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SYNOPSIS “Many people view leadership the same way they view success, hoping to go as far as they can, to climb the ladder, to achieve the highest position possible for their talent. But contrary to conventional thinking, I believe the bottom line in leadership isn't how far we advance ourselves but how far we advance others. That is achieved by serving others and adding value to their lives.” The quote above sums up the foundation of the 21 laws and the philosophy behind them. Based on 40 years of leadership and the observations of successful leaders in business, politics, sports, and other industries, these principles are the core elements of being a leader. The laws are based on the premise that leadership is not just about a business or organization, but also about self-development and the development of others. SUMMARY 1.     The Law of the Lid The ability to lead determines a person’s level of effectiveness. That level of effectiveness is the “lid” on pers...

SYNOPSIS “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It’s precisely that simple, and it’s also that difficult." Like most good books on leadership, this one makes it clear that developing the skills of a leader is very much about self-development. A leader must know himself and the climate in which he leads. That climate includes circumstances, other people, policies, and a host of other factors. To become a leader, we must understand the rules of the game AND know how to play it. SUMMARY Mastering the Context All situations that require leadership have a specific context that impacts decisions. Many leaders allow the situation itself to have too much influence on their decisions. To lead effectively, a leader must make decisions based on the big picture and not on current circumstances. Bennis uses the story of Norman Lear, a leader in television production, to make his point. Lear created shows that went against the norm of sitcoms in the 60's. He u...

SYNOPSIS A lot of professionals are familiar with taking over in a new position or a new company, and the first 90 days can determine success or failure. This book provides proven strategies to make those 90 days count. The framework here applies to start-ups and established businesses and helps anyone successfully take on a new role. To jump-start a new position, there are five focus points for diagnosing the new situation, creating strategies, and taking control quickly. SUMMARY Assessing Your Strengths and Weaknesses It's critical to self-evaluate strengths and weaknesses and how they relate to the responsibilities of the new role before creating a 90-day plan. By relating current skills to the specifics of the new role, it creates a smoother, faster transition and increases the chances of success. It's important to remember that what may seem like strengths can sometimes be interpreted as weaknesses in a new role. While having attention to detail may have bee...

SYNOPSIS This book focuses on how team dynamics can make or break a company. Written as a leadership fable, this story follows a leader and his team as they struggle with the dysfunctional behaviors that will probably be familiar to most professionals. The company has great people with talent but just can't compete because morale is low and the team members just can't agree on common goals. “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.” The team is unable to make important decisions, and the company is losing the battle for market share. By identifying the five dysfunctions that are disabling the team, the leader eventually eliminates the issues holding everyone back and turns a dysfunctional group into an effective, committed team. SUMMARY Absence of Trust Trust among a team means all the members can show their weaknesses and be vulnerable with...

SYNOPSIS There's really no other way to put it. This book is 'the' handbook for building great teams. There is no fluff, no elaborate theories. Only practical advice proven to work. Managers and leaders already know how important a team can be and they know how hard it is to build a great one. This book has all the tools for building those great teams. “To succeed, organizations must rely on the knowledge, skills, experience, and perspective of a wide range of people to solve multifaceted problems, make good decisions, and deliver effective solutions. This is where dynamic, productive teams can make the difference.” Full of useful templates and step-by-step guidelines, this a workbook in the best sense of the word. There's lots of white space for notes and plenty of worksheets to help keep everything together. Each area of team development, team management, and team dynamics is covered in great detail. SUMMARY To build effective teams, it's important firs...

SYNOPSIS The Art of War was written by a Chinese general named Sun Tzu more than 2,500 years ago. Revered for its practical advice on warfare, the lessons here apply to anyone who leads others. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of war, along with practical advice for leading effectively. Three of the more important elements of success in battle, leadership, strategy, and tactics, are critical for victory. SUMMARY Leadership The first chapters focus on leading effectively, not just in regards to strategy and tactics, but in how to instill confidence and purpose in followers. The focus here is on being strong and confident, but also on caring and being responsible for the well-being of others. There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: Recklessness, which leads to destruction. Cowardice, which leads to capture. A hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults. A delicacy of honor, which is sensitive to shame. Over-solicitude for his men, which ...

SYNOPSIS This book divides work into two categories: 'Deep Work' and 'Shallow Work.' Shallow work is meetings, emails, phone calls, and the all those other daily tasks. The internet and social media have added even more distractions, creating more problems in time management. Getting these constant interruptions under control allows more time for deep work. Deep work is the tasks that need undivided attention and a distraction-free place. The book offers a simple formula for understanding how it works: High-quality work produced = (Time spent) x (Intensity of focus). “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” SUMMARY The need for uninterrupted concentration has become more important than ever because of the amount of information and the never-ending digital distractions. While social media and...

SYNOPSIS Design firm and idea factory IDEO has developed ten personas for innovation. These talents, or roles, help teams focus from different points of view to create more useful solutions. These ten “faces” are not just theories on the advantage of seeing things from different viewpoints. They are practical, tested methods that help create better solutions, more insightful team members, and a culture of innovation. Each persona represents a unique approach to looking at innovation and solving problems. The ten “faces” are categorized into three categories: learning, organizing, and building. These three categories are the basic building blocks of the innovation process, and the personas fine-tune the approach to take with each phase. SUMMARY The Learning Personas The first three personas are learning roles focused on the continuous need for new information. Each of these roles is designed to avoid the stagnation that plagues many organizations. Their focus is typically ex...

