The World's Best Book Summaries
How do you know when it’s the right time to sell your business? Is it in your best interest to stay independent? In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, author Ben Horwitz discusses when the right time to sell your business is. There are both rational and emotional factors when it comes to selling something you’ve built and both play into the decision-making process. Continue reading for advice on whether or not you should sell your business.
What are the roles and responsibilities of a CEO? What qualities make a good CEO? A good CEO should be able to do three things well: articulate their vision, get the team to work on the vision, and achieve results. The role of a CEO is also to be a good decision-maker and to have the courage to do what is necessary, even if it’s difficult. Keep reading about the roles and responsibilities of a CEO.
What is Patrick Lencioni’s Death by Meeting leadership fable about? How can you apply the tips in the book to make work meetings more productive and engaging? Patrick Lencioni’s Death by Meeting leadership fable follows a CEO named Casey who leads long, boring, and unproductive meetings at his company. After Casey’s company is acquired, he is forced to improve his meetings or he could lose his job. Keep reading to learn about Lencioni’s leadership fable and how to lead better meetings.
Why did Opsware transition from servers to software? What did Ben Horowitz do to make the company so profitable? Ben Horiwitz, co-founder of Loudcloud, bought Opsware in hopes of saving Loudcloud from going under. Horowitz took the struggling Opsware and turned it into multimillion dollar company which HP acquired in 2007 for over a billion dollars. Continue on to learn how Ben Horowitz managed to turn Opsware around.
Is your business growing but you’re keeping the same managers? How could this be holding you back? Why does scaling your business mean you may need to replace once-valuable team members? Managing a 5-person team is very different from running a 100-person global sales force. Whenever your company scales, you should be reevaluating your employees. It may be difficult to replace somebody who has done a great job in the past, but you owe it to your company to find the best person for each job. Keep reading to learn what changes you should make when scaling your business.
If deep work is so valuable, why don’t we do it more often? How did we become addicted to distraction in the workplace? There are three major distractions that workers face daily: open offices, instant communication, and social media. These distractions are ubiquitous in the corporate setting and are often even supported by companies. Keep reading to learn more about how the distraction addiction is preventing deep work.
What are the best Patrick Lencioni quotes from Death by Meting? How can Lencioni’s fable help you improve the structure and productivity of your work meetings? Death by Meeting is a business fable about a CEO named Casey. Casey’s company was just acquired and he was told that if he didn’t improve his meetings, he could be replaced. With the help of his assistant Will, Casey learns how to run meetings that are engaging, provocative, and well-structured. Continue reading for Patrick Lencioni quotes from Death by Meeting.
What are the benefits of giving inflated job titles to your employees? Should you use deflated job titles instead? As your company grows, deciding on job titles will become important. Inflating job titles is one way to attract talent to your company. On the other hand, deflating job titles gives new employees the chance to recalibrate when they join you. Continue reading for more information about inflated and deflated job titles.
What is the MECE framework? How does it work and what are its limitations? The Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) framework is an organizational management system where an organization is divided into units that don’t overlap but collectively cover everything. The main limitation of the MECE framework is that this division limits the ability of units to function adaptively when the situation calls for it. Learn about the MECE framework of organizational management.
How can having a process for compensation, complaints, and promotions save you a lot of headache? What should those processes look like? Once a company grows, it should start to develop processes around three situations: compensation, promotions, and complaints. Having processes around these subjects will help reduce company politics and set expectations. Continue reading to learn how to learn how to develop a compensation, complaint, and promotion process.