Best Management Skills

Voted one of Top 100 Business Books of All Time on Goodreads. People are using this simple, powerful concept to focus on what matters most in their personal and work lives. By focusing their energy on one thing at a time people are living more rewarding lives by building their careers, strengthening their finances, losing weight and getting in shape, deepening their faith, and nurturing stronger marriages and personal relationships. In. The ONE Thing. , you. '. ll learn to. *. cut through the clutter. *. achieve better results in less time. *. build momentum toward your goal. *. dial down the stress. *. overcome that overwhelmed feeling. *. revive your energy. *. stay on track. *. master what matters to you. The ONE Thing. delivers extraordinary results in every area of your life. --. work, personal, family, and spiritual. Gary Keller is chairman of the board and cofounder of Keller Williams Realty, Inc., which holds the #1 position as the largest real estate company in the world.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Have you ever felt the Universe arranged everything for you to be at the right time on your computer, reading the right article that mentioned the perfect book you were meant to read at that specific point in your life? Not because it wasn't understood the first time around, but because I simply want to inundate myself with all its the ideas. Below are some of the highlights that profoundly resonated with me but I invite you to grab a copy and read the whole book. Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. Success is actually a short race -- a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over. How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our lives."
"Or do they pull off something worthwhile and can they really aid someone find the business success they are seeking? Are they preaching to an already converted choir to confirm their preconceived notions or are they offering fresh insights and trying to broaden the horizons of readers? This book is authored by the very successful founder of one of the nation's great realtors, Keller-Williams. Gary Keller is targeting those business folks who want to find single minded success - the kinds of self-sacrificing, dedicated, and single-minded people he wants to hire and who will make themselves (and him) a great deal of money. Keller believes in focus, utter dedication to your one thing, and driving to breakthrough barriers to get to your one big purpose. He is not a big believer work life balance - he actually rejects it and calls it a lie. In other words, the key ideas are underlined in what looks like pencil - as if a previous reader had done it for you. I hear any number of executives talk about this as they are on their third marriage and fathering their own grandkids. There is a lot of benefit that comes from having succeeded and getting the space and time that comes from financial success."
"It's realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. well written, incredibly simple, concise, practical analysis of the whys and hows of discovering and executing our ONE Thing. The Focusing Question - Helps us arrive at The ONE Thing. "When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn't actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.""

Darren Hardy, publisher of Success Magazine , presents The Compound Effect , a distillation of the fundamental principles that have guided the most phenomenal achievements in business, relationships, and beyond. Darren has been a leader in the personal-development industry for sixteen years, having led two personal development-based television networks—The People’s Network (TPN), and The Success Training Network (TSTN)—producing and launching more than a thousand TV shows, live events, and products and programs with many of the world’s top experts. Darren is a product of the principles he reveals in The Compound Effect . As publisher and editorial director of Success Magazine , Darren is in a unique position to interview leading experts on human performance and achievement, as well as many of today’s top CEOs, revolutionary entrepreneurs, superstar athletes, entertainers, and Olympic champions, to uncover and share the secrets behind their extraordinary success. Each month in the pages of Success Magazine , on his blog (DarrenHardy.SUCCESS.com), on Twitter (@ DarrenHardy), on Facebook (DarrenHardyFan), and before live audiences of entrepreneurs across the country, Darren distills the best of the best information and strategies available, mixing in his own street-tested principles of success.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This was a great read."
"Hardy provides excellent analogies and examples to reinforce the main ideas of the compound effect, which is a method in which prolonged consistency will return extraordinary rewards."
"Easy read, really good kick in the pants concept to set your life, business, year on fire."
"I have read over 30 books on coaching and this is one of the best I have read."
"I enjoyed reading this book, gives you great insight of what happens with your personal and professional choices, highly recommend to a new entrepreneur!"
"This book has changed my life and put me on the right track!"
"Not only a quick engaging read but it is very actionable with worksheets and resources for accountability and follow thru!"
"Mr. Hardy gives a quick, no-nonsense read about how to be successful as taught by the great motivators."

