The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office by David Novak and John Boswell

The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office by David Novak and John Boswell

Hardcover: 320 pages

Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (October 9, 2007)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0307393690

ISBN-13: 978-0307393692

Review
"The Education of an Accidental CEO is a wonderful journey tracking the aspects of leadership. David Novak is a classic type-A personality who possesses the insatiable desire to improve and make those around him rise to new levels. Everyone is in search of the secret. You'll find it in this book. A motivational must"
--Rick Pitino


"David Novak is a great business leader and a wonderful guy. Our companies have very little in common, yet I have learned a lot from Dave. He is great with people, an innovator and one of the best global thinkers I have met. This book is filled with the 'little things' that authentic leaders do every day to build a great business. The best leaders are the best learners. Dave's 'journey' brings the skill of learning to life."
--Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric


"An entertaining, humorous, honest and inspiring message from an extraordinary person who engenders trust and instills self-confidence. Throughout this book David Novak brightens your mood and improves your outlook."
-Larry Bossidy, retired chairman and CEO of Honeywell International and co-author of Execution and Confronting Reality

"If CEOs were selected like NFL quarterbacks, David Novak would be a first-round draft pick. I would certainly like to have him running a Berkshire company. After you read this book, you will know why."
--Warren Buffett

“Just plain fun to read....More important, though, is the message—no matter whether you are a CEO or just starting out—that each and every day provides the opportunity to learn and get better at what you do, because as David says ‘you never know what you’re capable of.’ His book is smart with heart and you’ll see how far openness and honesty can get you. In short, very far.”
—Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase

“David Novak is completely authentic and means every word....What a great lesson for anyone striving for real success.”
—Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and president of the Table Group

“David has always had the natural leadership gift of ‘taking people with him,’ but he has never stopped learning, always valued others no matter what their background, and always stayed true to who he is. His great personal story provides lessons to anyone who has the privilege of leading.”
—Brenda Barnes, chairman and CEO of the Sara Lee Corporation
Product Description
David Novak—one of today’s most engaging, unconventional, and successful business leaders—lived in thirty-two trailer parks in twenty-three states by the time he reached the seventh grade. He sold encyclopedias door to door, worked as a hotel night clerk, and took a job as a $7,200-a-year advertising copywriter with the hopes of maybe one day becoming a creative director. Instead, he became head of the world’s largest restaurant company at the ripe old age of forty-seven.

While David never went to business school, he did learn from the greatest of teachers—experience—and plenty of other very smart people as well: Magic Johnson on the secret to teamwork, Warren Buffett on what he looks for in the companies he buys, John Wooden on ego, and Jack Welch on one thing he’d do over. Now he wants to share with you what he discovered about getting ahead and getting noticed; motivating people and turning businesses around; building winning teams and running a global company of nearly one million people; and always staying true to yourself.

The Education of an Accidental CEO is filled with David Novak’s street-smart wisdom:

From his formative years...
• Walking through your anxieties
• Avoiding the poison of stereotypes
• Staying “right-sized”
• Breaking through the clutter

From his years as an ad executive and chief marketing officer ...
• How not to roll over like Fluffy the dog
• Seeing yourself as a brand
• When to pull the plug on the Super Bowl

As the COO of Pepsi Cola and then as president of KFC and Pizza Hut ...
• Why a gold watch can have less value than a floppy rubber chicken
• Knowing when “the answers are in the building”
• Knowing when to do nothing
• What it takes to revitalze a company

And as CEO of Yum! Brands, Inc. ...
• How to “shock the system”
• How to avoid the slow-no’s
• Managing two up and two down

David Novak’s ideas for building an entire culture around reward and recognition—getting everyone from division presidents to dishwashers to buy into recognizing the achievements of others—is studied by other companies and discussed here in great detail. Whether you are the CEO of a global conglomerate or a budding entrepreneur, there is something here that will help you get where you want to go.

Closing Techniques (That Really Work!) by Stephan Schiffman

Closing Techniques (That Really Work!) by Stephan Schiffman (Paperback - Mar 18, 2009)

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Adams Media; 4 edition (March 18, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1598698206
ISBN-13: 978-1598698206

About the Book

Many salespeople can line up prospects, recite the benefits of their product or service, and stir the interest of their client. But when it comes to actually closing the deal, they fail and the sale falls apart. That?s where sales guru Stephan Schiffman comes in?and saves the sale. In this book, Schiffman reveals the pioneering techniques that have helped more than half a million salespeople nail the sales that matter. This book includes chapters on: the four words to avoid during meetings; why salespeople shouldn?t mix business with pleasure; the most important word when closing a sale; and working existing accounts.