SYNOPSIS “Good companies embrace a culture of mini-failures.” A tour through the systems used by design firm and idea factory IDEO provides an insider's view of how innovation works and why it's a necessity for any business. The sometimes vague concepts that are a part of innovation, like brainstorming and creativity, are broken down and explained clearly enough to make them more practical to use for start-ups and established companies alike. Real-life examples and applications help bring insight into how seeing things from a fresh point of view can result in better services and products that help companies stay competitive. SUMMARY “It’s not about just coming up with the one genius idea that solves the problem, but trying and failing at a hundred other solutions before arriving at the best one.” Innovation at Work LEGO was nominated in 2015 by Forbes as the most powerful brand in the world. But just over ten years earlier, in 2004, the toy company was on the edge...

SYNOPSIS Most leaders and managers are familiar with meetings that aren't as productive as they should be. By using “parallel thinking,” where participants focus on one part of a discussion at a time, productivity is increased. This method uses the analogy of different colored hats to represent six modes of thinking. By having everyone wear the same color “hat” at the same time, it creates a group focus with a single point of view. “A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.” By moving from hat to hat, the group is able to focus more specifically on each part of the issue individually. These switches from hat to hat are also effective in keeping things moving when roadblocks pop up. At times, individuals or individual groups may wear a particular hat, focusing on a specific point of view. This allows people to step into unfamiliar roles and helps them to look at things differently, understand other roles better, a...

SYNOPSIS The leader of one of the most successful design companies, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, shares what he has learned about how to make “change by design.” Tim draws from his years of experience to present the fundamental principles of the design process, from idea to realization. These principles apply not only to products, but to services, procedures, and virtually any other kind of problem. Change By Design isn't a “how-to” book, but rather an introduction and explanation of the methods used successfully by design thinkers. These methods aren't just for creatives and designers. The principles here are practical ways of thinking for anyone who needs solutions for problems. SUMMARY “Design thinking taps into capacities we all have but that are overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It is not only human-centered; it is deeply human in and of itself.” Design Thinking When most people think of “design,” they think of creative types working feveri...

SYNOPSIS “You see, genius is a path, not a gift. Studies of history’s greatest geniuses have shown that there is a 'genius code,' if you will. A combination of very specific traits that we can develop in ourselves, and thus, operate at a genius level.” This book is based on research from a variety of sources and proposes that genius is not some mystical, elusive trait, but a combination of many personality characteristics. Genius is not innate; it is a goal that can be achieved by developing separate traits or behaviors to create the “genius code.” Becoming a genius certainly isn't easy, but it is achievable. The concepts are the results of attempts to discover the common traits of “geniuses” from all walks of life, throughout history. Initial research attempts provided few results and did not identify common genius traits. This lack of common ground among the likes of Edison, DaVinci, Socrates and even Ted Williams, uncovered the notion that genius may actually be ...

SYNOPSIS Anyone can be creative. That's the message this book drives home by showing that creativity is an innate ability that requires courage to uncover. It's not so much a case of learning how to be creative, but rather learning how to release creativity by overcoming fears and doubts. The key to being creative is to learn how to take action. Everyone has good ideas at one time or another, but those creative ideas never see the light of day because most people don't have confidence in their creative abilities. They are afraid of failure or being judged. “If you want more success, you have to be prepared to shrug off more failure.” Learning how to control all those doubts takes the willingness to forgive failure and learn from the lessons those failures hold. No great breakthrough or innovation succeeded without failures. Through tenacity and commitment, creative efforts can survive the uncertainty and setbacks that are always a part of innovation. By refusing to giv...

SYNOPSIS The sub-title of this book sums it up pretty well: How to stop the corporation from stifling people and strangling profits. The ideas here are irreverent, humorous, and most of all, relevant. Creativity. Initiative. Boldness. These are the qualities that most professionals wish their employees and peers possessed. But too often, these same professionals never realize that it is the company or organization itself that stifles these important qualities. This book challenges readers to humanize business by bringing out the best in the people they work with by getting out of their way. The views here aren't in any particular order because the book is designed to serve as a way to promote thought and to question the traditional workings of business. By opening any page, readers will find useful ideas and thought-provoking observations. A typical view from the author gives a great example of the tone throughout the book. Addressing the traditional perk of upper management a...

SYNOPSIS For executives, the job is not simply to ensure that “things get done;” it’s to ensure the right things get done, at the right time, and in the right way. The Effective Executive teaches that the role of leadership in every organization is to set clear objectives, focus their strengths on priorities, and make tough choices about what to do and what not to do in different circumstances. These aren’t innate abilities. They are skills that can be learned through study, practice, and experience. SUMMARY Effectiveness can be learned An executive must first be able to effectively manage themselves before they can manage others by making effectiveness a habit. Effectiveness is a skill that is learned by practice. By focusing on what behaviors are effective and using those behaviors consistently, effectiveness becomes a habit. It takes a conscious effort to learn how to be effective, and it requires five basic habits. Managing time Focusing on contributions and results ...

SYNOPSIS Our effectiveness is a compilation of habits. Our habits are a compilation of knowledge, skill, and desire. This book focuses on how to develop the most effective habits with a character-driven approach as opposed to approaches that are personality-driven and developed from the outside-in.  This “inside-out” approach is composed of three stages. Dependence: Relying on others for our survival and happiness. Independence: Relying on ourselves and making our own decisions. Interdependence: Learning to combine independence and dependence to achieve results that aren't possible independently. The first three habits focus on self-mastery and moving from dependence to independence. The next three habits focus on collaboration, communication, and moving from independence to interdependence. The seventh habit focuses on maintaining a balanced foundation for effectively using the other habits. SUMMARY Habit 1: Be Proactive This habit teaches that change begins ...