These approaches have been honed from over three decades of advising tens of thousands of CEOs and executives and helping them navigate the increasing complexities (and weight) that come with scaling up a venture. The goal of this book is to help you turn what feels like an anchor into wind at your back -- creating a company where the team is engaged; the customers are doing your marketing; and everyone is making money. Scaling Up shows business leaders how to get their organizations moving in sync to create something significant and enjoy the ride. Scaling Up is that business book. Verne’s tools and techniques have been critical to helping us drive and manage this growth during my 20 years as CEO ― and ultimately to freeing me up as the founder to pursue other interests.” -- Scott Tannas, founder and Vice Chairman, Western Financial Group; senator, Canadian Parliament. “Scaling up a significant business requires precisely the kind of discipline and focus detailed in Verne’s practical and ‘how-to’ driven book.” -- Scott Farquhar, co-founder and CEO, Atlassian. “Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up is one of the finest business books you'll ever read. Whether you're an entrepreneur who wants to scale up, a CEO who wants to take his business to the next level, or a non-profit executive who wants to leave a legacy, this book will be life-changing.” -- Tan Yinglan, Author of Way of the VC – Top Venture Capitalists on Your Board, Chinnovation – How Chinese Innovators are Changing the World and New Venture Creation - Entrepreneurship For The 21st Century - An Asian Perspective. ( Scaling Up ) Verne Harnish is founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) and chaired for fifteen years EO's premiere CEO program, the "Birthing of Giants" and WEO's "Advanced Business" executive program both held at MIT. Founder and CEO of Gazelles, a global executive education and coaching company with over 150 coaching partners on six continents, Verne has spent the past three decades helping companies scale-up.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"For those leaders who are willing to take Verne's exceptionally well-presented ideas in the areas of People, Strategy, Execution and Cash and IMPLEMENT them consistently (using the practical and customizable tools that he offers both in the book and at the scalingup.com web site), the results will be nothing short of transformative."
"This book was great for our organization."
"Verne's insight is superb, fresh view, clear direction, a lot of new books, you are in good hands!"
"Most businesses in the world turnover less than $1 million and if you want to make it to the 4% this book has solid advice from an experienced entrepreneur on how to become part of the 4%."
"I have read a lot of business books, literally thousands, and I would put this book in my top 10 for sure."
"Excelente teory, dificult to achieve in practice."
"Great book."
"A good book for start ups in both business and other organizations."
Best Business Project Management

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) –Fifth Edition reflects the collaboration and knowledge of working project managers and provides the fundamentals of project management as they apply to a wide range of projects.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"As a project management instructor and course developer at a state university, a project management keynote speaker, and someone who has been training project managers for nearly two decades, I highly recommend this book. - You will need another book since many exam concepts aren't even covered in the PMBOK. I personally like PMP Exam Prep, Seventh Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam or CAPM/PMP Project Management Certification All-in-One Exam Guide with CD-ROM, Second Edition. - When submitting project experience on the application, you can submit work even if your title was not Project Manager. ***Update (Sep 2013)***. New editions of the books I linked to above were released: - PMP Exam Prep, Eighth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam. - CAPM/PMP Project Management Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Third Edition."
"So, go ahead and buy another book on studying for the PMP exam, but if that book covers any topic(s) that are NOT in THIS BOOK, you are learning content that is irrelevant for this exam. I bought Joseph Phillips study guide, and although it was helpful, there were many terms and content items NOT in the PMBOK guide, and therefore I did not get any questions on the real exam related to those terms/topics. Also, I took 5 practice exams from 3 different sources (one was from the Joseph Phillips CD) which turned out to give me false confidence because the real exam was a LOT harder. I recommend memorizing the 47 processes and being able to write them down in the chart before you take the exam."
Best Career Guides

The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes: • More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point. • Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal. • How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times. • The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either. -- Dr. Stewart D. Friedman, Adviser to Jack Welch and Former Vice President Al Gore on Work/Family Issues, Director of the Work/Life Integration Project, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania "Stunning and amazing. -- Phil Town, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of "Rule #1 "The 4-Hour Workweek is a new way of solving a very old problem: just how can we work to live and prevent our lives from being all about work?