About the Author

Stephan Schiffman (New York, NY) has trained more than 500,000 salespeople at firms such as AT&T Information Systems, Chemical Bank, Manufacturer?s Hanover Trust, Motorola, and U.S. Health Care. Schiffman is the president of DEI Management Group. He is the author of such bestselling books as Cold Calling Techniques and The 25 Sales Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople.

TKO Hiring! Ten Knockout Strategies for Recruiting, Interviewing, and Hiring Great People by Dave Anderson

TKO Hiring! Ten Knockout Strategies for Recruiting, Interviewing, and Hiring Great People by Dave Anderson

Firnando Chau Review


Table of Contents:-
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Introduction
Round One: Understand the Cost of Hiring Recklessly
Round Two: Become a Proactive Recruiter
Round Three: Create a Potent Interview Structure
Round Four: Ask Tough Interview Questions
Round Five: Effectively Check References
Round Six: How to Use Predictive Testing Hiring Profiles
Round Seven: How to Get New Hires Off to a Great Start
Round Eight: How to Retain Eagles Once You Find Them
Round Nine: Differentiate Your Employees for Development and Retention
Round Ten: Knockout Summary for Follow Through
Bibliography
Index

The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness by Stephen R. Covey (Paperback - Nov 29, 2005)

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (November 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743287932
• ISBN-13: 978-0743287937

From Publishers Weekly

The original seven habits of highly successful people are still relevant, but Covey, author of the mega-bestseller of that title, says that the new Information/Knowledge Worker Age, exemplified by the Internet, calls for an eighth habit to achieve personal and organizational excellence: "Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs." Covey sees leadership "as a choice to deal with people in a way that will communicate to them their worth and potential so clearly they will come to see it in themselves." His holistic approach starts with developing one's own voice, one's "unique personal significance." The bulk of the book details how, after finding your own voice, you can inspire others and create a workplace where people feel engaged. This includes establishing trust, searching for third alternatives (not a compromise between your way and my way, but a third, better way) and developing a shared vision. This book isn't easy going; less business jargon and more practical examples would have made this livelier and more helpful. But if organizations operated with Covey's ideas—and ideals—most people would undoubtedly find work much more satisfying. DVD not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

It takes the likes of Covey--and a gap of 15 years in publication time--to hit directly on the issue confronting individuals and corporations today: the gap between effectiveness and greatness. Following his best-selling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1996), the author demonstrates in words and a series of 16 brief DVD clips (included) exactly how to find your own voice and, for leaders, how to support the discovery of the organization's voice. He selects examples from past and present, from Abraham Lincoln to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, demonstrating, first, the ways to uncover the four intelligences (mental, spiritual, physical/economic, and emotional/social) and, second, the roles necessary to lead others to discover their voices. Statistics and personal anecdotes (a conversation with Bill Marriott, for instance) underscore the importance of trust and the implementation of that trust; one study from Harris Interactive reveals that only 48 percent of respondents said their organizations lived up to organizational values. Timely commentary in a surefire next-seller. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Stephen Covey continues to wow us with his new The 8th Habit. As the world's most respected leadership expert, he builds on the foundation of his bestselling 7 Habits and gives a pattern for life that is passionate, makes a difference and leaves a legacy of greatness."-- Larry King

"The 8th Habit is a marvelous read, a triumph of the spirit and, in my view, Covey's most important work."
-- Warren Bennis, author of On Becoming a Leader

"The 8th Habit is a true masterpiece, a must-read. These principles of personal and organizational leadership, when lived, unleash human genius and inspire deep commitment and magnificent levels of service and satisfaction. This book will be my gift to all my associates as required reading for all of my future endeavors."
-- Horst Schulze, former President and COO of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

"The 8th Habit will clearly stand as the crowning achievement of Covey's lifetime of service."
-- Tom Peters, author of Re-imagine!: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

"Getting results in large companies is a very rare skill and this book captures how to do it."
-- Kevin Rollins, President and CEO, Dell, Inc.

