Effectiveness isn't a trait we're born with, but there's hope according to the late Peter F. Drucker, a man some designate as the father of management theory.
Fortunately for business owners, employees and managers alike, Drucker makes a case that executive effectiveness is learned through a set of principles which he outlines in his timeless book, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done.
Communicating an idea is difficult, but communicating an idea to a modern sensory-overloaded audience is…nearly impossible. Citing inspiration from Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point, Chip and Dan Heath offer a recipe for constructing memorable ideas in their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The Heath Brothers organize their book based around six principles of effective communication that make ideas resonate.
Verne Harnish is a well respected and extremely successful "business guru" who seeks to help emerging companies increase growth and realize their potential. His highly acclaimed book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast-Growth Firm, is arguably one of the clearest and most practical guides on growing and managing a small to medium size business.
Jim Collins takes a quantitative approach to analyzing what factors turn a good company into a great one in his highly acclaimed book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't (2001). Collins and his 26 person research team analyzed reams of corporate data from public companies and defined a good-to-great transition as 10-years of relative inactivity followed by 15 years of cumulative stock returns.
Read more on Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't – Book Review…
So you have a business idea and the ambition to see things through, yet you haven't a clue where to begin. You're not alone. Most aspiring business owners become overwhelmed with questions like "how do I write a business plan?" "who are my customers?" and the ever nagging "how do I raise capital?" Kawasaki's The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything systematically fills in the blanks while communicating details in a language we all understand. This isn't a book for the all knowing; this is a book for the aspiring business owner who wants to put his or her ideas into action. Kawasaki himself is no stranger to the art of starting -