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Don't get me wrong, Ferriss makes some excellent points and he's got some really great tips and tricks in here, I'm just not sure how universal they really are. I thought he was just talking about ways to spend less time working, but that "The 4-Hour" just sounded good (since he now has a whole line of books with titles that start that way). I never did understand the point of retirement, so Ferriss's plan sounds much more appealing to me. Granted, that would make my job a whole lot more portable, but I could never get away with only working four hours per week (at least not until after I sell that bestselling novel, which is such a realistic plan!). I, too, thought I could get another job within a few months, but that did not turn out to be the case. So, if I go spend all my money on a mini-retirement now, and then come back only to find that I can't get a job for another year, I'll be screwed. I love them, but they have enough to deal with right now, and the last thing I want to do is burden the people around me because I decided to go globe-trotting for a few months."
"Practicing the book context for over 2 months now."
"The second half suggests how you can spend all your new free time!"
"First edition was easier to read."
"I gav the book 4 stars because I felt it starts iff a little slow but soon you are asking yurself why you neve thought of looking at something in that way befire."
"Mostly conceptual with a few chapters of application, this book introduced me to mind blowing concepts (automated business, outsourcing and traveling inexpensive etc.)."
"Seriously, he begins by admitting he first made his fortune selling (allegedly) nutritional supplements that cost almost nothing to make and weren't based on science, but were then hyped to the point the uninformed public was paying through the nose to get it. This gave him ideas on how to further hype his message to an even larger audience, without bothering to sell anything tangible. He then gives advice about "paraphrasing and combining points from several books," borrowing from the public domain, and/or compensating some other "expert." Apparently, not knowing a damn thing is a virtue he calls "Cultivating Selective Ignorance." If having an educated and well-informed populace is fundamental to having a flourishing democracy, this is how we'll end up with a plutocracy where the stupidest few prey on the desperate and stupid masses, while outsourcing all the jobs they might create. Outsource everything -- including your brain -- to a 3rd World Country: He hires virtual assistants in various 3rd World Countries, especially India, who are then given fabulous access to all of his personal information to the point they can pretend to be him and make all of his personal and business decisions. Hey, what could possibly go wrong by hiring complete strangers and giving them all information about you in order to think for you, do your work and run your errands? Just tell him you're too busy and further kill morale by then asking those other suckers - aka, co-workers - for a quick breakdown of what happened."
Best Strategic Management

How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. -- Harry C. Edwards In what Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last he wrote with Jerry Porras, this worthwhile effort explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. After establishing a definition of a good-to-great transition that involves a 10-year fallow period followed by 15 years of increased profits, Collins's crew combed through every company that has made the Fortune 500 (approximately 1,400) and found 11 that met their criteria, including Walgreens, Kimberly Clark and Circuit City.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Though he was promoting a different book, I heard only incredible things about his work Good to Great and at the conference I was fascinated with his understanding of how people and businesses thrive. Collins (and his team) systematically walks us through six stages every great works through to move from good to great: Level 5 Leadership, First Who...Then What, Confront the Brutal Facts, The Hedgehog Concept, A Culture of Discipline, and Technology Accelerators."
"After all, we spend so much time in cars we may as well make the best of the time. If you are motivated to do great things inside your company this will give you ideas to determine the others around you who feel the same way, and how to identify the points in your company that will make you great and those that will delay growth."
"Buy this book and read it because it will change your perspective on business and life."
"The use of analogies to help someone understand something they can not relate to is one thing, but the use of analogies over and over again is the sign of a weak mind; I stopped reading when he started using analogies to explain analogies."
