The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It

Christine Pearson & Christine Porath

12% of all employees say they've left jobs because they were treated badly. An astonishing 95% of Americans say they've experienced rudeness at work.  Pearson and Porath examine the devastating toll that bad behavior can have on otherwise well-functioning companies and show how to spot the roots of incivility, rip them out, and create a culture of respect. They urge managers to stop making excuses, set a zero-tolerance policy, and lead by example.

 http://www.thecostofbadbehavior.com/about-the-book.html

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization

Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

Argues that every company is a tribe or network of tribes - groups of 20 to 150 people in which everyone knows everyone else - and shows leaders how to assess their organization's tribal culture on a scale from one to five and then implement specific tools to elevate the stage to the next.

 http://www.triballeadership.net/book

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

Tony Hsieh

Describes the journey that Zappos took in building its company and company culture around the idea of “WOW!”customer service.  

http://www.deliveringhappiness.com/about-2/

Culture

Linchpin 

 Seth Godin

Describes an essential type of person in the workplace, the “Linchpin.” These are people who invent, lead, connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos.

http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/books.asp

Culture

A Sense of Urgency

John P. Kotter

Describes the importance of having an urgency-driven culture and includes many tools to create a sense of urgency in your business.

http://www.kotterinternational.com/ResourceItemView.aspx?MediaID=74

Culture

Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service 
 

Ari Weinzweig

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

Patrick M. Lencioni

A cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage that organizational health - consistent and unified management, operations, and culture - provides.

 http://www.tablegroup.com/oh/

The New Geography of Jobs

Enrico Moretti

Provides a perspective on the tectonic shifts that are reshaping America’s labor market—from globalization and income inequality to immigration and technological progress—and how these shifts are affecting our workforce.

The Primes: How Any Group Can Solve Any Problem

Chris McGoff

Unveils 32 universal secrets of how to tackle complex problems successfully, recognize and eliminate the most destructive forces in an organization, keep teams focused and productive, and deliver extraordinary results on time.

 http://theprimes.com/

Great Business Teams: Cracking the Code for Standout Performance

Howard M. Guttman

Decodes the inner workings of great business teams with the more than 30 in-depth examples examining teams at top-management, business-unit, and functional levels.  Isolates five key factors that drive team performance. 

 http://www.greatbusinessteams.com/

HR for Small Business

Charles H. Fleischer

Great quick reference guide on a wide variety of HR issues that small and midsized companies face.

Culture

Drive 

Daniel Pink

Describes a model for motivation in the workplace based on the human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

http://www.danpink.com/

Culture

Mergers & Acquisitions, from A to Z

Andrew J. Sherman

Describes the steps that companies go through during the merger and acquisition process.  A good reference good and checklist for companies that are planning on M&A as part of their corporate strategy.    

Finance

The Big Short 

Michael Lewis

Describes several key players that were able to predict the 2007-08 housing market implosion.  Shows how these individuals, who were shorting the markets, made a fortune on the bubble collapse and the related impacts on the financial world and economy at large.

Finance

Financial Intelligence: A Manager's Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean 

Karen Berman, Joe Knight, John Case

Describes the essentials of finance with basics of financial measurement:  reading income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

http://www.financialintelligencebook.com/

Finance

Tribes

Seth Godin

Godin’s latest argues that lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a tribe: a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea. Smart innovators find or assemble a movement of similarly minded individuals and get the tribe excited by a new product, service or message, often via the Internet. According to Godin, almost everyone can be a leader; most are kept from realizing their potential by fear of criticism and fear of being wrong. We can be leaders if we want, tribes are the way of the future and change is good. 

http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/books.asp

The Advantage-Makers: How Exceptional Leaders Win by Creating Opportunities Others Don't

Steven Feinberg

Teaches the reader how to become an "Advantage Maker" and learn to shift the odds in your favor, drive superior outcomes, grab hold of hidden “levers of opportunity,” use dissatisfaction and skepticism constructively, and avoid the “Laws of Defeat.”

 http://stevenfeinberg.com/book.shtml

The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed

Adam Bryant

Reporter from The New York Times surveys over seventy CEOs to reveal the keys to success, including the five essential personality traits that all high performers exhibit. 

 http://www.adambryantbooks.com/books.php

BIG Ideas to BIG Results: Remake and Recharge Your Company, Fast 

Michael T. Kanazawa & Robert H. Miles

A step-by-step guide to creating more buy-in throughout the organization and ensuring execution through accountability, thereby increasing employee committment to company goals.

http://www.bigideastobigresults.com/

 Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

Yvon Chouinard

CEO of Patagoinia, Inc. relates his and his company's story and the core philosophies that have sustained it, including a dedication to doing good and having adventures.

Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell

Describes the importance of data and important macro factors that impact industry success.

http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html

Leadership

Leadership

Rudy Giuliani

Autobiography of Giuliani on his experiences as a corporate lawyer and U.S. attorney and then as mayor of NYC. He champions the leadership principles of preparation, accountability and strong self-definition.

Leadership

Execution – The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Explains that the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is the ability to execute and describes the building blocks that that need to be in place to successfully manage people, strategy, and operations.

http://www.ram-charan.com/execution.htm

Leadership

Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition

Dennis Perkins, Margaret Holtman, Paul Kessler and Catherine McCarthy

Describes powerful leadership characteristics through a true-life narrative of Shackleton’s 1910 Antarctic expedition. Combines Shackleton’s compelling 3 year journey with survival leadership techniques.

http://www.margaretholtman.com/leading-at-the-edge.html

Leadership

How to be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy - HBR Article

Robert Sutton

HBR article describes the key factors for leaders during challenging and uncertain times.  The 77 tips are suggested actions for businesses to follow during an economic downturn.

Leadership

Integrity Dividend

Tony Simons

Describes how people who do what they say they will do make more money, are more powerful, and are more generally successful.

http://integritydividend.com/

Leadership

Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know

Mark Jeffery

Over 80 percent of companies don't make data-driven marketing decisions - and suffer for it. Data-Driven Marketing uses simple, non-technical language to help marketers master the latest analytical techniques while maximizing Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). Learn the 15 key metrics every marketer should know, the five obstacles to data-driven marketing and how to overcome them, and see in-depth examples of how to apply data-driven principles in small and large organizations.

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/kwo/win09/faculty/jeffery.htm

Marketing

The Marketing Mavens

Noel Capon

What differentiates people who are able to create customers ? Over a four-year-long research program that spanned 25 industries, Capon identified these Marketing Mavens and their unfailing focus on placing customers at the center of their business by make marketing everyone’s job, and the five imperatives that make an organization succeed: 1. Picking markets that matter, 2. Selecting segments to dominate, 3. Designing the offer to create value, 4. Integrating to serve the customer, and 5. Measuring what matters.

http://www.axcesscapon.com/book-information/marketing-mavens

Marketing

Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing

Mark Schaefer

Through "Return On Influence," Schaefer takes you on a ride filled with interesting characters, amazing stories, and the inspirational new "Citizen Influencers" who have learned to harness the power of the web and establish their own voice despite all odds. 

http://www.businessesgrow.com/publications/

Marketing

Buyology 

Martin Lindstrom

Describes a groundbreaking market research method in brain scanning technology.  These new methods use brain activity to determine how people really feel about products, services, and advertising messages.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com//index.php/cmsid__buyology_your_buyology

Marketing

Power Base Selling: Secrets of an Ivy League Street Fighter

Jim Holden

Describes how selling has changed in recent years and what it takes to be successful in sales.  How sales professionals must align themselves with powerful advocates inside customer organizations, build well formulated competitive selling strategies, and provide non-traditional value to customers.

Marketing

The Innovator's Dilemma (2011 Update)

Clayton Christensen

Outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership—or worse, disappear altogether. Most companies miss out on new waves of innovation, and even a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, The Innovator’s Dilemma presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

 http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-dilemma/

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Reveals the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the “human scale principle,” using the “Velcro Theory of Memory,” and creating “curiosity gaps.”

 http://www.heathbrothers.com/madetostick/

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini

Explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. Teaches the six universal principles and how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them.

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen

Enumerates the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.

 http://www.jimcollins.com/books.html

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

Marshall Goldsmith

America’s most sought-after executive coach shows how to climb the last few rungs of the ladder.

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Atul Gawande

Explains how in a world of great and increasing complexity, great results can be found in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.  Essential reading for anyone working to get things right.

 http://www.thechecklistmanifesto.com/

How We Decide

Jonah Lehrer

This book explains how the discoveries of neuroscience can help us make the best decisions, and arms the reader with tools to determine the correct part of the brain to use for different types of decisions.

http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books

Strategy

The 80/20 Principle

Richard Koch

Describes how in many examples across business (and life), 20 percent of the input produces 80 percent of the output.  Koch helps you to identify your most productive 20 percent and get more out of your business and life.

http://www.the8020principle.com/

Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy

W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne

Paints a metaphor of expanding, competitor-free “blue ocean markets” which innovative companies should navigate instead of highly competitive “red seas” and provides tools for analyzing these markets.

http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/

Strategy

Goals 

Brian Tracy

Describes the importance of goal setting with empirical evidence and a wide variety of specific goal setting and implementation methods.

http://www.briantracy.com/catalog/product.aspx?pid=211

Strategy

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

Heath Brothers

Describes how people need to unite their rational and emotional minds in order to bring about transformative change.

http://www.heathbrothers.com/switch/

Strategy