Product Description

The world has changed dramatically since the classic, internationally bestselling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was published, influencing tens of millions. The challenges and complexity we all face in our relationships, families, professional lives and communities are of an entirely new order of magnitude. In order to thrive, innovate, excel and lead in what Covey calls the new Knowledge Worker Age, we must build on and move beyond effectiveness...to greatness.Accessing the higher levels of human genius and motivation in today's new reality requires a sea change of new thinking -- a new mind-set, a new skill-set, a new tool-set -- in short, a whole new habit.

About the Author

Stephen R. Covey is a renowned authority on leadership, a family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and vice chairman of FranklinCovey Co. The author of several acclaimed books, he has also received numerous honors and awards, including being named one of Time magazine's twenty-five most influential Americans. Covey lives with his wife, Sandra, and their family in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.

Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs

Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs

Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (February 24, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594201277
ISBN-13: 978-1594201271


From Publishers Weekly


In this sobering but optimistic manifesto, development economist Sachs (The End of Poverty) argues that the crises facing humanity are daunting—but solutions to them are readily at hand. Sachs focuses on four challenges for the coming decades: heading off global warming and environmental destruction; stabilizing the world's population; ending extreme poverty; and breaking the political logjams that hinder global cooperation on these issues. The author analyses economic data, demographic trends and climate science to create a lucid, accessible and suitably grim exposition of looming problems, but his forte is elaborating concrete, pragmatic, low-cost remedies complete with benchmarks and budgets. Sachs's entire agenda would cost less than 3% of the world's annual income, and he notes that a mere two days' worth of Pentagon spending would fund a comprehensive antimalaria program for Africa, saving countless lives. Forthright government action is the key to avoiding catastrophe, the author contends, not the unilateral, militarized approach to international problems that he claims is pursued by the Bush administration. Combining trenchant analysis with a resounding call to arms, Sachs's book is an important contribution to the debate over the world's future. (Mar.) 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Other Reviews


"Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces. We can address poverty, climate change, and environmental destruction at a very modest cost today with huge benefits for shared and sustainable prosperity and peace in the future, or we can duck the issues today and risk a potentially costly reckoning in later years. Despite the rearguard opposition of some vested interests, policies to help the world's poor and the global environment are in fact the very best economic bargains on the planet." - Al Gore, Winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and Former Vice President of the United States 


"Jeffrey Sachs never disappoints. With powerful illustrations and moving words, he describes what humanity must do if we are to share a common future on this planet. By making sense of economics as it affects the lives of people, this book is an excellent resource for all those who want to understand what changes the 21st century may bring." - Kofi Annan, winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize and former secretary-general of the United Nations


About the Book


From one of the world's greatest economic minds, author of The New York Times bestseller The End of Poverty, a clear and vivid map of the road to sustainable and equitable global prosperity and an augury of the global economic collapse that lies ahead if we don't follow it
The global economic system now faces a sustainability crisis, Jeffrey Sachs argues, one that will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life. The changes will be deeper than a rebalancing of economics and politics among different parts of the world; the very idea of competing nation-states scrambling for power, resources, and markets will in some crucial respects become passŽ. The only question is how bad it will have to get before we face the unavoidable. We will have to learn on a global scale some of the hard lessons that successful societies have gradually and grudgingly learned within national borders: that there must be common ground between rich and poor, among competing ethnic groups, and between society and nature.


The central theme of Jeffrey Sachs's new book is that we need a new economic paradigm-global, inclusive, cooperative, environmentally aware, science-based-because we are running up against the realities of a crowded planet. The alternative is a worldwide economic collapse of unprecedented severity. Prosperity will have to be sustained through more cooperative processes, relying as much on public policy as on market forces to spread technology, address the needs of the poor, and to husband threatened resources of water, air, energy, land, and biodiversity. The "soft issues" of the environment, public health, and population will become the hard issues of geopolitics. New forms of global politics will in important ways replace capital-city-dominated national diplomacy and intrigue. National governments, even the U.S., will become much weaker actors as scientific networks and socially responsible investors and foundations become the more powerful actors.


If we do the right things, there is room for all on the planet. We can achieve the four key goals of a global society: prosperity for all, the end of extreme poverty, stabilization of the global population, and environmental sustainability. These are not utopian goals or pipedreams, yet they are far from automatic. Indeed, we are not on a successful trajectory now to achieve these goals. Common Wealth points the way to the course correction we must embrace for the sake of our common future.


About the Author


Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. He is internationally renowned for his work as an economic adviser to governments around the world.