Best Communication in Management

TEACHING A LEVIATHAN TO IMPROVISE It’s no secret that in any field, small teams have many advantages—they can respond quickly, communicate freely, and make decisions without layers of bureaucracy. A NEW APPROACH FOR A NEW WORLD McChrystal and his colleagues discarded a century of conventional wisdom and remade the Task Force, in the midst of a grueling war, into something new: a network that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority. Leaders looked at the best practices of the smallest units and found ways to extend them to thousands of people on three continents, using technology to establish a oneness that would have been impossible even a decade earlier. The world is changing faster than ever, and the smartest response for those in charge is to give small groups the freedom to experiment while driving everyone to share what they learn across the entire organization. “In addition to being a fascinating and colorful read, this book is an indispensable guide to organizational change.” –Walter Isaacson , from the foreword “This is a bold argument that leaders can help teams become greater than the sum of their parts.” —Charles Duhigg , author of The Power of Habit “ Team of Teams is erudite, elegant, and insightful. Team of Teams harnesses these new realities as assets, providing a leadership framework to produce the inclusiveness and adaptability of a fast-moving start-up, at the scale of any size organization.” —Brad Smith , president and CEO, Intuit “In Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal, who won some of our most striking victories in the great war between nations and terrorist networks, shares insights for all in this lucid, persuasive, and sometimes wrenching account of our troubled yet transformational times.” —John Arquilla , professor, Defense Analysis United States Naval Postgraduate School “In the fast-moving world of today and tomorrow, organizations that don’t adapt will simply fade.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The book is not a military history, but instead a concise and exceptionally “fun to read” collection of insightful ideas told through entertaining stories ranging from industry to hospital emergency rooms. I recommend it for leaders and associates from all types of organizations who need to break down the effects of siloed teams in which information flow and decision making is ineffective in today’s increasingly complex environment. The discussions in the book are grounded in organizational management theory and leadership methods, but along the way gives a once in a lifetime look at the inside of the most storied Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit in existence today. They include weather forecasting, basketball and soccer, engineering marvels, big data, airline customer service, aircraft crews, NASA, SEAL training, plastic surgeons at the Boston Marathon bombing, GM versus Ford, MIT studies, and the enduring effects of Ritz Carlton and Nordstrom. The following should be of interest to today’s leaders: the difference between complicated and complex environments; how having more information available does not improve prediction nor mean lead to smarter decisions at the top; Taylorisms and efficiency ideals may actually cost you more than they save; the ‘need to know’ fallacy; the value of using your best people as ‘liaison officers’ or ‘embeds’; how resilient people make organizations stronger because they can adapt to changing environments; learning from your adversary is time well spent--they might have a better organizational model not necessarily better people; how to delegate authority to take action until you are uncomfortable; how to build trust and a shared awareness of the big picture; ‘eyes on, hands off’ leadership; and the difference between creating Strategic Corporals and an organization full of Lord Horatio Nelsons. The book carries you forward in time to see how far the Task Force had come by changing their culture, structure, and habits to allow the larger corporate command to become as agile and capable as its commandos. This short example, that covers just 46 minutes of a follow-on-target operation, highlights sharply the outcome of The Task Force’s investment in transparency, trust building and empowered execution. Sir Lieutenant General Lamb, a close friend of Stan McChrystal, shared a paper with me once that he titled 'In Command and Out of Control' and it raises a lot of the same questions and concepts about how to lead in a complex and fast-paced world. The concept is literally about getting 'out of the control' business and realizing that in order for organizations to take advantage of fleeting opportunities teams must be empowered at the lowest levels to take action."
"This book should be read by leaders of organizations both large and small so they can get the most out of their workforce and thrive in today’s ever-changing business climate."
"General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army Retired, took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in the Middle East in 2003 and transformed it from a hierarchical organization built on efficiency and discipline to a fluid, information-rich, decentralized organization. As author Pat Lencioni (“Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars,” “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”) has pointed out, organizations seeking creativity, collaboration, agility and speed need to break down silos and work across groups. McChrystal in his “Team of Teams” shares insights and his personal evolution that led to the transformation of his Task Force from one that suffered frequent and disastrous set-backs to one that could match, and then beat back networked terrorist organizations which could strike rapidly, reconfigure in real time, and integrate its globally dispersed actions. “Team of Teams” is organized around five topics: The challenge of the new environment: Accelerating speed and interdependence in today’s world has created levels of complexity that confound even the most superbly efficient organizations. The myths and magic of teams: What is it that creates the trust and common purpose that bond great small teams and why do so many small teams and firms falter as they grow and scale. AHSC was ahead of its time with its team of teams (19 Divisions) organizational structure that proved collaborative, agile and fast…and an incubator for industry leaders."
