The World's Best Book Summaries
Are you wondering how to hire the right person? What kind of person does your company need to succeed? A critical element of team building is hiring the right people. According to Julie Zhuo in The Making of a Manager, building a successful team will help empower your company’s vision. Below, you’ll learn the key to hiring people that are fit for your team.
Who wrote Tribal Leadership? What are the book’s strengths and weaknesses? What impact has it had? The book Tribal Leadership was first published in 2008 by Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins. It’s the only book on which Dave Logan, Halee Fischer-Wright, and John King collaborated. In the book, they describe how to improve an organization by leveling up its culture. An organization is made of tribes—socially networked groups of 20 to 150 people—and the cultures of those tribes determine the organization’s performance and its members’ happiness. Keep reading for our Tribal Leadership review, covering the book’s authors, context, impact,
What is the best method for facilitating a team purpose workshop? How can a team purpose workshop lead to greater success? To determine your purpose in the first place, Find Your Why author Simon Sinek and his co-authors created a step-by-step process that individuals and groups can follow in a group discussion or workshop. Sinek’s process to find your purpose helps you or your team explore past experiences for insight into what moves you. Keep reading to learn the steps for conducting the most effective team purpose workshop, according to Simon Sinek.
What is the best way to evaluate interview candidates? How should you decide which candidate to select? It can be hard to decide who to hire if every candidate is qualified. Julie Zhuo’s advice in The Making of a Manager can make it easier to make this decision through careful evaluation. Read more to learn how to evaluate interview candidates.
How did Ernest Shackleton step up as a leader when the Endurance sank? What are lessons on leadership to take away from Shackleton’s experience? In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and 27 other men set out on the Endurance ship to Antarctica, but the ship became trapped in ice. Shackleton effectively led his team through a time of crisis, and all the men survived because of his leadership skills. Learn more about Ernest Shackleton’s leadership skills from Alfred Lansing’s book Endurance.
What’s slowing down your business? How could your morning routine be more efficient? Every system has slow parts that drag the whole system down. Identifying bottlenecks is key to maximizing a system’s efficiency. In The Great Mental Models Volume 3, authors Rhiannon Beaubien and Rosie Leizrowice explain what bottlenecks are, how to identify them, and why bottleneck management is a necessary ongoing process in any system. Let’s look in detail at how to identify bottlenecks.
Are you trying to change the culture of your organization? What can you learn from Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture about this kind of leadership? Toussaint Louverture led the military and diplomatic campaign that liberated enslaved people in Haiti and set the stage for its independence from France. In What You Do Is Who You Are, Ben Horowitz draws cultural leadership insights from Louverture. Read on to learn more about Louverture and his leadership.
What are loonshots? How can organizations cultivate a culture where innovative ideas thrive? Loonshots are innovative ideas that change the world (e.g., insulin, radar, computer animation). Initially, loonshots are dismissed as crazy and overly ambitious. For this reason, loonshots almost don’t make it. In his book Loonshots, Safi Bahcall argues that organizations can deliberately cultivate these kinds of ideas. He presents four rules for nurturing loonshots and explains how organizations can keep innovating no matter how big they grow. Let’s explore Bahcall’s four rules for generating loonshots.
When it comes to decision-making in your organization, how much power do you and your employees have? How fast are decisions made? What happens immediately after a decision is made? In his book What You Do Is Who You Are, Ben Horowitz discusses how decision-making is an aspect of your organization’s culture. As the leader, you set the tone for how decisions are made. Horowitz identifies three choices you make that determine what kind of decision-making culture you build. Keep reading for details on these three choices.
Why do large organizations struggle to innovate? How can you sustain innovation in your organization as it grows? Maintaining innovation is a major concern for organizations as they grow. According to Safi Bahcall, the author of Loonshots, it’s possible to balance growth with continued innovation. The key, he says, is to balance stake with rank. Here’s how organizations can keep innovating no matter how big they grow, according to Safi Bahcall.