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Book Summary: Amazon’s ideas can make your organization smarter.

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Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr

Whatever you think about Amazon, it’s impossible to ignore the impact that it’s had on so many aspects of the business landscape, from retailing to publishing to entertainment and even cloud data services. Working Backwards, written by two early and senior executives, describes some of the notable business practices behind Amazon’s growth and impact. Mostly these are ideas that organizations of any type or size can use or adapt.

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Book Summary: Make better decisions.

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Creating Great Choices book cover

Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking

by Jennifer Riel and Roger L. Martin

Conventional wisdom says that trade-offs are inevitable when making hard choices. But settling for the least bad option is a lousy way to make a big decision. This book proposes a “third and better way” to make important choices using proven, repeatable processes to create better answers to problems, sidestep our built-in biases, and avoid trading off one stakeholder group’s needs for another.

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Book Summary: Three keys to unlock your influence.

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Book cover: Influencer

Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change

by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

The premise of this book is that leaders are agents of change. Whether they’re heading an organization, leading a social change movement, or parenting, genuine leaders are always trying to create something better and more impactful. And to do that, influence is the most critical tool in the leader’s tool belt.

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BHAGs – The missing link between vision and accomplishment

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We’ve all seen them, read them, and maybe even written some of them – lofty vision statements that are meant to inspire our teams and spur forward action. But do they? More often than not, there’s a missing link between vision and action: concrete goals and a plan for fulfillment. A plan that reaches beyond the annual or three-year strategic plan and provides a bridge to a future where that vision is realized.

A BHAG can provide that critical link.

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Book Summary: Motivation for the 21st century

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Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink

The premise of this book is that motivation practices in many organizations have yet to catch up with our expanding understanding of human nature. We’re still using industrial-age management techniques while trying to succeed in a knowledge-age world.

Using psychological research and case studies, Dan Pink outlines three levels of motivation, which he names Motivation 1.0 (based on our survival drive), Motivation 2.0 (based on our drive to seek rewards and avoid punishment), and Motivation 3.0 (our drive to seek autonomy, mastery, and purpose).

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Book Summary: Proposals for a TL;DR world.

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The One-Page Proposal: How To Get Your Business Pitch Onto One Persuasive Page

by Patrick G. Riley

Do you have an idea or initiative that you want to get out into the world? A one-page proposal can be a great way to develop and communicate the concept quickly and effectively to potential allies and supporters.

The One-Page Proposal can help ensure that your one-pager hits the mark. Written by longtime entrepreneur Patrick Riley, the book covers the structure of a successful one-page proposal and its development process. It also includes many examples.

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Book Summary: Reap the rewards of taking smarter notes.

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How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

by Sönke Ahrens

Better note-taking leads to better thinking, learning, and writing. That’s the premise of How to Take Smart Notes. But it’s not the disposable notes that most of us take, nor is it the haphazard note-taking process many of us use.

You’ll be introduced to Niklas Luhmann’s slip-box note-taking method. Luhmann, a lawyer/civil servant turned university professor, by the end of his career, had published 58 books and 400+ articles aided by his slip-box. (Some sources say 70 books, including those published posthumously from work in progress.) He wasn’t just prolific but influential. He’s considered one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century and a prominent thinker on systems theory.

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Book Summary: Expand your memory. Boost your thinking.

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Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

by Tiago Forte

Every day we face a flood of information. Some of it is useful. Much of it not. Some of us try to hoard as much as we can. Others let the bulk of it slide because they don’t have good filters for what’s useful or they’re too overwhelmed to deal with it. But, embedded in what’s slipping by are bits of information—gems—that could be invaluable for improving our relationships, advancing our careers, or developing our organizations.

The hoarders don’t fare better. Much of what they collect (warehouse) molders out of sight and certainly out of mind. In both cases, the gems are out of reach of the only place they could be useful, our attention. What if we could harness the power of technology to deal with the onslaught, capture the useful stuff, put it to work or organize it for future use, and ultimately benefit from the wealth of information we face every day? That’s the question this book answers.

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Book Summary: Better engagement = better outcomes (and reviews).

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The Workshop Survival Guide: How to design and teach educational workshops that work every time

by Rob Fitzpatrick and Devin Hunt

The Workshop Survival Guide is a straightforward guide to workshop design and facilitation. Author Rob Fitzpatrick teaches early-stage startups how to get customer feedback. Co-author Devin Hunt teaches mid-stage entrepreneurs on a variety of business topics. They’ve created and delivered workshops for audiences ranging from professionals to executives, undergrads to MBAs, disadvantaged youths to others.

The book has three sections. Part one covers design fundamentals. Part two is about facilitation. The appendix describes additional teaching formats and an example of a process for developing a new exercise.

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Book Summary: Time management should start here.

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Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

by Oliver Burkeman

Four Thousand Weeks puts everything else you read or learn about time management and productivity into a better, more meaningful context. Don’t read it; instead, experience it. Let it have the serious impact on your life that your life deserves.

After basking in the warm promises of ever so many other books on time management, this one felt like a plunge into the icy water. Shocking but clarifying at the same time. A leap from the warm, comforting pretense that, if we find just the right combination of tools, we can get it all done into the cold reality that we can’t. And by the way, here’s a reminder that life is absurdly short, so what will you do with it?

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