no point in inventing and presenting a product only to sit back and hope that consumers everywhere will discover its greatness. It's not simply about what you or your product can do, it's about what you do differently from everyone else. Coauthors Trout and Steve Rivkin say it all in their no-holds-barred title, Differentiate or Die.
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Extraordinary Guarantees - Achieving Breakthrough Gains in Quality and Customer Satisfaction
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by Christopher Hart
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ISBN: 0814450644, Paperback- $24.95 BUY
Many leading firms have achieved both these results by offering extraordinary guarantees. You too can boost organizational performance and quality to new levels by following the practical advice offered in the important book, Extraordinary Guarantees. Guarantees were once considered nothing more than a marketing gimmick. But as more and more quality leaders have begun to offer ironclad pledges of total customer satisfaction, the guarantee is now being recognized as an unparalleled tool for gaining a major, often unbeatable, competitive edge-and a host of other benefits.
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Leadership
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by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Ken Kurson
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ISBN: 0786868414, Hardcover- $16.35 BUY
This highly anticipated book from New York's once controversial, now beloved former mayor opens with a gripping account of Giuliani's immediate reaction to the September 11 attacks, including a narrow escape from the original crisis command headquarters, and closes with the efforts to address the aftermath during his remaining four months in office. But, he argues, he did not suddenly become a great leader on September 11, and "had been doing [my] best to take on challenges my whole career."
Throughout, he displays the hands-on management that marked his administration, including his willingness to respond swiftly and in person to crises, to prove that he could be relied on when the city needed him most. While some critics found his style too aggressive, he has an effective counterargument: "Before September 11, there were those who said we were being overly concerned [about security]," he observes. "We didn't hear that afterwards..."
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Why We Buy - The Science of Shopping
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by Paco Underhill
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ISBN: 0684849143, Paperback- $9.75 BUY
In an effort to determine why people buy, Paco Underhill and his band of retail researchers have camped out in stores over the course of 20 years, dedicating their lives to the "science of shopping." Armed with an array of video equipment, store maps, and customer-profile sheets, Underhill and his consulting firm, Envirosell, have observed over 900 aspects of interaction between shopper and store. They've discovered that men who take jeans into fitting rooms are more likely to buy than females (65 percent vs. 25 percent).
They've learned how the "butt-brush factor" (bumped from behind, shoppers become irritated and move elsewhere) makes women avoid narrow aisles. They've quantified the importance of shopping baskets; contact between employees and shoppers; the "transition zone" (the area just inside the store's entrance); and "circulation patterns" (how shoppers move throughout a store). And they've explored the relationship between a customer's amenability and profitability, learning how good stores capitalize on a shopper's unspoken inclinations and desires.
Underhill, whose clients include McDonald's, Starbucks, Est?Lauder, and Blockbuster, stocks Why We Buy with a wealth of retail insights, showing how men are beginning to shop like women, and how women have changed the way supermarkets are laid out. He also looks to the future, projecting massive retail opportunities with an aging baby-boom population and predicting how online retailing will affect shopping malls. This lighthearted look at shopping is highly recommended to anyone who buys or sells.
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Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and in Your Life
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by Spencer Johnson, Kenneth H. Blanchard
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ISBN: 0399144463, Paperback- $12.97 BUY
Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice--nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are "littlepeople," mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It's not just sustenance to them; it's their self-image.
Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they've found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods--our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in--although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.
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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Restoring the Character Ethic
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by Stephen R. Covey
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ISBN: 0671708635, Paperback- $11.20 BUY
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas.
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