Posted by: AtlasMD

September 11, 2015

Recommended Reading: Great by Choice

RecommendedPost02We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These semi-weekly posts feature a book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck — Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. 

Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask: why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research,buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins andhis colleague Morten Hansen enumerate the principles for building a truly greatenterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times. This book is classic Collins: contrarian, data-driven and uplifting.

Put Blink on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

September 4, 2015

Recommended Reading: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

RecommendedPost02We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These semi-weekly posts feature a book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

In his landmark bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within.

Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of “blink”: the election of Warren Harding; “New Coke”; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police.

Blink reveals that great decision makers aren’t those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing”-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

Put Blink on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

August 28, 2015

Recommended Reading: The Starbucks Experience

RecommendedPost02We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These semi-weekly posts feature a book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: The Starbucks Experience

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SUCCESS!

You already know the Starbucks story. Since 1992, its stock has risen a staggering 5,000 percent! The genius of Starbucks success lies in its ability to create personalized customer experiences, stimulate business growth, generate profits, energize employees, and secure customer loyalty-all at the same time.

The Starbucks Experience contains a robust blend of home-brewed ingenuity and people-driven philosophies that have made Starbucks one of the world’s “most admired” companies, according toFortune magazine. With unique access to Starbucks personnel and resources, Joseph Michelli discovered that the success of Starbucks is driven by the people who work there-the “partners”-and the special experience they create for each customer. Michelli reveals how you can follow the Starbucks way to

  • Reach out to entire communities
  • Listen to individual workers and consumers
  • Seize growth opportunities in every market
  • Custom-design a truly satisfying experience that benefits everyone involved

Filled with real-life insider stories, eye-opening anecdotes, and solid step-by-step strategies, this fascinating book takes you deep inside one of the most talked-about companies in the world today.

For anyone who wants to learn from the best-and be the best-The Starbucks Experience is a rich, heady brew of unforgettable user-friendly ideas.

Put The Starbucks Experience on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

August 21, 2015

Recommended Reading: The Icarus Deception

RecommendedPost02We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These semi-weekly posts feature a book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: The Icarus Deception. How High Will You Fly?

In Seth Godin’s most inspiring book, he challenges readers to find the courage to treat their work as a form of art.

Everyone knows that Icarus’s father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun; he ignored the warning and plunged to his doom. The lesson: Play it safe. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy. What boss wouldn’t want employees to believe that obedience and conformity are the keys to success?

But we tend to forget that Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because seawater would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe.

The safety zone has moved. Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: Make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card.

Godin shows us how it’s possible and convinces us why it’s essential.

Put The Icarus Deception on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

June 19, 2015

Recommended Reading: Good Boss, Bad Boss

RecommendedPost02We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These semi-weekly posts feature a book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: Good Boss, Bad Boss. How to Be The Best and Learn from the Worst. 

Now with a new chapter that focuses on what great bosses really do. Dr. Sutton reveals new insights that he’s learned since the writing of Good Boss, Bad Boss. Sutton adds revelatory thoughts about such legendary bosses as Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs, A.G. Lafley, and many more, and how you can implement their techniques.

If you are a boss who wants to do great work, what can you do about it? Good Boss, Bad Boss is devoted to answering that question. Stanford Professor Robert Sutton weaves together the best psychological and management research with compelling stories and cases to reveal the mindset and moves of the best (and worst) bosses. This book was inspired by the deluge of emails, research, phone calls, and conversations that Dr. Sutton experienced after publishing his blockbuster bestseller The No Asshole Rule. He realized that most of these stories and studies swirled around a central figure in every workplace: THE BOSS. These heart-breaking, inspiring, and sometimes funny stories taught Sutton that most bosses – and their followers – wanted a lot more than just a jerk-free workplace. They aspired to become (or work for) an all-around great boss, somebody with the skill and grit to inspire superior work, commitment, and dignity among their charges.