Best Human Resources & Personnel

TEACHING A LEVIATHAN TO IMPROVISE It’s no secret that in any field, small teams have many advantages—they can respond quickly, communicate freely, and make decisions without layers of bureaucracy. A NEW APPROACH FOR A NEW WORLD McChrystal and his colleagues discarded a century of conventional wisdom and remade the Task Force, in the midst of a grueling war, into something new: a network that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority. Leaders looked at the best practices of the smallest units and found ways to extend them to thousands of people on three continents, using technology to establish a oneness that would have been impossible even a decade earlier. The world is changing faster than ever, and the smartest response for those in charge is to give small groups the freedom to experiment while driving everyone to share what they learn across the entire organization. “In addition to being a fascinating and colorful read, this book is an indispensable guide to organizational change.” –Walter Isaacson , from the foreword “This is a bold argument that leaders can help teams become greater than the sum of their parts.” —Charles Duhigg , author of The Power of Habit “ Team of Teams is erudite, elegant, and insightful. Team of Teams harnesses these new realities as assets, providing a leadership framework to produce the inclusiveness and adaptability of a fast-moving start-up, at the scale of any size organization.” —Brad Smith , president and CEO, Intuit “In Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal, who won some of our most striking victories in the great war between nations and terrorist networks, shares insights for all in this lucid, persuasive, and sometimes wrenching account of our troubled yet transformational times.” —John Arquilla , professor, Defense Analysis United States Naval Postgraduate School “In the fast-moving world of today and tomorrow, organizations that don’t adapt will simply fade.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The book is not a military history, but instead a concise and exceptionally “fun to read” collection of insightful ideas told through entertaining stories ranging from industry to hospital emergency rooms. I recommend it for leaders and associates from all types of organizations who need to break down the effects of siloed teams in which information flow and decision making is ineffective in today’s increasingly complex environment. The discussions in the book are grounded in organizational management theory and leadership methods, but along the way gives a once in a lifetime look at the inside of the most storied Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit in existence today. They include weather forecasting, basketball and soccer, engineering marvels, big data, airline customer service, aircraft crews, NASA, SEAL training, plastic surgeons at the Boston Marathon bombing, GM versus Ford, MIT studies, and the enduring effects of Ritz Carlton and Nordstrom. The following should be of interest to today’s leaders: the difference between complicated and complex environments; how having more information available does not improve prediction nor mean lead to smarter decisions at the top; Taylorisms and efficiency ideals may actually cost you more than they save; the ‘need to know’ fallacy; the value of using your best people as ‘liaison officers’ or ‘embeds’; how resilient people make organizations stronger because they can adapt to changing environments; learning from your adversary is time well spent--they might have a better organizational model not necessarily better people; how to delegate authority to take action until you are uncomfortable; how to build trust and a shared awareness of the big picture; ‘eyes on, hands off’ leadership; and the difference between creating Strategic Corporals and an organization full of Lord Horatio Nelsons. The book carries you forward in time to see how far the Task Force had come by changing their culture, structure, and habits to allow the larger corporate command to become as agile and capable as its commandos. This short example, that covers just 46 minutes of a follow-on-target operation, highlights sharply the outcome of The Task Force’s investment in transparency, trust building and empowered execution. Sir Lieutenant General Lamb, a close friend of Stan McChrystal, shared a paper with me once that he titled 'In Command and Out of Control' and it raises a lot of the same questions and concepts about how to lead in a complex and fast-paced world. The concept is literally about getting 'out of the control' business and realizing that in order for organizations to take advantage of fleeting opportunities teams must be empowered at the lowest levels to take action."
"This book should be read by leaders of organizations both large and small so they can get the most out of their workforce and thrive in today’s ever-changing business climate."
"General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army Retired, took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in the Middle East in 2003 and transformed it from a hierarchical organization built on efficiency and discipline to a fluid, information-rich, decentralized organization. As author Pat Lencioni (“Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars,” “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”) has pointed out, organizations seeking creativity, collaboration, agility and speed need to break down silos and work across groups. McChrystal in his “Team of Teams” shares insights and his personal evolution that led to the transformation of his Task Force from one that suffered frequent and disastrous set-backs to one that could match, and then beat back networked terrorist organizations which could strike rapidly, reconfigure in real time, and integrate its globally dispersed actions. “Team of Teams” is organized around five topics: The challenge of the new environment: Accelerating speed and interdependence in today’s world has created levels of complexity that confound even the most superbly efficient organizations. The myths and magic of teams: What is it that creates the trust and common purpose that bond great small teams and why do so many small teams and firms falter as they grow and scale. AHSC was ahead of its time with its team of teams (19 Divisions) organizational structure that proved collaborative, agile and fast…and an incubator for industry leaders."