As Dr. Sutton digs into the nitty-gritty of what the best (and worst) bosses do, a theme runs throughoutGood Boss, Bad Boss – which brings together the diverse lessons and is a hallmark of great bosses:They work doggedly to “stay in tune” with how their followers (and superiors, peers, and customers too) react to what they say and do. The best bosses are acutely aware that their success depends on having the self-awareness to control their moods and moves, to accurately interpret their impact on others, and to make adjustments on the fly that continuously spark effort, dignity, and pride among their people.

Put Good Boss, Bad Boss on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

February 27, 2015

Recommended Reading: Three Feet From Gold

RecommendedPost02We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These weekly posts feature one book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: Three Feet From Gold: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities

This remarkable business allegory tells a fascinating story in presenting the key principles of Napoleon Hill’s revolutionary bestseller Think and Grow Rich. While you follow a struggling young entrepreneur through a life-changing series of encounters with some of today’s foremost business leaders and inspirational figures, you’ll find encouragement and motivation to believe in yourself, discover your own Personal Success Equation™, and to never give up. You are just three feet from gold! A century ago Napoleon Hill began the research that ultimately resulted in his extraordinary bestseller Think and Grow Rich. Since its publication in 1937, with more than 100 million copies sold worldwide, the book has inspired generations of men and women to turn their dreams into reality with its wise and effective principles of self-motivation, leadership, service, and achievement culled from Hill’s interviews with visionaries of his day. Now, a hundred years later, in Three Feet from Gold, a young entrepreneur whose life is falling apart finds himself retracing Hill’s steps after a serendipitous encounter with a powerful businessman who sees the young man’s potential and sets him on a challenging journey of personal, spiritual, and financial growth. Sharon L. Lechter—co-author of the #1 New York Times best-seller Rich Dad Poor Dad—and Greg S. Reid— a successful author, and in-demand motivational speaker—have given us more than the story of one man’s dogged pursuit of success. They deliver an effective equation for accomplishing goals that calls for combining passion and talent, taking action with the right association, and above all else, having faith that you are on the right path.

Put Three Feet from Gold on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

February 20, 2015

Recommended Reading: Good to Great

We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These weekly posts feature one book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: Good to Great written by Jim Collins

The Challenge:
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study: 
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

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. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

Put Good to Great on your bookshelf. >

Posted by: AtlasMD

December 10, 2014

Recommended Reading: The SPEED of Trust

We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These weekly posts feature one book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: The SPEED of Trust.

Stephen M.R. Covey shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients and, employees—is essential to a successful organization.

With nearly 750,000 copies in print, this instant classic shows that establishing trust is “the one thing that changes everything” (Marcus Buckingham, coauthor of Now, Discover Your Strengths) in both business and life.

Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees, and constituents—is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization.

For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time–killing, bureaucratic check–and–balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

BUY THE SPEED OF TRUST >

Posted by: AtlasMD

November 26, 2014

Recommended Reading: The Power of Habit

We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These weekly posts feature one book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: The Power of Habit.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

BUY THE POWER OF HABIT >

Posted by: AtlasMD

November 17, 2014

Recommended Reading: The Checklist Manifesto

We often get asked for recommended reading lists. We’re delivering! These weekly posts feature one book we highly recommend to learn more about business, philosophy, and different perspectives to help you run your business. Do you have a recommendation that’s not on the list yet? Mention it in the comments!

This Week’s Recommendation: The Checklist Manifesto.

In his latest bestseller, Atul Gawande shows what the simple idea of the checklist reveals about the complexity of our lives and how we can deal with it.

The modern world has given us stupendous know-how. Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us in health care, government, the law, the financial industry—in almost every realm of organized activity. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people—consistently, correctly, safely. We train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies, and still we fail. Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better, using the simplest of methods: the checklist. In riveting stories, he reveals what checklists can do, what they can’t, and how they could bring about striking improvements in a variety of fields, from medicine and disaster recovery to professions and businesses of all kinds. And the insights are making a difference. Already, a simple surgical checklist from the World Health Organization designed by following the ideas described here has been adopted in more than twenty countries as a standard for care and has been heralded as “the biggest clinical invention in thirty years” (The Independent).

BUY THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO >